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The Novamir Channel

Mental time-travel in birds

Certain types of birds may track army ant swarms using sophisticated memory and the ability to plan for the future.

Self-Replication Process Holds Promise for Production of New Materials
New York University scientists have developed artificial structures that can self-replicate, a process that has the potential to yield new types of materials.

Psychopathic Killers: Computerized Text Analysis Uncovers the Word Patterns of a Predator

As words can be the soul's window, scientists are learning to peer through it: Computerized text analysis shows that psychopathic killers make identifiable word choices -- beyond conscious control -- when talking about their crimes.

Musical Aptitude Relates to Reading Ability

Auditory working memory and attention, for example the ability to hear and then remember instructions while completing a task, are a necessary part of musical ability. But musical ability is also related to verbal memory and literacy in childhood.

Glasgow surgeon using ultrasound to treat fractures

Doctors in the Scottish city which pioneered the use of ultrasound to scan the body are now using it to heal broken bones.

100,000-Year-Old Ochre Toolkit and Workshop Discovered in South Africa

ScienceDaily (Oct. 13, 2011) — An ochre-rich mixture, possibly used for decoration, painting and skin protection 100,000 years ago, and stored in two abalone shells, was discovered at Blombos Cave in Cape Town, South Africa.

Magic and Medicine

A digital resource dedicated to Simon Forman, the notorious, self-styled astrologer-physician, later dubbed the "Elizabethan Pepys", has been launched to mark the 400th anniversary of his death.

Evidence of Human, Dino Tracks Coexistence

A team of Chinese and American scientists have discovered the world's only evidence of coexisting human beings and dinosaur tracks in a remote county in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, according to a paper published in the Geological Bulletin of China, a Chinese core academic journal.

Researchers Build Transparent, Super-Stretchy Skin-Like Sensor
Imagine having skin so supple you could stretch it out to more than twice its normal length in any direction -- repeatedly -- yet it would always snap back completely wrinkle-free when you let go of it. You would certainly never need Botox.

Crab Pulsar emits light at highest energies ever detected in a pulsar system, scientists report
An international team of scientists has detected the highest energy gamma rays ever observed from a pulsar, a highly magnetized and rapidly spinning neutron star.

The VERITAS experiment measured gamma rays coming from the Crab Pulsar at such large energies that they cannot be explained by current scientific models of how pulsars behave, the researchers said.

The return to recycling
‘Trash talk’ shows how modern conservation has deep roots in the past

If you think today’s emphasis on recycling represents a revolution in human behavior, think again.

Before the Industrial Revolution and the advent of cheap consumer goods, throwing things away was a last resort as homeowners repaired, repurposed, and recycled home goods until there was little left to use.

Exhibition in Md. showcases Archimedes 'Lost and Found' text
(AP)  BALTIMORE — After more than a decade of restoration and study, the public is getting a glimpse at the oldest surviving copy of works by an ancient Greek mathematical genius at the Walters Art Museum.

Utah researcher helps artist make bulletproof skin
A bio-art project to create bulletproof skin has given a Utah State researcher even more hope his genetically engineered spider silk can be used to help surgeons heal large wounds and create artificial tendons and ligaments.

NASA Telescopes Help Solve Ancient Supernova Mystery

PASADENA, Calif. -- A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.

Astrophile: Undead stars rise again as supernovae
Ten thousand light years away, the burned-out core of a dead star quietly circles a sun-like companion. Though the stellar corpse shows no signs of life, it is a cosmic vampire, biding its time as it slowly sucks gas from its mate.

The 'rich club' that rules your brain
Not all brain regions are created equal – instead, a "rich club" of 12 well-connected hubs orchestrates everything that goes on between your ears. This elite cabal could be what gives us consciousness, and might be involved in disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease.

Photographed in Glacier National Park, Montana, this mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) effortlessly performs a death-defying climb. The goat's diet consists mainly of grass, sedge, lichen, and occasionally leaves and shoots – Here, precariously wedged between the rocks, the goat is reaching out for a tasty lick of rock that can provide mineral nutrients such as sodium, calcium, potassium or sulphate.

