Science Special News

[Rasputin]

How the Moon rules your life

For eons, folklore has blamed the Moon for everything from lunacy to bad luck. And, for the last few centuries, scientists have scoffed. Now, according to new research they're not so sure. The Moon may not be made of cheese, but it seems to influence a lot more down on Earth than we previously thought. According to new research, the Moon affects not only the tides of the oceans but also people, producing a range of symptoms from flare-ups of gout to bladder problems. It may even lie behind the causes of car crashes and affect people's hormonal balances.Having carried out new research and reviewed 50 other studies, scientists suggest that doctors and the police even need to prepare for how their work rate will increase at different points in the lunar cycle. Among the findings examined by the researchers were studies that showed GP consultations go up during a full moon, according to Leeds University. Appointments rise by 3.6 per cent, which works out at around three extra patients for each surgery. The researchers did not speculate on the nature of the moon-related problems or why they happened, but said that "it does not seem to be related to anxiety and depression".Gout and asthma attacks peak during new and full moons, according to work carried out at the Slovak Institute of Preventive and Clinical Medicine in Bratislava, where attacks over a 22-year period were monitored.Data from 140,000 births in New York City showed small but systematic variations in births over a period of 29.53 days - the length of the lunar cycle - with peak fertility in the last quarter.

"The timing of the fertility peak in the third quarter suggests that the period of decreasing illumination immediately after the full moon may precipitate ovulation.''A study in Florida of murders and aggravated assaults showed clusters of attacks around the full moon. A second study of three police areas found the incidence of crimes committed on full-moon days was much higher than on all other days. And a four-year study into car accidents found that the lowest number happened during the full-moon day, while the highest number was two days before the full moon. Accidents were more frequent during the waxing than the waning phase.

[Rasputin]

Some rumors are out of this world

Reverse engineering of flying saucers captured at Roswell, the development of energy weapons and weather control, time-travel technology, a shadowy one-world government -- these are a few of the rumors floating around about Area 51. Even though the government says no such research is occurring at the nonexistent base, many people ask "What if?"The rumors began in Roswell, N.M., in July 1947, when the local newspaper published an article titled "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region." After pressure from the government, the newspaper republished the article stating the article found was a tinfoil weather balloon.But many believe the government did indeed find a UFO and decided to cover up the incident.UFO skeptics think Area 51 is actually a site for developing and testing spy planes.

Some believe the Air Force spread rumors about alien encounters to distract the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "It's kind of dumb if you don't think that something is out there. We can't be in this big place all by ourselves," Cypress Bay High student Nick Gleason said.Scientists say 97 percent of reported alien encounters are explainable, but what about the remaining 3 percent?

[Rasputin]

Uri Geller successor show under fire

A hit Israeli TV show starring celebrity spoon-bender Uri Geller has come under fire from magicians for being full of "tricks and stunts". The self-proclaimed paranormalist is looking for others with his "powers" on Uri Geller Looks for a Successor. But Israeli magician Eliron Toby said the show "damaged" those who wanted to believe in Geller and Dandi Asraf said there were "no supernatural powers". Israeli-born Geller said the programme did not involve sleight of hand. The participants did have supernatural powers capable of performing marvels, he told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency. "I am not a magician and have never been one," Geller said. "I keep my powers mysterious." Asraf said the prime-time show was "entertaining". "But obviously everything is tricks and stunts. There are no supernatural powers.

There is no magic - it does not exist in this world." Toby said he was sad "that such a man has for so many years been able to fool so many people. "He contradicts the saying that you can't fool all of the people all the time. "The Successor has damaged those people who want to believe that Geller can heal or help them." The Israeli Society for Magicians is expected to meet to discuss the show.

[Rasputin]

Japanese marine park films rare shark

A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 600 meters (2,000 ft) or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week. The Awashima Marine Park in Shizuoka, south of Tokyo, was alerted by a fisherman at a nearby port on Sunday that he had spotted an odd-looking eel-like creature with a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth.Marine park staff caught the 1.6 meter (5 ft) long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a "living fossil" because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.The shark appeared to be in poor condition when park staff moved it to a seawater pool where they filmed it swimming and opening its jaws."We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare," said an official at the park.

