Pig Cells Implanted in Diabetics Ray Lilley, Associated Press

A New Zealand biotech company began a trial Thursday of an experimental treatment for diabetes in which cells from newborn pigs will be implanted into eight human volunteers.
Living Cell Technologies hopes the cells may be able to delay the effects of Type 1 diabetes, including blindness, premature coronary illness and limb amputation resulting from poor blood circulation.
Prof. Bob Elliott, medical director of the company, acknowledged that, even in the best-case scenario, the treatment would not eliminate all symptoms.
Some scientists have warned that implanting pig cells has risks. Others say it is too soon to begin testing on humans because no animal trials were conducted.
One risk is that viruses that exist in animals but not in humans could jump species, potentially causing new illnesses and possible new pandemics. Scientists say there are more than 100 pig viruses that could potentially transfer to humans.
Elliott said Thursday that the possibility of a pig endogenous retrovirus -- the virus thought to be most contagious for humans -- infecting humans is largely "theoretical."

From : Discovery Channel

First Panda Born From Frozen Sperm Tini Tran, Associated Press

China announced the first successful birth of a panda cub from artificial insemination using frozen sperm, giving a new option for the notoriously poor breeders, officials said Friday.
Panda females have only three days a year in which they can conceive -- one reason their species is endangered.
Female panda You You (pronounced Yo Yo) gave birth to the new cub Thursday morning at the Wolong Giant Panda Research Center in southwestern Sichuan. It is You You's third baby, and the 10th panda cub born at Wolong this year.
Just after dawn, the pinkish, hairless cub emerged, and its mother licked the baby to clean it, according to footage shown by state broadcaster CCTV.
Panda researchers said Friday that they believe it's the first successful live birth worldwide using frozen panda sperm.
"We did try before but it failed," said Huang Yan, a deputy research technician with the China Panda Preservation Research Center.

From : Discovery Channel

Sudoku Game Inspires Gene Sequencing Solution

Sudoku, logic puzzle that folks are addicted to, is not just for passing the time. It's helping to speed up genetic sequencing.

Geneticists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have a found a way to use Sudoku to sequence more than a hundred thousand DNA samples.

Until now, only a single DNA sample could be sequenced at a time.

Not only does the new method save time and improve efficiency, but it dramatically cuts cost. A sequencing project that uses conventional methods can cost $10 million. But that figure can be cut to $80,000 or less by using the Soduku method.

From : Discovery Channel

Michael Jackson Had a Patent

The news of Michael Jackson's death threw everyone off. Many people grew up with his music and have many favorite songs which inspired a lot of great artists today. Indeed, He was consider as the "King of Pop". His death was a big surprise, but then this morning, another surprise: Jackson had a patent.

The title: Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion.

It's a system that consists of a special shoe that has a hitch designed to attach to a projection in a stage. When the shoe engages with the component in the stage, the performer can lean forward beyond his or her center of gravity.

Why did he invent it? According to the patent, he had dance steps in his video performances where he and members of his dance crew would appear to lean forward beyond the center of gravity. This illusion was achieved by using cables attached to each dancer's waist. But the set up required stage hands to help out and was too clumsy for use during live performances.

The solution: The shoes. The video shows the anti-gravity shoes in action, live:



He was an amazing performer. A genius musician and this idea shows that his intelligence and creativity went beyond music.

From : Discovery Channel

New Technology to Make Digital Data (emails, text messages, chat messages, posts, etc.) Self-Destruct

A group of computer scientists at the University of Washington has developed a way to make electronic messages “self destruct” after a certain period of time, like messages in sand lost to the surf. The researchers said they think the new software, called Vanish, which requires encrypting messages, will be needed more and more as personal and business information is stored not on personal computers, but on centralized machines, or servers. In the term of the moment this is called cloud computing, and the cloud consists of the data — including e-mail and Web-based documents and calendars — stored on numerous servers.

The idea of developing technology to make digital data disappear after a specified period of time is not new. A number of services that perform this function exist on the World Wide Web, and some electronic devices like FLASH memory chips have added this capability for protecting stored data by automatically erasing it after a specified period of time.

But the researchers said they had struck upon a unique approach that relies on “shattering” an encryption key that is held by neither party in an e-mail exchange but is widely scattered across a peer-to-peer file sharing system.

Public key cryptography makes it possible for two parties who have never physically met to share a digital secret and as a result engage in a secure electronic conversation sheltered from potential eavesdroppers. The technology is at the heart of most modern electronic commerce systems.

Vanish uses a key-based encryption system in a different way, making it possible for a decrypted message to be automatically re-encrypted at a specified point in the future without fear that a third party will be able to gain access to the key needed to read the message.

The pieces of the key, small numbers, tend to “erode” over time as they gradually fall out of use. To make keys erode, or timeout, Vanish takes advantage of the structure of a peer-to-peer file system. Such networks are based on millions of personal computers whose Internet addresses change as they come and go from the network. This would make it exceedingly difficult for an eavesdropper or spy to reassemble the pieces of the key because the key is never held in a single location. The Vanish technology is applicable to more than just e-mail or other electronic messages. Tadayoshi Kohno, a University of Washington assistant professor who is one of Vanish’s designers, said Vanish makes it possible to control the “lifetime” of any type of data stored in the cloud, including information on Facebook, Google documents or blogs. In addition to Mr. Kohno, the authors of the paper, "Vanish: Increasing Data Privacy with Self-Destructing Data," include Roxana Geambasu, Amit A. Levy and Henry M. Levy.

The potential value of such technology was brought into stark relief last week when a computer hacker stole data belonging to the social media company Twitter and e-mailed it to Web publishing companies in the United States and France.

