Scientists design a more efficient democratic voting system

The main problem with plurality voting is that by having one vote, voters can only indicate their preferred alternative, without being able to provide more information regarding what they think of the other alternatives. Sometimes this causes people to not vote for their favorite choice because they think they do not have a chance to win, while in other cases, it may occur that when their choice loses, a certain amount of resentment is created by suspicions that the minority losing is more important than the gains of the victorious majority. From the economic theory point of view, these voting results are not efficient in that they do not maximize social well-being. That is what these researchers are trying to avoid in their voting system by standardized bidding, recently published by Robert F. Veszteg, of the UC3M, together with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid professor, Agnes Pintér, in the academic review, European Journal of Political Economy.

The voting system by standardized bidding which they have developed is a method allowing voters to order alternatives according to their preferences, scoring them along a numeric scale. "What is important is that they say a number for each alternative which is higher for their top choice or those for which they wish to assign more importance", stated Professor Róbert F. Veszteg, from the UC3M Economics Department. He then illustrated this with the following example: If a group of friends wants to decide whether to see a romantic movie, a comedy or a horror film, each one of the friends would have to say three numbers (one for each movie). After that, the numbers could represent the maximum amount of money (in Euros) that he/she would pay to be able to see the film in question, or the personal satisfaction from seeing the movie expressed with the number of doughnuts he/she could buy which would give the same satisfaction.

This liberty can cause two problems, the researchers noted. The first one: How can you add the votes if some are measured in Euros and others are measured in doughnuts? And the second: What do you do with people who are prone to exaggeration and tend to give extremely high numbers? To resolve these issues, the scientists resort to the standardization of these "numbers/votes/bids", a statistical technique which eliminates individual units of measurement and divides by the standard deviation of each bid before adding", Veszteg pointed out. In a nutshell, this would make Tryon Edward's idea a reality. This U.S. theologian, lexographer, and writer said that "Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning. The standardization is what allows these discounts to be accurately calculated. ...

via Scientists design a more efficient democratic voting system.

Key to psychological disorder may lie in the immune system

A type of cell that is known to protect the brain against infection could be involved in a form of psychological disorder, a new study reveals. What's more, restoring normal populations of these cells by transplantation can cure abnormal behaviour in mice.

Microglia are highly branched immune cells that constantly move around and scavenge the brain for debris and pathogens. Researchers have now shown that a genetic defect that reduces the number of these cells causes excessive grooming in mice. The behaviour is similar to that observed in trichotillomania in humans — an obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder that compels people to pull out their hair. "No connection had ever been made between microglia and behaviour," says Mario Capecchi at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, whose team published the findings today in Cell1.

Scientists had presumed that abnormal behaviour stems from impaired neural function or brain development, says Christopher Pittenger, who studies the neural basis of psychiatric conditions at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "To find that it has to do with microglia is a big surprise," says Pittenger, who was not involved in the new study. ...

via Key to psychological disorder may lie in the immune system : Nature News.

I was just hearing that probiotics may correct some mental disorders.

The Skull of Doom

Crystal skulls have long had a fringe following, and the most famous of them is one named for the explorer-author Frederick A. Mitchell-Hedges (see “Legend of the Crystal Skulls”). Mitchell-Hedges claimed to have found the skull somewhere in Central America in the 1930s, but his adopted daughter Anna later said she found it under a fallen altar or inside a pyramid at the Maya site of Lubaantún in British Honduras (now Belize) some time in the 1920s. Neither of their contradictory accounts is true. In fact, like all the other crystal skulls thus far examined, it is a modern creation, despite its nearly mythical place in the minds of devotees.

I have had two opportunities to examine the Mitchell-Hedges skull closely and to take silicone molds of carved and polished elements of it, which I have analyzed under high-power light and scanning-electron microscopes. I have also evaluated the documentary evidence, newspaper stories about Mitchell-Hedges, his memoirs Land of Wonder and Fear (1931) and Danger My Ally (1954), and a file of letters and documents that Anna Mitchell-Hedges sent to Frederick Dockstader, the director of the Museum of the American Indian in New York City, which I recently found.