(Image: Joel Sartore/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2011)

Seeing through walls

Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Lab have developed new radar technology that provides real-time video of what’s going on behind solid walls.

Rethinking Equilibrium: In Nature, Large Energy Fluctuations May Rile Even 'Relaxed' Systems
An international research team led by the University at Buffalo has shown that large energy fluctuations can rile even a "relaxed" system, raising questions about how energy might travel through structures ranging from the ocean to DNA. Through computer simulations, an international research team has shown that energy disperses unevenly through a chain of equal-sized beads that touch one another and are held between hard walls. Large energy fluctuations arise within the system of beads, even as the system "relaxes" over time.

Researchers Identify Mysterious Life Forms in the Extreme Deep Sea

A summer research expedition organized by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has led to the identification of gigantic amoebas at one of the deepest locations on Earth.

Comets may be creating oceans on alien planet

Comets have been caught battering an exoplanet for the first time, new observations suggest. If the existence of the planet is confirmed, the finding means that the impacts are bringing water and organic material – the essential ingredients for life – to a world that lies in the habitable zone around its star.

Researchers Identify Brain Cells Responsible for Keeping Us Awake
Bright light arouses us. Bright light makes it easier to stay awake. Very bright light not only arouses us but is known to have antidepressant effects. Conversely, dark rooms can make us sleepy. It's the reason some people use masks to make sure light doesn't wake them while they sleep. Now researchers at UCLA have identified the group of neurons that mediates whether light arouses us — or not.

Want blue eyes? New laser surgery makes it happen
The beauty of cosmetic surgery is that, with a few snips here and there, just about anyone can get an instant boost in self-esteem. But it’s also the kind of knife that cuts both ways, leaving many to wonder whether such procedures also serve to perpetuate one beauty standard over another. You can argue that, for instance, liposuction and facelifts speaks to an somewhat unhealthy over-fixation on thinness and looking youthful. Now a potential breakthrough may add a new wrinkle to these sort of debates.

Most vertebrates descended from ancestor with sixth sense
Although humans experience the world through five senses, sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates have another sense: They can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves.

Analytics in 40 years: Machines will kick human managers to the curb
In the next 40 years analytics systems will replace much of what the knowledge worker does today. In other words, systems like IBM’s Watson will be your boss and humans—especially the species known as middle management—will go extinct.

2012: Killer Solar Flares Are a Physical Impossibility

Given a legitimate need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather -- great bursts of electromagnetic energy and particles that can sometimes stream from the sun -- some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth. Citing the accurate fact that solar activity is currently ramping up in its standard 11-year cycle, there are those who believe that 2012 could be coincident with such a flare.

Satellites Find Lost Libyan Civilization
Satellite imagery has uncovered new evidence of a lost civilization of the Sahara in Libya’s south-western desert wastes that will help re-write the history of the country.

The fall of Gaddafi has opened the way for archaeologists to explore the country’s pre-Islamic heritage, so long ignored under his regime.   

City Lights Could Reveal E.T. Civilization

ScienceDaily (Nov. 3, 2011) — In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights. "Looking for alien cities would be a long shot, but wouldn't require extra resources. And if we succeed, it would change our perception of our place in the universe," said Loeb.     

Newest chemical elements get proposed names
Elements 114 and 116 will likely be called flerovium, livermorium

The two new elements, which have the atomic numbers 114 and 116, were discovered by scientists in the U.S. and Russia.

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory-Dubna collaboration, which discovered the two elements, have proposed that element 114 be named flerovium and given the atomic symbol Fl to honour the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia, where a number of super-heavy elements, including element 114, were made.    

Lights that help you sleep
It’s an agonizing irony for anyone recovering in a hospital bed: Rest helps, but it can be hard to get a good night’s sleep in a busy ward.

Holland’s Maastricht University Medical Center has taken a step towards improving that by  trialling a lighting system in its cardiac unit where patients slept on average 8 percent longer than a control group of patients who recovered under normal lighting.  

