... as depressing as that may be to hear. Some friends recently described their December trip to India, the first time they've visited in years. India's economy is on fire, unleashing some tremendous pent-up economic demand. What was striking, my friends related, was how strongly India's economic development is geared toward the future, towards not only catching up with wealthier, more developed nations, but also towards anticipating and meeting economic challenges that loom in the future. This is in stark contrast to the US, which seems, at best, focused on defending the status quo.

Who interviewed who?  There's Scopes Monkey Choir-- the podcast interviewing me.  And there's 365 Days of Astronomy-- the podcast where I interview them.  Welcome to an irrational approach to "music in a rational universe".

You may recognize the famous Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, whose best known work is “Pictures at an Exhibition”.  But the pictures that follow are from a totally different exhibition, that of the Association for Science Education Annual Conference 2011, held at the University of Reading from 5^th to 8^th January.
 

A cave inside some remote mountains of Armenia contain what is being called the oldest winery yet discovered, dating back to around 4,100 B.C., 1,000 years earlier than previous finds.

The discovery was made in the same mysterious Armenian cave complex where ancient leather shoe was found last summer. 

This is the oldest complete wine production facility ever found, including grape seeds, withered grape vines, remains of pressed grapes, a rudimentary wine press, a clay vat apparently used for fermentation, wine-soaked potsherds, and even a cup and drinking bowl.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected beams of antimatter launched by thunderstorms, which act like enormous particle accelerators and can emit gamma-ray flashes called TGFs - and also high-energy electrons and positrons.   TGFs are produced inside thunderstorms  and shown to be associated with lightning.  It is estimated that about 500 such flashes occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected. 

Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter.

Hanny's Voorwerp, a strange, glowing green cloud of gas that has mystified astronomers since its discovery in 2007, has gotten a better look by Hubble. The cloud of gas is lit up by the bright light of a nearby quasar and shows signs of ongoing star formation.

Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object in Dutch) is a mysterious, glowing green blob of gas is floating in space near a spiral galaxy - the size of the Milky Way.

Thanks to the Tevatron Facebook account manager, R.M. (Ron, tell me if I can disclose your identity here), I can offer to you today an exceptional plot of historical significance.

Before I paste below the plot in question, let me discuss what it is about. The Tevatron collider has operated since October 1985 -about a couple of geological eras back, in particle physics terms. The W and Z bosons were newborn babies back then, the top quark was thought to have a mass in the 30-50 GeV ballpark, and, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones, "Carlo Rubbia raged and the bodies stunk".

Why haven't antioxidant therapies yielded more positive results?   The answer may be that Nrf2, a protein that plays an important role in some antioxidant therapies, may not be as effective due to additional mechanisms that cause it to promote atherosclerosis - clogging of the arteries.

Nrf2 has been thought to be an important drug-therapy target for diseases such as cancer because it can induce chemopreventive activity by attaching to specific sequences of DNA, leading to the release of numerous antioxidant and anti-inflammatory genes and enzymes that can decrease or inhibit the effects of carcinogens. 

Without question nanotechnology is a key component in our energy future.   In recent years, developers have been investigating light-harvesting thin film solar panels made from nanotechnology and promoting efficiency metrics which they say make the technology marketable but a researcher has challenged recent "charge" measurements for increasing solar panel efficiency.

While we need to invest in the future, we need to make sure there is no hype that promises to increase efficiencies in thin film panels.