"They live between 600 and 1,000 meters under the water, which is deeper than humans can go.""We think it may have come close to the surface because it was sick, or else it was weakened because it was in shallow waters," the official said.The shark died a few hours after being caught.Frilled sharks, which feed on other sharks and sea creatures, are sometimes caught in the nets of trawlers but are rarely seen alive.

[Rasputin]

Flying dinos had bi-plane design

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: The first flying dinosaurs took to the air in a similar way to a World War I bi-plane, a study shows. A fresh analysis of an early feathered fossil dinosaur suggests that it dropped its hind legs below its body, adopting a bi-plane-like form. This contrasts with earlier reconstructions showing the dinosaur maintaining its wings in a tandem pattern, a bit like a dragonfly. Details appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. The ancestors of modern birds are thought to have been small, feathered, dinosaurs. Microraptor gui, which lived 125 million years ago, was one of the earliest gliders. It appears to have utilised four wings, as it had long and asymmetric flight feathers on both its hands and feet. An initial assessment of Microraptor fossils from China suggested the animal spread its legs out laterally and maintained its wings in a tandem pattern, in a similar manner to dragonflies.

Now, researchers Sankar Chatterjee and R Jack Templin offer an alternative hypothesis. Their evaluations of the limb joints and feather orientation indicate that a tandem wing design would neither have achieved suitable lift, nor enabled Microraptor to walk on the ground easily. Instead, the scientists report that its hind legs were positioned below the body, in a bi-plane fashion. Dr Chatterjee, from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, US, explained that two lines of evidence had led the team to this conclusion.

[Rasputin]

Physicists propose test for String Theory

A lot of the controversy surrounding string theory is due to the absence of any meaningful way to test for the existence of the tiny one-dimensional filaments. But now, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Texas at Austin believe they can test at least part of this controversial theory. Writing in the journal Physical Review Letters L, the scientists describe how measurements of high-energy particle collisions could reveal the elusive strings. They contend that those collisions will be observable at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a subatomic particle accelerator scheduled to be operating later this year at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). "Our work shows that, in principle, string theory can be tested in a non-trivial way," explained Carnegie Mellon's Ira Rothstein. Their proposed test is based on how W bosons scatter in high-energy particle collisions. W bosons are special because they carry a property called the weak force, which provides a fundamental way for particles to interact with one another.

"The beauty of our test is the simplicity of its assumptions," explained Grinstein of the University of California. "The canonical forms of string theory include three mathematical assumptions - Lorentz invariance [the laws of physics are the same for all uniformly moving observers], analyticity [a smoothness criteria for the scattering of high-energy particles after a collision] and unitarity [all probabilities always add up to one]. Our test sets bounds on these assumptions."

[Rasputin]

Future exploration: High-tech spacesuits

Submitted by Blue Lizard: Future explorers on the Moon and Mars could be outfitted in lightweight, high-tech spacesuits that offer far more flexibility than the bulky suits that have been used for spacewalks in the 1960s. Research is under way at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a Bio-Suit System that incorporates a suit designed to augment a person’s biological skin by providing mechanical counter-pressure. The “epidermis” of such a second skin could be applied in spray-on fashion in the form of an organic, biodegradable layer.This coating would protect an astronaut conducting a spacewalk in extremely dusty planetary environments. Incorporated into that second skin would be electrically actuated artificial muscle fibers to enhance human strength and stamina.The Bio-Suit System could embody communications equipment, biosensors, computers, even climbing gear for spacewalks or what NASA calls an Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA).“When we get back to the Moon and on Mars, we’re not going there to stay in a habitat,” said Dava Newman, professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems here at MIT. “EVA becomes … a primary function,” she said.Newman is leading the Bio-Suit System work, assisted by researchers Kristen Bethke, Christopher Carr, Nicole Jordan, and Liang Sim in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems. The study is multi-pronged and is intended to better calibrate astronaut performance, explore improvements to current spacesuit designs and generate novel ideas for a new generation of space exploration suits.

