From news.bbc.co.uk:
Thousands of Xbox 360 owners who have been cut off from Microsoft's Xbox Live service will have to buy a new console if they want to play online again.Read the complete article: Xbox console ban is 'permanent'
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Microsoft has barred as many as 1m gamers from Xbox live for modifying their consoles to play pirated games.
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From www.nature.com:
The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has been one of the most important biological model systems for more than 30 years. But now growing numbers of researchers are abandoning the stalwart species to investigate closely related worms that offer better insights into the origins of complex biological traits.Read the complete article: Biologists turn against worm
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To tease apart this reproductive transition, Ronald Ellis, a developmental geneticist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Stratford, and his colleagues turned their attention to C. remanei, a species that has only male and female sexes. Publishing today in Science1, Ellis's team showed that by lowering the expression of just two genes — one involved in the sex-determination pathway, the other in sperm activation — they could transform C. remanei females into sperm-producing, self-fertile hermaphrodites.
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From rss.sciam.com:
We all love getting something new. But then we have to move around our current clutter to find a place for it. Well, looks like things work the same way in the brain. Because according to a study published in the journal Cell, newborn neurons in the brain’s memory center make room for new memories by moving out the old ones. Ten years ago, scientists discovered that the brain makes new neurons well into adulthood. These cells arise in the hippocampus, a brain region associated with learning and memory. So everyone figured these new neurons must help make new memories, although no one knew how. Working with rodents, researchers watched what happens when they either prevented neurons from ...Read the complete article: Finding Room for New Memories
From www.popsci.com:
Hostage situations are often described like explosive devices, as ticking time bombs waiting to go off. And just as bomb disposal units have robots to help with their job, now police negotiators have a bot of their own for defusing a different kind of explosive situation.Read the complete article: Robo-Negotiator Talks Down Armed Lunatic
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Usually, when Murphy said "dead or alive, you're coming with me", the "alive" option rarely panned out. This robocop, however, already seems to be getting better results.
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From www.nature.com:
Depletion of the element in stars might be linked to the existence of extrasolar planets.Read the complete article: Lithium loss may be the planet-hunter's gain
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The amount of lithium on the surface of a Sun-like star could be a telltale sign that it is orbited by extrasolar planets — a finding that could speed astronomers' attempts to detect them.
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However, that is not what astronomers observe: the Sun has 140 times less lithium than it is predicted to have had when it formed, far less than astronomers expect to see. And now it would seem that the Sun isn't alone in having this characteristic.
Israelian's team analysed data from surveys of 30 Sun-like stars that had detectable orbiting planets, known as extrasolar planets, and found that the vast majority — 26 stars in total — had unusually low levels of lithium in their atmospheres. If a star's low lithium levels are strongly correlated with the presence of extrasolar planets, it could provide an important new way to search for planets in other solar systems. The team's results are published in Nature1.
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From discovermagazine.com:
The future of computing may depend on embracing the chaos that defines human thinking.Read the complete article: Brain-Like Chip May Solve Computers' Big Problem: Energy
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Kwabena Boahen's love affair with digital computers began and ended in 1981, when he was 16.
Boahen lived outside the city of Accra in the West African nation of Ghana. His family's sprawling block house stood in a quiet field of mango and banana trees. One afternoon Boahen's father rolled down the driveway with a surprise in the trunk of his Peugeot: a RadioShack TRS-80—the family's first computer—purchased in England.
Young Boahen parked the machine at a desk on the porch, where he usually dismantled radios and built air guns out of PVC pipe. He plugged the computer into a TV set to provide a screen and a cassette recorder so he could store programs on tapes, and soon he was programming it to play Ping-Pong. But as he read about the electronics that made it and all other digital computers work, he soured on the toy.
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From www.nature.com:
Two tiny changes in the sequence of one gene could have helped install the mechanisms of speech and language in humans.Read the complete article: Evolution of a single gene linked to language
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To find out whether these changes in FOXP2 had a biological function, a team led by Daniel Geschwind of the University of California, Los Angeles, inserted the two versions into human brain cells and looked at expression of the genes that the protein regulates. They found that the human version increased the expression of 61 genes and decreased the expression of 51 genes compared with the chimp version of the protein. To double-check that the same was happening in real brains, they looked at the expression of these genes in human and chimp brain tissue and found similar expression levels as in the cells. Their study is published in Nature2.
