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Alan Turing’s Patterns in Nature, and Beyond | Wired Science. Mafia’s Corpse-Dissolving Claims Exaggerated | Wired Science. CHICAGO — Contrary to claims made by informants within the Sicilian Mafia, sulfuric acid will not dissolve a corpse in minutes, a new study finds. The research, reported Feb. 23 at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, was part of a wider effort to test claims about the mafia’s “lupara bianca,” or “white shotgun” murders, wherein the subject is known to be dead but a body is never found.

Experiments conducted on partial pig carcasses, a widely accepted stand-in for human bodies, showed that it takes days to melt flesh in sulfuric acid. Adding water to the acid speeds up the process, dissolving muscle and cartilage within 12 hours and turning bone to dust within two days, suggesting that the technique could render a corpse completely unrecognizable. “But it is impossible that they completely destroyed a corpse with acid,” said study coauthor Massimo Grillo of the University of Palermo in Italy. Image: Flickr/jgh_photo. Possible Early Warning Sign for Market Crashes | Wired Science. Complexity researchers who study the behavior of stock markets may have identified a signal that precedes crashes. They say the telltale sign is a measure of co-movement, or the likelihood of stocks to move in the same direction.

When a market is healthy, co-movement is low. But in the months and years before a crash, co-movement seems to grow. Regardless of whether stock prices go up or down or stay the same, they do so in tandem. People are copying each other, and a small nudge can send everyone in the same direction. The system appears primed for collapse. “One of the most important things happening now is that economists are trying to understand, what is systemic risk?

Seen through an econophysicist’s eyes, a stock market panic is an avalanche. Bar-Yam’s findings, released Feb. 13 on arXiv, are part of an emerging research field known as econophysics. Heated water turning to gas is one such behavior, known technically as a phase transition. Images: 1) NASDAQ © 2010. 2) arXiv. See Also: Primordial Soup’s Missing Ingredient May Be Sulfur | Wired Science. A fresh look at forgotten vials from Stanley Miller’s primordial-soup-in-a-bottle experiments implies that volcanoes seeping hydrogen sulfide helped form some of life’s earliest ingredients. Sulfur’s presence makes it possible to synthesize a greater variety of amino acids — the molecules that link to form protein chains — and gives nascent life a larger palette of chemicals from which to select.

“When you are analyzing old samples, you always hope in the back of your mind that you are going to find something really cool,” says primary author Eric Parker, a graduate student now at Georgia Tech. “It was a pleasant surprise to see such a large array of different amino acids and amines.” In Miller’s classic experiments, dating from the early 1950s, electricity — standing in for lightning — zaps a few basic chemicals, water, methane, hydrogen and ammonia, to simulate the atmospheric conditions on Earth before life began. “Miller was a real packrat. See Also: Help Make Better Map of Global Light Pollution | Wired Science. You can help build the best global map of light pollution, the uniquely modern problem that has stolen starlight from most of the urbanized world. From March 22 through April 6, the GLOBE at Night website will collect the public’s measurements of the night sky.

Anyone can participate by comparing their local view of specific constellations with magnitude charts on the site. The event is in its sixth year, and organizers hope to surpass the 17,800 observations they collected in 2010. “With half of the world’s population now living in cities, many urban dwellers have never experienced the wonderment of pristinely dark skies and maybe never will,” says the GLOBE at Night. “This loss, caused by light pollution, is a concern on many fronts: safety, energy conservation, cost, health and effects on wildlife, as well as our ability to view the stars.” Baby sea turtles attracted by artificial light. Aside from the loss of stars from view, light pollution has more quantifiably dangerous sides. Flawed Diamonds Could Store Quantum Data | Wired Science. DALLAS — Scientists have developed a new way to manipulate atoms inside diamond crystals so that they store information long enough to function as quantum memory, which encodes information not as the 0s and 1s crunched by conventional computers but in states that are both 0 and 1 at the same time.