The significance of the advance is that the Vanish “trust model” does not depend on the integrity of third parties, as other systems do. The researchers cite an incident in which a commercial provider of encrypted e-mail services revealed the contents of digital communication when served with a subpoena by a Canadian law enforcement agency.

The researchers acknowledged that there are unexplored legal issues surrounding the use of their technology. For example, certain laws require that corporations archive e-mails and make them accessible.

The researchers have developed a prototype of the Vanish system based on a plug-in module for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser. Using the system requires that both parties of the communication have a copy of the module, which is one of the limits of the technology. Mr. Kohno said that he did not envision Vanish being used for all communications, but only for sensitive ones.

From : The New York Times
Link By : Discover Channel

Wide Angle: Solar-Powered Swimsuits

The engineers are at it again. Recharge your iPod from your swimsuit. We’ll look into it. Today. On Engineering Works!

One of the biggest problems with portable high-tech equipment like cell phones and iPods is that the batteries keep running down. It’s hard to recharge a fading iPod at the beach.

Some engineers in Germany may have an answer for you. A solar-powered swimsuit, complete with a miniature plug-in for your MP3 player’s power cord. And you can even swim in it.

Engineers at an energy company in Hamburg are working with a German fashion house to design and build a swimsuit with banks of photovoltaic cells to convert all that seaside or poolside sunlight into electricity. You have to let the cells dry off before you plug in after your swim, but it’s the idea that counts.

In case you’ve forgotten, or didn’t know, photovoltaic cells are those little solar cells on the front of your calculator. Bigger versions produce electricity that powers traffic signals and streetlights in some places and satellites in orbit.

Photovoltaic cells use sunlight to produce electricity directly from sunlight. The process works because flat layers of semiconductors in the cells absorb energy from sunlight. This energy knocks loose electrons in the semiconductors and they move around. When they move, we get electricity. Someday maybe enough to run our houses or cars.

Image: iko/flickr.com

From : Discovery Channel

Missing AIDS Link Found in Chimps Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

Scientists believe they have found a "missing link" in the evolution of the virus that causes AIDS. It bridges the gap between the infection that does no harm to most monkeys and the one that kills millions of people. That link is a virus that is killing chimpanzees in the wild at a disturbingly high rate, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.
Chimpanzees are the first primate besides man shown to get sick in the wild in significant numbers from a virus related to HIV. Chimps are also man's closest relative among primates.
And chimps are already endangered.
But the discovery of the disease killing chimps may help doctors come up with better treatments or a workable vaccine for humans, experts said.
The monkey version of the virus that causes AIDS is called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), but most apes and monkeys that have it show no symptoms or illness. So "if we could figure out why the monkeys don't get sick, perhaps we could apply that to people," said study lead author Beatrice Hahn, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The nine-year study of chimps in their natural wild habitat at Gombe National Park in Tanzania found chimps infected with SIV had a death rate 10 to 16 times higher than uninfected chimps. And necropsies of dead infected chimps showed unusually low counts of T-cell white blood proteins that are just like the levels found in humans with AIDS, Hahn said in a phone interview.
And when scientists looked at the particular strain, they found that it was the closest relative possible to the virus that first infected humans.
"From an evolutionary and epidemiological point of view, these data can be regarded as a 'missing link' in the history of the HIV pandemic," AIDS researcher Dr. Daniel Douek of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases wrote in an e-mail. Douek was not involved in the Nature study.
Monkeys and apes -- except for chimps -- seem to survive the virus because of some kind of evolutionary adaptation, probably on the cell receptors, Douek wrote. The infection of chimps is more recent so they haven't adapted, he wrote.
Hahn said chimps and people probably caught the virus the same way, by eating infected monkeys. And they both spread it the same way, through sexual activity.
Many factors are causing Africa's chimp population to dwindle, said study co-author Michael Wilson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and former director of field research at the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania. Hunting, loss of habitat and disease are decreasing chimp numbers and it's hard to figure out how much of a factor SIV is, he said.
"It is a concern," Wilson said. "The last thing these chimps need is another source of mortality."
Wilson, who spent years observing chimps in Tanzania as part of the study, said that when researchers realized the virus was fatal and they knew which chimps were infected, it became hard to watch some of their activities in the wild.
He recalled wanting to warn one female chimp, "Don't mate with those guys." Wilson said. "But of course I can't do that."

From : Discovery Channel

World's Largest Telescope Acts Like Big Bucket Irene Klotz, Discovery News

A new telescope scheduled to be inaugurated this week on Spain's Canary Islands holds the title as the world's largest, but contenders are gathering in the wings.
The Gran Telescopio Canarias, or GTC for short, has 10.4 meters (34 feet) of mirrors for collecting faint light from distant objects.
"Basically, a telescope mirror functions like a bucket in the rain: The larger the bucket, the faster you collect water," said Michael Richer, an astronomer with Mexico's Instituto de Astronomia Ensenada, who serves as a scientific advisor for the GTC.
"Larger telescopes allow you to collect light faster. This permits the observation of fainter sources -- either because they're farther away or because they're intrinsically fainter -- or more detailed observations that require more precise manipulation of the light," Richer told Discovery News.
GTC tops the 10-meter (32.8-foot) Keck Telescopes on Hawaii's Mauna Kea and folds new teams of astronomers into a heated quest for knowledge about how the universe formed and what it contains. The $180 million GTC is owned Spain, Mexico and the University of Florida.
"When you're a partner in your own telescope, you have a competitive advantage," said Stan Dermott, chairman of the astronomy department at the University of Florida.
Like the twin Keck telescopes, GTC has a primary mirror made of 36 hexagonal segments that are meticulously aligned to serve as a single piece of reflective glass.
"Projects to see and to understand the early phases of stars and galaxy formation are ones of greatest interest," telescope director Pedro Alvarez Martin wrote in an email to Discovery News.
The telescope already is in the business of discovering extrasolar planets. During its commissioning phase, astronomers using GTC discovered a planet transiting a distant star.
GTC's inauguration is scheduled for Friday, but its reign as the world's biggest telescope is not expected to last long.
This week, astronomers announced that the site for a planned 30-meter (90-foot) telescope will be near the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The telescope, which is being built the University of California, the California Institute of Technology and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, is expected to be completed by 2018.
Also in the works are a European-backed 42-meter (138-foot) observatory and the Giant Magellan Telescope, planned for Las Campanas, Chile, with a 24-meter (79-foot) primary mirror. Europe hasn't yet decided on a site for the European Extremely Large Telescope and is reportedly considering locations in Argentina, Chile, Morocco and Spain.