The microscopic evidence presented here indicates that the skull is not a Maya artifact but was carved with high-speed, modern, diamond-coated lapidary tools. The historical record shows it first appeared in London in 1933 and was purchased a decade later by Mitchell-Hedges, who claimed the crystal skull was an authentic pre-Columbian artifact. The newly found archival evidence suggests Anna was later involved in the evolution of tall tales about the skull’s origins, providing a fascinating look at the creation of a popular mythology in service of a profitable business venture.

via Archaeology Magazine - The Skull of Doom.

Approaching space object 'artificial, not asteroid' says NASA

... an unknown object approaching the Earth from deep space is almost certainly artificial in origin rather than being an asteroid.

Object 2010 KQ was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona earlier this month, and subsequently tracked by NASA's asteroid-watching service, the Near-Earth Object Program headquartered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

According to the NASA experts:

Observations by astronomer S J Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that 2010 KQ's spectral characteristics do not match any of the known asteroid types, and the object's absolute magnitude (28.9) suggests it is only a few meters in size.The mysterious artificial object has apparently made a close pass by the Earth, coming in almost to the distance of the Moon's orbit, and is now headed away again into the interplanetary void. The object has used no propulsion during the time NASA has had it under observation. ...

it must have moved under its own power at some point, given its position and velocity.

"The orbit of this object is very similar to that of the Earth, and one would not expect a [naturally occurring] object to remain in this type of orbit for very long," said Paul Chodas, a brainbox at JPL.

The experts believe that the object must be a spacecraft, or more accurately part of one - sadly not an alien visitor, though. Rather it's likely to be a booster stage from an interplanetary mission of the past, now drifting back in to Earth and out again. The next visit will probably be 2036, at which time there's a small chance that 2010 KQ will crash into the atmosphere and burn up. ...

via Approaching space object 'artificial, not asteroid' says NASA • The Register.

Might be an alien probe... ;-)

Google Street View secretly took your wi-fi details... and will use the data to target ads at mobile phones

There were earlier reports that Google had admitted accidentally collecting some emails from ‘open’ wireless networks. But The Mail on Sunday today reveals how – and why – the company has collected details of all wi-fis, even those protected by security.

Last night the firm, one of the world’s most powerful companies and worth £28billion, admitted that it should have been ‘more transparent’ about the full extent of the project and pledged to stop mapping any new personal wireless networks in future.

But it said it would not delete the information it had already obtained from the Street View project which now covers almost every road in Britain.

Personal wireless equipment – known as a router – allows people to access the internet from anywhere in their homes without plugging laptops and other devices into a telephone point.

However, the broadcast signal is not confined by the walls of a property and its footprint will often spill into neighbouring buildings and the street outside.

Internet providers encourage people to set up passwords to prevent anyone from using their web connection without their knowledge or potentially gaining access to personal information held on their computers.

But, even with a password in place, Google was able, without alerting anyone in advance or seeking any permission, to log the locations of all these wi-fi networks noting their names, called SSIDs, and the unique MAC, or Media Access Control, address of people’s personal equipment.

There are fears – dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ by Google officials – that personal information, together with the precise location of specific computer devices mapped by the firm, could be cross-referenced to track individuals’ internet use for commercial reasons.

The internet giant, which made profits of £4.5billion last year, says it is now using the data it gathered to offer location-based commercial services and advertising to mobile phone users and people with other portable devices, including Apple’s much-hyped iPad.

Software and phone ‘applications’ can pinpoint exactly where a mobile or computer device is by triangulating its position with the nearest wireless hot spots either at businesses or private addresses.


Google’s Mobile App, for example, allows users to link directly to restaurants and shops, find cinemas and theatres and hotels in their area and even to track the precise location of their friends and display information on their recent movements.