Many of the genes looked at by the team are known to have roles in brain development and function, firming up the central place of FOXP2 in the brain's language and speech networks. They also affect soft-tissue formation and development, linking FOXP2 to the physical side of speech and articulation.
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From SEEDMAGAZINE.COM:
Dave Munger is editor of ...
Read the complete article: Probing into Depression
From www.universetoday.com:
Though it may seem an unlikely location to happen upon a conference on astrobiology, the Vatican recently held a "study week" of over 30 astronomers, biologists, geologists and religious leaders to discuss the question of the existence of extraterrestrials. This follows the statement made last year by the Pope's chief astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, that the existence of extraterrestrials does not preclude a belief in God, and that it's a question to be explored by the Catholic Church. The event, put on by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, took place at the Casina Pio IV on the Vatican grounds from November 6-11.Read the complete article: Vatican Holds Conference on Extraterrestrial Life
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From feeds.space.com:
Spacecraft have used ion drives to explore the moon and deep space, but a new study aims to boost the electric propulsion idea to keep satellites around Earth alive longer.Read the complete article: Better Ion Engines May Keep Satellites Alive Longer
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More efficient ion thrusters could also benefit space missions beyond Earth orbit. Europe's SMART-1 lunar orbiter used them to maneuver up until it slammed into the moon in 2006, while other spacecraft use them today, including NASA's Dawn probe heading out to two asteroids and Japan's ailing Hayabusa, which is limping home from its own asteroid rendezvous.
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From www.brightsurf.com:
Aerosols, very small particles suspended in the air, play an important role in the global climate balance and in regulating climate change. (2009-11-11) ...Read the complete article: Climate studies to benefit from 12 years of satellite aerosol data
From www.nature.com:
Trading in shares in the first 28 companies on ChiNext, a new stock exchange for innovation-oriented companies, started on 30 October. On the same day, the government's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced that it was creating 20 venture-capital funds that would be worth 9 billion renminbi (US$1.3 billion), a significant proportion of the country's venture-capital market (see graphic).Read the complete article: China moves to help high-tech firms
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From www.nature.com:
Whether river deltas become swamped by rising sea levels will depend on a multitude of factors, including the type of soil and the tectonic action of any nearby plates, say researchers.Read the complete article: Global warming won't affect all deltas
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The battle to preserve the delta need not be fought at all, Ibáñez Martí says. The last time that seas were rising rapidly, at the end of the ice age, the Mississippi Delta simply retreated upriver, he explains. One option would be to let the same happen again. That, however, might prove politically unfeasible as people are likely to be unwilling to relocate. If efforts focus on protecting existing buildings from flooding, though, the delta might be squeezed between the rising sea and inland development.
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From discovermagazine.com:
The best thing we can do for the theory of evolution may be to bring its creator back down to earth.Read the complete article: Darwin's Great Blunder—and Why It Was Good for the World
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But you'll be glad you came, I promise, and a grateful Lord will one day wash your tired feet in Paradise. For it is from here, looking east, that you get to see the truth—long known in the scientific community, and as a consequence long kept quiet—that Mr. So-Called Charles Darwin, with his dumb beard and his dumb theories, born 200 years ago this very year, was wrong. Not just a little bit wrong. A lot wrong. Wronger than a bluetick hound on moonshine. Wronger than a Dixie Chick wearing a blindfold. And he could, additionally, be a real pain in the you-know-where about it.
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The year was 1836. A 27-year-old Charles Darwin, not yet bearded, fresh from chundering his way around the planet in the poop cabin of the HMS Beagle, disembarked in Falmouth, England, on a mission to cement his growing reputation as a Grand Fromage of Science. His first destination, however, after a two-year pit stop to shower and change his top hat, was not, as you might imagine, the London Zoo, nor the Natural History Museum (which had not yet even been built), but rather the modest town of Spean Bridge, high and deep in the rainy and remote Scottish Highlands.
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