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Borrowing from the physics of invisibility cloaks could make it possible to hide buildings from the devastating effects of earthquakes, say physicists in France and the UK. The "earthquake cloak" idea comes from the team led by Stefan Enoch at the Fresnel Institute in Marseille, France. They were the first to show that the physics of invisibility cloaks could have other applications – designing a cloak that could render objects "invisible" to destructive storm waves or tsunamis. The seismic waves of an earthquake fall into two main groups: body waves that propagate through the Earth, and surface waves that travel...

Using a clinical technique pioneered by his laboratory in Israel, Dr. Michael Shechter of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center was able to visualize what happens inside our arteries before, during and after eating high carb foods. Doctors have known for decades that foods like white bread and corn flakes aren’t good for cardiac health. But, this new landmark study shows exactly how these high carb foods increase the risk for heart problems.

If the universe obeyed Newton's laws of gravity, there would be about a 60% chance that Mercury would head toward the Sun or Venus during the Sun’s lifetime. But according to a new study, corrections to Newton's laws using Einstein's theory of gravity (general relativity) lower these chances to about 1%. That’s good news, because if Mercury had a near miss with Venus or the Sun, it could wreak havoc on Earth.

Next time someone tells you intelligent design is “based on religion,” you might point him to American Founder Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. As I explain in a special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Jefferson not only believed in intelligent design, he insisted it was based on the plain evidence of nature, not religion. Ironically, the critics of intelligent design often think they are defending the principles of Jefferson. The National Council for the Social Studies, for example, claims that intelligent design is religion and then cites Jefferson’s famous Letter to the Danbury Baptists calling...

The reputation of diamond as the hardest material around is under threat. Researchers in China and the United States recently determined that two naturally occurring substances surpass diamond’s resistance to scratching and indentation. They calculated that the mineral lonsdaleite—made of carbon, like diamond—is 58 percent harder than its famous cousin. And wurtzite boron nitride beats diamond’s hardness by about 18 percent after being subjected to pressure, which alters its atomic bonds. Still, in the short term diamond will continue to dominate in practical applications such as saws, drill bits, and industrial abrasives, since the newly studied materials are extremely rare....

"And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family." (Leviticus 25:10)This verse is especially significant in American history as the verse from which the great exhortation was taken on the first Independence Day: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof!" It has ever since been associated with the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, as Americans each year thank God for "the land...

Read the following news stories and much more by clicking the excerpt link below: 1. New York Times: “Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh”In covering a visit by paleontologists to our Creation Museum, a New York Times’ article spreads some misunderstanding including in an associated blog by the reporter). 2. Washington Post: “Among Many Peoples, Little Genomic Variety”A new genetic study of 53 human populations shows that each falls into one of three genetic groups—yet that the three groups aren’t as different as was thought. The legacy of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Noah’s three sons), perhaps? 3. BBC News:...

"Yesterday, a sunspot emerged in the circled region, but it disappeared so fast that it did not receive an official number."

For the first time, direct evidence of lightning has been detected on Mars, say University of Michigan researchers who found signs of electrical discharges during dust storms on the Red Planet. The bolts were dry lightning, says Chris Ruf, a professor in the departments of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. "What we saw on Mars was a series of huge and sudden electrical discharges caused by a large dust storm," Ruf said. "Clearly, there was no rain associated with the electrical discharges on Mars. However, the implied possibilities are exciting." Electric activity in Martian...

Roman Catholicism and Genesis A review of The Doctrines of Genesis 1–11: A Compendium and Defense of Traditional Catholic Theology on Origins by Fr Victor P. Warkulwiz The Catholic Church’s belief about Genesis 1–11 has been in a muddle for a long time—ever since uniformitarianism and evolution came on the scene. This situation is similar to Protestant churches, sadly for both liberal and conservative ones. Within the ‘traditionalist’ churches, this book is a welcome addition to the book Genesis, Creation and Early Man by the Russian Orthodox heiromonk Seraphim Rose,1 who documented that the Church fathers of Eastern Orthodoxy from...