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, headquartered in Atlanta, is sponsoring the Bio-Suit System effort.“We need to shrink-wrap the astronaut,” Newman said. “It would be like wearing a second skin.”The Bio-Suit System, Newman said, would provide life support through mechanical counter pressure where pressure is applied to the entire body through a tight-fitting suit with a pressurized helmet for the head. Ongoing research is targeted at understanding, simulating, and predicting capabilities of suited astronauts in a variety of scenarios — be they performing simple motions or more complex movement, such as overhead or cross-body reach, stepping up, or trudging across an exotic landscape.

[Rasputin]

The happiest man in the world ?

To scientists, he is the world's happiest man. His level of mind control is astonishing and the upbeat impulses in his brain are off the scale. Now Matthieu Ricard, 60, a French academic-turned-Buddhist monk, is to share his secrets to make the world a happier place. The trick, he reckons, is to put some effort into it. In essence, happiness is a "skill" to be learned.His advice could not be more timely as tomorrow Britain will reach what, according to a scientific formula, is the most miserable day of the year. Tattered new year resolutions, the faded buzz of Christmas, debt, a lack of motivation and the winter weather conspire to create a peak of misery and gloom.But studies have shown that the mind can rise above it all to increase almost everyone's happiness. Mr Ricard, who is the French interpreter for Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, took part in trials to show that brain training in the form of meditation can cause an overwhelming change in levels of happiness.MRI scans showed that he and other long-term meditators - who had completed more than 10,000 hours each - experienced a huge level of "positive emotions" in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain, which is associated with happiness. The right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts, is suppressed.Further studies have shown that even novices who have done only a little meditation have increased levels of happiness. But Mr Ricard's abilities were head and shoulders above the others involved in the trials.

"The mind is malleable," Mr Ricard told The Independent on Sunday yesterday. "Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time."Mr Ricard was brought up among Paris's intellectual elite in the 1960s, but after working for a PhD in biochemsitry he abandoned his distinguished academic career to study Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalayas.A book of philosophical conversations he conducted with his father Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher, became an unlikely publishing phenomenon when it came out in France in the late 1990s.

[Rasputin]

TV special searches for haunted homes

The producers of "Ghostly Homes of Cape Cod" and "Ghostly Homes of Charleston" are looking for suitable homes for a new Halloween special. Jake Klim: Do you think your house is haunted? Are strange sounds creeping you out late at night? Does your basement moan and howl? Does your attic creak? Do your walls and ceiling wail with pain? Lights turn on and off by themselves?Think your house is haunted? Maybe it just needs a visit from our television crew and our team of licensed home inspectors. Horizon Entertainment is looking to produce an hour-long Halloween special for a national cable network. Our program will be modeled after Finders Fixers, a nationally run television series currently airing on the DIY Network. Each week on Finders Fixers our home inspectors solve household mysteries and help homeowners make necessary repairs. We even pay for some of them!

For our Halloween special, we're looking for a young couple whose house might be haunted, but more likely just has some fun aches and pains that we can help them fix. Are those moaning sounds coming from the upstairs closet the dying cries of Uncle Jasper, or just the sound of wind whipping loose 2x4s on the side of the house?If you think you've got a house that looks haunted, and sounds haunted, but may be in need of a little repair AND you live in the Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania area and would like to be considered for our television special, please let us know. Tell us a little about yourself, your house and its problems, and why you think your house might, just might be haunted. Nonreturnable pictures of yourself, your house and the problems are really really helpful.