The search engine makes money by selling advertising attached to its internet maps and other content on its site, and also charges business when customers ‘click through’ to their websites to book a table or reserve a hotel room.


Using the wi-fi hotspot locations means Google can pinpoint users more precisely and more cheaply than using mobile phone masts or global positioning satellites.


According to its website, Google advertisers can ‘connect with the right customer at the right moment, wherever they are’.


It adds: ‘Is your customer just around the corner from you? Mobile users’ locations can be pinpointed with metre-level accuracy. Advertisers can easily target or tailor your message according to location and automatically show your customer relevant local store information, like phone numbers and addresses, to enable them to take immediate action.’


The concern about Google’s new system has also raised questions about other less well-known firms who have been quietly building up their own database.


One, Skyhook, says it has collected its information by ‘deploying drivers to survey every single street, highway, and alley in tens of thousands of cities and towns worldwide, scanning for wi-fi access points and cell towers plotting their precise geographic locations’.


There are also fears about possible future uses of the information, which could include users being targeted by unsolicited local advertising sent to them automatically as they walk or drive down a specific street.


For example, an automatic message paid for by a multinational coffee shop chain could be sent saying: ‘Feeling thirsty? You’re just 100 yards from our nearest coffee shop.’


Details of this secret side of the Street View project emerged this month after German regulators demanded details of the data Google was collecting on its citizens as it mapped the country for its version of Street View.

It was only then that the California-based multinational revealed that it was mapping people’s wi-fi networks and in some cases had inadvertently downloaded people’s personal information, including emails and web browsing history.


The German regulator, and also the Information Commissioner’s Office in Britain, have now ordered Google to delete this personal data.


And the firm is also facing a series of court cases in America over the issue, with one lawyer, Robert Carp, who is representing a Massachusetts internet firm, saying that the secret data collection was ‘nothing more than a further attempt to enhance their advertising capabilities’.

...

via Google Street View secretly took your wi-fi details... and will use the data to target ads at mobile phones | Mail Online.

Hologram TVs that will put you IN the action in development

Thousands of football fans are investing in cutting-edge 3D TVs for the World Cup in South Africa. But viewers could soon watch matches on holographic TVs that would make you feel like you were actually at the game.

Holo-TVs will resemble a large book laid out on the floor, according to Sony engineers. Lasers will then project a 'cloud' of images that will appear to float in the middle of the room and can be enjoyed from every angle WITHOUT 3D glasses.

It may sound like an implausible technology more suited to Star Wars films than real life, but industry leaders are taking it very seriously indeed.

NHK, the Japanese equivalent of the BBC, have committed to selling the first holo-TV by 2020, and earmarked £2.8billion for the ambitious project.

Japan are so confident they have offered holographic broadcasts to the globe as part of their bid of the 2022 World Cup.

The images would be captured from 360 degrees by 200 high-definition cameras during each match and then transmitted as three-dimensional images, a technology that has been driven by Japan's electronics giants.

The matches could be projected like a real match onto a pitches around the world, giving viewers the illusion of watching the real thing.

Microphones installed below the pitch where the actual game is taking place would record all sounds, including the ball being kicked and the referee's whistle, to create an ultra-realistic digital version.

via Hologram TVs that will put you IN the action in development | Mail Online.

Wait to cut umbilical cord, say researchers

Cutting of babies' umbilical cords should be delayed to allow more vital stem cells and nutrients to flow from their mothers, researchers have claimed. By leaving more time between delivery to clamping and cutting the cord, more blood is transferred to the child and more "gifts" are handed over in "nature's first stem cell transplant", it was claimed. Researchers said that in western culture the umbilical cord may be clamped too soon – usually between 30 seconds and a minute after birth.

But this might prevent valuable umbilical blood being transferred to the infant.

It could also prevent anaemia – one of the most common blood disorders which is caused by a lack of red blood cells.

During childbirth, the placenta and umbilical cord start contracting and pumping blood toward the newborn.

Once the blood has reached an equilibrium, the cord's pulses cease and the blood flow stops.

