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US researchers claim to have developed a single test that is able to identify past exposure to every known human virus infection, using a drop of blood.The technique decodes the infection history imprinted in our immune response. The scientists hope that the test will eventually provide important insight into how viruses contribute to development of a range of diseases. The work was published in the journal Science. During a virus infection, your immune system generates antibodies designed to fight the virus. Each antibody recognises a tiny fragment of the virus and their interaction is very specific - they fit like...

Puto Video http://cdn.theguardian.tv/mainwebsite/2015/04/16/150416pluto_desk.mp4 Pluto’s moons have been tracked closely for the first time, showing that they tumble unpredictably rather than keeping one face fixed on their host planet. Astronomers also observed that Pluto, whose status was downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006, might be better regarded as a binary dwarf as it is locked in orbit with its largest moon, called Charon. The twin system creates an imbalanced and shifting gravitational field, which sends the tiny outer moons spinning chaotically, the measurements from the Hubble space telescope showed. Target Pluto: fastest spaceship set for epic encounter with our remotest...

John Forbes Nash Jr. was a mathematical genius who had his life chronicled in the movie A Beautiful Mind. One of Nash’s colleagues says that just days before he died in a New York taxi cab accident, he had discussed his latest and possibly most brilliant discovery to date. Mathematician Cédric Villan says that Nash told him that he had replaced Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and that the new equation would further explain quantum gravity. The Daily Mail reports that on May 20, 2015, just three days before the tax cab accident that would take his life, Nash spoke to...

Astrophysicists have developed a new method for calculating the effect of Rayleigh scattering on photons, potentially allowing researchers to better understand the formation of the Universe. The CMB is the oldest light in the universe, which originated when electrons combined with protons to form the first atoms. These primordial atoms were also the first to Rayleigh scatter light. UBC theoretical cosmology graduate student Elham Alipour, UBC physicist Kris Sigurdson and Ohio State University astrophysicist Christopher Hirata probed the effect of Rayleigh scattering -- the process that makes the sky appear blue when the Sun's photons are scattered by molecules...

According to Google Trends, interest in the search term “Kratom” has increased sharply from 2011—by a factor of three. Insider blogs note that it trends higher than many other supplements. What’s more, vastly conflicting descriptions of its benefits and side effects are all over the Web, along with troubling reports of adulterated versions of the substance being sold online. Not surprisingly, eager beaver regulators have jumped into the fray. But what, exactly, is Kratom? Formally known as Mitragyna speciosa, it is a tree that grows from 3-20 meters (10-66 ft) tall, native to Southeast Asia. The plant is a member...

A new class of magnets discovered that swell in volume and generate little heat when placed in a magnetic field could be used to harvest or convert energy efficiently. Applications range from sensors and actuators for automobiles to biomedical devices, besides defence applications. Discovered by scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD) and Temple University, the new magnets made from abundant metal alloys could replace the expensive, rare-earth magnets which exhibit poor mechanical properties. Maryland professor of materials science and engineering Manfred Wuttig, and Harsh Deep Chopra, professor and chair of mechanical engineering at Temple heated certain iron-based alloys (iron-gallium,...

In a move that shows commercial space exploration is not just possible, but probable, the United States House of Representatives just passed the SPACE Act in order to lay down some general guidelines in case you want to, you know, start a mining operation in space. While private charters like Virgin Galactic, and colonization missions to Mars by the likes of SpaceX are all the rage these days, the bill would suggest that enough private organizations have an interest in mining valuable resources from space that the need for legislation is necessary. Bear in mind, not a single private company...

Bishop Hill points us to this video of the Tesla Supercharging station at the Harris Ranch exit of Interstate 5 in California. He writes: “How can one resist posting a video of Tesla electric cars being recharged (so it is claimed) using a diesel generator? These people love the environment you see.” The video shows a portable diesel generator next to the charging station and some Tesla automobiles. Watch this short video:

My nephew, Nick, had a BBC newscast on about human smugglers in Thailand.  It appears that the BBC is a bit less shy about showing weapons than many U.S. outlets, but that could simply be perception on this one show.  I watch very little TV.    From BBC.com: Manit told us his district had long been used by human traffickers to transfer migrants from boats to trucks. He wanted to stamp it out. But he was getting little help from the central government, or from local law enforcement.  The BBC correspondent was allowed to join a patrol off the coast. ...

According to a Tuesday story in the UK edition of the International Business Times, Neil degrease Tyson, the celebrity astrophysicist and media personality, advocated a space race between the United States and China. The idea is that such a race would spur innovation and cause industry to grow. The Apollo race to the moon caused a similar explosive period of scientific research and engineering development.

