Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgPUpIBWGp8

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6941974.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797093

James Hansen, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Insitute for Space Studies, told The Times that he planned to boycott the UN conference because it was seeking a counter-productive agreement to limit emissions through a “cap and trade” system.

Link: http://www.infowars.com/climate-change-ringleader-phil-jones-to-step-down/

CRU’s Phil Jones will step down from his position as director of the unit that cooked climate change data to hide global cooling. Britain’s East Anglia University says Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review. The CRU scandal emerged after anonymous persons gained access to 160 MB of emails and source code. It is uncertain if the evidence implicating Jones and the CRU came from hackers or whistle-blowers. Lord Monckton, the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley and adviser to Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit in the 1980s, went on the Alex Jones Show last week and called from criminal prosecution of Jones and his crew of climate change fraudsters. On Sunday, the Times Online reported that scientists at the University of East Anglia admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. The CRU was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 2/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 3/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 4/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate
Lord Christopher Monckton on Alex Jones Tv 5/5:Lord Monckton Talks About Climategate

Link: http://www.climatedepot.com/a/4140/Geologist-appalled-at-NYTs-Krugman-Legitimate-scientists-do-not-doctor-datahijack-peerreviewsend-fraudulent-data-to-UN-that-is-used-to-perpetuate-greatest-hoax-in-the-history-of-science

Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook - November 29, 2009: "I've spent four decades studying global climate change and as a scientist I am appalled at [NYT's Paul] Krugman's cavalier shrugging off the Hadley email scandal as 'just the way scientists talk among themselves.' That's like saying it's alright for politicians to be corrupt because that's the way they are." "Legitimate scientists do not doctor data, delete data they don't like, hide data they don't want seen, hijack the peer review process, personally attack other scientists whose views differ from theirs, send fraudulent data to the IPCC that is used to perpetuate the greatest hoax in the history of science, provide false data to further legislation on climate change that will result in huge profits for corrupt lobbyists and politicians, and tell outright lies about scientific data." TimesOnline: Climate change data dumped: Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based. It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. Another World Is Possible: The Dog Ate Global Warming. SPPI: Proved: There is No Climate Crisis.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNRW5qMRnIU

Melting Watergate - Some facts and figures that oppose the prevailing hysteria about global warming / climate change.

Link: http://www.iceagenow.com/Phil_Jones_has_collected_$22_million_in_grants.htm

Excerpts from a post by Michael Shedlock - "It's now official. Much of the hype about global warming is nothing but a complete scam. The global warming thesis was completely fabricated. "Inquiring minds are reading Hacked: Hadley CRU FOI2009 Files on The Reference Frame by Luboš Motl, a physicist from the Czech Republic. "So far, the most interesting file I found in the "documents" directory is pdj_grant_since1990.xls which shows that since 1990, Phil Jones has collected a staggering 13.7 million British pounds ($22.6 million) in grants. Daily Telegraph: Climategate: the whitewash begins. WSJ: Rigging a Climate 'Consensus'. Another World Is Possible: The Dog Ate Global Warming. InfoWars: Climategate: The Silence is Deafening from the Corporate Media.

Link: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7844

"Hide the decline" refers to the decline in the Briffa MXD temperature reconstruction in the last half of the 20th century, a decline that called into question the validity of the tree ring reconstructions. (I'm going to analyze the letters on another occasion.) In the IPCC Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, IPCC "hid the decline" by simply deleting the post-1960 values of the troublesome Briffa reconstruction - an artifice that Gavin Schmidt characterizes as an “a good way to deal with a problem" and tells us that there is "nothing problematic" about such an artifice. Clima Depot: UK SCIENTIST: 'CASE FOR CLIMATE FEARS IS BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS...WHOLE THEORY SHOULD BE DESTROYED AND DISCARDED AND UN CONFERENCE SHOULD BE CLOSED': “The world is cooling and has been cooling for 7 years and the leading scientists, so-called 'scientists' have been trying to hide that evidence,” Corbyn said in reference to hacked emails showing top UN IPCC scientists apparently conspiring to manipulate temperature data and exclude scientific studies from peer-review that they did not agree with. “We should end this anti-scientific nonsense now,” Corbyn said. “The data, real data, over the last one thousand, ten thousand or million years, shows THERE IS NO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CARBON DIOXIDE AND WORLD TEMPERATURES OR CLIMATE EXTREMES.."