[Rasputin]

Caverns give up huge fossil haul

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: An astonishing collection of fossil animals from southern Australia is reported by scientists. The creatures were found in limestone caves under Nullarbor Plain and date from about 400,000-800,000 years ago. The palaeontological "treasure trove" includes 23 kangaroo species, eight of which are entirely new to science. Researchers tell Nature magazine that the caves also yielded a complete specimen of Thylacoleo carnifex, an extinct marsupial lion. It appears the unsuspecting creatures fell to their deaths through pipes in the dusty plain surface that periodically opened and closed over millennia. Most of the animals were killed instantly but others initially survived the 20m drop only to crawl off into rock piles to die from their injuries or from thirst and starvation. The preservation of many of the specimens was remarkable, said the Nature paper's lead author, Dr Gavin Prideaux.

"To drop down into these caves and see the Thylacoleo lying there just as it had died really took my breath away," the Western Australian Museum researcher told the BBC's Science In Action Programme. "Sitting in the darkness next to this skeleton, you really got the sense of the animal collapsing in a heap and taking its last breath. It was quite poignant.

[Rasputin]

France to reveal UFO secrets

UFO sightings in France are set to be revealed - exciting paranormal enthusiasts in the UK. The archive of over 1,600 incidents will be released by France's National Space Studies Centre (CNES) and has led to calls for the UK to publish all its sightings.The highly-anticipated online archive was due to go live this month but has now been delayed until at least March, said the space agency.Nick Pope, former head of the Ministry of Defence’s UFO projects division, said the France archive could track the paths of unidentified flying objects across the Channel.Nick said: “I really welcome the French move. There is a huge interest in UFO sightings. It will be great to see if there are reports in there which relate to classic UFO sightings.”Nick believes an online archive should be published here and claims that many reports gathered by the Ministry of Defence are still kept under wraps.He said: “There is a lot of files which have not seen the light of day. If the MoD published them, it would be a huge step forward.“I don’t believe there is a cover up but the MoD leaves itself open to that accusation.”However the MoD said it has released information on sightings on a annual basis.

A spokesman told the Sun online: “We regularly receive Freedom of Information requests on UFOs and these are published in full over time.The MoD said that based it remained “open-minded” about the existence of extraterrestrial life-forms.But added: “To date we know of no evidence that substantiates the existence of these alleged phenomena”.Yesterday CNES told the Sun online the launch of its archive, dating back 30 years, would be delayed.A spokeswoman said: "The archive is not online yet. It will be in mid-March."

[Rasputin]

Hints of huge water reservoirs on Mars

Mars is losing little water to space, according to new research, so much of its ancient abundance may still be hidden beneath the surface. Dried up riverbeds and other evidence imply that Mars once had enough water to fill a global ocean more than 600 metres deep, together with a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide that kept the planet warm enough for the water to be liquid. But the planet is now very dry and has a thin atmosphere.Some scientists have proposed that the Red Planet lost its water and CO2 to space as the solar wind stripped molecules from the top of the planet's atmosphere. Measurements by Russia's Phobos-2 probe to Mars in 1989 hinted that the loss was quite rapid.Now the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has revealed that the rate of loss is much lower. Stas Barabash of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in ***una led a team that used data from Mars Express's ASPERA-3 instrument (Analyzer of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms).

Its measurements suggest the whole planet loses only about 20 grams per second of oxygen and CO2 to space, only about 1% of the rate inferred from Phobos-2 data.If this rate has held steady over Mars's history, it would have removed just a few centimetres of water, and a thousandth of the original CO2.Either some other process removed the water and CO2 or they are still present and hidden somewhere on Mars, probably underground, Barabash says. "We are talking about huge amounts of water," he told New Scientist. "To store it somewhere requires a really big, huge reservoir."

