Debris from Swift-Tuttle comet to create Perseid meteor shower – Palm Beach Daily News

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Debris from Swift-Tuttle comet to create Perseid meteor shower Palm Beach Daily News - 3 hours ago By MIKE LYNCH Sorry about using the tabloid-type headline to get you to read my column, but I couldn't resist. Actually the Earth, in orbit around the sun and traveling well over 67000 mph, will run into a dust debris trail left by a comet. Western US to Have Best Glimpse of Next Week's Perseid Meteor Shower FOXNews Meteor shower to light up sky early Tuesday morning Houma Courier National Geographic - WTAM.com - Norwich Bulletin - eFluxMedia all 55 news articles

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Microsoft Investing In "Open Source" Lab In Philippines – Slashdot

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Microsoft Investing In "Open Source" Lab In Philippines Slashdot - 3 hours ago jaromil writes "Following up its cozying up to OSCON, now Microsoft is launching its first 'open source' lab in the Philippines, paying for a huge media coverage. Lenovo Confirms It's Looking At IBM's 'Microsoft-Free' Client InformationWeek Pravda, Sutor, and IBM Linux ZDNet eWeek - PC World - Computerworld - eFluxMedia all 281 news articles

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Nemo Sniffs His Way Home

Tiny orange clownfish, made famous by the Disney character Nemo, use the smell of leaves and anemones in the water to find their way home on the coral reef.

That’s the finding of a new study using a clever apparatus to measure the fishes’ preference for water carrying different odors.

A team lead by Geoffrey Jones of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia surveyed waters around Papua New Guinea for clownfish populations.

“The boat captain said, ‘If you want to find the orange clownfish, you have to find islands. The fish need to see trees,’” said study lead author Danielle Dixson. The survey confirmed this observation: “There’s a huge statistical difference [in the numbers of clownfish] between where there are islands and where there are not islands.”

For reasons that are unknown, the two types of anemones that the region’s clownfish call home only live near islands with trees and beaches and are not found on “islands” made only of reefs.

But the fish have to search for these anemones, because after the eggs hatch near the parents’ home anemone, the larvae are carried away by ocean currents. About 11 days later, the juvenile fish settle back into a new anemone, somehow having found their way to their favored abodes.

The researchers set out to figure out how.

They used a chamber with two sources of water flowing side by side. At the top, a wall divides the chamber, separating the water sources. Lower down, the wall disappears, but the water remains unmixed, with the two types of water flowing parallel to each other.

The researchers introduced clownfish into the chambers and measured how much time they spent on either side. This allowed the researchers to test the fishes’ preference for water from different sources.

First they compared beach water from near vegetated islands with water from reef islands.

Baby Bugs Bully Parents for Food, Protection

Baby bugs, known as larvae and nymphs, have no shame when it comes to begging.

They will do everything from kicking their mother in the face to hitting her repeatedly with— their antennae in order to receive food, protection and attention, according to a forthcoming study.

The findings reveal how complex parent and offspring relationships can be — even among seemingly lowly insects — and how manipulation could have first evolved in certain creatures, including humans.

Some of the world’s top manipulators and the best mothers might even be bugs.

Co-author Flore Mas described, for example, how scared treehopper nymphs will aggressively shake their plant homes to get their dutiful mother’s attention. Mothers will then “protect their offspring by sitting on top of them and repelling the attacker with aggressive behaviors, such as leg kicking, wing fanning or body twisting.”

Mas, a researcher at the University of Basel’s Zoological Institute, and colleague Mathias Kolliker, analyzed multiple such interactions between larvae and their parents for a study that has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior.

Perhaps the most extreme begging was observed among baby burying beetles.

The beetle larvae raise their heads, wave their legs and kick their parents in the face, which stimulates the mother to regurgitate food into their mouths. Earwigs engage in similar behavior.

Even larvae that are housed in confining cells, such as Vespidae wasps, may scrape their mandibles on their cell walls to get attention and food.

“Manipulation occurs when the emitter has evolved a cue that affects the receiver, but the receiver’s response has not evolved to be affected by this cue, so there is no communication,” Mas told Discovery News.

She explained that such cues could be “honest,” meaning that they may convey true and desperate need. Usually these signals are chemical, so when a baby bug is scared or hungry it might give off hormones that relate its state to its parents. Usually mothers respond, but fathers of assassin bugs, correid bugs and thrips help with parenting too.

Living Cells Reprogrammed to Make Insulin

Talk about an extreme makeover: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases.

The cell identity switch turned ordinary pancreas cells into the rarer type that churns out insulin, essential for preventing diabetes. But its implications go beyond diabetes to a host of possibilities, scientists said.

It’s the second advance in about a year that suggests that someday doctors might be able to use a patient’s own cells to treat disease or injury without turning to stem cells taken from embryos.

The work is “a major leap” in reprogramming cells from one kind to another, said one expert not involved in the research, John Gearhart of the University of Pennsylvania.

That’s because the feat was performed in living mice rather than a lab dish, the process was efficient and it was achieved directly without going through a middleman like embryonic stem cells, he said.

The newly created cells made insulin in diabetic mice, though they were not cured. But if the experiment’s approach proves viable, it might lead to treatments like growing new heart cells after a heart attack or nerve cells to treat disorders like ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, cautioned that the approach is not ready for people.

He and his colleagues report the research in a paper published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Basically, the identity switch comes about by a reprogramming process that changes the pattern of which genes are active and which are shut off.