Physicists use such quantum data to send information securely, and hope to eventually build quantum computers capable of solving problems beyond the reach of today’s technology. For those developing this quantum memory, the perfect diamonds don’t come from Tiffany & Co. — or Harry Winston, for that matter. Impurities are the key to the technology. “Oddly enough, perfection may not be the way to go,” said David Awschalom of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “We want to build in defects.” One of the most common defects in diamond is nitrogen, which turns the stone yellow. Unlike a diamond itself, this quantum memory isn’t forever. Image: Jurvetson/Flickr See Also: Persecution Complex Is the Defining Modern Psychosis | Wired Science. Over the course of the 20th century, fantasies of persecution became the defining modern delusion, suggest a pair of studies on long-term trends in psychosis.

The first, published Mar. 18 in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, was based on 102 patient records from a psychiatric hospital in western Pennsylvania. Randomly picked and representing each decade of the 20th century, the records were interpreted as glimpses of each era’s mental atmosphere. From these glimpses, a fuller picture emerged.

After 1950, delusions involving persecution — variations on the “someone is out to get me” theme — were four times more frequent. Feelings of being spied upon increased by five. “That more patients after 1950 believe they are being spied upon is consistent with the development of related technology and the advent of the Cold War,” wrote the researchers, who were led by Marywood University psychologist Brooke Cannon. [Via Mind Hacks.] Image: Will/Flickr. See Also: The Strange Past and Promising Future of the Lobotomy | Wired Science. By Annalee Newitz, io9 If you thought that scene in Sucker Punch where the doctor gave lobotomies with an ice pick was artistic exaggeration — well, it wasn’t. That’s exactly how Walter Freeman, a popularizer of lobotomies in the 1940s, performed thousands of operations.

In the mid-20th century, the lobotomy was such a popular “cure” for mental illness that Freeman’s former research partner António Egas Moniz was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his role in perfecting the operation. Moniz and Freeman had a falling out after Freeman started using an ice pick-shaped instrument to perform up to 25 lobotomies a day, without anaesthesia, while reporters looked on. How did the lobotomy ever become accepted medical practice? Moniz and Freemen are usually credited with inventing the lobotomy in the 1930s, though in truth their work was based on many other people’s research going back to the mid-19th century. And so Moniz, later joined by Freeman, began experimenting on patients. X-Rays Reveal 19th-Century Artist’s Cover-Up | Wired Science. ANAHEIM, California — Experimenting with a vivacious blonde, only to settle instead on a somber brunette, is an old, clichéd storyline — in fact, it’s at least 200 years old.

A new analysis of a 19th century painting reveals that the artist first depicted a blonde with purple ribbons in her hair, before painting the canvas over with a sedate, unadorned brunette. Altering the original version of a painting, a practice known as pentimenti from the Italian pentirsi, to repent, is not uncommon, said Matthias Alfeld, who presented his finding March 29 at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. This particular instance of “the artist’s regret” was revealed by a technique known as scanning macro-X-ray fluorescence at DESY, the German accelerator laboratory in Hamburg. Stimulated by an X-ray beam, chemical elements in the painting fluoresce, revealing hidden pigments without damaging the artwork.

Who that artist was remains in question. Images: Matthias Alfeld/University of Antwerp See Also: Ancient Greek Computer Had Surprising Sun Tracker | Wired Science. The world’s oldest astronomical calculator is famous for having intricate gear systems centuries ahead of their time. But new work shows the Antikythera mechanism used pure geometry, as well as flashy gears to track celestial bodies’ motion through the heavens. The device, a 2,000-year-old assemblage of gears and wheels that matched 19th century clocks in precision and complexity, was salvaged from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901. Called the Antikythera mechanism, the machine gracefully kept track of the day of the year, the positions of the sun and the moon, and perhaps the other planets. It also predicted eclipses and kept track of upcoming Olympic games. Most of the mechanism’s calculations were driven by a series of 37 interlocking dials, which may have been manipulated by a hand crank.

Three hands denoting the date and the position of the sun and the moon moved through the zodiac and the months as the gears turned. See Also: Hot Rocks: Geology Photo Contest Winners | Wired Science  Unprecedented Arctic Ozone-Thinning Drifts South | Wired Science. In mid-March, our online story about the thinning of stratospheric ozone over the Arctic noted that conditions appeared primed for regional ozone losses to post an all-time record. On April 5, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Michel Jarraud announced that Arctic ozone had indeed suffered an unprecedented thinning. [partner id="sciencenews" align="right"] Ozone losses this year “still don’t compare to what occurs in the Antarctic,” says Bryan Johnson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. It would be really big news, he says, if the Arctic polar vortex stayed stable long enough to permit a near disappearance — a proverbial hole — in ozone at certain altitudes.