[Rasputin]

Fish demonstrate logical reasoning

Fish have the reasoning capacity of a 4- or 5-year-old child when it comes to figuring out who among their peers is "top dog," new research shows. Stanford University scientists made the discovery—said to be the first demonstration that fish can use logical reasoning to figure out their social pecking order—by studying fights among small, highly territorial, spiny-finned fish called cichlids, common in freshwater in tropical Africa, including in Lake Tanganyika in central Africa. Logan Grosenick, a graduate student in statistics, and his colleagues found that a sixth fish could infer or learn indirectly which were the 1st through 5th strongest simply by observing fights among them in adjacent, transparent tanks, rather than by directly fighting each fish itself or seeing each fish fight all four others. This type of reasoning, called transitive inference (TI), is a developmental milestone for human children, showing up nonverbally as early as ages 4 and 5; it also has been reported in monkeys, rats and birds. It allows thinkers to reason that if A is bigger than B, and B is bigger than C, then A is also bigger than C. Anthropomorphizing animals, or casting human intentions on them, is a mistake, Grosenick said, but it's a philosophical matter as to whether the cichlids' ability to infer rankings is the same as similar reasoning in humans.

"They are making correct logical inferences on an abstract representation of their world, which would usually be called 'reasoning' in humans," he said. Biologist Russell D. Fernald, one of Grosenick's colleagues on the study, said that fish thinking is very different from that of humans. "The capacity shown here is a necessary precondition for reasoning, but having this capacity does not mean these fish actually reason or do any other specific logical tasks," he told LiveScience.

[Rasputin]

Hobbit cave digs set to restart

Submitted by Waspie Dwarf: Archaeologists who found the remains of human Hobbits have permission to restart excavations at the cave where the specimens were found. Indonesian officials have blocked access to the cave since 2005, following a dispute over the bones. But Professor Richard Roberts, a member of the team that found the specimens, told BBC News the political hurdles had now been overcome. The researchers claim that the remains belong to a novel species of human. But some researchers reject this assertion, claiming instead that the remains could belong to a modern human with a combination of small stature and a brain disorder. Finding other specimens in the cave, particularly one with an intact skull, is crucial to resolving the debate over whether the Hobbit's classification as a separate species - Homo floresiensis - is valid. But access was reportedly blocked due to political sensitivities. "This year we will back in Liang Bua again, back in the cave where we found the Hobbits," said Professor Roberts, from the University of Wollongong in Australia. "This is good; we've now managed to get over the political hurdles that had been put up.

We'll probably be in there towards the middle of the year." The Hobbit's discoverers are adamant it is an entirely separate human species that evolved a small size in isolation on its remote Indonesian island home of Flores. Skeletal remains were discovered by an Australian-Indonesian research team in Liang Bua, a limestone cave deep in the Flores jungle, in 2003. Researchers found one near-complete skeleton, which they named LB1, along with the remains of at least eight other individuals.

[Rasputin]

Ghost hunters rely on common sense

As Grant S. Wilson and Jason Hawes crept up the spiral staircase of the old lighthouse, they saw a figure grab the railing and look down at them. They quickened their steps, ran after him and found ... nothing. A dead end. Two padlocked doors. No one at all. Just another day in the life of "Ghost Hunters," the TV show on the Sci-Fi Channel that follows the real-life exploits of a team of unusual investigators. Now the public is invited to meet the stars of "Ghost Hunters" in person, Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m., at the Eastfield Mall in Springfield. Joining Wilson and Hawes will be their fellow ghost hunter Steven A. Gonsalves, who lives in Springfield when he's not on the road filming. Admission to the event is free. Autographs cost $10, with proceeds going to The Republican's Newspapers in Education program. The Sci-Fi Channel calls its hit, which has a crew of 10, an "alternative reality show." Gonsalves appears on camera as well as serving as technical manager, in charge of equipment. He says he has been reading up on ghosts since he was 13. His mother is one of his biggest fans. "She always wants to go with me!" says Gonsalves. He is not fazed by being on the TV. "It feels like you're talking to a black box," he says, "not like 6 or 7 million people are watching you."

Fellow ghost hunters Wilson and Hawes never did find out who was in that lighthouse in St. Augustine, Fla. But a camera in the building did pick up traces of the figure. "He was walking around, and then he zipped up three flights of stairs in about a second," said Wilson in a telephone interview. "He leaned over the railing a couple of times, and once he just totally disappeared." The ghost hunters have also explored prisons, schools, libraries, castles, aircraft carriers and many other sites of strange happenings. They never charge a fee for their services.