Big Think: Is the human life span accelerating faster than people age? – “At a certain point in time – perhaps sooner than most people think – the ever-increasing average human lifespan will begin accelerating faster than people age. This moment, according to anti-aging expert Aubrey de Grey, will be more important than the Singularity – when the human race achieves this “longevity escape velocity,” we will essentially become immortal…”

H1N1: Yes, You Should Vaccinate Your Kids – “There are times when I wonder whether we’re really living in the 21st century. I’ve been having that feeling a lot recently, observing other parents (both online and off) discuss whether or not getting the H1N1 “Swine Flu” vaccine for their kids is a good idea…”

Does the Vaccine Matter? – “Vaccination is central to the government’s plan for preventing deaths from swine flu. The CDC has recommended that some 159 million adults and children receive either a swine flu shot or a dose of MedImmune’s nasal vaccine this year. Shots are offered in doctors’ offices, hospitals, airports, pharmacies, schools, polling places, shopping malls, and big-box stores like Wal-Mart. In August, New York state required all health-care workers to get both seasonal and swine flu shots. To further protect the populace, the federal government has spent upwards of $3billion stockpiling millions of doses of antiviral drugs like Tamiflu—which are being used both to prevent swine flu and to treat those who fall ill…”

Placebo effect caught in the act in spinal nerves – “The placebo effect is not only real; its ability to deaden pain has been pinpointed to cells in the spinal cord. That raises hopes for new ways of treating conditions such as chronic pain…”

LHC gets colder than deep space – “The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment has once again become one of the coldest places in the Universe.”

Crystals hold super computer key – “Tiny crystals could hold the key to creating computers with massive storage capacity, scientists believe…”

The death of language? – “An estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world. But that number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades. What is lost when a language dies?”

A Guide to Windows 7 Security – “Until now, Windows Vista was the most secure version of the Windows operating system. Windows 7 picks up where Vista left off, and improves on that foundation to provide an even more secure computing experience. Microsoft also incorporated user feedback about Vista to enrich the user experience and to ensure that the security features are intuitive and user-friendly. Here’s a look at some of the more significant security enhancements in Windows 7…”

Evolution details revealed through 21-year E. coli experiment – “evolution bacteria e. coliIn 1988, an associate professor started growing cultures of Escherichia coli. Twenty-one years and 40,000 generations of bacteria later, Richard Lenski, who is now a professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University, reveals new details about the differences between adaptive and random genetic changes during evolution…”

Part 1: Life returns to an eerie Chernobyl – “In the radioactive realm at ground zero of history’s worst nuclear disaster, nature reclaims its territory. And a few defiant old folks are calling it home again…”

Hollywood Pressuring FCC on Selectable Output Control Again – “Our friends at Public Knowledge have been doing a great job in Washington, D.C., fighting against the MPAA’s efforts to selectively disable the high-definition analog (i.e., “component” video) outputs on your cable box. In essence, Hollywood is telling the FCC that it won’t give Americans early access to blockbuster movies unless the FCC lets it kill your analog outputs…”

New Concept May Enhance Earth-Mars Communication – “Direct communication between Earth and Mars can be strongly disturbed and even blocked by the Sun for weeks at a time, cutting off any future human mission to the Red Planet. An ESA engineer working with engineers in the UK may have found a solution using a new type of orbit combined with continuous-thrust ion propulsion…”

Physicists Calculate Number of Parallel Universes – “Over the past few decades, the idea that our universe could be one of many alternate universes within a giant multiverse has grown from a sci-fi fantasy into a legitimate theoretical possibility. Several theories of physics and astronomy have hypothesized the existence of a multiverse made of many parallel universes. One obvious question that arises, then, is exactly how many of these parallel universes might there be…” See also: Physicists Calculate Exact Number of Alternate Universes

why we’re stuck with dark energy – “The universe seems like a very dark place. Ordinary matter that makes up stars, planets and the vast amounts of interstellar gases is less then 5% of everything in the visible universe. Some strange, unknown substance we call dark matter takes up almost five times as much of the universe’s composition. And a staggering 73% of everything we know is actually an expression of dark energy, a phenomenon we know even less about than dark matter. While we’ve been able to produce a map of dark matter clusters based the effects of their gravity on nearby stars and galaxies, dark energy still remains an elusive beast the existence of which is being cast into doubt by two mathematicians…”

