esocid writes “At the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, scientists presented evidence today that desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life The result of that brew could be the dominance of “left-handed” amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet. Chains of amino acids make up the protein found in people, plants, and all other forms of life on Earth. There are two orientations of amino acids, left and right, which mirror each other in the same way your hands do. These amino acids “seeds” formed in interstellar space, possibly on asteroids as they careened through space. At the outset, they’ve equal amounts of left and right-handed amino acids. But as these rocks soar past neutron stars, their light rays trigger the selective destruction of one form of amino acid.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Pioneer Woman writes “Researchers at Hebrew University in Jerusalem have found a link between a gene called AVPR1a and ruthless behavior. These findings come from an economic exercise called the ‘Dictator Game’ that allows players to behave selflessly, or like national dictators and ‘little Hitlers’ found in workplaces the world over. The team decided to look at AVPR1a because it is known to produce receptors in the brain that detect vasopressin, a hormone involved in ‘prosocial’ behavior. Researchers tested DNA samples from more than 200 student volunteers, before asking the students to play the game that measured their altruism. There was no connection between the participants’ gender and their behavior but there was a link to the length of the AVPR1a gene.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Roland Piquepaille writes “UK researchers have recently used virtual reality to check if people had paranoid thoughts when using public transportation. Their VR tube ride experiment revealed that 40% of the participants experienced exaggerated fears about threats from others. Until now, researchers were relying on somewhat unreliable questionnaires to study paranoid thoughts which are often triggered by ambiguous events such as someone laughing behind their back. With the use of VR, psychiatrists and psychologists have a new tool which can reliably recreate social interactions. As the lead researcher said, VR ‘is a uniquely powerful method to detect those liable to misinterpret other people.’.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Bad news, Products and services, Consumer experience, Oil, Recession

It has definitely been a tough week for airlines, and yesterday Skybus became the third airline to cease operating.

Once again, the main culprits are rising fuel costs and the slowing economy, making it almost impossible for small, low-cost airline companies to compete in the current market. Skybus decided that it would be shutting down all operations as of yesterday, and plans to file for bankruptcy over the course of the next week.

Skybus has not been around for too long. The company started up about a year ago and operated around 75 flights a day. The company had 350 employees working out of Columbus, Ohio, and 100 in Greensboro, N.C.

Similar to what we saw earlier this week with the ATA Airline closure, the writing had been on the wall for a while now at Skybus. A couple of weeks ago, the company’s CEO stepped down in order to pursue a book-writing career, and over the course of the past weeks the airline had already begun to cancel flights and destinations in reaction to rapidly rising fuel costs.

In addition to Skybus and ATA Airline shutting down and planning to file for bankruptcy, earlier in the week we also go that the news that Aloha Airlines had been forced to ground all of its flights.

Skybus announced on its official website that anyone holding Skybus tickets for future flights should contact their credit card companies as soon as possible to work out a refund, and to look for alternative flights to handle their travel needs.

I would like to say that this isn’t a trend that we should expect to see continue, but with oil prices still trading at near record highs you really have to wonder how many more stories like this we’re going to be hearing over the upcoming weeks and months.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

Share This

Share This

An anonymous reader writes “IEEE Spectrum reports that noted encryption pioneer Prof. Martin Hellman has a new passion; estimating the danger of our current nuclear weapons policies. His web site, Defusing the Nuclear Threat, asks the question, ‘How risky are nuclear weapons? Amazingly, no one seems to know.’ Hellman therefore did a preliminary analysis and found the danger to be ‘equivalent to having your home surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.’ The web site and a related statement therefore urgently call for more detailed studies to either confirm or correct his startling conclusion. The statement has been signed by seven notable individuals including former NSA Director Adm. Bobby R. Inman and two Nobel Laureates.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

An anonymous reader writes “Science Daily reports on scientific findings from the ESA’s Venus Express probe. The device, which is even now orbiting Earth’s sister planet, is feeding back data hinting at Venus’ origins. Initially, the probe has found, the planet evolved far too quickly. As a result Venus’ liquid oceans were boiled away. With those gone, the planet’s development stalled and ceased. ‘They may have started out looking very much the same,’ stated Professor Taylor, ‘but increasingly we have evidence that Venus lost most of its water and Earth lost most of its atmospheric carbon dioxide … The interesting thing is that the physics is the same in both cases. The great achievement of Venus Express is that it is putting the climatic behaviour of both planets into a common framework of understanding.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

An anonymous reader writes “IEEE Spectrum reports that noted encryption pioneer Prof. Martin Hellman has a new passion; estimating the danger of our current nuclear weapons policies. His web site, Defusing the Nuclear Threat, asks the question, ‘How risky are nuclear weapons? Amazingly, no one seems to know.’ Hellman therefore did a preliminary analysis and found the danger to be ‘equivalent to having your home surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.’ The internet site and a related statement therefore urgently call for more detailed studies to either confirm or correct his startling conclusion. The statement has been signed by seven notable individuals including former NSA Director Adm. Bobby R. Inman and two Nobel Laureates.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Forecasts, Consumer experience, Economic data, Commodities, Oil, Housing, Recession

Alan Greenspan has been traveling overseas too much promoting his book. Today he said there’s over a 50% chance of a recession in the U.S. According to Reuters, the former Fed chairman said “I would not describe the situation we’re in as a recession, even though the chances that we’ll have one are more than 50 percent.”

If Mr. Greenspan was in the U.S. more often he might notice that many people can no longer afford both gas and food due to inflation in commodities prices. That alone has curtailed spending among many members of the lower and middle classes.

The drop-off in retail sales devils major retailers. Three U.S. airlines have already filed Chapter 11, and that number may well rise. Auto sales were off over 14% at both of the larger American car companies.

Many stocks in major U.S. firms are near 52-week lows and non-farm payrolls dropped sharply according to the most current report. Financial institutions have cut tens of thousands of jobs, and that may get worse.

Otherwise, everything is fine.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Share This

Share This

An anonymous reader writes “A successful docking of the Automated Transfer Automobile dubbed ‘Jules Verne’ occurred earlier this week. The first of its kind, the crewless ship reached orbit and lightly touched up against the international space station on Thursday. By now astronauts on the ISS will have opened its doors and begun air circulation in preparation of offloading the almost 7.5 tons of fuel, oxygen, food, clothing and equipment they need to survive. The EU Space Bureau sees this as a historic journey for the program: ‘The Jules Verne, named after the visionary French science fiction author, is the first of a new class of station supply ships called Automatic Transfer Cars. The craft was built by the nations of the European Space Agency as one of Europe’s major contributions to the international station. “The docking of the A.T.V. is a new and spectacular step in the demonstration of European abilities on the international scene of space exploration,” stated Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This