Scientists from Texas are batty over a new discovery which could lead to the single most important medical breakthrough in human history—significantly longer lifespans. The discovery, featured on the cover of the July 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, shows that proper protein folding over time in long-lived bats explains why they live significantly longer than other mammals of comparable size, such as mice.

Scientists have performed the first DNA-based reconstruction of the giant extinct moa bird, using prehistoric feathers recovered from caves and rock shelters in New Zealand.Researchers from the University of Adelaide and Landcare Research in New Zealand have identified four different moa species after retrieving ancient DNA from moa feathers believed to be at least 2500 years old. The giant birds – measuring up to 2.5 metres and weighing 250 kilograms – were the dominant animals in New Zealand’s pre-human environment but were quickly exterminated after the arrival of the Maori around 1280 AD.

Harry Potter fans are looking forward to the boy wizard’s next screen adventure, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens this month. Pottermania broke loose when J. K. Rowling’s first book appeared on bookstands in 1997, prompting the creation of films, fan websites, and dozens of similarly themed books. Rowling’s world of wizardry has even inspired the name of a dinosaur fossil, Dracorex hogwartsia. But serious researchers are seeing evidence that dragons were more than just fantastical creatures...

The 1994 discovery of the Wollemi pine growing in a remote gorge in New South Wales, Australia, caused a sensation, because it had previously only been known from fossils said to be millions of years old (as we have previously reported—see, e.g., Sensational Australian tree … like “finding a live dinosaur”). While keeping the exact location a secret, the authorities offered up a single licence to propagate the “living fossil” tree, which was won in 1998 by a government department of the neighbouring state of Queensland. Expecting that people worldwide would jump at the chance to purchase their own “dinosaur...

One of the most significant transformations in U.S. graduate education and the international market for highly-trained workers in science and engineering during the last quarter century is the representation of students from outside of the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. universities. In all but the life sciences, the foreign share of Ph.D. recipients now equals or exceeds the share from the United States. Students from outside the United States accounted for 51 percent of Ph.D. recipients in science and engineering in 2003, up from 27 percent in 1973. In 2003, doctorate recipients from outside the...

Jesus Fish/Darwin Fish --snip-- Atheists use their Darwin fish to protest against the Christian faith. That they use evolution to counter biblical faith shows how foundational the issue of origins is to the gospel, and that church leaders who dismiss it as a ‘side issue’ have their heads in the sand...

The human body, much like a computer, contains myriad data processors. They include, but are not limited to, the chemical-electrical activity of the brain, heart, and peripheral nervous system, the signals sent from the cortex region of the brain to other parts of our body, the tiny hair cells in the inner ear that process auditory signals, and the light-sensitive retina and cornea of the eye that process visual activity.[2] We are on the threshold of an era in which these data processors of the human body may be manipulated or debilitated. Examples of unplanned attacks on the body's data-processing...

Tamaki Sato was confused by the dinosaur exhibit. The placards described the various dinosaurs as originating from different geological periods -- the stegosaurus from the Upper Jurassic, the heterodontosaurus from the Lower Jurassic, the velociraptor from the Upper Cretaceous -- yet in each case, the date of demise was the same: around 2348 B.C... [H]ere in the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, Earth and the universe are just over 6,000 years old, created in six days by God. The museum preaches, "Same facts, different conclusions" and is unequivocal in viewing paleontological and geological data in light of a literal reading...

The weather on Mars was much balmier in the recent past than scientists have previously thought, according to a new interpretation of the formation of certain landforms on the surface. The finding could have implications for the possibility of finding signs of life on Mars.

Washington, June 28: The sun, a star at the centre of the solar system, is known to provide ideal conditions for life to thrive on Earth. But, astronomers have claimed that it also leaves the planet wide open to harmful cosmic rays. A joint team from University of Arizona and University of Texas in the US has found that the sun periodically leaves Earth open to assaults from interstellar nasties in a way that most stars do not. The sun protects humans from cosmic rays and dust from beyond the solar system by enveloping in the heliosphere -- a bubble...

rom Richard Dawkin’s God Delusion to Bill Maher’s Religulous, the media is filled with half-truths and whole lies about what it means to be a believer in God, and more often than not, Christian. Dawkin’s argues that there is contradictory evidence to the existence of God while Maher pokes fun at the members of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, while simultaneously asking the usual theological questions. For example: Do you think that, if when you were a kid, they transposed the Bible stories with fairy tales, that you would know the difference as an adult? Yes Mr. Maher, I would. It...