By obstetricians and midwives delaying the clamping of the cord – or by waiting until the pulses have definitely finished – newborns could benefit fully from the blood transfer, said the team from the University of South Florida.

Dr Paul Sanberg, of the university's Centre of Excellence for Ageing and Brain Repair, said: "Several clinical studies have shown that delaying clamping the umbilical cord not only allows more blood to be transferred but helps prevent anaemia as well.

"Cord blood also contains many valuable stem cells, making this transfer of stem cells a process that might be considered 'the original stem cell transplant'.

"The virtue of the unique and immature features of cord blood, including their ability to differentiate, are well known."

After reviewing the majority of research in the field, Dr Sanberg and his colleagues concluded that delaying cord clamping could reduce the infant's risk of many illnesses, including respiratory distress, chronic lung disease, brain haemorrhages, anaemia, the inflammatory condition sepsis and eye disease. ...

via Wait to cut umbilical cord, say researchers - Telegraph.

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it

The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades

We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.

The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.

Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots," said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. "This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months."

That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast.

Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline was attacked by rebels. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland. "We are faced with incessant oil spills from rusty pipes, some of which are 40 years old," said Bonny Otavie, a Bayelsa MP.

This point was backed by Williams Mkpa, a community leader in Ibeno: "Oil companies do not value our life; they want us to all die. In the past two years, we have experienced 10 oil spills and fishermen can no longer sustain their families. It is not tolerable."

With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution.

"If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta." ...

via Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it | Environment | The Observer.

Project Alpha Lookback with Michael Edwards

Original Alpha Kid, Michael Edwards pays a visit to the foundation and recalls some of the behind the scenes tricks that he and Steve Shaw (Banachek) did during the MacLab test.

Project Alpha was an elaborate hoax orchestrated by the stage magician and skeptic James Randi. It involved planting two fake psychics, Steve Shaw (now better known as Banachek) and Michael Edwards, into a paranormal research project. During the initial stages of the investigation, the researchers came to believe that the pair's psychic powers were real. However, more formal experiments, as well as criticism from both the parapsychology community and Mr. Randi himself, led them to dismiss their initial trust.[1] The hoax was later revealed publicly.

The success of Project Alpha led Randi to use variations of the technique on several other occasions.

Great info on the Project Alpha Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alpha

via Project Alpha Lookback with Michael Edwards.

UCI researchers create retina from human embryonic stem cells

UC Irvine scientists have created an eight-layer, early-stage retina from human embryonic stem cells, the first three-dimensional tissue structure to be made from stem cells.

It also marks the first step toward the development of transplant-ready retinas to treat eye disorders such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration that affect millions.

"We made a complex structure consisting of many cell types," said study leader Hans Keirstead of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center and the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UCI. "This is a major advance in our quest to treat retinal disease."

In previous studies on spinal cord injury, the Keirstead group originated a method by which human embryonic stem cells could be directed to become specific cell types, a process called differentiation. Results of those studies are leading to the world's first clinical trial using a stem cell-based therapy for acute spinal cord injury.

In this study, the Keirstead team utilized the differentiation technique to create the multiple cell types necessary for the retina. The greatest challenge, Keirstead said, was in the engineering. To mimic early-stage retinal development, the researchers needed to build microscopic gradients for solutions in which to bathe the stem cells to initiate specific differentiation paths.

"Creating this complex tissue is a first for the stem cell field," Keirstead said. "Dr. Gabriel Nistor in our group addressed a really interesting scientific problem with an engineering solution, showing that gradients of solutions can create complex stem cell-based tissues."

The retina is the inside back layer of the eye that records the images a person sees and sends them via the optic nerve from the eye to the brain. Retinal diseases are particularly damaging to sight. More than 10 million Americans suffer from macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over 55. About 100,000 have retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive, genetic disorder that usually manifests in childhood.

