Reuters Technology Week (video)
Mar. 27 – The latest in gadgets and geeks from Argentina, Siberia, and Japan.

French Recording May Be World’s First
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – At first listen, the grainy high-pitched warble doesn’t sound like much, but scientists say the French recording from 1860 is the oldest known recorded human voice. The 10-second clip of a woman singing “Au Clair de la Lune,” taken from a so-called phonautogram, was recently discovered by audio historian David Giovannoni. The recording predates Thomas Edison’s “Mary had a little lamb” – previously credited as the oldest recorded voice – by 17 years. The tune was captured using a phonautograph, a device created by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville that created visual recordings of sound waves.

The end of the silicon chip : carbon nanotubes
The future of computing is under the spotlight at the Institute of Physics’ Condensed Matter and Materials Physics conference at the Royal Holloway College of the University of London on 26-28 March. The silicon chip, which has supplied several decades’ worth of remarkable increases in computing power and speed, looks unlikely to be capable of sustaining this pace for more than another decade — in fact, in a plenary talk at the conference, Suman Datta of Pennsylvania State University, USA, gives the conventional silicon chip no longer than four years left to run.

Scientists find that squid beak is both hard and soft, a material that engineers want to copy
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) —— How did nature make the squid’s beak super hard and sharp —— allowing it, without harm to its soft body —— to capture its prey? The question has captivated those interested in creating new materials that mimic biological materials.

Researchers Create Protective Sac for Growing Stem Cells
Miniature lab would carry therapeutic cells to their destination in the body

Breech Birth May Be Determined by Genes
‘Bottom first’ delivery more likely if either parent was born that way, study says.

Weight Bias Is As Prevalent As Racial Discrimination, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008) — Discrimination against overweight people–particularly women–is as common as racial discrimination, according to a study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University.

FDA Probing Possible Link Between Asthma Drug and Suicide Risk
Singulair, top-selling drug for teens, under review by U.S. agency and manufacturer Merck.

Family Study Associates Pesticide Use With Parkinson’s Risk
Study found strongest ties to herbicides and insecticides

Key Culprit In Stroke Brain Cell Damage Identified
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008) — Researchers have identified a key player in the killing of brain cells after a stroke or a seizure. The protein asparagine endopeptidase (AEP) unleashes enzymes that break down brain cells’ DNA, scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have found. Finding drugs that block AEP may help doctors limit permanent brain damage following strokes or seizures, says senior author Keqiang Ye, PhD, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory.

Most Older Americans Living Longer and Better
But problems persist, such as disparities among races, report finds

Japan parrot beats humans in solving chain puzzle
“Ten,” a six-year-old New World parrot, can solve a puzzle consisting of two entangled chains in less than 30 seconds. It takes humans about an hour. The female macaw at a botanical garden in suburban Tokyo competes against more than a dozen human visitors every day, but remains undefeated.

Iron Age bones found at Olympic site in London
Archaeologists uncovered four skeletons in Iron Age graves on the site of the London 2012 Olympic Park.

Study shows life was tough for ancient Egyptians
CAIRO (Reuters) – New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found. 

Evolution Of New Species Slows Down As Number Of Competitors Increases
Competition between closely related species for food and habitat becomes more intense the more species there are, and researchers believe this could be the reason for the drop-off in the appearance of new species over time.

Bolts Of Blue Lightning Thrusting Upward, Other Lightning Quirks, Explained
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008) — The mechanism behind different types of lightning may now be understood, thanks to a combination of direct observation and computer modeling reported by a team of researchers from New Mexico Tech and Penn State.

Inside Leo the Lion
Catch the bright stars of Leo and visiting Saturn in March and April.

Quantum Channel Between Earth And Space? Firing Photons Makes Advance In Space Communication
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008) — For the first time, physicists have been able to identify individual returning photons after firing and reflecting them off of a space satellite in orbit almost 1,500 kilometres above the earth.  The experiment has proven the possibility of constructing a quantum channel between Space and Earth.

Saturn Storm Has Hurricane-Like Features
Vortex over Saturn’s south pole has eye, eye walls like hurricanes on Earth.

Distant star’s demise previews our sun’s death
WASHINGTON — Astronomers at 25 observatories around the world began aiming their telescopes this week at a preview of our sun’s eventual death.

Why Matter Matters In The Universe
“Our universe is made up almost completely of matter. While we’re entirely used to this idea, this does not agree with our ideas of how mass and energy interact. According to these theories there should not be enough mass to enable the formation of stars and hence life. In our standard model of particle physics, matter and antimatter are almost identical. Accordingly as they mix in the early universe they annihilate one another leaving very little to form stars and galaxies. The model does not come close to explaining the difference between matter and antimatter we see in the nature. The imbalance is a trillion times bigger than the model predicts.”
But there’s a lot of “dark matter” in the universe that we don’t know much about.  Why couldn’t dark matter consist of antimatter?