Link: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2009/11/148_56112.html

A life-size model of a young girl from the 6th-century Gaya Kingdom (42-562) was revealed in Seoul, Wednesday. The model, constructed from the ``1,500-year-old's'' excavated skeletal remains, is the first of its kind in the country.

``We have excavated human bones on many occasions but it is the first time we created a full-scale model,'' Kang Soon-hyung, director of the Gaya National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, was quoted as saying by the Munhwa Ilbo.

The girl, who was buried alive, is speculated to have been a 16-year-old servant to a powerful family. After adding layers of muscle and skin as well locks of hair, the model stands 1.53 meters tall. She is relatively short but is slim and has a small face ― a beauty by modern standards. Her remains were among those of four people that were unearthed during the institute's excavation project in Songhyeong-dong, Changnyeong-gun, South Gyeongsang Province, between 2006 and 2007. A study on Gaya's custom of burying the living with the dead will soon be published, the institute said.

Link: http://www.minnesotansforglobalwarming.com/m4gw/

A parody fo "Draggin the Line" by Tommy James and the Shondells about Climategate. Thanks also to JibJab.com for their great animations, I covered up their logo so people didn't think they made this or condone this message. Another World Is Possible: CLIMATE CHANGE FRAUD: Scientists Would Rather Change Facts Than Their Theories -VIDEO. HotAir: Do hacked e-mails show global-warming fraud?

Link: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/24nov_solartsunami.htm

Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That's what NASA's STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft are telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the "solar tsunami." Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun's surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind—a trick of the eye—but surely not a real wave. "Now we know," says Joe Gurman of the Solar Physics Lab at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Solar tsunamis are real."

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1230278/Mars-Great-northern-ocean-covered-Red-Planet.html

A vast ocean once covered a third of Mars, scientists believe. Such a stunning prospect greatly increases the chances of life having existed on the Red Planet, the fourth from the Sun in our solar system. Researchers have come to the conclusion after using new software to analyse images of the surface. As a result, they have managed to find dozens of valleys to build up the most detailed map to date. The valleys, first spotted in 1971, were caused by a network of rivers more than twice as extensive as previously mapped. The water channels were in a belt between the equator and mid-southern latitudes. The experts from Northern Illinois University and Nasa believe they mark the paths of rivers that once flowed from the planet's southern highlands into a huge ocean in the north.

Link: http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=117461

Physicists returned to their future on Friday. About 10 p.m. outside Geneva, scientists at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, succeeded in sending beams of protons clockwise around the 17-mile underground magnetic racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment. For physicists, the event was a milestone on the way back from disaster and the resumption of a 15-year, $9 billion quest to investigate laws and forces that prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. The collider was designed to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts apiece and smash them together in tiny fireballs in an effort to replicate and study the conditions of the Big Bang.

Link: http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/16/using-co2-to-extract-geothermal-energy/

As part of developing new energy resources that don’t emit carbon dioxide, the DOE is funding 9 trials that use supercritical CO2 to extract more geothermal energy. The idea started in 2000 at Los Alamos National Laboratory; when physicist Donald Brown thought of pumping geothermal fluid using supercritical CO2 - a pressurized form that is part gas, part liquid; instead of water. Theoretically this should flow more freely through rock than water, because it is less viscous than water. Then, six years later; in modeling the technology Lawrence Berkeley hydro-geologist Karsten Pruess projected that not only should it perform as expected but that it would also yield a 50% hotter geothermal resource.

Link: http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/thirty-meter-telescope-will-see-what-the-hubble-has-left-blur/

Based on the ground itself, the Thirty Meter Telescope in the making will be lined in to produce the best images possible to revolutionize the study of the universe, adding a deeper level of understanding with the more detailed imagery. The gigantic telescope featuring a primary mirror almost the size of a whale will be completed by 2018. The telescope is touted to have 12 times better resolution than the Hubble, which means what the Hubble telescope hasn’t shown from space the TMT may just show that from the ground.

Scheduled to be located atop the volcanic dome of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the scientists behind the Thirty Meter Telescope believe, the telescope post resurrection would aid the astronomers to see objects that remain blur in the Hubble Deep Field, more clearly than have been seen before. The telescope could assist in imaging direct light routinely to understand planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, besides a look into the both dark matter and dark energy.