From : Discover Channel

Quake Nudges New Zealand Closer to Australia David Brooks, AFP

A massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake last week has moved the south of New Zealand closer to Australia, scientists said Wednesday.
With the countries separated by the 2,250-kilometer-wide (1,400-mile-wide) Tasman Sea, the 30 centimeter (12 inch) closing of the gap in New Zealand's southwest won't make much difference.
But earthquake scientist Ken Gledhill of GNS Science said the shift illustrated the huge force of the tremor, the biggest in the world so far this year.
"Basically, New Zealand just got a little bit bigger is another way to think about it," he said.
While the southwest of the South Island moved about 30 centimeters closer to Australia, the east coast of the island moved only one centimeter westwards, he said.
The biggest quake in New Zealand in 78 years caused only slight damage to buildings and property when it struck the remote southwest Fiordland region of the South Island last Thursday.
A small tsunami was generated by the earthquake, with a tide gauge on the West Coast of New Zealand recording a wave of one meter.
"For a very large earthquake, although it was very widely felt, there were very few areas that were severely shaken," Gledhill said.
Aerial inspection of the forested fiords near the quake's epicenter showed few land slips or other signs of damage.
This was partly because the type of rupture at the boundaries of the Australian and Pacific plates meant the energy from the quake was largely directed westwards towards the sea rather than inland towards the nearest towns.
The type of quake, known as a subduction thrust rupture, also meant the quake produced lower frequency shaking, felt as a rolling motion, rather than sharp jolts which would have caused more damage.
New Zealand frequently suffers earthquakes because it marks the meeting point of the Australian and Pacific continental plates.
Gledhill said the latest quake may have brought forward a major quake on the offshore section of the Alpine fault, off the coast of Fiordland in the Tasman Sea.
"There could easily be another large earthquake in another part of that region. We can't predict that obviously."
The latest quake was the biggest since February 2, 1931 when a 7.8 quake killed at least 256 people in the North Island city of Napier.
The biggest quake recorded here measured 8.2 and caused major damage in 1855 in the fledgling European settlement that later became the capital Wellington.
The latest quake was unusual in striking right on the boundary of the Australian and Pacific plates and will be important in researching earthquake hazards, Gledhill said.

From : Discovery Channel

Most Raindrops Burst Before Hitting the Ground AFP

For generations, schoolchildren have been taught that raindrops start as micro-droplets that then gather together in clouds with their neighbors to become bigger droplets.
Complex interaction between these droplets as they fall explains why raindrops come in such a remarkable range of sizes, goes this idea.
But French scientists armed with ultra-fast video footage say something else happens on the way down -- and this is why rainfall can range from fine droplets to chubby plops.
Initially, a raindrop starts to fall as a sphere, but then flattens out into a pancake shape.
Eventually, as the pancake widens and thins, the onrush of air causes it to hollow out, like an upturned bag.
The bag then inflates beyond the ability of the water's tension to hold things together and bursts into lots of smaller droplets.

From : Discovery Channel

Solar Eclipse Draws in Thousands Indrajit Kumar Singh, Associated Press

Hordes of scientists, students and nature enthusiasts prepared Tuesday for the longest total solar eclipse of this century, while millions planned to shutter themselves indoors, giving in to superstitious myths about the phenomenon.
Wednesday's eclipse will first be sighted at dawn in India's Gulf of Khambhat, just north of the metropolis of Mumbai, before being seen in a broad swath moving north and east to Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China.
The eclipse will reach its peak in India at about 6:20 a.m. local time (8:50 p.m. EDT; 0050 GMT), and will last 6 minutes and 39 seconds at its maximum point.
It will be seen for 3 minutes and 48 seconds in the Indian village of Taregna, where scientists say residents will have the clearest view.
Over the past week the village has been swamped by researchers who will study scientific phenomena ranging from the behavior of birds and other animals to atmospheric changes affected by the eclipse.
Hotels in Patna were fully booked while taxis raised their rates sensing a brief opportunity in the sudden interest in the village.
The whole process takes only several thousands of a second.
But when the droplets hit the ground, the most numerous by far are very small, while large drops are comparatively few.
"Rainfall does indeed start through coalescence in the clouds but something quite different happens on the way down, and this explains the diversity of raindrop sizes," said Emmanuel Villermaux, who co-wrote the study with Benjamin Bossa of the Aix-Marseille University in southern France.
"Each drop breaks up individually, independently of its neighbors, on its way to earth."
Way back in 1904, scientists noted that raindrops came in different sizes.
The hypothesis was that droplets which bump into other droplets coalesce and become bigger, while smaller droplets are those that did not bump into as many other droplets.
But the new paper, published online in the journal Nature Physics, says the process is in fact much simpler than thought.
The findings could have practical applications in understanding rainfall patterns and in crop spraying, said Villermaux.
"Understanding how droplets will be distributed can be very important. Take pesticide spraying, for instance. With most sprayers in use today, all it takes is a slight breeze for half of the pesticide to end up in the neighboring field," he said.
Scientists set up telescopes and other equipment in Taregna a day in advance to make the most of the brief window of opportunity provided by the eclipse.
"We are hoping to make some valuable observations on the formation of asteroids around the sun," Pankaj Bhama, a scientist with India's Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators, said Tuesday.
Thousands of people lined up outside a planetarium in Patna on Tuesday to buy solar viewing goggles. The goggles, costing 20 rupees (40 cents), are supposed to act as filters and allow people to look at the sun without damaging their eyes.
But millions across India were shunning the sight and planned to stay indoors, gripped by fearful myths.
Across India, even in regions where the eclipse was not visible, pregnant women were advised to stay indoors in curtained rooms over a belief that the sun's invisible rays would harm the fetus and the baby would be born with disfigurations, birthmarks or a congenital defect.
Still, it was not all gloom and doom. A travel agency in India is running a charter flight to watch the eclipse by air, with seats facing the sun selling at a premium.

