Blog Heap of Links for the day 3 May 2009

Consider these two different reactions from the White House press corps during presidential drop-ins at the White House's James S. Brady Briefing Room [video]

President Barack Obama plans to roll out a set of proposals on international tax policies on Monday, in an announcement with potential implications for U.S. multinational firms.

"Progress in simulation-based engineering and science holds great promise for the pervasive advancement of knowledge and understanding through discovery," said Clark Cooper, program director for materials and surface engineering at NSF and also a sponsor of the report. "We expect future developments to continue to enhance prediction and decision making in the presence of uncertainty."

Michael Woodworth, a forensic psychologist at UBC Okanagan studying deception in computer-mediated environments, says offering up a fib in person might make you provide certain signals that you're trying to deceive, but lying online avoids the physical cues that can give you away.... a growing number of individuals are falling prey to deceptive practices and information received through computer mediated contexts such as the Internet "By learning more about how various factors affect detecting deceit in online communication, our research will certainly have important implications in organizational contexts, both legal and illegal, in the political domain, and in family life as more and more children go online...."

18 countries have officially reported 898 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection....

"She went around a barrier, and we don't understand that, because she knows, she's always known how dangerous that road was," said Kendrick's aunt.... 911 call: a desperate woman calling for help after flood water swept her car off the road. "Seemed really calm. Level headed. But, she knew she was in trouble, right off the bat...."

resolved a long-standing mystery about an X-ray glow along the plane of the our home galaxy. The glow in the region covered by the Chandra image was discovered to be caused by hundreds of point-like X-ray sources, implying that the glow along the plane of the Galaxy is due to millions of such sources.

During the last two decades, astronomers have found hundreds of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. New research indicates they might have found even more except for one thing — some planets have fallen into their stars and simply no longer exist. [Um... duh.]

Ancient protein dating back 80 million years to the Cretaceous geologic period has been preserved in bone fragments and soft tissues of a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur....

Despite the common perception that total hip replacements last about 10 years, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found that the devices are extremely durable, even 20 years after surgery.

Scientists have studied high-frequency brain waves, known as gamma oscillations, for more than 50 years, believing them crucial to consciousness, attention, learning and memory. Now, for the first time, MIT researchers and colleagues have found a way to induce these waves by shining laser light directly onto the brains of mice.

Scrawnier people are more likely to perceive an approaching sound as closer than it actually is. This connection between physical fitness and the brain's auditory system may have evolved to help the weak get out of the way of approaching danger.

children's short sleep duration even without sleeping difficulties increases the risk for behavioral symptoms of ADHD.

investigated the effects of oxytocin, the "love hormone," on human couple interactions.... Oxytocin increased positive communication behavior in relation to negative behavior and reduced salivary cortisol, i.e., their stress levels, compared to placebo....

sometimes the delicate balance is tipped toward one partner or the other. ... When Nodosa begins to flower, the ants attack the buds, lopping them off before they get a chance to spread seeds. The ant, in effect, sterilizes its gracious host. Ingrates....

able to send half of their brains to sleep while the other half remains conscious. What is more, the mammals seem to be able to remain continually vigilant for sounds for days on end.... when the team checked the dolphins' blood for physical signs of sleep deprivation, they couldn't find any. After 5 days of unbroken vigilance the dolphins were in much better shape than the scientists.

possible to make type of dike that acts as an invisibility cloak that hides off-shore platforms from water waves. The principle is analogous to the optical invisibility cloaks that are currently a hot area of physics research. Tsunami invisibility cloaks wouldn't make structures disappear from sight, but they could manipulate ocean waves in ways that makes off-shore platforms, and possibly even coastlines and small islands, effectively invisible to tsunamis.

a "carpet cloak" from nanostructured silicon that conceals the presence of objects placed under it from optical detection. While the carpet itself can still be seen, the bulge of the object underneath it disappears from view. Shining a beam of light on the bulge shows a reflection identical to that of a beam reflected from a flat surface, meaning the object itself has essentially been rendered invisible.

a plug-and-play hardware prototype for personal computers that induces a new energy saving state known as "sleep talking." ... The new sleep talking state provides much of the energy savings of sleep mode and some of the network-and-Internet-connected convenience of awake mode.....

Our serial time-encoded amplified microscopy (STEAM) technology

We invite you to experience Karnak — to learn about an ancient site that still resonates today because of its monumental pylons, towering columns, stunning reliefs and architectural marvels. Enter the temple precinct and discover its rich religious, political and architectural history.

a high-tech model that runs in real time and allows users to navigate 2,000 years of history at the popular ancient Egyptian tourist site near modern-day Luxor, where generations of pharaohs constructed temples, chapels, obelisks, sphinxes, shrines and other sacred structures beginning in the 20th century B.C.