Wiredreports that the viral video reportedly of an "unknown lifeform" that was recorded in a sewer in Raliegh, North Carolina is a colony of tuibifex worms.
"They seem to respond to the light from the camera," says Ed Buchan, environmental coordinator at the Raleigh Public Utilities Department. "That light is pretty hot." Buchan also said, "We were surprised. We didn't know immediately what it was."
Nanosized robots are going to compete at RoboCup 2009 in a microscopic soccer stadium. Each team's nanobots will have to pass some agility tests to be allowed to compete in the miniscule soccer matches. In the matches the nanobots try to "kick" a dust mite size ball through a goal. The skills the nanobots use in the competition are similar to skills that nanobots will require for futuristic technologies like microsurgery. Take a look:
The Weather Channel captures amazing footage of a fast-moving twister in Wyoming. One of the videos lets you look up into the funnel of a tornado - this part is around 14 seconds into the clip.
National Ignition Facility Contains World's Most Powerful Laser
The world's most powerful laser that took $5 billion and a decade recently debuted with a special dedicated at the Livermore National Laboratory in California. The laser is housed inside a football field sized building called the National Ignition Facility. The AP says the laser was designed to help ensure the reliability of the nation's aging nuclear weapons but it could also be used one day to create a more efficient energy source. In 2010, NIF will focus the intense energy of 192 giant laser beams on a BB-sized target filled with hydrogen fuel - fusing, or igniting, the hydrogen atoms' nuclei in the world's first controlled thermonuclear reaction. You can read how the NIF works here.
Researchers Trying to Learn More About Platypus Evolution
National Geographic researchers are trying to collect DNA samples from the platypus to determine whether there are separate subspecies of the duck-billed mammals. The male platypus has a spur on its hind foot that can deliver painful venom so they have to be handled carefully.
NASA's Swift satellite recently discovered the most distant object in the Universe. The object is the afterglow of a self-destructing star located 13.1 billion light years from Earth.
NASA's Swift satellite and an international team of astronomers have found a gamma-ray burst from a star that died when the universe was only 630 million years old, or less than five percent of its present age. The event, dubbed GRB 090423, is the most distant cosmic explosion ever seen.
"Swift was designed to catch these very distant bursts," said Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The incredible distance to this burst exceeded our greatest expectations -- it was a true blast from the past."
At 3:55 a.m. EDT on April 23, Swift detected a ten-second-long gamma-ray burst of modest brightness. It quickly pivoted to bring its ultraviolet/optical and X-ray telescopes to observe the burst location. Swift saw a fading X-ray afterglow but none in visible light.
"The burst most likely arose from the explosion of a massive star," said Derek Fox at Pennsylvania State University. "We're seeing the demise of a star -- and probably the birth of a black hole -- in one of the universe's earliest stellar generations."
Here's a video that shows a computer graphic animation of the distant object.
British Airways Crew Member Hospitalized With Flu-Like Symptoms
There are over 1,000 cases of Swine Flu in Mexico and over sixty people have died. The Mexican government is taking action by shutting down schools and public events. There have been more alarming news today with reports of a couple Swine Flu cases in Kansas and possibly hundreds of cases at at a private school in New York City. The Guardian is reporting that a member of the cabin crew of a British Airways flight was taken to the hospital with flu-like symptoms. The flight was going from Mexico City to Heathrow airport in London.
A member of cabin crew was taken to hospital with "flu-like symptoms" today after falling ill on a British Airways flight from Mexico City to Heathrow.
The World Health Organisation has warned countries to be on alert for any unusual flu outbreaks after a swine flu virus was implicated in possibly dozens of human deaths in Mexico.
The BA employee, who has not been named, has been taken to Northwick Park hospital in Harrow, a hospital spokesman said.
He added: "He has flu-like symptoms and is responding well to treatment. The patient was admitted directly to a side room and the hospital is scrupulously following infection control procedures to ensure there is no risk to any other individual in the hospital."
The man was taken from flight BA242 which landed at 2pm today, a BA spokesman said.
Air travel is obviously the quickest way for this new strain of flu - comprised of swine, avian and human flu - to spread around the globe. The one bright spot so far is that most of the cases in the United States have been mild. It's possible that there is something else in Mexico causing the cases to be more deadly or that the U.S. just has not experience any of the more severe cases so far.
You can find CDC, WHO and local state Swine Flu resources here on Health News Blog.
Jose Luis Ortiz strapped a video camera to his pet eagle. The video gives you an idea of what it is like to soar like an eagle. Nature also has a video here, where a video camera was strapped to a Peregrine falcon.
This cute bird that likes to have its head scratched does have some Furby characteristics ike BuzzFeed and other blogs are suggesting. The bird in the video is likely a Malaysian Eagle Owl. The one in this video does not appear to be afraid of people.
Robotic Fish to Monitor Pollution in Spanish Harbor
CBS News reports that a school of battery-powered robotic fish will monitor pollution in the Spanish harbor of Gijon. The robotic fish contain special sensors to help them avoid rocks, ships and other objects so they won't need to be remotely monitored or remote controlled.
The robotic fish will patrol the harbor of Gijon, in northern Spain under a $3.6 million grant from the European Union. Hu said Gijon was chosen because port authorities there had expressed an interest in the technology.
The plan might seem "like something straight out of science fiction," said Rory Doyle, a researcher working on the project, but he explained that there was a very simple reason for choosing fishlike machines to monitor the harbor's environmental health.
"The design of fish which nature has produced is a very energy-efficient one," Doyle said. "The fish's efficiency is created by hundreds of millions of years' of evolution. Submarines come nowhere near it."
Information gathered from the robo-fish would be transmitted to the port's control center using a wireless Internet signal when the devices surfaced. The data gathered would be used to create a three-dimensional pollution map of the harbor's area.
Here's a video (no sound) that shows the robotic fish in action. (via Daily Mail, Ecofriend.org)
A NASA-funded study suggests that conditions for the tornado that whipped through downtown Atlanta a year ago were created by heat and energy generated from the urban landscape. The Wall Street Journal reports that NASA's study suggests that tornadoes are likely to become more common. NASA also has a specific report about the Atlanta tornado here.
Mother monkeys in Thailand are apparently teaching their infants how to clean their teeth by flossing with human hair. The monkeys must have read about the health benefits of flossing. Take a look:
Histiophryne psychedelica is new species of fish that appears to bounce on the ocean floor like a rubber ball. Live Science says the carnivorous frogfish has eyes like ours as well as a fleshy chin and cheeks. More articles about the fish can be found at The Guardian, Science Daily, USA Today and Seattle Times.
