Astronaut Makes Sushi in Space

Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi may be far from home, but not from his country’s trademark dish. He is making sushi in space while floating weightless aboard his current post on the International Space Station, and even wears a chef’s hat while he does it. In a demonstration, Noguchi held a piece of seaweed in one hand and used a spoon to nudge a floating clump of rice into it. With a few quick twists, he wrapped it all up in a neat roll.

“The first hand-rolled sushi in space, there you go,” a proud Noguchi told Fuji TV reporters after making a sushi roll while floating inside the space station’s Japanese-built Kibo laboratory. “It has salmon inside.”

Noguchi made the sushi during a space-to-ground video interview with Fuji TV reporters on Wednesday. He spoke Japanese, with an interpreter on Earth providing an English translation.

“You have a gourmet cooking corner in your show, too, so I would actually like to cook here for you,” he told them before wowing the reporters with his zero gravity culinary skill.

Food in space is a precious commodity for astronauts, particularly those living on the space station for up to six months at a time. But since astronauts live in weightlessness, the food floats around like everything else. Shuttle astronauts, for example, use tortillas, powdered eggs and sausage patties to make space burritos. Bread, they said, leads to troublesome crumbs.

Noguchi has lived aboard the space station since December and is one of five astronauts from three countries staffing the orbiting laboratory. He represents the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Two Russians and two Americans round out the rest of the current crew. Noguchi did not mention if he had any wasabi to go with his space sushi. …

via Astronaut Makes Sushi in Space – Yahoo! News.

The world’s five youngest billionaires (2009-2010)

I just got curious about this and started looking around. Forbes had some interesting things: Here is a complete list of the world’s billionaires in 2009. Youngest billionaire 2008:   Marc Zuckerberg – United States, Age: 23.

He and his friend Andrew McCollum along with two other roommates, Dustin Moskovits and Chris Hughes started Facebook. Mark is the CEO of Facebook and his net worth is said to be $1.5 billion. – link

Youngest billionaires in 2009:

Prince Albert von Thurn und Taxis

Net worth: $2.1 billion
Age: 25

“The youngest billionaire in the world is 25-year-old German Prince Albert von Thurn und Taxis, who is worth $2.1 billion. Von Thurn und Taxis first appeared on our list of the world’s billionaires at age 8, but he officially inherited his family’s fortune in 2001 on his 18th birthday. … German prince reclaims the title of world’s youngest billionaire as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg drops out of the billionaires’ club.”

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Sergey Brin

Net worth: $12 billion
Age: 35

Google co-founder continues to dominate search business despite facing strong headwinds. Company’s stock is down 30% in the past 12 months, slicing $6.7 billion from personal balance sheet. …

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Larry Page

Net Worth: $12 billion
Age: 36

Professor’s son, heads Google’s product division. Met partner Sergey Brin in a computer science Ph.D. program at Stanford University. Duo dropped out in 1998 to start Google from a friend’s garage…

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Sheik Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahayan

Net Worth: $4.9 billion
Age: 39

Investor with hoards of cash is a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family. Last September, he shelled out $300 million for soccer team Manchester City. One month later, he rescued British bank Barclays from possible nationalization with a controversial $5 billion cash investment.

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Jerry Yang

Net Worth: $1.1 billion
Age: 40

Embattled Yahoo! co-founder quit as chief executive in January. Settled proxy contest with shareholder activist Carl Icahn for control of company. Icahn won three board seats. Yahoo! stock is down nearly 55% since original Microsoft offer last February.

83 year old billionaire sets record, buys rough diamond for $35 million

A 507-carat diamond that sold for $35.3 million on Friday is shown in an undated photo courtesy of Petra Diamonds.

Petra Diamonds sold a 507-carat diamond for $35.3 million on Friday, breaking a record as the highest price ever paid for a rough diamond.

Analysts had estimated the value of the stone, one of the 20 biggest high-quality rough diamonds, at around $25 million.

“It is fitting that the Cullinan Heritage should achieve a sale price of $35.3 million, the highest sale price on record ever achieved for a rough diamond, as it has the potential to produce one of the world’s most important polished gems,” Chief Executive Johan Dippenaar said.

London-listed Petra said in a statement the gem was purchased in a tender by Chow Tai Fook Jewelry Co Ltd in Hong Kong.

Proceeds will help boost Petra’s profit for its fiscal year to end-June after the firm swung to a first-half profit on higher production and sales.

AIM-listed Petra found the gem last September at its 74 percent owned Cullinan mine in South Africa, which it bought from sector giant De Beers in 2007.

The Cullinan mine has been the source of many large diamonds, including the world’s largest rough diamond — the Cullinan — at 3,106 carats. That gem was cut into the Star of Africa stones that are now set in Britain’s Crown Jewels.

Petra was a member of a consortium that paid $148 million when buying the Cullinan mine from De Beers, which is 45 percent owned by mining group Anglo American.

via Petra sets record, sells diamond for $35 million – Yahoo! News.