A new species of ancient human has been unearthed in the Afar region of Ethiopia, scientists report. Researchers discovered jaw bones and teeth, which date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years old. It means this new hominin was alive at the same time as several other early human species, suggesting our family tree is more complicated than was thought. The study is published in the journal Nature. The new species has been called Australopithecus deyiremeda, which means "close relative" in the language spoken by the Afar people. The ancient remains are thought to belong to four individuals, who would have...

What a difference 20 million miles makes! Images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are growing in scale as the spacecraft approaches its mysterious target. The new images, taken May 8-12 using a powerful telescopic camera and downlinked last week, reveal more detail about Pluto’s complex and high contrast surface. These images show Pluto in the latest series of New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photos, taken May 8-12, 2015, compared to LORRI images taken one month earlier. In the month between these image sets, New Horizons’ distance to Pluto decreased from 68 million miles (110 million kilometers)...

Bill Nye, who once called himself “the science guy,” took advantage of the torrential rains that hit Houston and the surrounding area to get up on the global warming – aka climate change – hobby horse. Tuesday, he tweeted, “Billion$$ in damage in Texas & Oklahoma. Still no weather-caster may utter the phrase Climate Change.” Of course meteorologists, unlike Nye, have spent their careers studying weather and its underlining causes. For a more scientifically accurate explanation of what caused the storms, read the Houston Chronicle’s excellent and fact based analysis.

... In a study published in the journal Environmental Psychology, the University of Melbourne’s Kate Lee and a group of colleagues found that interrupting a tedious, attention-demanding task with a 40-second “microbreak” — in which one simply looks at a computerized image of a green roof — improved focus as well as subsequent performance on the task.

Do the smartest presidents make the best presidents? This question invariably emerges as a topic of spirited debate when the U.S. presidential election approaches. In 2004, former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines asked, “Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush?” Citing Bush’s and Kerry’s scores on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery—an IQ-like test that the military uses to determine whether a recruit is qualified for enlistment—the conservative pundit Steve Sailer countered that there was no doubt that, in fact, Bush had the higher IQ. And the chatter about IQ has begun...

Named counter-electronics high-powered microwave advanced missile. Weapon destroys electronic systems without hurting people or buildings. Champ is now an 'operational system already in [the] tactical air force.' Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range has been chosen as the delivery vehicle. From Ocean's Eleven to Star Trek, weapons that wipe out enemy electronics are a staple of science fiction films. For years, scientists have been attempting to create such a weapon as part of Champ, or the Counter-electronics High-powered microwave Advanced Missile Project. Now, the US Air Force claims it has advanced the technology, and says it can deploy it using...

I watch very little TV.  I do not like to corrupt the data flow.  But I happened to be in Las Vegas when my nephew was watching a BBC program on human smugglers in Thailand.  From BBC.com: Manit told us his district had long been used by human traffickers to transfer migrants from boats to trucks. He wanted to stamp it out. But he was getting little help from the central government, or from local law enforcement. The BBC correspondent was allowed to join a patrol off the coast.  In the video, the BBC is not shy about showing...

Natural scientists agree that the climate is changing and that humans bear some of the blame. Social scientists are now attempting to assess the economic and political price societies are likely to pay for turning up our planet’s thermostat. The security policy community is especially eager for an answer. In the academy, the debate over climate change and its security implications gained momentum after researchers from Stanford, the University of California Berkeley, New York University, and Harvard observed that civil wars were more prevalent during years that experience hotter temperatures. The chief explanation for this relationship is that higher temperatures...

Mass Killings Stopped by Armed Citizens has been my most popular article.  It was published on 16 December, 2012.  I had been collecting these incidents for a few years, ever since I noticed that the old media gave them virtually no coverage.  They received a little local coverage, but were ignored/spiked by the national media. In the original publication, there were eight incidents.  Readers quickly brought more to my attention, swelling the list to fifteen.  Over the last two years, seven more incidents have been added.  One of those, the SC Boiling Springs event, does not appear to be...

ITER, the international fusion reactor being built in France, will stand 10 stories tall, weigh three times as much as the Eiffel Tower, and cost its seven international partners $18 billion or more. The result of decades of planning, ITER will not produce fusion energy until 2027 at the earliest. And it will be decades before an ITER-like plant pumps electricity into the grid. Surely there is a quicker and cheaper route to fusion energy. Fusion enthusiasts have a slew of schemes for achieving the starlike temperatures or crushing pressures needed to get hydrogen nuclei to come together in an...