From : Discovery Channel

Weed Killer May Make Corn More Nutritious Emily Sohn, Discovery News

Herbicides get a bad rap for their hazardous effects on the environment, but there may be a silver lining. A new study found that a common weed-killer can actually make sweet corn more nutritious.
It's the first study to show health-boosting properties of any herbicide on any crop. While the same surely won't be true for all chemically treated produce, the researchers involved in the work are inspired enough by their results to start looking for more examples.
"We think this is a new area of crop science," said Dean Kopsell, a vegetable crop physiologist at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville. "We've been applying herbicides to these crops, but no on has ever looked at their nutritional value."
For their first inroads into the subject, Kopsell and colleagues investigated a common herbicide called mesotrione, which farmers have been using for about a decade to keep weeds away from field corn, sweet corn and popcorn.
Mesotrione works by interfering with a weed's ability to produce carotinoids -- pigments that simultaneously help the plants absorb light, protect them from the sun's harmful rays, and make them appear orange when green chlorophyll pigments die every autumn.
Carotinoids (which include beta-carotene in carrots, lutein in spinach, and lycopene in tomatoes) also act as antioxidants, protecting the people who eat them from cancers, heart disease, and other illnesses.
When sprayed with mesotrione, weeds lose carotinoids and their protective effects, turn white and die. "They get sort of fried to death," Kopsell said.

From : Discovery Channel

Zubbles: World's First Colored Bubbles Eric Bland, Discovery News

Shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow, bubbles are a joy to children young and old. For inventor Tim Kehoe, however, creating a bubble with a single color that won't stain when it pops has been a 15-year, $3-million obsession. Two weeks ago, the world's first colored, non-staining bubbles, Zubbles, went on sale.
A lot of people "said that you just can't color a bubble," said Kehoe, "which is discouraging when that is exactly what you are trying to do."
The use of bubbles for entertainment purposes was first recorded about 400 years ago. Today, bubbles are arguably the world's most popular toy, with more than 200 million bottles of bubble solution sold annually.
The simple chemistry of bubbles -- two layers of soap sandwiching a layer of water about a millionth of an inch thick -- has foiled virtually every attempt to modify them. Bubbles that last a little longer or can be blown a little bigger have since been created, but adding color, what some toy manufactures have called the "holy grail" of toys, has remained frustratingly elusive.
Standard food coloring or dyes have no effect; they simply run down the sides of the bubble, creating a drop of color on the bottom. Other dyes can stain bubbles, but when they pop they also stain clothes, dogs and eyes, as Kehoe discovered during one accident. Other tests, including one for a bubble dye that washed out, didn't fare much better.
"I thought a washable bubble was a great idea," said Kehoe. "But the kids (of a large focus group) were covered head to toe in red dye. It looked like a scene from Braveheart."

From : Discovey Channel

How to Use Keyword Research to Boost Search Engine

Keyword research is a specific discipline within search engine optimisation (which I'd argue is itself a discipline within Design) whose purpose is to identify the most competitive footing on which to focus your web site's content.
It is probably the #1 most critical factor in any web site's success, and certainly offers great return on investment.
New tools available to SEO specialists today make the process of identifying profitable content key terms quicker than ever, so there's no reason not to invest in a little research, even if your site is already established.
Here are my 3 steps to using keyword research to boost your site's search engine performance.

1. Find Your Main Keyword

Your site really needs to be "about" something. (Ideally, this will be a keyword that lots of people search on, but gets relatively low competition.)
A site that's "about" two different things is fine in many ways, but you'll usually benefit most from being stronger on one thing than quite strong on two different subjects.

The reason for this is to do with the way the traffic you get from search engines is skewed in favour of the top-ranked results. Getting the top spot on a search engine can get you 3x more traffic than position two, which in turn can be twice as good as position three, and so on. If you looked at the traffic each position gets on a graph, you'd see a very sharp fall-off from the top few results down to the "long tail".

We can deduce from this that you'll likely get more traffic if you're top of the rankings for one term than to be at position #11 on two different terms.
Your main site keyword is the main term for which you want your site to rank highly. Once it's identified, you'll ensure your site embodies this subject throughout.
What we'll usually do is start with the most obvious keyword, and do some expansive analysis to compare related terms and hopefully find more specific terms that are likely to deliver better value, i.e. those that get a healthy level of search traffic but for which the leading results are relatively weak from an SEO perspective.

How Keyword Research Evaluates Relative Value

There's a lot of information available online to help SEOs and site owners establish the relative market value of any particular keyword. Some professional tools combine data from many of the following sources to speed up the process. At a high level, the way to work out a market's attractiveness is:

• How many people search on that term in a given period?