Science panel: Get ready for extreme weather
WASHINGTON (AP) — Think of the Texas drought, floods in Thailand and Russia's devastating heat waves as coming attractions in a warming world. That's the warning from top international climate scientists and disaster experts after meeting in Africa.  

Water's quantum weirdness makes life possible
WATER'S life-giving properties exist on a knife-edge. It turns out that life as we know it relies on a fortuitous, but incredibly delicate, balance of quantum forces.  

ONR Helps Undersea Robots Get the Big Picture
ARLINGTON, Va.— Scientists have successfully transitioned fundamental research in autonomy to undersea gliders, demonstrating in recent sea tests how the new software, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), can help robots become smarter at surveying large swaths of ocean.

“Using the new algorithms, the vehicle has a greater ability to make its own decisions without requiring a human in the loop,” said Marc Steinberg, program officer for ONR’s Adaptive Networks for Threat and Intrusion Detection or Termination (ANTIDOTE), a multi-disciplinary university research program.

Saturday's Lunar Eclipse Will Include 'Impossible' Sight
Over the central regions of the United States, the moon will set as it becomes progressively immersed in the Earth's umbral shadow. The Rocky Mountain states and the prairie provinces will see the moon set in total eclipse, while out west the moon will start to emerge from the shadow as it sets.

New species of dinosaur discovered in museum basement
Paleontologists are used to digging deep for dinosaur remains--but to turn up a newly discovered dinosaur species, they had to dig no deeper than the basement of a London museum.

Algae helps explains Antarctic ice sheet formation
Antarctica's vast ice sheets first grew when carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere sharply declined millions of years ago, scientists now find.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas — it traps heat radiating away from the Earth's surface. High levels of it in the atmosphere are linked with global warming, while low levels are linked with global cooling. Many such periods of warming and cooling have occurred in the Earth's history, with repercussions for climate around the planet.

The Magnetic Moon
Tina Dwyer is fascinated with the moon. The former Caltech undergrad has been interested in astronomy and science ever since she was a kid, she says. But it wasn't until she did a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) project at Caltech that her passion for the moon and planetary science ignited.  

Long-Dead Inventor Nikola Tesla Is Electrifying Hip Techies

Decades after he died penniless, Nikola Tesla is elbowing aside his old adversary Thomas Edison in the pantheon of geek gods.

And his rivalry with Edison—called the Battle of the Currents because Edison had bet on direct current—was legendary. Tesla won the contest, when his AC equipment powered an unprecedented display of electric light at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

Comet Lovejoy Survives Fiery Plunge Through Sun, NASA Says
A newfound comet defied long odds on Thursday (Dec. 15), surviving a suicidal dive through the sun's hellishly hot atmosphere, according to NASA scientists.

Comet Lovejoy plunged through the sun's corona at about 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT on Dec. 16), coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star's surface. Temperatures in the corona can reach 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), so most researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed.  

Billion-Dollar Disasters 'Harbinger' of Future Extreme Weather: NOAA
SAN FRANCISCO — The 12 $1-billion-plus disasters that hit the United States this year are most likely not simply a matter of the stars aligning against us, according to the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who implicated climate change as a contributor.

2012: Magnetic Pole Reversal Happens All the (Geologic) Time
Scientists understand that Earth's magnetic field has flipped its polarity many times over the millennia. In other words, if you were alive about 800,000 years ago, and facing what we call north with a magnetic compass in your hand, the needle would point to “south.” This is because a magnetic compass is calibrated based on Earth's poles. The N-S markings of a compass would be 180 degrees wrong if the polarity of today's magnetic field were reversed. Many doomsday theorists have tried to take this natural geological occurrence and suggest it could lead to Earth's destruction. But would there be any dramatic effects? The answer, from the geologic and fossil records we have from hundreds of past magnetic polarity reversals, seems to be “no.”  

Ancient Texts Tell Tales of War, Bar Tabs
A  trove of newly translated texts from the ancient Middle East are revealing accounts of war, the building of pyramidlike structures called ziggurats and even the people's use of beer tabs at local taverns.

