Climate science is tricky business because the atmosphere and Mother Earth are an eloborate, complex system no one understands.   So how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions is open to speculation but a new study this week suggests scientists' best predictions about global warming are likely incorrect.  Which means they could be high ... but they could also be really low.

The study in Nature Geoscience says that climate models explain only about half of the heating that occurred during a well-documented period of rapid global warming in Earth's ancient past.

It will enrage our fellow Californians, who regard the wholesomeness and warmth of the in-home hearth as akin to fratricide, but when it comes down to it, people in the Third World, like the US is becoming economically, are going to respond to the stress of rising natural gas prices in ways that activists in cozy office buildings do not like.

How they heat their homes will be at the top of the list for everyone in the upper part of North America this winter - which means out-of-fashion alternative energy options, the kind our ancestors used; wood burning stoves. 

Cars that drive themselves?   Being cut up by some remote hand that never touches you?  It's not a Stephen King novel, it's the latest in robotics and it's coming to a Senate floor near you.

Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF) presented took over the Hart Senate Office Building and had a luncheon briefing for Senate members and staff on cyber-physical systems (CPS).

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered that the Earth orbits the Sun, thus paving the way for our modern view of the world.  It took a few hundred years for religion to apologize for the reception his discovery got but luckily the  the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) only took a dozen years after the discovery of element 112 to honor him.

Element 112 was discovered at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung (Center for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt.

Ancient nomadic hominids moved from place to place but often how has been subject to speculation.   Now researchers think they have one answer, using the dental fossils of animals eaten by Homo heidelbergensis.

In the French cave of Arago, an international team of scientists headed by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) in Tarragona has analyzed the dental wear of herbivorous animals, the first time that an analytical method has allowed the establishment of the length of human occupations at archaeological sites. The key is the last food that these hominids consumed. 

This told them some details on the vegetation in the environment and the way of life of Homo heidelbergensis. 

Is it a magic trick?   A man takes a paper clip and bends it so that it is just a crooked piece of wire, then he throws it into a bowl of hot water and instantly the metal wire returns to the shape of the paper clip.

This phenomenon is called the shape memory effect and it can be observed in certain metallic alloys, known as shape memory alloys. These kinds of materials are ideal for many applications. In aerospace technologies, solar sails can unfold in outer space.  In cardiology, stents are small tube-shaped, metal grid frameworks folded together and inserted into blood vessels where they expand and prevent the vessels from becoming blocked.

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #1

There are many unsolved mysteries in this world.  A web search for 'greatest mysteries', 'unsolved mysteries', 'world's greatest mysteries' and similar search terms leads to many sites dealing mostly with the strange and the paranormal.  It is all too easy to claim that science has yet to explain x, y and z, and many sites make such claims.  Before science can explain a mystery it must be explainable at least in principle.  The Voynich manuscript seems to be explainable, at least in principle.  It is just a matter of breaking a code.

Does fasting lead to a longer life?   You never see any really old fat people but that has more to do with other issues than starvation.   

Some studies indicate that caloric restriction does extend life spans in fruit flies, mice and, most recently, rhesus monkeys, apparently by slowing the aging process, but in the case of most, they were also weaned that way from birth, which will get you thrown in jail if you do it to your kids.

Virtually all those studies had been performed in sterile environments, on animals raised under relatively pathogen-free conditions.   Stanford University School of Medicine researchers decided to see if reduced caloric intake also helps creatures cope with infection.

I've never been a shark guy, I will confess that to you.   Actually, I have never been an animal guy of any kind.   When I was a wee scientist / media guru / journalist / game show host, Disney had a program on Sunday evenings.  If there was one of those live animal shows on, I left the room.   I wanted a cartoon with a talking dog or a mouse or something.   Animals were what we ate, not what we laughed at.

BERLIN, July 13 -- The new German Alliance for Industrial Biotechnology is
making its first appearance. An initiative recently launched by Germany Trade
Invest, the network includes both research institutions and producers, namely
industrial biotechnology clusters and chemical parks, in addition to regional
investment agencies. The alliance aims to bolster Germany’s biotechnology
sector by creating new business opportunities across the entire value chain.
Members of the alliance will be presenting together at the Sixth Annual World
Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing from July 19-22 in
Montreal, Canada.