• What proportion of people searching on that term are likely to be looking to buy, rather than just find free information?


• How much competition is there for the term, and how focused is the competition on the term? (It's OK if a lot of sites claim to be about a term, but few are focused to compete directly for it.)


• What's the likely monetary value of a visitor looking for the term? (The open market forces of Google AdWords auction gives a great indicator of this.)

When you combine all this information, which is obtainable by comparing data published free-of-charge by the main search providers, it's possible to evaluate the relative benefit of getting clicks on different terms.

The Secret of Competitiveness

OK, it's hardly a secret, really just common sense. In short, it's better to get a big slice of a small pie than a tiny slice of a big pie.
In real language, there's not much point competing directly for a highly competitive search term. If you'll struggle to get inside the top 50 results for a term, the drop-off of traffic will mean you only get crumbs, and then for a generic term.
A much better option is to compete in a smaller, more accurately-defined market niche, where there's less competition for the traffic. If you can get in the top 5, even if for a narrower term, you'll probably benefit because you'll get a much healthier share of traffic plus your visitors will be better-defined if your term is more accurate.

2. Identify Lower-Level Keywords

We'll then look at various sub-sections of the site, using a similar process, to find strong terms for each particular category.
As a rough model, consider your site arranged in a pyramid, with the home page at the top, the main section (L2) pages on the second level, which correspond to the direct, permanent links in your main navigation. The third-level of pages are the ones deeper in the site sections, not directly accessible from the home page, but from the second-level menu pages.
Each level of the site will have its own level of key terms, which extends downwards.

• Your whole site has its own main term, which applies strongly to the home page, and also to every other page on the site.


• Your second-level pages (sections) inherit the site's subject, and can/should also each have a more specific term, which applies to the section menu page, and also other pages within that section.


• Third-level pages should inherit the site's aboutness, their section's aboutness, and can also have another level of specificity of their own.

In this way, search engines will get that the whole site is about your main keyword, which is vital for competing strongly. When someone's looking for that term, the search engine will know that your whole site is about that term.
When someone's looking for something more specific, and that term matches the term for one of your sections, you should perform competitively, as you have a number of related pages that share that term. Of course, it's common to find a search term that comprises both your top-level term and a lower-level term, which is another good reason why your whole site should be strong on its own term.

If I'm searching for "Film Review Star Trek", a site is more likely to match if it's strongly about Film Reviews already, and has a page that specifically reviews the Star Trek movie - compared to a site that happens to feature such a review.

Again, these terms won't always be the most obvious ones. There may be more valuable terms that don't seem to you to be the natural choice, but which will bring in more useful traffic.

3. Apply Your Selected Terms (On- and Off-Site)

Clearly, it's not enough just to identify your target search terms. You need to convince the search engines that your site and your pages are really "about" those same terms.
Search engines are just machines following programmed rules, so the key is to show them that your site/page is focused on your selected term, and also that other related sites consider your site/page to be about the same thing. If those two things happen, a search engine has no reason to come to any other conclusion, and it comes down to which site is most about the term.
There are two general approaches here, which should be used in tandem:

1. On-site SEO: Your site clearly says it's about the target terms


2. Off-site SEO: Other sites that link to yours say it's about the target terms

I'll briefly cover some of the main techniques used in each of these approaches.

On-site SEO: Your site clearly says it's about the target terms

How do you tell a search engine that a certain page is about a certain thing?

• Use the term frequently in your content, but not too frequently - keep the language natural! - and make sure it's used near the top of the page (equating to higher-level meaning).


• Use the term in the tags that describe what your page is about: The title, the main heading (h1), other headings, and the meta description.


• Make sure your markup is relatively clean and uncluttered, so maximise your density of keywords to chaff and move all your content higher up in the flow.


• Use the terms within links that point to relevant pages.

Off-site SEO: Other sites that link to yours say it's about the target terms

There are two main ways to get other sites to link to yours: paying them to do so, and not paying them to do so. Not paying is better, although when you pay for a link, you can often get to set the specific link text, which is in effect telling another site what to say your site is about.
The very best way to get inbound links is to write great content that people find valuable and choose to link to of their own accord. This is hands-down the safest and most beneficial path to take.
The links you get are likely to be around for longer, they're likely to come from a variety of related pages that you'd otherwise never know about, and - perhaps most importantly - your great content will give people a rewarding experience, making it more likely that they'll bookmark your site, return to it, link back to it, and send their friends, which can create a self-generating virtuous loop.

Descovered From : Web Design From Scratch

New Mirror Reflects from Any Angle Eric Bland, Discovery News

A universal mirror, an object that reflects all light waves back at their source, has been created by scientists in Europe and Asia.
Imagine a tennis player hitting a ball against a wall. The ball would bounce right back to the player no matter what angle he or she directed the shot. A universal mirror has the same effect, except with light waves.
Unlike an ordinary mirror, which only reflects objects at 90 degrees, a universal mirror reflects objects back at any angle. In other words, a person positioned in front of a large, optical universal mirror would see his or her own reflection perfectly no matter where the person stands.
"(A universal mirror) makes things become very visible," said Ulf Leonhardt, a professor at the University of St. Andrews and co-author of a paper in the current issue of Nature Materials. "It's the exact opposite of an invisibility cloak."
Unlike a universal mirror, an invisibility cloak guides light waves around an object in order to conceal it. Although universal mirrors and invisibility cloaks might preform opposite functions, they each employ the same technology: metamaterials.