At the Canadian Science Writers’ Association convention in Sudbury, Ontario, our Sunday dinner speaker was American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University, who presented sample clips from famous sci-fi films. And a whole lot more. Would you be astonished to learn that the films portray implausible or impossible physics? No? Filmmakers value audience numbers more than atomic numbers. His clips entertained, but did not surprise:. However, his talk frequently targeted religion and politics: although he professed to respect theists, he offered snarky asides suggesting that fear of science is growing in Canada (because it might damage religion), adding,...

ROME (AP) -- The first-ever scientific tests on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul "seem to conclude" that they do indeed belong to the Roman Catholic saint, Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday. Archaeologists recently unearthed and opened the white marble sarcophagus located under the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls in Rome, which for some 2,000 years has been believed by the faithful to be the tomb of St. Paul. Benedict said scientists had conducted carbon dating tests on bone fragments found inside the sarcophagus and confirmed that they date from the first or...

Scientists have found a substance in red wine that is slowing down the aging process in mice. Will it someday lengthen the lives of humans, too? Morley Safer reports. FULL STORY AND VIDEO FROM 60MINUTES

A question on the letters page of the September 2002 issue of Fortean Times -- a British magazine which covers fringe science or "Fortean" subjects -- piqued my interest. Was it true that a manhole cover, accidentally blasted upwards at escape velocity during the American nuclear tests in the 1950s, was in fact the first manmade object in space, beating Sputnik 1 by a long way? Or was it just an urban myth? The Internet is the natural home of the urban myth: the two could have been made for each other. The question therefore was: could it find room...

June 26, 2009 — Evolution of rape?  No way.  Sharon Begley won’t let the evolutionary psychologists get away with their tales about how rapists, molesters, and cheaters can’t help themselves because evolution made them that way.  The Science Magazine blog Origins seems to be cheering her on. Science writer Sharon Begley, who in 2007 returned to her old job at Newsweek after 5 years of writing the “Science Journal” column for The Wall Street Journal, has long reported skeptically about anything smacking of biological determinism.  In the 29 June issue of Newsweek, she pens a 4300-word critique of evolutionary psychology,...

Two long sought-after phases of ultra-cold water may have been trapped between crystals of ice. Water — not as transparent as it seems.Punchstock Researchers in India and Italy say they have seen two types of liquid water that have long been suspected to exist below water's normal freezing point.Water is undoubtedly a strange liquid. Unlike most liquids, it becomes less rather than more dense when it freezes — and it is densest not when it is coldest (at 0 °C, just before it freezes) but at 4 °C. These are just two of water's host of anomalous properties, some of...

It's a defining moment in a parent's life: Seeing their unborn child's image on an ultrasound for the first time. Now pregnant women could have the chance to hold a life-size model of their unborn baby. The startling new medical technology is the result of a Royal College of Art design student's PhD. Brazilian student Jorge Lopes has pioneered the conversion of data from ultrasound and MRI scans into life-size plaster models of living embryos using a method called rapid prototyping. 'It’s amazing to see the faces of the mothers. They can see the full scale of their baby, really...

Here's a case for which solving an energy problem could ease a challenging environmental problem as well. Researchers have discovered that carbonized chicken feathers could provide an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to store hydrogen fuel for future motor vehicles. If the concept is proven--and perhaps a bigger if, accepted by the automobile industry--it could go a long way toward helping to dispose of the 2.7 billion kilograms of chicken feathers generated each year by commercial poultry operations. Hydrogen is a leading alternative fuel for vehicles. The byproducts of its combustion are nonpolluting, and its source--water--is superabundant. One hitch is the...

