Science

Doggie 'doctors' diagnose their owners' ills - Creature Comforts- msnbc.com

Posted by Jeff from MSNBC

In the past few years, studies have shown that dogs can sniff out both early and late stage lung and breast cancers. The Pine Street Foundation, a non-profit cancer education and research organization, in San Anselmo, Calif., is even training dogs to recognize ovarian cancer.

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Technologist: Sniffing Bombs With Mobiles

Posted by Jeff from Newsweek

The project, known as Distributed Nuclear Detection by Ubiquitous Cell Phone, would help locate dirty bombs or nuclear weapons by "triangulating" the source of radiation when people carrying mobile phones pass by. (The greater the number of equipped cell phones, the greater the precision: phones closest to radioactive material will register stronger signals.) The Purdue project and others like it represent a "major shift" in combating radiation terrorism, says Rita Colwell, a former director of the National Science Foundation and now a professor at the University of Maryland.

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Rise of the rat-brained robots

Posted by Jeff

Via

: AFTER buttoning up a lab coat, snapping on surgical gloves and spraying them with alcohol, I am deemed sanitary enough to view a robot's control system up close. Without such precautions, any fungal spores on my skin could infect it. "We've had that happen. They just stop working and die off," says Mark Hammond, the system's creator. This is no ordinary robot control system - a plain old microchip connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made - and continue to make - connections with each other.

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Stone arch collapses in Utah park

Posted by Jeff from MSNBC

Wall Arch fell sometime early last week, though no one has reported seeing it collapse, said Paul Henderson, the park's chief of interpretation. He said the arch, located along the popular Devils Garden Trail, was claimed by forces that will eventually destroy other arches in the park: gravity and erosion.

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Software To Improve AIDS Survival?

Posted by seegz from Slashdot

"There are more than 33 million people living with HIV worldwide. No cure or vaccine has been unveiled this week in Mexico during the International AIDS Conference. Still, European researchers have developed 'a predictive software system for HIV that could help extend the lives of victims of the killer disease.'

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Big day set for big-bang machine

Posted by Jeff from cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com

If the schedule holds, the collider on the French-Swiss border will make a splash at 9 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) Sept. 10, a week after a federal judge in Hawaii begins hearing a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit claiming that the device could destroy the world. Over the past few months, scientists at CERN (and the federal government) have laid out their case that a globe-gobbling catastrophe could never happen. Nevertheless, the court proceedings could provide a sideshow for the main event. Or they could be finished up by that time.

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Cern lab set for beam milestone

Posted by seegz from BBC News

A vast physics experiment - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - reaches a key milestone this weekend ahead of an official start-up on 10 September.

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