"What's so exciting with our discovery," Keirstead said, "is that creating transplantable retinas from stem cells could help millions of people, and we are well on the way."

The UCI researchers are testing the early-stage retinas in animal models to learn how much they improve vision. Positive results would lead to human clinical trials.

via UCI researchers create retina from human embryonic stem cells.

That’s not the afterlife – it’s a brainstorm

DOCTORS believe they may have found the cause of the powerful spiritual experiences reported by people “brought back from the dead”.

A study of the brainwaves of dying patients showed a surge of electrical activity in the moments before their lives ended.

The researchers suggest this surge may be the cause of near-death experiences, the mysterious medical phenomena in which patients who have been revived when close to death report sensations such as walking towards a bright light or a feeling that they are floating above their body.

Many people experience the sensation as a religious vision and treat it as confirmation of an afterlife. However, the scientists behind the new research believe that is wrong.

“We think the near-death experiences could be caused by a surge of electrical energy released as the brain runs out of oxygen,” said Lakhmir Chawla, an intensive care doctor at George Washington University medical centre in Washington.

“As blood flow slows down and oxygen levels fall, the brain cells fire one last electrical impulse. It starts in one part of the brain and spreads in a cascade and this may give people vivid mental sensations.”

Many revived patients have reported being bathed in bright light or suffused with a sense of peace as they start to walk into a light-filled tunnel. A few even say they experienced visions of religious figures such as Jesus or Muhammad or Krishna, while others describe floating above their own deathbed, observing the scene.

In one of the most famous cases, in 1991, Pam Reynolds, an American singer, reported watching the top of her own skull being removed by surgeons before she moved into a bright glowing realm, including detailed accounts of the surgery and the conversations by her surgeons.

If Chawla is right, however, such experiences have a biological explanation rather than a metaphysical one. In the research he used an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that measures brain activity, to monitor seven terminally ill people.

The medical purpose of the devices was to make sure that the patients, suffering from conditions such as cancer and heart failure, were sufficiently sedated to be out of pain. However, Chawla noticed that moments before death the patients experienced a burst in brainwave activity lasting from 30 seconds to three minutes.

The activity was similar to that seen in people who are fully conscious, even though the patients appeared asleep and had no blood pressure. Soon after the surge abated, they were pronounced dead. ...

via That’s not the afterlife – it’s a brainstorm - Times Online.

One last lucid dream, eh? I'd kind of prefer to be instantly vaporized--so instantly that I don't have time to think--at the end of the line, how about you?

Drug defeats deadly Ebola virus infection

An RNA-based drug has treated an infection of the deadly Ebola virus – the first drug to have been shown to do so in all recipients.

Ebola Zaire virus kills 90 per cent of the people it infects. There are experimental vaccines that protect people given it before they are exposed to the virus, but there has been no drug to help those who are already infected.

Now Thomas Geisbert of the Boston University School of Medicine in Massachusetts and colleagues have designed a small interfering RNA molecule that sabotages three of the virus's vital genes. Four rhesus monkeys infected with the virus all survived after receiving the drug for seven days, starting 30 minutes after infection

The treatment could be used within five years, says Geisbert, but further experiments and trials are needed to establish how long after infection it is effective.

via Drug defeats deadly Ebola virus infection - health - 28 May 2010 - New Scientist.

When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent

It's hardly a secret that large segments of the population choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs: economic, political, religious, or otherwise. But many studies have indicated that these same people aren't happy with viewing themselves as anti-science, which can create a state of cognitive dissonance. That has left psychologists pondering the methods that these people use to rationalize the conflict.

A study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology takes a look at one of these methods, which the authors term "scientific impotence"—the decision that science can't actually address the issue at hand properly. It finds evidence that not only supports the scientific impotence model, but suggests that it could be contagious. Once a subject has decided that a given topic is off limits to science, they tend to start applying the same logic to other issues.