Just-released research about a new class of drugs called “PARP inhibitors” is the most exciting development in cancer research in a decade or more. In just a few years it could save thousands of lives. In the longer term, the drugs could represent a transformational approach to understanding and treating several forms of the disease. All this enthusiasm is based on a small report published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. It focuses on one clinical trial in its earliest stage in 60 patients with breast, ovarian and prostate cancer. Some — but not all — of the...

The transparent solar cells that the car is equipped with generate electricity from ambient light, which is afterwards used to carry out electrolysis of water finally generating hydrogen, which fuels the car. The only by-product of the car engine will be clean potable water and breathable oxygen. Utilizing a new energy model, the vehicle uses the electricity to stimulate a central water tank, splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gets stored in special reserve tanks, while the oxygen gets expelled into the air as exhaust. So, no emissions, since this cute little car functions exactly like a...

Scientists in Germany have observed a single molecule of HCl dissociating into its component ions in water - and have discovered that just four water molecules are needed for complete dissociation of the acid. The team say that their findings, made under ultracold conditions, should help scientists understand nanoscale chemical transformations at very low temperatures, including those occurring in stratospheric clouds and interstellar media. Previous studies into the dissociation mechanism of the strong acid HCl at ultracold temperatures had left a puzzle. Normally, such reactions require thermal energy, but at ultracold temperatures this thermal energy is not available. Now, Martina Havenith and...

ChemSpider, the open-access online database of structure-searchable chemical information, has found a new home with the UK's Royal Society of Chemistry. The move is hoped to enable ChemSpider to expand in scope and become a primary resource for online chemistry data.The acquisition of ChemSpider builds on an existing partnership between the two organisations, which last year saw the launch of a web-based resolver for the IUPAC's International Chemical Identifier (InChI) and its more streamlined cousin, the InChIKey, which allow chemical structures to be associated with strings of text. Graphical representations of chemical structures, while a valuable means of communication between human chemists,...

The Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis from space [Stunning Pics in URL] While docked and onboard the International Space Station on March 21st 2008, an STS-123 Endeavour crewmember, looking northward across the Gulf of Alaska, captured the glowing green beauty of the Aurora Borealis over the Earth

Last Thursday we were all frightened out of our wits by a new report from the Met Office about what life in Britain would be like in 2080: scorching African sun, all the crops dying, plagues of locusts and mosquitos. Cows collapsing in the fields because they had not worn enough Factor 30; half of Yorkshire and Norfolk washed away by the sea, middle England flooded by swollen rivers, Essex a lifeless arid desert (no change there, then); impeccably well-mannered middle-class people on their knees sucking the last molecules of moisture from dusty, exhausted standpipes in Notting Hill; famine, pestilence...

New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.

June 16, 2009 — What kid hasn’t played with maple seeds to watch them spin in the air like helicopters? Scientists watch them, too. A team from the Netherlands and California found out how they stay in the air for so long without engines to drive them. One would think in an era of advanced aeronautical engineering the physics would all be worked out, but the abstract explains that the seeds know more than the engineers do...

June 17, 2009 — If you are a war-mongering beast who likes to burn things, you’re displaying your evolutionary past. That’s what a couple of news reports are claiming. New Scientist has a review...

When does a boy become a man? The answer goes far beyond biology and chronological age...

Get all the following stories plus much more by clicking the excerpt link below: 1. BBC News: “New Dinosaur Gives Bird Wing Clue” Last week we reported on a solid scientific study that dismissed dinosaur-to-bird evolution. Of course, some researchers have yet to catch on. 2. LiveScience: “Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years” After tens of thousands of years trapped in ice, an ancient species “wakes up.” Is it science news or the plot of a low-budget movie? 3. PhysOrg: “Odd Discovery May Help Refine Theories About How Planets Form” A planet with a “steeply titled” orbit—will it help refine...

The human ear is an amazing device. In a recent press release, an MIT engineer said that the ear is “like a super radio with 3,500 parallel channels.”[1] In fact, its design inspired the development of a new space and energy-saving radio receiver chip...