From wikipedia:

Chow Tai Fook Enterprises Ltd. is a diversified, Hong Kong-based company engaged in the property development, hotel, casino, transportation, jewelry, port and telecommunications businesses.

Chow Tai Fook is a private company owned by Dr. Cheng Yu-tung, who is its chairman, as well as the chairman of New World Development Co. Ltd.

Chow Tai Fook is the major shareholder of New World Development Co. Ltd. (HKSE: 0017). It owns the Marina hotel property in Manila, the Philippines.

… Cheng Yu-tung GBM … is a Hong Kong billionaire with extensive business dealings and real estate interests in Hong Kong and Macau. He owns the privately-held Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, a conglomerate which operates the Sheraton Marina hotel and controls the publicly listed New World group. He also has interests in Shun Tak Holdings, and the Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau, owned by Stanley Ho.

Cheng also serves on the board of the Hang Seng Bank, Hong Kong’s third-largest bank.

He represents the Kingdom of Bhutan in Hong Kong, serving as the honorary consul for the country.

Net Worth:$4.0 bil
Fortune:self made
Source:real estate
Age:83
Marital Status:married, 4 children

- forbes.com

Scientists Unravel Mysteries of Intelligence

It’s not a particular brain region that makes someone smart or not smart.

Nor is it the strength and speed of the connections throughout the brain or such features as total brain volume.

Instead, new research shows, it’s the connections between very specific areas of the brain that determine intelligence and often, by extension, how well someone does in life.

“General intelligence actually relies on a specific network inside the brain, and this is the connections between the gray matter, or cell bodies, and the white matter, or connecting fibers between neurons,” said Jan Glascher, lead author of a paper appearing in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “General intelligence relies on the connection between the frontal and the parietal [situated behind the frontal] parts of the brain.”

The results weren’t entirely unexpected, said Keith Young, vice chairman of research in psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Temple, but “it is confirmation of the idea that good communication between various parts of brain are very important for this generalized intelligence.”

via Scientists Unravel Mysteries of Intelligence – Yahoo! News.

Iceberg breaks in Antarctica not where expected

With the dramatic crash of an iceberg against a glacier that dislodged a massive new chunk of ice, the mysterious continent of Antarctica once again did the unexpected.

A big chunk of ice, slightly smaller than Oahu, broke off from a place it wasn’t supposed to and in a way that wasn’t quite anticipated, scientists reported Friday.

The new iceberg broke off from the cooler eastern end of Antarctica, the result of tidal forces that caused a longer but thinner iceberg that stretches for 60 miles to hammer it free. The new chunk broke off a long tongue of ice that had been building for decades, but will unlikely cause future ice loss problems on the continent, scientists said.

This happened as researchers have focused attention on the western side of Antactica, a continent about 1 1/2 times larger than the United States. Concern has grown over warmer temperatures there and especially the region’s shrinking peninsula, which sticks out into the water like a broken pinky finger.

Remarkably, that peninsula, where last year one ice shelf was said to be hanging by a thread, has had an unusually cool summer. It’s hit pause on ice loss, said Ted Scambos, senior scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

In a satellite phone interview this week from the western peninsula where he’s working, Scambos predicted no major ice calving. His comments were made Thursday.

The next day Australian researchers alerted the world to the iceberg crash with the Mertz Glacier on the other side of the continent. They said it had probably occurred around Feb. 12 or 13.

“There are some crazy things going down in Antarctica,” said Mark Serreze, director of the snow and ice data center, based in Boulder, Colo. “It seems kind of weird, but weird things happen.” …

via Iceberg breaks in Antarctica not where expected – Yahoo! News.

Nouns and Verbs Learned in Different Brain Regions

Nouns and verbs may go hand and hand in a sentence, but they are learned in different regions of our brains, a new study suggests.

The work could explain why children learn nouns before verbs, and adults also perform better and react faster to nouns during cognitive tests.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to look at the brain activity of 21 people as they learned 160 new nouns and verbs.

The subjects had to work out the meaning of a new term based on the context provided in two sentences. For example, in the phrases “The girl got a jat for Christmas” and “The best man was so nervous he forgot the jat,” the noun jat means “ring.” Similarly, with “The student is nising noodles for breakfast,” and “The man nised a delicious meal for her,” the made-up verb would mean “to cook.”

The task was meant to simulate how we acquire new vocabulary over the course of our lives, said study author Rodríguez-Fornells, a psychologist at the University of Barcelona.

The brain imaging showed that when participants were learning new nouns, the left fusiform gyrus, which is associated with visual and object processing, was activated. New verbs activated part of the left posterior medial temporal gyrus (associated with semantic and conceptual aspects) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (involved in processing grammar).

In addition, activation of other specific parts of the brain was associated with how well people learned new nouns, but not verbs.