The paper is worth reading for the introduction alone, which sets up the problem of science acceptance within the context of persuasive arguments and belief systems. There's a significant amount of literature that considers how people resist persuasion, and at least seven different strategies have been identified. But the author, Towson University's Geoffrey Munro, attempts to carve out an exceptional place for scientific information. "Belief-contradicting scientific information may elicit different resistance processes than belief-contradicting information of a nonscientific nature," he argues. "Source derogation, for example, might be less effective in response to scientific than nonscientific information."

It might be, but many of the arguments against mainstream science make it clear that it's not. Evolution doubters present science as an atheistic conspiracy; antivaccination advocates consider the biomedical research community to be hopelessly corrupted by the pharmaceutical industry; and climatologists have been accused of being in it to foster everything from their own funding to global governance. Clearly, source derogation is very much on the table.  ...

Within the scientific community, there has been substantial debate over how best to deal with the public's refusal to accept basic scientific findings, with different camps arguing for increasing scientific literacy, challenging beliefs, or emphasizing the compatibility between belief and science. Confirming that the scientific impotence phenomenon is real might induce the scientific community to consider whether any of the public engagement models they're currently arguing over would actually be effective at addressing this issue.

via When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent.

Toxic cities mock 'healthy' cycle riding

CYCLING to work may seem the healthy option, but a study has shown that people riding in cities inhale tens of millions of toxic nanoparticles with every breath, at least five times more than drivers or pedestrians.

The research involved fitting cyclists with devices that could count the particles, mostly emitted by car exhausts, in the air they were breathing.

It showed that urban concentrations of nanoparticles, which measure just a few millionths of a millimetre, could reach several hundred thousand in a cubic centimetre of air.

The particles, when inhaled, have been linked to heart disease and respiratory problems.

Because they are exerting themselves, cyclists breathe harder and faster than other road users. The study found that they suck in about 1,000 cubic cm with each breath, meaning they may inhale tens of millions of the particles each time they fill their lungs, and billions during a whole journey.

“This is the first time anyone has counted the particles while also measuring people’s breathing during city commuting. It showed that cyclists can inhale an astonishing number of pollutant particles in one journey,” said Luc Int Panis of the transport research institute at Hasselt University in Belgium, who led the study.

For the research, just published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, Int Panis and his colleagues asked cyclists to pedal while wearing a mask fitted with instruments that could measure and count the particulates, as such particles are known. All are invisible even in severely polluted air.

The researchers found that in Brussels the cyclists inhaled 5.58m nanoparticles for every metre cycled, dropping to about 1.1m when they tried the experiment in Mol, a much smaller town in Belgium.

They also found the cyclists inhaled four to five times more particles than a car passenger driven along the same route. ...

via Toxic cities mock 'healthy' cycle riding - Times Online.

Chinese hiding three million babies a year

"I am the biggest offender against the one-child policy in China!" laughed Fu Yang, a wiry and energetic 47-year-old man, as he fidgeted and poured tea. "I had seven daughters in just ten years."

Mr Fu and his rather more reserved wife are among the millions of Chinese parents who risk threats, fines and even imprisonment in order to defy the country's one-child policy. The couple, who now live a prosperous life in a small village outside the southern city of Xiamen, have had to flee across three provinces and hide their children with friends in the past.

"There were some difficult times," Mr Fu conceded. "We were chased around and we had to live like beggars. But I never thought about doing otherwise. I'm aware that many people do not want their daughters, but we have a decent respect for life. In China, we think that when you have a child it is like dropping a piece of your own body from you, and we never considered the other options," he said.

Since 1978, China’s government has limited each couple to one child in a bid to stem the growth of the world's largest population. To police the law, neighbourhood committees keep a close eye out for any pregnancies, and Family Planning officials have the power to force women to have abortions and sterilisations, as well as to monitor their contraception.

The policy does not apply to everyone. In the countryside, parents are allowed to try for a second child if their first is a girl. Couples who are both single children themselves are also allowed to have two children. A growing number of rich Chinese also pay fines in order to have a second child. ...

via Chinese hiding three million babies a year - Telegraph.