Link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i7tbrgnPO8e3Leoxp_Nz_W81g8pw

Investing billions today to protect threatened ecosystems and dwindling biodiversity would reap trillions in savings over the long haul, according to a UN-backed report issued Friday. More than a billion of Earth's poorest denizens depend directly on coral reefs, forests, mangroves, aquifers and other forms of "natural capital" to eke out a living. Unless world leaders take swift action to halt the accelerating depletion of these resources, the result could be hunger, conflict and environment refugees, the study warned.

Link: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Moon-Nasa-Says-Significant-Amount-Of-Water-Found-On-The-Moon/Article/200911215453164?lpos=World_News_Top_Stories_Header_3&lid=ARTICLE_15453164_Moon%3A_Nasa_Says_Significant_Amount_Of_Water_Found_On_The_Moon

Preliminary data from a Moon probe "indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater," Nasa said. "The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the Moon," it added in a statement. The data was found after Nasa sent two spacecraft crashing into the lunar surface last month in a dramatic experiment to probe for water. Wired: Lunar Impactor Finds Clear Evidence of Water Ice on Moon.

Link: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6649.html

A central tenet of “climate change” dogma holds that increased emissions (2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now) leads to greater CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But a new study from the University of Bristol could shake up traditional assumptions. The study suggests that CO2 levels have remained constant since 1850. New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8347000/8347644.stm

It is one of the rarest giants of the ocean, and it has been caught on film for the first time. An underwater camera crew filming for the BBC recorded a smalleye stingray swimming off the coast of Mozambique. The smalleye stingray is the largest of all 70 species of stingray, attaining widths of more than 2m. The elusive creature, first discovered in 1908, has only ever been seen alive off the coast of Tofo in southern Mozambique.

Footage of the fish will be broadcast on BBC Two at 2000GMT on Wednesday 11 November, as part of the programme Andrea: Queen of the Mantas for the BBC documentary series Natural World.

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427321.000-clever-fools-why-a-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart.html

Is George W. Bush stupid? It's a question that occupied a good many minds of all political persuasions during his turbulent eight-year presidency. The strict answer is no. Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population. But this, surely, does not tell the whole story.

Link: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/asteroid-with-energy-of-three-hiroshima-bombs-explodes-over-indonesia-14544946.html#ixzz0VJTLqpPm

An asteroid, with the energy of three Hishoma bombs, has exploded in the atmosphere above Indonesia - reigniting fears about Earth's defences against space impacts. Witnesses in Indonesia heard the explosion and spotted a huge fireball in the sky. The blast was also heard by monitoring stations 10,000 miles away, according to a report by scientists at the University of Western Ontario.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6891362.ece

People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming. In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.

Link: http://io9.com/5391199/naked-mole-rats-have-anti+cancer-superpowers

Naked mole rats might be the most awesomely peculiar mammals in existence; they possess ants' hive mind-like qualities, feel no pain, and are completely immune to cancer. And researchers have finally unlocked the secret to their remarkable cancer-fighting powers.

Despite the critters' 30-year lifespans, naked mole rats have never been found with tumors, and are the only known mammals that don't get cancer. Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York added cancerous cells to naked mole rat cells in order to observe the mechanism that inhibits cancerous growth. The growth of cancer cells in humans is inhibited by a gene known as p27, a gene that the naked mole rat also employs to inhibit cancer growth. But the gene primarily responsible for inhibiting cancer cell growth in naked mole rats is p16-ink4a, a gene humans also possess, but which plays no role in inhibiting cell growth in humans. NYT: The Life Span of a Rodent May Aid Human Health.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1223244/Colossal-sea-monster-unearthed-eaten-T-Rex-breakfast.html

The fossilised skull of a giant 'sea monster' measuring up to 53ft in length has been discovered on the south coast of England. Weighing up to 12 tonnes, the ferocious pliosaur roamed the oceans 150 million years ago. The skull, which is 90 per cent complete, is 7.5ft long and experts believe it could belong to one of the largest of its species ever found. It was found by local collector Kevan Sheehan on the shores of Weymouth Bay, Dorset, who recovered the heavy fragments over a number of years from the beach. It has now been purchased by Dorset County Council using money from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Mr Sheehan said: 'In 40 years of collecting, I have often been green with envy at some of the finds other people have made. But now when someone shows me a find, I can say: "that's not a fossil....this pliosaur, that's a fossil!"' The fossil will be scientifically analysed, prepared and then put on public display at Dorset County Museum.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD5MUSBOBK0

RIGA, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - No one was injured after a meteorite fell near a small town in northern Latvia on Sunday, local Latvian media reported.