From : Discovery Channel

Machu Picchu Described as Pilgrimage Site Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Machu Picchu, the "lost city of the Incas," was not a true city but rather a pilgrimage center symbolically connected to the Andean vision of the cosmos, an Italian study has concluded.
According to Giulio Magli, professor of archaeoastronomy at Milan's Polytechnic University, Machu Picchu was the ideal counterpart of the Island of Sun, a rocky islet in the southern part of Lake Titicaca.
"This island had a very important sanctuary which was a destination of pilgrimage. An apparently insignificant rock was believed to be the place of birth of the sun, and therefore of the Inca civilization," Magli told Discovery News.
The Inca, who ruled the largest empire on Earth by the time their last emperor, Atahualpa, was garroted by Spanish conquistadors in 1533, believed that the sun god was their ancestor.
Surrounded on three sides by the gorges of the Urubamba River (also called the Vilcanota River), and tucked between two massive mountain peaks -- the Huayna Picchu and the Machu Picchu -- the Inca city features about 200 stone structures and was probably inhabited by no more than 750 people. It is perched some 8,000 feet in the clouds.

From : Discovery Channel

Monster Jellyfish

Giant jellyfish like this one are taking over parts of the world's oceans as overfishing and other human activities open windows of opportunity for them to prosper, say researchers.
In this photo, a diver is attaching a sensor to track a monster Echizen jellyfish, which has a body almost 5 feet across, off the coast of northern Japan.
Jellyfish are normally kept in check by fish, which eat small jellyfish and compete for jellyfish food such as zooplankton, researchers said. But, with overfishing, jellyfish numbers are increasing.
These huge creatures can burst through fishing nets, as well as destroy local fisheries with their taste for fish eggs and larvae.
Anthony Richardson of CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research and colleagues reported their findings in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution to coincide with World Oceans Day.
They say climate change could also cause jellyfish populations to grow. The team believes that for the first time, water conditions could lead to what they call a "jellyfish stable state," in which jellyfish rule the oceans.
The combination of overfishing and high levels of nutrients in the water has been linked to jellyfish blooms. Nitrogen and phosphorous in run-off cause red phytoplankton blooms, which create low-oxygen dead zones where jellyfish survive, but fish can't, researchers said.
"(There is) a jellyfish called Nomura, which is the biggest jellyfish in the world. It can weigh 200 kilograms (440 pounds), as big as a sumo wrestler and is 2 meters (6.5 feet) in diameter," Richardson said.
Richardson said jellyfish numbers are increasing in Southeast Asia, the Black Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.
Photo credit: Yomiuri Shibun/AFP/Getty Images

From : Discovery Channel

WHO Declares Swine Flu Pandemic

The World Health Organization told its member nations it was declaring a swine flu pandemic Thursday -- the first global flu pandemic in 41 years as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.
In a statement sent to member countries, WHO said it decided to raise the pandemic warning level from phase 5 to 6 -- its highest alert level -- after holding an emergency meeting on swine flu with its experts.
"At this early stage, the pandemic can be characterized globally as being moderate in severity," WHO said in the statement, urging nations not to close borders or restrict travel and trade. "(We) remain in close dialogue with influenza vaccine manufacturers."
Health officials from Scotland, Indonesia and Thailand previously announced the agency would declare a swine flu pandemic -- a global epidemic -- on Thursday after a teleconference with leading flu experts. Officials at U.N. missions in Geneva also said they expected the imminent announcement of a pandemic.
"It is likely in light of sustained community transmission in countries outside of North America -- most notably in Australia -- that level 6 will be declared," Scotland's Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon told Scottish lawmakers, adding it would be Thursday.
Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari said she had been notified by WHO that "today will be declared to be phase 6."

From : Discovery Channel

Roll Up the Computer

This is either a step forward or a step back. You tell us. A computer display that you can roll up and stick in your pocket like a magazine. We’ll check it out on Engineering Works!
Computers are nifty. But they’re hard to take with you. Even a laptop is too big to put in your pocket. And the displays on small portables like Blackberries are hard to read.
But what if your computer looked like a magazine? And worked like one? You could hold it in your hands and read it like a magazine or a book. The display would be made of flexible plastic. The processor would be in the spine of the – magazine. You’d use a cable or wireless connection to load whatever you wanted to read from your desktop compute or laptop.
You’d use touch controls in a corner to open and close what you’re reading and turn the – page. Roll or fold it up and put it into your pocket or briefcase when you’re ready to go. One of the coolest things about a device like this is that you could load a whole shelf of books and magazines into it and walk off with them.
Computer engineers are getting close, but you can’t buy one yet. The displays aren’t sharp enough yet to read comfortably more than a few minutes. And the technology is still really expensive.
Photo: Fujitsu

From : Discovery Channel

Do the Mars Rovers See Martian Leprechauns?

What I love about NASA conspiracy theorists -- you know those folks who think we never went to the moon and the Air Force is hiding alien bodies -- is that they want to have their cake and eat it too.
At a recent convention called, you guessed it, Conspiracy Con 2009, self-styled Mars sleuth, Andrew Basiago, accused NASA of hiding evidence of Martian life in photos taken from the rover Spirit.
But I will bet money that when NASA eventually releases images showing manmade artifacts at the Apollo landing sites, to be photographed from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO, which will enter lunar orbit tomorrow) conspiracy flakes will accuse NASA of faking the PR pictures.

The idea that NASA is hiding any data from Mars is patently absurd and beyond your everyday paranoia. Tons of images from NASA’s Mars Rovers, Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can by accessed online. The MRO images show details as small as one meter across. Feel free to go looking for the elusive Martians yourself.
The paranoia about “hidden pictures” can be traced back to the Mother-of-all-Mars cover-up allegations, the infamous “Face on Mars.”
In1976 an innocuous photo taken by the Viking 1 orbiter and quickly released to the public by NASA showed a striking formation that looks like a face, actually more like a hockey mask, peering up from the Cydonia plains.
This predictably got traction that it was an extraterrestrial artifact inexplicably made to look humanoid. If the aliens were really smart they would have put such a sculpture at on the moon and made it big enough to be seen in amateur telescopes.