Chinese dam causes quakes and landslides

The Three Gorges dam was so vast and sweeping a vision that nothing could stand in its way. Not the old cities of the Yangtze valley, storehouses of human toil and treasure for more than a thousand years. Not the lush, low-lying farmlands, nor the villages, nor even the pagodas and temples that graced the riverbanks.

The cries of dissenting scientists and the lamentations of more than a million Chinese people forced to leave their ancestral lands counted for nothing.

When the waters rose to 570ft last year, drowning all these things, it marked a triumph for the engineers at the top of the Chinese Communist party.

But in the past six months a sinister trail of events has unfolded from the dam all the way up the 410-mile reservoir to the metropolis of Chongqing.

It began with strange, small-scale earthquakes recorded by official monitoring stations and reported by the Chinese media.

Mysterious cracks split roads and sundered schoolhouses and apartments in newly built towns and villages on the bluffs looking down on the river.

The local government now says that 300,000 people will have to move out in addition to the 1.4m evicted to make way for the dam.

More than 50,000 residents have already been relocated owing to seismic problems that were not foreseen when the dam was built, according to the state news agency, Xinhua.

As the boats sail by, landslides can be seen from the river — some small, some big — staining the waters of the Yangtze with minerals and sediment.

Big pleasure cruisers, tramp steamers and shoals of sampans plough through waters that switch from hue to hue as their chemical composition changes.

In Badong county, midway through the Three Gorges, celebrated in Chinese painting and poetry, the citizens are troubled by a sense of foreboding.

The local government hastily moved out of a prestigious new block after experts warned that it was unsafe.

But ordinary folk and even schoolchildren have been left to fend for themselves. More than 3,000 children attend school every day in a building dating back to 1943 that officials know to be at risk of collapse. Nothing has been done to move them, supposedly because of a lack of funds.

The playground is riddled with cracks. One ominous jagged line runs down the side of the classrooms.

“The government agrees that our whole school must move,” said a worried teacher, who asked not to be named, “but so far it’s just talk.” ...

via Chinese dam causes quakes and landslides - Times Online.

Discovered: The dinosaur that flew back when the Sahara was a lush and green paradise

A new type of giant flying reptile with a wingspan of six metres and which lived in the Sahara 95 million years ago has been discovered, scientists said today.

The pterosaur, which had a lance-shaped lower jaw making it look like a huge heron, was found by a team of scientists from University College Dublin, the University of Portsmouth and Universite Hassan II in Casablanca.

According to the findings published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE yesterday, the scientists believe the newly identified pterosaur to be the earliest example of its kind.

The new species of pterosaur was unearthed in three separate well-preserved pieces and, unlike most other pterosaur fossils, retains its original three dimensional shape.

Dr David Martill, a reader in palaeobiology at the University of Portsmouth's School of Earth and Environmental Studies, said: 'This is the first of this type of pterosaur to be recorded in Africa, and is related to the Texan giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus, the largest animal ever to fly.'

Expedition leader Nizar Ibrahim, an expert on north African dinosaurs from University College Dublin, said: 'This pterosaur is distinguished from all others by its lance-shaped lower jaw which had no teeth and looked rather like the beak of a gigantic heron.

via Discovered: The dinosaur that flew back when the Sahara was a lush and green paradise | Mail Online.

Megafauna cave painting could be 40,000 years old

Scientists say an Aboriginal rock art depiction of an extinct giant bird could be Australia's oldest painting.

The red ochre painting, which depicts two emu-like birds with their necks outstretched, could date back to the earliest days of settlement on the continent.

It was rediscovered at the centre of the Arnhem Land plateau about two years ago, but archaeologists first visited the site a fortnight ago.

A palaeontologist has confirmed the animals depicted are the megafauna species Genyornis.

Archaeologist Ben Gunn said the giant birds became extinct more than 40,000 years ago.

"The details on this painting indicate that it was done by someone who knew that animal very well," he said.