The results were published this month in the journal Neuroimage.

via Nouns and Verbs Learned in Different Brain Regions – Yahoo! News.

The image is from a different but also interesting Brain article: A Neurosemantic Theory of Concrete Noun Representation Based on the Underlying Brain Codes.

SnakeOil? Scientific evidence for health supplements

A generative data-visualisation of all the scientific evidence for popular health supplements by David McCandless and Andy Perkins.

I’m a bit of a health nut. Keeping fit. Streamlining my diet. I plan to live to the age of 150 in fact. But I get frustrated by constant, conflicting reports and studies about health supplements.

Is Vitamin C worth taking or not? Does Echinacea kill colds? Am I missing out not drinking litres of Goji juice, wheatgrass extract and flaxseed oil every day?

In an effort to give myself a quick reference guide, I dove into the scientific evidence and created a visualization for my book. And then worked with the awesome Andy Perkins on a further interactive, generative “living image”.

Play with interactive version | See the still image

This visualisation generates itself from this Google Doc. So when new research comes out, we can quickly update the data and regenerate the image. (How cool is that??) Hopefully then this should be a useful web resources for years to come.

… This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble.

You might also see multiple bubbles for certain supps. These is because some supps affect a range of conditions, but the evidence quality varies from condition to condition. For example, there’s strong evidence that Green Tea is good for cholesterol levels. But evidence for its anti-cancer effects is conflicting. In these cases, we give a supp another bubble.

The evidence

We only considered large, human, randomized placebo-controlled trials in our data scrape – wherever possible. No animal trials. No cell studies. Many of the health claims made by the $23 billion supplements industry are based on non-human trials. We wanted to cut through that. …

via SnakeOil? Scientific evidence for health supplements | Information Is Beautiful. ( source: PubMed, Cochrane )

Perhaps I should add some brewer’s yeast to my morning shake and eat more Shitake mushrooms since beta-glucan gets such high marks as an anti-viral and anti-cancer agent in the above data.

Radio Orangevale

I made a note two years ago to check out Radio Orangevale, a Sacramento area band once known as Las Pesadillas.

Ocean robot plans its own experiments

Scientists in the US are using an underwater vehicle that can “plan its own experiments” on the seafloor.

The “Gulper AUV” is programmed to look for the information that scientists want and plan its own route, avoiding hazardous currents and obstacles.

The research team described this advance at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland.

The group explained how it could “train” the robot to bring the best science back to the surface.

Thom Maughan from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California was one of the engineers on the project.

He explained how the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) used a piece of software called “T rex”, which operates in a similar way to the software used to control Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rovers – helping them to avoid obstacles on the surface of the Red Planet.

One main difference between the two pieces of software is that for the Mars rovers, the software ran in the control centre on Earth. With this marine vehicle, it runs onboard the robotic vehicle.

“You can tell it what to do before you put it in the water,” Dr Maughan said.

“We tell it, ‘here’s the range of tasks that we want you to perform’, and it goes off and assesses what is happening in the ocean, making decisions about how much of the range it will cover to get back the data we want.” …

via BBC News – Ocean robot ‘plans experiments’.

Scanning for skin cancer: Infrared system looks for deadly melanoma

Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a noninvasive infrared scanning system to help doctors determine whether pigmented skin growths are benign moles or melanoma, a lethal form of cancer.

The prototype system works by looking for the tiny temperature difference between healthy tissue and a growing tumor.

The researchers have begun a pilot study of 50 patients at Johns Hopkins to help determine how specific and sensitive the device is in evaluating melanomas and precancerous lesions. Further patient testing and refinement of the technology are needed, but if the system works as envisioned, it could help physicians address a serious health problem: The National Cancer Institute estimated that 68,720 new cases of melanoma were reported in the United States in 2009; it attributed 8,650 deaths to the disease.

To avert such deaths, doctors need to identify a mole that may be melanoma at an early, treatable stage. To do this, doctors now look for subjective clues such as the size, shape and coloring of a mole, but the process is not perfect.

“The problem with diagnosing melanoma in the year 2010 is that we don’t have any objective way to diagnose this disease,” said Rhoda Alani, adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and professor and chair of dermatology at the Boston University School of Medicine. “Our goal is to give an objective measurement as to whether a lesion may be malignant. It could take much of the guesswork out of screening patients for skin cancer.”

With this goal in mind, Alani teamed with heat transfer expert Cila Herman, a professor of mechanical engineering in Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering. Three years ago, Herman obtained a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant to develop new ways to detect subsurface changes in temperature. Working with Muge Pirtini, a mechanical engineering doctoral student, Herman aimed her research at measuring heat differences just below the surface of the skin.

Because cancer cells divide more rapidly than normal cells, they typically generate more metabolic activity and release more energy as heat. …

via Scanning for skin cancer: Infrared system looks for deadly melanoma.