Atheism, for Good Reason, Fears Questions --snip-- That theists and open-minded agnostics and atheists on the pro-Darwinist side of this debate are finally engaging the same fundamentalist atheist dogma that intelligent design proponents have engaged for several decades is a good sign. Fundamentalist atheists are of course fighting back ferociously, because they understand, as perhaps the accomodationists don’t, the profound implications of an understanding of the natural world that is not causally closed. Teleology is obvious in nature. Atheists and materialists intrinsically deny the reality of teleology-- Aristotelian final causation-- in nature, yet nothing in the natural world can be...

DOCTORS have frozen sperm stem cells from a three-month-old baby so that he can father children when he is older. The infant is undergoing cancer treatment that is likely to leave him infertile. His parents hope that once he reaches adulthood, doctors will transplant the stem cells back to allow him to produce sperm. The breakthrough in America could give the infant the chance to have a family, but raises ethical questions because a baby is unable to give consent to such a procedure. Until now, doctors in Britain and America have offered fertility treatment to boys only once they...

GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest atom smasher will likely be fired up again in October after scientists have carried out tests and put in place further safety measures to prevent a repeat of the faults that sidelined the $10 billion machine shortly after startup last year, the operator said Saturday. The Large Hadron Collider was meant to restart in late September, but that will probably be pushed back two to three weeks, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research said. "We're pretty confident about the dates," James Gillies told The Associated Press, adding that scientists believe they...

Materials displaying 'self-erasing' colour images have been created by chemists in the US, who have studied how certain nanoparticles can assemble and disassemble themselves under different wavelengths of light.The materials, which are printed with ultraviolet (UV) light and erased with visible light, could one day be used for self-expiring bus tickets or for carrying secret messages.'Self-erasing papers are important for time-sensitive materials and secure communications,' said study leader Bartosz Grzybowski of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. 'On the fundamental level, what we describe is also a very different way of looking at the concept of information storage. We're not using traditional coloured inks per se,...

The editor-in-chief of an academic journal has resigned after his publication accepted a hoax article. The Open Information Science Journal failed to spot that the incomprehensible computer-generated paper was a fake. This was despite heavy hints from its authors, who claimed they were from the Centre for Research in Applied Phrenology – which forms the acronym Crap. The journal, which claims to subject every paper to the scrutiny of other academics, so-called "peer review", accepted the paper. Philip Davis, a graduate student at Cornell University in New York, who was behind the hoax, said he wanted to test the editorial...

Several studies in recent years have claimed evidence for shorelines and other features that suggest ancient lakes on Mars. Firm evidence has remained elusive. Now a University of Colorado at Boulder research team claims "the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars" in a statement released today.

BIFs, as they're known to geologists, are enigmatic. All seem to have started out as sediments on ancient seafloors, and by some estimates the oxide mineral accumulated in all known BIFs contains about 20 times as much oxygen as today's atmosphere does. Yet some of these deposits accumulated long before Earth's atmosphere became thoroughly oxygenated, so the source of the oxygen stored in these BIFs is baffling. Then there's the mysterious banding, in which thin layers of iron-rich minerals such as hematite (Fe2O3) and magnetite (Fe3O4) alternate with silica-rich, iron-poor bands, usually of jasper and chert. Finally, some of the...

June 18, 2009 — A picture of colorfully-plumed dinosaurs graces an article on National Geographic, but were feathers found with the fossil? No; the article said, “Primitive feathers may have covered the dinosaur’s body, but there is no direct evidence for that, noted [James] Clark, whose work was funded in part by the National Geographic Society” (which also owns National Geographic News). The feathers are apparently completely imaginary. National Geographic has been caught doing this before...

Radiometric dating is often used to “prove” rocks are millions of years old. Once you understand the basic science, however, you can see how wrong assumptions lead to incorrect dates. Most people think that radioactive dating has proven the earth is billions of years old. After all, textbooks, media, and museums glibly present ages of millions of years as fact. Yet few people know how radiometric dating works or bother to ask what assumptions drive the conclusions. So let’s take a closer look and see how reliable this dating method really is...