Scientists have long hoped to find a way to reprogram a patient’s cells to produce new ones. Research with stem cells, and similar entities called iPS cells that were announced last year, has aimed to achieve this in a two-step process.

The first step results in a primitive and highly versatile cell. This intermediary is then guided to mature into whatever cell type scientists want. That guiding process has proven difficult to do efficiently, especially for creating insulin-producing cells, Gearhart noted.

Toshiba XD-E500 Review

More stories We already picked the new Toshiba XD-E500 upscaling DVD player as one of our Top 100 Holiday Gift Tips. Now our review partner Digital Trends tested the XD-E500 and published a review. Quote from the XD-E500 review: “Just when I thought that I would probably never review a DVD player gain, Toshiba introduced their new XD-E500 1080p up conversion DVD player. Toshiba, who was one of the co-inventor’s DVD technology, and also the creator of the now defunct high-definition HD DVD optical disc, is coming back to the DVD marketplace with a new upconverting DVD player. Why? While still licking its wounds from the loss of its high-definition optical disc format, Toshiba has unveiled a new video processing technology called ‘XDE,’ which stands for ‘Extended Detail.’ According to Toshiba, XDE offers enhanced picture performance from standard definition DVDs. Toshiba has also realized the folks are not quite ready to give up their DVD players just yet in favor of Blu-ray players either, and are still quite fond of their DVDs. So, the idea of XDE was born in hopes of breathing renewed life into the DVD format. The new model XD-E500, which is housed in a sleek and very slender black cabinet, is priced at $149.95 retail. I expect it to be $99 by the Holidays.” Read the full Toshiba XD-E500.

HP obtains Judgment against Pelikan in unfair Competition Suit

More stories HP announced that Germany-based Pelikan Hardcopy Deutschland GmbH was found to be in violation of the German law on unfair competition by the Cologne Regional Court, Germany. In a judgment issued in July and finalized earlier this month, the court ordered Pelikan to cease labeling certain newly manufactured inkjet print cartridges as “remanufactured.” HP initiated this unfair competition action against Pelikan last summer after Pelikan refused HP?s request to voluntarily give an undertaking to cease its misleading advertising. HP had discovered that Pelikan marketed and sold new print cartridges in packaging that claimed the new cartridges were remanufactured products. In the recent judgment, the court agreed with HP and took the view that Pelikan?s labeling was misleading to customers. The newly manufactured Pelikan print cartridges were sold under the Pelikan brand and designated as H06 and H08 color cartridges. These same Pelikan products were the subject of a patent infringement proceeding brought by HP against Pelikan in Germany last year. In August 2007, the D?sseldorf Regional Court in Germany ordered Pelikan to stop importing and distributing these cartridges, following Pelikan?s admission of patent infringement. Via the HP site.

Dell misses Wall St Target, sees Spending Cutbacks

More stories SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Dell Inc posted a disappointing drop in quarterly earnings and said spending cutbacks on information technology have spread from the United States to Western Europe and Asia, sending its shares down more than 10 percent. “They’re saying lower IT spending is spreading. That is evidence of a global slowdown in IT spending. This certainly isn’t good news for tech overall. Dell’s outlook is for slower spending – especially in Asia and Western Europe,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management, who also noted weakness in Dell profit margins. Dell reported a surprise 17 percent decline in quarterly profit on Thursday as the company suffered from tighter corporate spending in United States. Net income for the fiscal second quarter ended August 1 fell to $616 million, or 31 cents per diluted share, from the restated year-ago net income of $746 million, or 33 cents per diluted share. Excluding amortization and business realignment costs, Dell earned 33 cents per share, behind Wall Street’s 36 cents per share target, according to Reuters Estimates. Revenue rose 11 percent to $16.43 billion. Dell shares tumbled to $22.64 in extended trade following the quarterly report, after closing down 42 cents at $25.21 on Nasdaq. (Reporting by Eric Auchard and Jim Finkle, editing by Richard Chang) Copyright 2008 Reuters.

Samsung X360 at IFA 2008 revealed

More stories Samsung unveiled the ultra-light notebook Samsung X360 at the IFA 2008 in Berlin. The Samsung X360 features a 13.3 inch LED backlit display and can be had with a 120GB SSD or 120GB HDD. The X360 only weighs 1.27kg and features a slick Protect-o-Edge dubbed case design. Other features of the Samsung X360 include Intel Centrino 2 Ultra Low Voltage CPU, 3 USB ports, HDMI, VGA, 7-in-1 card reader, Bluetooth, 802.11n, and 1.3MP video camera. The new Samsung X360 notebook is slated to ship in September. Via the IFA 2008 Samsung page.

OPIS iPhone Application Helps Save at the Pump

More stories OPIS — Oil Price Information Service — is the largest supplier of retail gas and diesel pricing information in the country. OPIS has launched a new application for the iPhone that helps users save at the pump. The application is called iGas and the GPS system of the iPhone 3G locates their position and finds the ten cheapest fueling stations in the immediate area. Users can also filter search results by their preferred type of fuel from diesel, regular, premium and so on. “The iPhone changes the game for consumers when shopping for the best prices on goods and services. The immediacy of being able to use the iPhone to perform targeted internet queries anywhere allows people to optimize their purchasing dollar,” said Michael Sinsky, CIO, OPIS.Via OPIS