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| Author: |
comicbookguy |
| Dated: |
Sunday, August 15 2004 @ 01:46 PM PDT |
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439 times |
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 Scientists in the United States have found a way of turning lazy monkeys into workaholics using gene therapy. Usually monkeys work hard only when they know a reward is coming, but the animals given this treatment did their best all the time.
Scientists involved in the study believe treatments based on this concept could one day benefit people with conditions like depression, where motivation has largely disappeared from their lives.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3557310.stm
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| Author: |
comicbookguy |
| Dated: |
Friday, June 25 2004 @ 06:23 PM PDT |
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454 times |
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Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat.
DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth. The discovery, reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, represents the first documented human case of such a mutation.
Read the full story here
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| Author: |
comicbookguy |
| Dated: |
Monday, June 07 2004 @ 03:57 PM PDT |
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432 times |
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Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia of Atlantis. Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the "island" of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC.
Satellite photos of a salt marsh region known as Marisma de Hinojos near the city of Cadiz show two rectangular structures in the mud and parts of concentric rings that may once have surrounded them. "Plato wrote of an island of five stades (925m) diameter that was surrounded by several circular structures - concentric rings - some consisting of Earth and the others of water.
To read the full story click here.
Source: BBC News
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| Author: |
PlanetD |
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Saturday, May 01 2004 @ 04:04 PM PDT |
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651 times |
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Happy 40th Birthday BASIC
Dartmouth math professors Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny created a primitive network to allow multiple users to share a single computer through terminals scattered around campus.
With the help of students, Kurtz and Kemeny developed a commonsense language to run the system, relying on basic equations and commands, such as PRINT, LIST and SAVE.
On May 1, 1964, BASIC came to life in the basement of Dartmouth's College Hall. Two terminals hooked up to a single computer ran two different programs.
By 1970 nearly 100 companies used BASIC systems to share and sell time on computers. And when computers eventually entered the consumer market, most used BASIC. The popularity of BASIC waned as computers got more sophisticated, and newer languages were developed to take advantage of the power. Many of those languages had their roots in BASIC.
Forty years later pure BASIC -- Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code -- has all but disappeared, but its legacy lives on.
2 comments
Most Recent Post: 05/13 03:28AM by FloridaGirl
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| Author: |
comicbookguy |
| Dated: |
Monday, March 29 2004 @ 09:29 PM PST |
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451 times |
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I read an interesting story today. It seems woman really do speak their very own language and it's called Nushu. Nushu, meaning women's script is believed to have emerged in China during the third century at a time when the Chinese government prohibited education of women.
Nushu is believed to still be in use, but only by very few elderly women in remote rural areas. Asian linguists hope to keep the language alive through books, education, and further efforts at preserving what is believed to be the world's only female-specific language.
To read more Click Here.
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| Author: |
PlanetD |
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Sunday, March 28 2004 @ 12:07 PM PST |
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382 times |
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Three years after its first test flight ended in an explosion, NASA successfully launched an experimental jet the X-43A Saturday designed to reach speeds approaching 8,000 kilometres an hour.
Engineers have pursued scramjet technology because it could allow rocket-speed travel but with considerable savings in weight. Rockets must carry their own oxygen to combust the fuel they carry aboard; scramjets can scoop it out of the atmosphere.
In scramjets, oxygen is rammed into a combustion chamber where it mixes with fuel and spontaneously ignites. To work, the engine must be travelling at about five times the speed of sound - requiring an initial boost that only a rocket can provide.
A third X-43A could fly as early as the fall.
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| Author: |
PlanetD |
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Sunday, March 14 2004 @ 09:55 AM PST |
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551 times |
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Snack Treat Lovers beware...
The Environmental Protection Agency is studying the chemicals released into the air when a bag of microwave popcorn is popped or opened.
Exposure to vapors from butter flavoring in microwave popcorn has been linked to a rare lung disease contracted by factory workers in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has said it suspects the chemical diacetyl caused the illnesses.
However, health officials insist people who microwave popcorn and eat it at home are not in danger.
In the first direct study of chemicals contained in one of the nation's most popular snack foods, the EPA's Indoor Environment Management Branch at Research Triangle Park, N.C., is examining the type and amount of chemicals emitted from microwave popcorn bags.
Further research would be needed to determine any health effects of those chemicals and whether consumers are at risk, said Jacky Rosati, an EPA scientist involved in the study.
To read the full story Click Here
1 comments
Most Recent Post: 03/18 03:59PM by Anonymous
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| Author: |
comicbookguy |
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Saturday, January 31 2004 @ 12:41 PM PST |
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397 times |
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SOLOMONS, Md. (AP) - Days after hurricane Isabel ravaged the cliffs lining St. Mary's River last year, Jeff DiMeglio and his girlfriend went scouring for shark teeth and found what DiMeglio, an experienced fossil hunter, recognized as the rib of a whale.
He immediately covered the findings and contacted a museum. Heavy erosion from the storm had unearthed the complete fossilized skull of what paleontologists say was an eight-million-year-old whale. The find is important because little is known about whales of that era, said Stephen Godfrey, curator of paleontology for the Calvert Marine Museum.
The remains were unveiled Thursday at the museum, where scientists are carefully chipping away sediment around the 1.7-metre skull with hopes of one day putting it on display.
For the full story Click Here
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| Author: |
comicbookguy |
| Dated: |
Friday, January 02 2004 @ 06:52 PM PST |
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465 times |
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WASHINGTON (AP) - People who may have been ancestors of the first Americans lived in Arctic Siberia, enduring one of the most unforgiving environments on Earth at the height of the Ice Age, said Russian researchers who discovered the oldest evidence yet of humans living near the frigid gateway to the New World.
Scientists uncovered a 30,000-year-old site where ancient hunters lived on the Yana River in Siberia, some 500 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle and not far from the Bering land bridge that then connected Asia with North America.
"Although a direct connection remains tenuous, the Yana...site indicates that humans extended deep into the Arctic during colder (Ice Age) times," the authors wrote in a study appearing this week in the journal Science.
The researchers found stone tools, ivory weapons and the butchered bones of mammoths, bison, bear, lion and hare, all animals that would have been available to hunters during the Ice Age period.
For the full story Click Here
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| Author: |
comicbookguy |
| Dated: |
Thursday, December 11 2003 @ 10:58 AM PST |
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352 times |
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Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way, an achievement that could someday help scientists develop powerful new computers.
The research differs from work published in 2001 that was hailed at the time as having brought light to standstill. In that work, light pulses were technically "stored" briefly when individual particles of light, or photons, were taken up by atoms in a gas.
Harvard University researchers have now topped that feat by truly holding light and its energy in its tracks - if only for a few hundred-thousandths of a second.
For the full story Click Here
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