Copyright Novamir.org 1999 -
"To see the future you must look backwards," ~ The Book of Isaiah.
LONDON (Reuters) -
In a report published on Thursday by the London-
"Over the next 30-
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Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination Created
The University of California, San Diego and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation have agreed to establish the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination (ACCCHI) at UC San Diego. The agreement was signed in conjunction with the foundation’s annual international Clarke Awards held on April 12, 2012, in Washington, D.C.
Sandra A. Brown, vice chancellor for research at UC San Diego, and Sheldon Brown, professor of media arts at UC San Diego, represented the campus at the formal signing ceremony with Tedson Meyers, chairman of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.
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“The Clarke Center will be a focal point for active collaboration on current and future research and an intersection of disciplines for the purpose of identifying and advancing creative and innovative solutions for the challenges of contemporary and future societies,” said Vice Chancellor Sandra Brown.
A massive alien planet that may have been ripped into Earth-
The planet's two remaining pieces, which researchers tentatively identified as planet-
"Planets can still evolve, by disintegrating to several small bodies, or by being completely destroyed," authors Ealeal Bear and Noam Soker, of the Israel Institute of Technology, told SPACE.com by email.
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The average adult human's brain weighs about 1.3 kilograms, has 100 billion or so
neurons, and sucks up 20% of the oxygen we breathe. It's much bigger than an animal
our size needs. According to a new computer model, the brains of humans and related
primates are so large because we evolved to be social creatures. If we didn't play
well with others, our brains would be puny.
A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a "do not eat" signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells.
A decade ago, biologist Irving Weissman of the Stanford University School of Medicine
in Palo Alto, California, discovered that leukemia cells produce higher levels of
a protein called CD47 than do healthy cells. CD47, he and other scientists found,
is also displayed on healthy blood cells; it's a marker that blocks the immune system
from destroying them as they circulate. Cancers take advantage of this flag to trick
the immune system into ignoring them. In the past few years, Weissman's lab showed
that blocking CD47 with an antibody cured some cases of lymphomas and leukemias in
mice by stimulating the immune system to recognize the cancer cells as invaders.
Now, he and colleagues have shown that the CD47-
Skywatchers take note: The biggest full moon of the year is due to arrive this weekend.The moon will officially become full Saturday (May 5) at 11:35 p.m. EDT. And because this month's full moon coincides with the moon's perigee — its closest approach to Earth — it will also be the year's biggest.
The moon will swing in 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) from our planet, offering skywatchers a spectacular view of an extra-
And not only does the moon's perigee coincide with full moon this month, but this perigee will be the nearest to Earth of any this year, as the distance of the moon's close approach varies by about 3 percent, according to meteorologist Joe Rao, SPACE.com's skywatching columnist. This happens because the moon's orbit is not perfectly circular.
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Austrian and Japanese researchers on Wednesday unveiled solar cells thinner than a thread of spider silk that are flexible enough to be wrapped around a single human hair.
The thin-
“The total thickness of this device is less than a typical thread of spider silk,” the researchers said in a report carried by online science journal Nature Communications.
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This may be the weirdest doughnut you have ever seen, but it solves a long-
Topology is the branch of mathematics concerned with the geometric deformations of objects. According to its rules, a flat square is equivalent to a holed-
There is just one problem: for the two ends to meet, the torus must be stretched in a way that distorts the original shape of the square. Any horizontal lines on the original square will be stretched on the torus, while vertical lines will remain the same. (Cartographers encounter a similar problem when unwrapping a globe of the Earth to create flat maps. They are forced them to make compromises such as inflating the size of Greenland, which can appear similar in size to Africa on standard maps but is actually one-
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When we modern folks visit a beautiful natural site, the experience may evoke a sense of peace, a feeling of awe, or just the need to snap a million photos.If you'd like to see your images on Yahoo! Travel, join now and submit your own!
For our ancient forebears, though, these places were so much more. Throughout history, civilizations all over the globe have attached spiritual or religious importance to natural spots that played key roles in their respective cultures.
From the mythological homes of powerhouse gods like Zeus and Shiva to the serene spot where the mortal Buddha achieved enlightenment, these are the places of legends. Some are still used for age-
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Space-
Outside experts are skeptical about the project, announced Tuesday at a news conference in Seattle, because it would likely require untold millions or perhaps billions of dollars and huge advances in technology. But the same entrepreneurs pioneered the selling of space rides to tourists — a notion that seemed fanciful not long ago, too.
"Since my early teenage years, I've wanted to be an asteroid miner. I always viewed it as a glamorous vision of where we could go," Peter Diamandis, one of the founders of Planetary Resources, told reporters at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. The company's vision "is to make the resources of space available to humanity."
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This photo taken in Dundee, Texas, shows a supercell storm, which are formed when
updrafts create convective rotating movements within a cloud. Supercells are associated
with severe weather such as tornadoes, which are common in Texas and other southern
US states and cause widespread damage.
Yesterday, fine art photographer Mitch Dobrowner was announced as the winner of the
L'Iris d'Or for his series of dramatic black-
Aspirin: New Evidence Is Helping Explain Additional Health Benefits and Open Potential for New Uses
New evidence is helping explain additional health benefits of aspirin. Researchers
in Canada, Scotland and Australia have discovered that salicylate, the active ingredient
in aspirin, directly increases the activity of the protein AMPK (AMP-
The research from scientists at McMaster University, the University of Dundee and the University of Melbourne will be published in the April 20 issue of the journal Science.
"We're finding this old dog of aspirin already knows new tricks," said Dr. Greg Steinberg,
a co-
Licorice Contains Anti-
It provides the raw material for licorice candy, calms the stomach and alleviates
diseases of the airways: licorice root. Chosen as the “Medicinal plant 2012,” the
root has been treasured in traditional healing since ancient times. Researchers at
the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin have now discovered that
licorice root also contains substances with an anti-
Natural substances have a surprising and often largely unexploited potential in the prevention and treatment of common diseases. For example, licorice root Glycyrrhiza contains different substances that help to alleviate disorders of the airways and digestive system. It has been used for millennia in traditional healing and is mainly administered in the form of tea.