The texts date from the dawn of written history, about 5,000 years ago, to a time about 2,400 years ago when the Achaemenid Empire (based in Persia) ruled much of the Middle East.    Photos of texts:  click here

Experts stumped by ancient Jerusalem markings
JERUSALEM (AP) — Mysterious stone carvings made thousands of years ago and recently uncovered in an excavation underneath Jerusalem have archaeologists stumped.

Israeli diggers who uncovered a complex of rooms carved into the bedrock in the oldest section of the city recently found the markings: Three "V'' shapes cut next to each other into the limestone floor of one of the rooms, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) deep and 20 inches (50 centimeters) long. There were no finds to offer any clues pointing to the identity of who made them or what purpose they served.  

Arabian Artifacts May Rewrite 'Out of Africa' Theory
Newfound stone artifacts suggest humankind left Africa traveling through the Arabian Peninsula instead of hugging its coasts, as long thought, researchers say.

... The currently accepted theory is that the exodus from Africa traced Arabia's shores, rather than passing through its now-arid interior.

However, stone artifacts at least 100,000 years old from the Arabian Desert, revealed in January 2011, hinted that modern humans might have begun our march across the globe earlier than once suspected.

Mystery of Dead Sea Scroll Authors Possibly Solved
The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored.

Scholars are divided about who authored the Dead Sea Scrolls and how the texts got to Qumran, and so the new finding could help clear up this long-standing mystery.    

Proteins linked to longevity may be involved in mood control
Over the past decade, MIT biologist Leonard Guarente and others have shown that very-low-calorie diets provoke a comprehensive physiological response that promotes survival, all orchestrated by a set of proteins called sirtuins.

The emotional & physical benefits of gratitude
How does gratitude benefit us? Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at UC Davis, is one of the world’s leading scientific experts on gratitude. He says grateful people have advantages when it comes to success in life.

Engineered virus which hacks & controls brain: Do you mind?

Today, an average computer user cannot even keep the machine secured. So what will the world look like when hacking your mind becomes as easy as infecting your machine with a computer virus?

Hunt for Da Vinci Battle Fresco Stirs Squabble
A masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci hidden for 450 years behind a false wall in the center of Florence, a clue hidden in plain sight that tens of thousands of tourists passed by every year: It sounds like the plot of a Dan Brown novel. Indeed, that’s what some people say it is.

Expert: Mexico glyphs don't predict apocalypse  MEXICO CITY (AP) — The end is not near.

At least that's according to a German expert who says his decoding of a Mayan tablet with a reference to a 2012 date denotes a transition to a new era and not a possible end of the world as others have read it.

Stonehenge rocks Pembrokeshire link confirmed
Experts say they have confirmed for the first time the precise origin of some of the rocks at Stonehenge.

The museum's Dr Richard Bevins said the find would help experts work out how the stones were moved to Wiltshire.     Link

... Learning from the past:

The Bronze Age – now in 3D

The world will get its first glimpse of one of the most significant later Bronze Age sites ever recorded in Britain today, yielding a rare and extraordinarily detailed view of life 3,000 years ago.

Frankincense Endangered by Tree Decline

Trees that produce frankincense—used in incense and perfumes across the world and a key part of the Christmas story—are declining so dramatically that production of the fragrant resin could be halved over the next 15 years, according to a new study published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.

Rare Arctic white rainbow, fog bow over North Pole (photo by Sam Dobson)

THIS is the amazing moment a WHITE rainbow streaks across the arctic sky.

The rare phenomenon - named a fog bow - was spotted during a recent expedition to the North Pole.

Brand new island rises from Red Sea depths
Throw away that shiny new atlas you got for Christmas - it's already out of date.

Volcanic activity in the Red Sea is causing the formation of a new island in the Zubair archipelago as lava is cooled by the surrounding seawater and solidifies. The underwater volcano responsible is located on the Red Sea Rift, where the African and Arabian tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart.

2012 End-of-the-World Countdown Based on Mayan Calendar Starts Today

The countdown to the apocalypse is on.

We're one year away from Dec. 21, 2012, the date that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar allegedly marked as the end of an era that would reset the date to zero and signal the end of humanity.

October - December 2011

January - March 2012