He says the detail could not have been passed down through oral storytelling.

"If it is a Genyornis, and it certainly does have all the features of one, it would be the oldest dated visual painting that we've got in Australia," he said.

"Either the painting is 40,000 years old, which is when science thinks Genyornis disappeared, or alternatively the Genyornis lived a lot longer than science has been able to establish."

Mr Gunn says there are paintings of other extinct animals right across the area including the thylacine, or tasmanian tiger, the giant echidna and giant kangaroo.

"It does give you a window back to a time that you can pinpoint, and in the case of the Genyornis it's a very long picture," he said.

The traditional owners of the land in the Northern Territory say they are excited the painting could be Australia's oldest dated rock art.

The Jawoyn Association's Wes Miller says the painting is one of thousands rediscovered across Arnhem Land in recent years.

"It verifies that the Jawoyn people were living in this country for a very, very long time," he said.

"People say it, but once again this is clearly a demonstration of how long Jawoyn people have been in this country and other Indigenous groups. It's great from that point of view. It's pretty exciting stuff."

via Megafauna cave painting could be 40,000 years old - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

They look a bit like dinosaurs in the process of evolving into birds.

Space so full of junk that a satellite collision could destroy communications on Earth

Space is so littered with debris that a collision between satellites could set off an “uncontrolled chain reaction” capable of destroying the communications network on Earth, a Pentagon report has warned.

The volume of abandoned rockets, shattered satellites and missile shrapnel in the Earth’s orbit is reaching a “tipping point” and is now threatening the $250 billion (£174bn) space services industry, scientists said.

A single collision between two satellites or large pieces of “space junk” could send thousands of pieces of debris spinning into orbit, each capable of destroying further satellites.

Global positioning systems, international phone connections, television signals and weather forecasts are among the services which are at risk of crashing to a halt.

This “chain reaction” could leave some orbits so cluttered with debris that they become unusable for commercial or military satellites, the US Defense Department's interim Space Posture Review warned.

There are also fears that large pieces of debris could threaten the lives of astronauts in space shuttles or at the International Space Station.

The report, which was sent to Congress in March and not publicly released, said space is "increasingly congested and contested" and warned the situation is set to worsen.

Bharath Gopalaswamy, an Indian rocket scientist researching space debris at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, estimates that there are now more than 370,000 pieces of junk compared with 1,100 satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO), between 490 and 620 miles above the planet.

The February 2009 crash between a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and an Iridium Communications Inc. satellite left around 1,500 pieces of junk whizzing around the earth at 4.8 miles a second. ...

via Space so full of junk that a satellite collision could destroy communications on Earth - Telegraph.

Newfoundland UFOs still a mystery

The unidentified flying objects spotted in January off Newfoundland remain a mystery to the government, despite extensive scrutiny, according to Department of National Defence (DND) documents obtained by CBC News.

The documents contain grainy images of a rocket with a long, fiery tail soaring skyward. The reports rule out missiles and model rockets, but don't suggest what the images might show.

Military experts discredit the possibility of ballistic and cruise missiles. DND's Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) assessed the images and reported: "The object is not a ballistic missile, not a cruise missile in boost phase nor a cruise missile in-flight phase. It is also not a licensed model rocket launcher."

The Jan. 25 sighting happened on the southern coast of Newfoundland near Harbour Mille. Several residents reported seeing the objects, including a woman who was able to photograph one of them. She reported to the RCMP that she had seen three missiles soaring over the ocean and it looked as if they had come up out of the water.

The DSTI says in the documents that the only missiles that can be launched from a submarine are ballistic or cruise missiles, but the country's top arms experts say the object photographed doesn't fit that profile.

"There are no distinguishing features on the object to use for identification … the shape of the flame is atypical of a missile launch," and "the length of the flame is greater than that of the rocket body. This eliminates the possibility that it is a cruise missile jet engine exhaust," said DSTI. ...

via CBC News - Canada - Newfoundland UFOs still a mystery.