In the 1980s a pair of NASA contractors at the Goddard Space Flight Center (but not scientists being paid to do such research), did their own amateur analysis on the image and claimed the object was too symmetrical to be natural. Conspiracy buffs hatched a myth that the “real” nature of the face was being hidden from the public.
Finally in April 2007 the MRO photographed the “face” at higher resolution and a different sun angle. What was left? A flat-topped mesa (or, an eroded face according to some Mars artifact diehards).
This same silly Rorschach test is now being applied to images from the Mars rover Spirit that is now sitting at Gusev Crater. Basiago, a lawyer turned amateur photo analyst, claims that “little people” can be seen in the rover Spirit photos (what? are they looking for their Lucky Charms?). Of course this life-on-Mars claim conveniently sidesteps the fact that there are no pictures from orbit that show any evidence of civilization: roads, buildings, farms, or even the legendary canals.

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From : Discovery Channel

NASA Tests Internet in Space Elise Ackerman, IEEE Spectrum

July 7, 2009 -- The many paths a message can take through the Internet make that network robust and efficient -- and the envy of those whose job it is to design communications schemes for the far-flung spacecraft leaving Earth each year. After more than a decade of development, NASA is in a rush to have a communications network ready by 2011 that can efficiently carry data between Earth and the multiple probes, rovers, orbiters and spacecraft exploring the solar system -- effectively binding them together to form an interplanetary Internet. Tests performed on the International Space Station last May were the second of three tryouts of the network's key technologies, called Delay Tolerant Networking, or DTN, protocols.
The DTN protocols will extend the terrestrial Internet into space by overcoming a number of obstacles, including the extraordinary length of time it takes packets to move between separate hops in a deep-space network, the intermittent nature of network connections, and bit-scrambling solar radiation.
"The communication delays are huge, and they are variable, because the planets are in orbit around the sun," says Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet's TCP/IP protocol and a key member of a group of computer scientists who began working on DTN in 1998. On Earth, packets move from source to destination in milliseconds. By contrast, a one-way trip from Earth to Mars takes a minimum of 8 minutes. The constant motion of celestial bodies means that packets have to pause and wait for antennas to align as they hop from planet to probe to spacecraft.
So sending communications in space is very different from doing so on Earth, where the stable topology of the Internet is taken for granted.
"What we have to do instead is to tell all the nodes that these are the changes that are going to occur," says Scott Burleigh, a software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., and one of the original developers of DTN. "You are going to be able to communicate from A to B at this data rate starting at 12:30 and ending at 3:30, and then you are not going to be able to communicate on that link anymore... until next Tuesday."

From : Discovery Channel

New Monkey Discovered in Brazil

Good news today from The Wildlife Conservation Society. They've announced the discovery of a new monkey from Brazil.
The image shows an artist's rendering of "Mura's saddleback tamarin" -- the newly discovered monkey found in a remote area of the Amazon. (Credit: Stephen Nash)
At a press conference today, a handout was issued with the following information:
The monkey is related to saddleback tamarins, which include several species of monkeys known for their distinctively marked backs. The newly described distinct subspecies was first seen by scientists on a 2007 expedition into the state of Amazonas in northwestern Brazil.
The discovery was published in the June online edition of the International Journal of Primatology. Authors of the study include Fabio Röhe of the Wildlife Conservation Society, José de Sousa e Silva Jr. of Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Ricardo Sampaio of the Instituto Nacional de Parquisas de Amaozônia, and Anthony B. Rylands of Conservation International.

Researchers have dubbed the monkey Mura's saddleback tamarin (saguinus fuscicollis mura) named after the Mura Indians, the ethnic group of Amerindians of the Purus and Madeira river basins where the monkey occurs. Historically this tribe was spread through the largest territory of any of the Amazonian Indigenous peoples, extending from the Peruvian frontier today (Rio Yavari) east to the Rio Trombetas.
The monkey is mostly gray and dark brown in color, with a distinctly mottled "saddle." It weighs 213 grams (less than ¾ of a pound) and is 240 millimeters (9 inches tall) with a 320 millimeter (12.6 inch) tail.
"The Wildlife Conservation Society is extremely proud to be part of this exciting discovery in the Amazon," said Dr. Avecita Chicchon, Director of WCS's Latin America Programs. "We hope that the discovery will draw attention to conservation in this very fragile but biodiverse region."
According to the study's authors, the monkey is threatened by several planned development projects in the region, particularly a major highway cutting through the Amazon that is currently being paved. Conservationists fear the highway could fuel wider deforestation in the Amazon over the next two decades. Other threats to the region include a proposed gas pipeline and two hydroelectric dams currently in the beginning stages of construction.
"This newly described monkey shows that even today there are still major wildlife discoveries to be made," said the study's lead author, Fabio Röhe of the Wildlife Conservation Society. "This discovery should serve as a wake-up call that there is still so much to learn from the world's wild places, yet humans continue to threaten these areas with destruction."
The Wildlife Conservation Society helped establish the Mamirauá, Amanã, and Piagaçu-Purus Sustainable Development Reserves in Brazil, which represent some of the largest protected blocks of rainforest on the planet.
WCS researchers have discovered several new monkey species in recent years: the Arunachal macaque, discovered in India in late 2004; and the Madidi monkey and Kipunji discovered in Bolivia and Tanzania respectively in 2005. In 2008, Jean Boubli, who now works for WCS, discovered a new species of uakari monkey in the Amazon and named it after noted WCS primatologist José Márcio Ayres.
WCS's Brazil Program would like to acknowledge the GEOMA project at the Ministry of Science and Technology of Brazil, for its support in the project that led to the discovery of the monkey.

