The News reader from Sicilian.Net

What computers have gained in speed with the introduction of multicore processors that split up workloads they may be losing in reliability. This is because software applications are written to execute different actions in a specific order. When different pieces of code are processed out of order (thanks to multi-processors' division of labor), it may cause computers to crash, leaving office workers, researchers, students, gamers and other users staring at a frozen screen. [More]

The Hubble Space Telescope is an iconic observatory, a triumph of space science that may be the most famous unmanned spacecraft since Sputnik. Hubble's renown is certainly well-deserved, but the spacecraft is aging--it will mark its 20th anniversary of reaching orbit in April. Hubble's services are still in tremendous demand, because it operates above the bulk of Earth's obfuscating atmosphere and so offers astronomers their clearest view of the distant universe. In 2014, when another large, space-borne observatory is set to be launched, the overworked Hubble should finally have some company. [More]

Don’t forget to move your clocks forward this weekend. And then don’t forget to be more careful in the days after you adjust your clocks. Because a recent study found that the hour of lost sleep was related to increased job-related injuries. Probably because sleepy workers were less alert. The work appeared last September in the Journal of Applied Psychology . [ see http://bit.ly/coie2b ] [More]

A drug targeting dopamine receptors might be able to "kick-start" an injured brain, enabling certain kinds of vegetative and minimally conscious patients to recover faster. [More]

The 1992 tearjerker Lorenzo’s Oil told the true story of one family’s struggle to save their son from X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a deadly degenerative brain disease. Unfortunately, over the ensuing years, the oil of the film’s title, a dietary supplement, has not panned out as the cure many people hoped it would be. Now a paper in the November 2009 issue of Science suggests that the long-sought cure may come from gene therapy--a famously hyped approach to treatment that tragically caused the death of a teenage experimental subject in 1999.

Since then, however, researchers have continued to cautiously pursue gene therapy for certain disorders with known genetic origins. ALD, for instance, is caused by mutations in a gene called ABCD1, leading to unusually high levels of a type of fatty acid that damages the material insulating some neurons. It affects about one in 20,000 six- to eight-year-old boys, leading to death before adolescence. The main treatment is still bone marrow transplantation: a risky procedure that relies on finding a suitable donor, explains Patrick Aubourg, a neurologist at France’s INSERM research institute.

The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries about the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science by R. Douglas Fields. [More]

Winds of Change I found it surprising that in “ A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030 ,” Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi do not mention the effects of the suggested energy sources on climate. The authors propose to absorb about six terawatts of energy from about 60 terawatts available in the wind, or about 10 percent of its total energy. Because the winds, at least near the U.S., usually flow around highs or lows, where the speed and related Coriolis force tend to maintain the pressure difference, I can easily envision that absorbing the energy will change the rate at which the pressure centers collapse. How this would change the weather, I do not know, but it must make a change to give us some of the energy. Possibly, the weather change would be an improvement, but as a believer in Murphy’s Law, I would be surprised. About 100 years ago dumping garbage into the ocean was justified because the oceans were infinite compared to the effect, so no one calculated how much was allowable. Let’s be smarter this time! Why not do the calculations before we cause more problems? [More]

MIAMI--In three months hundreds of thousands of soccer fans are expected to descend on nine South African cities for the 2010 World Cup. But for so many visitors going to a country where more than 10 percent of the population is estimated to have HIV/AIDS, many public health experts are worried that the event will kick off a spike in transmission. South Africa, in turn, has responded by requesting one billion condoms for the year (many of which will be supplied by the U.K.)--more than twice as many as usual, the BBC noted . [More]

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A California sushi chef and the restaurant in which he worked have been charged with illegally serving meat from an endangered Sei whale, the Justice Department said on Thursday.

Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, 45, and the parent company of the popular restaurant The Hump in Santa Monica were charged late on Wednesday with violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act which makes it illegal to sell any kind of whale meat.

Half a century ago, thousands of pregnant women in 46 countries took a drug for morning sickness that would later be discovered to cause severe malformations in developing fetuses. Worldwide, roughly 10,000 affected children nicknamed "thalidomide babies" were born with multiple defects, including the characteristic shortened upper limbs (a condition known as phocomelia, Greek for "seal limbs"), before the drug was discontinued in 1961 after four years on the market.

An electric insulator, in the simplest terms, blocks the flow of electric current. So it would be a bit counterintuitive, to say the least, if a current on one side of an insulator could produce voltage on the other. [More]

Dear EarthTalk: I have a new linoleum floor, which I chose partly for its ecofriendliness. How do I clean and maintain it without using harsh or toxic chemicals? --A. J. Maimbourg, via e-mail