According to media reports, the meteorite fell near a residential house on the outskirts of Mazsalaca town in the Valmiera district of Latvia, leaving a crater of some 20 meters (66 feet) in diameter and 10 meters (33 feet) deep. A spokesperson for the Latvian State Fire and Rescue Service said that rescuers and soldiers immediately cordoned off the territory, however, it is still not clear whether it was an asteroid or a space satellite.

"The territory has been immediately cordoned off as we still do not know what fell down from the sky. According to preliminary information, it was a meteorite. However, it is possible that it was a [space] satellite or its fragment. A radioactive contamination is also possible," she said.

Link: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,656221,00.html

Archaeologists in Germany have made a number of sensational finds along a railway line under construction in eastern Germany -- Bronze Age treasures, burial sites and evidence of settlements dating back more than 7,000 years. Archaeologists in the state of Saxony-Anhalt have uncovered 4,000-year-old skeletons and Bronze Age treasures in excavations along a railway line being built in eastern Germany. Copper and amber jewellery and hundreds of dog's teeth with holes bored in them as well as small shell discs worn as decoration for clothing have been found in the remains of settlements and graves from various epochs along the planned high-speed railway line from the cities of Erfurt to Leipzig, the Saxony Anhalt Office for Monument Protection and Archaeology said in a statement.

Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/12/woman.brain/index.html

Michelle Mack has turned medical thinking upside down. Born with only half a brain, Mack can speak normally, graduated from high school and has an uncanny knack for dates. At 27, doctors determined that the right side of her brain had essentially rewired itself to make up for function that was likely lost during a pre-birth stroke. But her childhood and young adult years were fraught with frustration. "It was very hard for me," Mack said. "It was very hard for me growing up. No one knew the truth about my brain."

Link: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/photomicrography/

“As part of my work as a research scientist, I have been taking photographs through the microscope for almost 30 years to observe the processes in living cells,” Paves said Thursday in a press release.

Nikon honored 20 images this year including an anglerfish ovary, cotton fibers and fish scales.

Winning the popular vote online out of 137 finalists was the image below of a bundle of fluorescent actin protein filaments captured by Dennis Breitsprecher of the Institute of Biophysical Chemistry at Germany’s Hannover Medical School. See the winners of the competition over the last 35 years below and on the following pages. Images: Above: Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) anther (20x) Confocal / Heiti Paves, Tallinn University of Technology, courtesy of Nikon Small World.

Link: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/8974/title/Math_Trek__A_Prayer_for_Archimedes

A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus. For seventy years, a prayer book moldered in the closet of a family in France, passed down from one generation to the next. Its mildewed parchment pages were stiff and contorted, tarnished by burn marks and waxy smudges. Behind the text of the prayers, faint Greek letters marched in lines up the page, with an occasional diagram disappearing into the spine.

Link: http://www.mizozo.com/tech/10/2009/05/world-s-best-preserved-40-000-year-old-wooly-mammo....html

Lubya, 1 month old Baby woolly mammoth who was perfectly frozen in the Siberian permafrost for 40,000 years, is heading to Chicago as the star of a mammoths and mastodons exhibit at the world-famous Field Museum. She was discovered 3 years ago when she was dug up by nomadic reindeer. She was so perfectly preserved that traces of her mother's milk were still in her stomach. Scientists believe she died after being sucked into a river bed. Mud was found in her trunk and throat, suggesting she had suffocated. The clay-like sediment is believed to have helped to keep Lyuba’s eyes, skin, organs and some fur intact. Scientists are hoping to glean further insights into what caused Ice Age mammals to become extinct 10,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene era. Despite the fact that the DNA could be retrieved from the mammoth, we are still far from successfully cloning a mammoth. Hopefully, one the technology is perfected, we might be able to see a "live" mammoth.

The Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced late Tuesday. The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, the laboratory said. JPL spokeswoman Whitney Clavin said the ring is very diffuse and doesn't reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it. Although the ring dust is very cold — minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit — it shines with thermal radiation. No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now, Clavin said. The bulk of the ring material starts about 3.7 million miles (5.95 million kilometers) from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4 million miles (11.9 million kilometers).

Link: http://news.scotsman.com/world/Water-wars-threaten-solar-future.5701828.jp

IN A rural corner of Nevada reeling from the recession, a glimmer of salvation seemed to arrive last year. A German developer announced plans to build two big solar farms, creating hundreds of jobs. But then things got messy. The company, Solar Millennium, revealed that its preferred method of cooling the power plants would consume 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 per cent of this desert valley's available water.

Link: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100011055/why-we-can-all-stop-worrying-about-global-warming-for-a-bit/

A bit like one of those mutant pandas I mentioned yesterday, the science has turned viciously against the warmists. Not that it wasn’t against them before. But they have their work seriously cut out if they’re ever going to recover from the speech given at the UN world climate conference in Geneva last week by Professor Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz institute.

Link: http://www.dailytech.com/Traces+of+Water+Found+on+Moon/article16327c.htm

Using data collected by three different missions studying the surface of the moon, researchers have their strongest evidence yet of possible signs of water. "When we say 'water on the moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles," according to Brown University researcher Carle Pieters. "Water on the moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the moon's surface."

Link: http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/new-nasa-temperature-maps-provide-102070.aspx

UCLA professor leads first-ever effort to map moon's surface temperatures. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), an unmanned mission to comprehensively map the entire moon, has returned its first data. One of the seven instruments aboard, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, is making the first global survey of the temperature of the lunar surface while the spacecraft orbits some 31 miles above the moon. Diviner has obtained enough data already to characterize many aspects of the moon's current thermal environment. The instrument has revealed richly detailed thermal behavior, throughout both the north and south polar regions, that extends to the limit of Diviner's spatial resolution of just a few hundred yards.

"Most notable are the measurements of extremely cold temperatures within the permanently shadowed regions of large polar impact craters in the south polar region," said David Paige, Diviner's principal investigator and a UCLA professor of planetary science. "Diviner has recorded minimum daytime brightness temperatures in portions of these craters of less than -397 degrees Fahrenheit. These super-cold brightness temperatures are, to our knowledge, among the lowest that have been measured anywhere in the solar system, including the surface of Pluto."

Link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Norman_Borlaug.jpg

Borlaug has died: Norman Ernest Borlaug (March 25, 1914–September 12, 2009) was an American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate, and has been called the father of the Green Revolution. Borlaug was one of five people in history to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He was also a recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, India's highest civilian honor to non-citizens of exemplary accomplishment. Borlaug's discoveries have been estimated to have saved over 245 million lives worldwide.

Borlaug received his Ph.D. degree in plant pathology and genetics from the University of Minnesota in 1942. He took up an agricultural research position in Mexico, where he developed semi-dwarf high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. As a result, Mexico became a net exporter of wheat by 1963. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply. Breaking News 24/7: Nobel Prize-winning scientist Norman Borlaug, father of the ‘green revolution,’ dies at age 95. AP: A look at honors bestowed on Norman Borlaug.

Link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/multimedia/ero/

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business after astronauts refurbished it in May. These first snapshots from Hubble showcase the 19-year-old telescope's new vision.

Link: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/skull-find-rewrites-the-history-of-man-14483863.html

The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man. The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia – before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man. Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa.

Link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-10321671-239.html

Shuttle commander Frederick "C.J." Sturckow, forced by a leaky steering jet to use Discovery's big maneuvering thrusters instead of preferred fine-control vernier engines, deftly guided the spaceplane to a flawless docking with the International Space Station Sunday night to cap a two-day rendezvous. Approaching from directly in front of the laboratory complex as both spacecraft sailed 220 miles above the central Atlantic Ocean at 5 miles per second, the shuttle's payload bay docking port engaged its counterpart on the front end of the station's Harmony module at 7:54 p.m. CDT, about 10 minutes ahead of schedule.

Link: http://imgur.com/j9wrB.jpg

What is required to power the whole world by solar power...

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=2

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person. “You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.” Xymphora: CSI lies.