From : Discovery Channel

Sperm Travels Faster Toward Attractive Females Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

July 8, 2009 -- Females may be outwardly choosy when selecting sexual partners -- accepting or shunning mates in very public ways -- but males may get the last say in this battle of the sexes.
New research found that males can adjust the speed and effectiveness of their sperm by allocating more or less seminal fluid to copulations. The determining factor is whether the male finds the female attractive.
The study, conducted on red junglefowl, a director ancestor of chickens, adds to the growing body of evidence that males throughout many promiscuous species in the animal kingdom, including humans, can mate with many females, but chances of fertilization are greater when the female is deemed to be attractive.
Desirable female red junglefowl are easy to identify.
"Female attractiveness is determined by the expression of a sexual ornament -- the comb -- which is phenotypically and genetically correlated to the number and mass of eggs females lay," according to study co-authors Charlie Cornwallis of the University of Oxford and the Royal Veterinary College's Emily O'Connor.
For the study, published in the current Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the researchers collected natural ejaculates from dominate and subordinate red junglefowl males housed at the University of Stockholm. The males had either just mated with attractive or unattractive females.

Seven S. Korean Web Sites Attacked Again Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press

July 9, 2009 -- South Korean Web sites were attacked again Thursday after a wave of Web site outages in the U.S. and South Korea that several officials suspect North Korea was behind.
Seven sites -- one belonging to the government and the others to private entities -- were attacked in the third round of cyber assaults, said Ku Kyo-young, an official from the state-run Korea Communications Commission.
Earlier in the day, the country's leading computer security company, AhnLab, had warned of a new attack after analyzing a virus program that sent a flood of Internet traffic to paralyze Web sites in both South Korea and the United States.
About two hours after the latest attack, all but one shopping site were working normally. The Yonhap news agency had earlier reported that the Web site of the leading Kookmin Bank was down for about 30 minutes.
Twelve South Korean sites were initially attacked Tuesday, followed by strikes Wednesday on 10 others, including those for government offices. The U.S. targets included the White House,
Pentagon, Treasury Department and the Nasdaq stock exchange.

From : Discovery Channel

400 Million-Year-Old Male Sex Member ID'd Nicky Phillips, ABC Science Online

July 14, 2009 -- Scientists have confirmed the oldest penis-like structure in an ancient fish specimen.
The discovery of the 400 million-year-old reproductive organ is one of the earliest examples of internal fertilization in vertebrate animals. Understanding the anatomy of these ancient fish could reveal further details in the evolution of vertebrates -- including humans.
The research is published in today's advanced online ahead of print edition of Nature.
Earlier this year the team, led by Australian palaeontologist Dr John Long, predicted some ancient fish from the Devonian era, had an attachment to their pelvic bone, which were used by males to fertilize females.
Long, of Museum Victoria, said "when we announced we'd found some structures in the pelvic fin that suggested copulation, we hadn't found the business end of how they were doing it."
Now the team have identified a long clasper, made entirely of bone, on another fish specimen. Long said claspers were used by the ancient fish, an extinct class of armored fish called placoderms, to grip inside the female while they were mating.
"It's a pretty big find because placaderms were the dominant fish for 70 million years, but we knew nothing about their reproduction," said Long.
He said their work earlier this year suggests the reproductive structure in the dominant group of placoderms, called arthrodires, was similar to present-day sharks.
"Now we've actually found it, a specimen with an undoubted clasper with a knobbly end."

From : Discovery Channel

Urine: A 'Clean' Energy Source Eric Bland, Discovery News

July 8, 2009 -- Urine-powered cars, homes and personal electronic devices could be available in six months with new technology developed by scientists from Ohio University.
Using a nickel-based electrode, the scientists can create large amounts of cheap hydrogen from urine that could be burned or used in fuel cells. "One cow can provide enough energy to supply hot water for 19 houses," said Gerardine Botte, a professor at Ohio University developing the technology. "Soldiers in the field could carry their own fuel."
Pee power is based on hydrogen, the most common element in the universe but one that has resisted efforts to produce, store, transport and use economically.
Storing pure hydrogen gas requires high pressure and low temperature. New nanomaterials with high surface areas can adsorb hydrogen, but have yet to be produced on a commercial scale.
Chemically binding hydrogen to other elements, like oxygen to create water, makes it easier to store and transport, but releasing the hydrogen when it's needed usually requires financially prohibitive amounts of electricity.
By attaching hydrogen to another element, nitrogen, Botte and her colleagues realized that they can store hydrogen without the exotic environmental conditions, and then release it with less electricity, 0.037 Volts instead of the 1.23 Volts needed for water.

From : Discovery Channel

BIG PIC: Giant Shark Beached A basking shark washes up on the shores of Long Island.

July, 15 2009 -- A 20-foot-long basking shark washed up on Gilgo Beach, on New York's Long Island, Tuesday morning with no visible wounds or injuries, officials said.
Surfers watched the enormous basking shark circle the waves and then wash up on a town beach a few miles east of Jones Beach. It was dead by the time officials arrived, Newsday reported.
The creature is estimated to weigh 2,000 pounds.
Tracy Marcus of Cornell Cooperative Extension told The Associated Press the shark probably had some kind of illness.
New York State Parks official George Gorman said researchers would examine the shark to determine how it died. After that, it will be buried in nearby sand dunes.
Basking sharks are common in the waters off Long Island, where they feast on plankton. Basking sharks aren't considered dangerous to humans.

Photo credit: Sophia Hall/Associated Press
From : Discover Channel