The red is a thermal radius.
North Korea’s aiming their test missile near Hawaii. The US military says they can protect the islands, and locals aren’t too worried, but if something happens, the thermal, shockwave and radioactive fallout will look something like this.
 

How much light is reflected and how much is absorbed depends on two factors
It appears to be a paradox: ultra-thin material that absorbs all the incident light. Nonetheless, it does exist.

Here swiney swiney!

Throwing “swine flu parties” in an attempt to get immunity against the virus while it is a fairly mild form is not a good idea, doctors say. Reports have emerged of people intentionally mixing with friends who have flu.
Their reasoning is that it is best to be infected before the winter when the [...]

The two-qubit processor is the first solid-state quantum processor that resembles a conventional computer chip and is able to run simple algorithms
A team led by Yale University researchers has created the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor, taking another step toward the ultimate dream of building a quantum computer.

New research sheds light on how alcohol alters the way brain cells work.
Alcohol’s inebriating effects are familiar to everyone. But the molecular details of alcohol’s impact on brain activity remain a mystery. A new study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies brings us closer to understanding how alcohol alters the way brain [...]

apply skin cream in order to stimulate the gene into action
Vaseline, a known molecule from apples and a gene network encapsulated in algal gelatin are the components of a possible gene therapy which literally gets under the skin.

 
 piranhas teeth
How did piranhas — the legendary freshwater fish with the razor bite — get their telltale teeth? Researchers from Argentina, the United States and Venezuela have uncovered the jawbone of a striking transitional fossil that sheds light on this question. Named Megapiranha paranensis, this previously unknown fossil fish bridges the evolutionary gap between flesh-eating [...]

Bang! Now you are burning.

India’s security forces are planning to mix one of the world’s hottest chilli powders in hand grenades to control riots and battle insurgents.
Defence scientists said they will replace explosives in small grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise a person without killing him.
“We are working on a project [...]

 
Animals all around the globe are dying from fibropapillomatosis,
a disease that causes tumors on the skin
While cancer touches the lives of many humans, it is also a major threat to wild animal populations as well, according to a recent study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

Is This a Horrible or Fantastic Idea?

Luxury ocean liners in Russia are offering pirate hunting cruises aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast.
Wealthy punters pay £3,500 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.

 
 language development alterations found in the brains of mice
Scientists of the German Mouse Clinic at Helmholtz Zentrum München have made a major contribution to understanding human language development. Using a comprehensive screening method, they studied a mouse model carrying a “humanized version” of a key gene associated with human language.

 
Nanoparticles and polymers were used to create a sensor that can distinguish between healthy, cancerous and metastatic cells.
Using a “chemical nose” array of nanoparticles and polymers, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a fundamentally new, more effective way to differentiate not only between healthy and cancerous cells but also between metastatic and [...]

 
Mississippi dead zone in 2004. This year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” could be one of the largest on record
University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year’s Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” could be one of the largest on record, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a [...]

 
Model dinosaur. Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.
The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal [...]

 
Steve Brill’s Clear Card closes operations
The company which aimed to help registered users pass through airport security more quickly and with less hassle, will fold operations as of 2 a.m. on Tuesday.  The New York-based Verified Identity Pass, Inc. is the company which operates Registered Traveler programs under the brand name Clear.

 
molecular gear of the size of 1.2nm whose rotation can be deliberately controlled.
Scientists from A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE), led by Professor Christian Joachim,*  have scored a breakthrough in nanotechnology by becoming the first in the world to invent a molecular gear of the size of 1.2nm whose rotation can be deliberately controlled. This [...]

 
A new study suggests that humans cognitively superior brains means
more instances of cancer compared to chimpanzees
Are the cognitively superior brains of humans, in part, responsible for our higher rates of cancer? That’s a question that has nagged at John McDonald, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Biology and chief research scientist at the Ovarian Cancer [...]

 
 fat guy in a little coat
Obesity is probably the most important factor in the development of insulin resistance, but science’s understanding of the chain of events is still spotty. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have filled in the gap and identified the missing link between the two. Their findings, to be [...]

Even though three quarters of our planet is considered water, there is still a demand for it in almost every community, and a scarcity in many. That’s because we can actually only use one to two percent of if this wonderful H2O.
With so many items that are now more available, like low-flow showerheads, faucet aerators, rain [...]

Poor children in Ethiopia
World hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with 1,020 million people going hungry every day, according to new estimates published by United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

 
E. coli bacteria
Bacteria can anticipate a future event and prepare for it, according to new research at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In a paper that appeared June 17 in Nature, Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel, doctoral student Amir Mitchell and research associate Dr. Orna Dahan of the Institute’s Molecular Genetics Department, together with Prof. Martin Kupiec [...]

 two italian greyhounds mating
Same-sex behavior is a nearly universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, common across species, from worms to frogs to birds, concludes a new review of existing research.

 
Doctors have been investigating the use of nanoparticles for medicine for years.
Nanoparticles specially engineered by University of Central Florida Assistant Professor J. Manuel Perez and his colleagues could someday target and destroy tumors, sparing patients from toxic, whole-body chemotherapies.

 
Earth…

By using a super-computer to virtually squeeze and heat iron-bearing minerals under conditions that would have existed when the Earth crystallized from an ocean of magma to its solid form 4.5 billion years ago, two UC Davis geochemists have produced the first picture of how different isotopes of iron were initially distributed in the solid [...]

YourSpace is shrinking.
In May 2009, Facebook became the most popular US social networking site.
But it was close.
According to comScore, Facebook totaled 70,278,000 unique visitors, up 97% from May 2008 to May 2009. MySpace hits shrank 5% over the same timeframe, fading to 70,255,000 unique visitors.