From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Mon Nov 03 2003 - 16:26:03 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: New Scientist
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 10:48 AM
Subject: New Scientist Print Edition e-zine: 3 November 2003
New Scientist Print Edition e-zine: 3 November 2003
Welcome to the New Scientist print-edition e-zine - our weekly
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----------FEATURES---------
A UNIVERSE LIKE NO OTHER
When Leonard Susskind invented string theory, he thought it would
tell us why our universe is the way it is. He now has an answer, but
it's not the one he was expecting.
String theory researchers have been trying to make their theory
produce a universe just like ours for decades. But the theory also
produces myriad other universes, all with different laws of nature
and different properties. No one has ever managed to find a way to
get rid of the ones that don't seem to correspond with reality.
But what if we've got reality all wrong? What if there really is a
vast and varied array of universes? To most physicists, it's a
horrible idea. But the astronomical evidence that is coming in looks
irrefutable. There's only one way to account for the properties of
our universe, says Susskind: that it is one amongst billions. After
hundreds of years of searching for answers about the laws of physics
and the constants of nature, we have just found out that we've been
asking the wrong questions.
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?id=mg18024195.400
THE SPEED OF LIFE
Much about an animal is determined by its size. In general, the
larger the beast, the slower its metabolism and the longer its life,
and vice versa. But the question of how nature imprints each
creature with its assigned metabolic rate, and why some are destined
to die sooner than others, is a long-standing mystery. But now
researchers believe it could all lie in our cell membranes....and if
they are right it could have some profound effects on people's
thinking about rates of living and the evolution of warm-blooded
animals.
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?id=mg18024195.500
TECHNOLOGY SECTION:
NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME AS WELL AS MY PC
Speech-recognition programs have been in development for around 40
years. Their success rate varies from application to application,
but where humans get only 1 word in 200 wrong, machines still make a
mistake on about 1 word in 20. And it's hardly surprising if you
consider the physical complexities of human speech. But by teaching
their machines the subtleties of language, the dynamics of the
tongue, lips and other biological articulators, and even the art of
lip reading, IBM researchers hope to have achieved superhuman speech
recognition by 2010.
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?id=mg18024194.000
----------EDITOR'S CHOICE----------
Hole in a spin
Flashes of infrared from our galaxy's central black hole suggest it
is spinning like crazy. Astronomers believe that Sagittarius A* is a
supermassive black hole weighing 3.6 million times as much as the
sun, but until now they knew nothing else about it. A team led by
Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
Physics in Garching, Germany, spotted infrared flares from
Sagittarius A* using the Very Large Telescope in Cerro Paranal,
Chile. The flares repeat every 17 minutes and Genzel suggests that
they come from material whirling around the black hole. But the
short interval between flashes means the material must be orbiting
very close in - so close that a stationary, spherical black hole
would swallow it. A spinning black hole, however, warps space-time
so that material can survive in a closer orbit. Genzel calculates
that the black hole is spinning at more than half the maximum
theoretical speed for a black hole that size, squashing it from a
sphere into a fat lens shape (Nature, vol 425, p 934).
Chosen by David Concar.David joined New Scientist way back in 1991
and so qualifies as one of the magazine's veteran journalists. Now
Deputy Editor, he was previously life sciences editor in the
features department and retains a special interest in all things
biological. He is responsible for New Scientist's first foray into
television, a ten part series called New Scientist Reports on the
Discovery channel in the UK
Cutting Edge
Memory-boosting glasses
Spectacles with tiny clip-on LCD screens that flash subliminal
messages could boost your memory, according to researchers at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The "memory glasses" are
connected to a wearable computer which creates messages about people
and objects in the field of view and flashes them up on the
transparent screen for 0.005 seconds. In tests, volunteers seated at
desktop computers first had two minutes to memorise the names
associated with 21 faces displayed on the screen. They then had to
correctly match faces with names while their memory glasses flashed
subliminal suggestions, such as the right or wrong names, or nothing
at all. Volunteers cued with the right names did better by at least
50 per cent than those given bad cues or no cues. Scientists hope
the spectacles will one day help people suffering from amnesia or
prosopagnosia - a disorder in which people cannot recognise faces.
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NEW SCIENTIST REPORTS
The new weekly science bulletin will be showing on Tuesday and
Wednesday nights as part of Science Night on Discovery Channel UK.
Top stories this week include:
- A new test to catch the dope cheats
- A Y to die for: why males risk extinction
Find out more at:
http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/newscientist/index.shtml
*********************************************************************
----------COMING UP NEXT WEEK----------
THE GRAVITY RADIO
Is there a hidden link between electromagnetism and gravity? New
Scientist meets one physicist willing to risk his reputation to find
out
ARMED AND DANGEROUS
Box jellyfish are probably the most toxic creatures on Earth and put
hundreds of people in hospital each year. What are the secrets of
these sinister and bizarre killers?
WAY TO GROW
How do plants and animals translate their genes into the graceful
curves of leaf and limb? Developmental biologist Enrico Coen
uncovers the elegant simplicity behind complex forms
NOW WHO'S IN THE DRIVING SEAT?
Computers and cars have one thing in common: they crash. Put them
together and the results are impossible for the car industry to
ignore
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