Carbonation Has a Taste – “In a study in the journal Science, researchers found that the taste buds for sensing sour also respond to carbonated beverages, because the fizz gets turned into chemical components, one of which is protons–basically simple, sour acid…”

India Asteroid Killed Dinosaurs, Made Largest Crater? – ” The dinosaurs’ demise may have been due to an asteroid double-whammy—two giant space rocks that struck near Mexico and India a few hundred thousand years apart, scientists say…”

How We Lost Our Diversity – “Modern humans are a lot alike–at least at the genetic level–compared with other primates. If you compare any two people from far-flung corners of the globe, their genomes will be much more similar than those of any pair of chimpanzees, gorillas, or other apes from different populations. Now, evolutionary geneticists have shown that our ancestors lost much of their genetic diversity in two dramatic bottlenecks that sharply squeezed down the population of modern humans as they moved out of Africa between 60,000 and 50,000 years ago…”

Can the world’s richest man feed the planet? – “Echoing luminaries before him—from Norman Borlaug to Kofi Annan—the world’s richest man Bill Gates called last night for a second Green Revolution focused on African farmers. That revolution won’t just be in new crop varieties and higher yields but also in farmer training and infrastructure—and, perhaps most controversially, will be genetically modified…”

New camera promises to capture your whole life – “A camera you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm…”

Brooklyn’s Urban Beekeepers: Breaking The Law For The Planet (Part I) – “Sometimes laws are meant to be broken. Meet a passionate crew of illegal urban beekeepers in Brooklyn, New York working on their very first honey harvest for their restaurants. Find out why raising bees on NYC rooftops is important for Mother Earth. And be inspired to get into the illegal “bees”ness of urban beekeeping in your own backyard or rooftop. It’s not only fun, but dangerous, especially if you don’t like wearing bee suits!”

Giant Ribbon Discovered at the Edge of the Solar System – “For years, researchers have known that the solar system is surrounded by a vast bubble of magnetism. Called the “heliosphere,” it springs from the sun and extends far beyond the orbit of Pluto, providing a first line of defense against cosmic rays and interstellar clouds that try to enter our local space. Although the heliosphere is huge and literally fills the sky, it emits no light and no one has actually seen it…”

Repellent Gives Cockroaches the Slip – “A breakthrough by scientists at Cambridge Univ. may help minimize the threat of termites, cockroaches and other pests such as ants and locusts–responsible for billions of dollars worth of damage to homes, crops and people’s health across the globe each year…”

A Few More ‘Inconvenient Truths’ – “The report released today by the world’s leading climate scientists made no bones about it: global warming is happening in a big way and it is very likely man-made. So, if we are indeed the bulk of the problem, we ought to step up and start doing things differently. Now…”

The truth about sleeping with baby – “Time and time again, mothers are warned of the dangers of sleeping with their infants. But has the science been badly misinterpreted?”

Researchers create portable black hole – “Mini-hole made of metamaterials ensnares microwave light…”

Times Square without cars? – “Advocates of a radical new plan want to create a pedestrian mall and light rail system in the heart of New York City…”

Jupiter’s Moon Europa Has Enough Oxygen For Life – ” New research suggests that there is plenty of oxygen available in the subsurface ocean of Europa to support oxygen-based metabolic processes for life similar to that on Earth. In fact, there may be enough oxygen to support complex, animal-like organisms with greater oxygen demands than microorganisms…”

French micro plane fast forwards to hover – “It may look like something your kids brought home from shop class, but this rugged, French-designed micro air vehicle (MAV) could be a missing link between smooth, steady hover and fast, forward flight…”

New robotic hand ‘can feel’ – “A team of scientists from Italy and Sweden has developed what is believed to be the first artificial hand that has feeling…”

Mr Ghosn bets the company – “Renault aims to be the first big producer of zero-emission vehicles…”

[[[Jump to IR #347]]]