Because stratospheric ozone protects Earth’s inhabitants from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays, regions impacted by the thinned ozone can face exaggerated sunburn risks. Image: Polar stratospheric clouds. See Also: Real-Time Debate Feedback Distorts Democracy | Wired Science. During the 2008 presidential debates, CNN unveiled their latest onscreen gimmick: A real-time graph depicting the averaged reactions of 32 supposedly undecided voters, who expressed favor or disfavor by turning handheld dials as they watched. At the time, some psychologists wondered whether the graph could unduly influence how other viewers perceived the debate, potentially amplifying feelings in a handful of people across millions in the audience.

The hypothesis was plausible, informed by decades of observations on decision-making and influence, but lacking hard data. Some of that data now exists. In an experiment described March 31 in PLoS One, British psychologists secretly manipulated a similar onscreen graph broadcast during a Prime Ministerial debate. The results confirmed their fears. Along with the United States and United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia also employ this technology, and it seems poised to spread. But those studies were incomplete. See Also: Soviet Space Propaganda: Doctored Cosmonaut Photos | Wired Science. Lies and half-truths have a way of catching up to you, largely because nobody has a good enough memory to be a successful liar for long. The Soviet side of the 1960s space race is a particularly graphic example of this. The Soviet Union's string of space triumphs over the United States was tarnished by a series of falsifications that surfaced and cast doubt on all their accomplishments, even the genuine ones.

Today on the 50th anniversary of the Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight, the greatest of the Soviet space triumphs, there are still plenty of unresolved doubts and suspicions.Those doubts are encouraged by a series of photographs of the cosmonaut team, released in the 1970s, in which some individuals have been airbrushed out of scenes. But the full image first appeared in this form (above), with one of the men erased. Because his face wasn’t even recognizable, more than mere security issues must have motivated it.

Antarctic Lake Hides Bizarre Ecosystem | Wired Science. In the eerie bluish-purple depths of an Antarctic lake, scientists have discovered otherworldly mounds that tell tales of the planet’s early days. [partner id="sciencenews" align="right"]Bacteria slowly built the mounds, known as stromatolites, layer by layer on the lake bottom. The lumps, which look like oversize traffic cones, resemble similar structures that first appeared billions of years ago and remain in fossil form as one of the oldest widespread records of ancient life. The Antarctic discovery could thus help scientists better understand the conditions under which primitive life-forms thrived.

“It’s like going back to early Earth,” says Dawn Sumner, a geobiologist at the University of California, Davis. Sumner and her colleagues, led by Dale Andersen of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, describe the discovery in an upcoming issue of Geobiology. “These are just incredibly beautiful microbial landscapes,” she says. See Also: Evolution of Language Takes Unexpected Turn | Wired Science. It’s widely thought that human language evolved in universally similar ways, following trajectories common across place and culture, and possibly reflecting common linguistic structures in our brains.

But a massive, millennium-spanning analysis of humanity’s major language families suggests otherwise. Instead, language seems to have evolved along varied, complicated paths, guided less by neurological settings than cultural circumstance. If our minds do shape the evolution of language, it’s likely at levels deeper and more nuanced than many researchers anticipated. “It’s terribly important to understand human cognition, and how the human mind is put together,” said Michael Dunn, an evolutionary linguist at Germany’s Max Planck Institute and co-author of the new study, published April 14 in Nature. The findings “do not support simple ideas of the mind as a computer, with a language processor plugged in. They support much-more complex ideas of how language arises.”

See Also: Listen: Humpback Whale Songs That Swept the Pacific | Wired Science. In a marvelous example of animal communication and culture, researchers have described how humpback whale songs sweep across the Pacific in just a few years. “The level and rate of change is unparalleled in any other nonhuman animal and thus involves culturally driven change at a vast scale,” wrote researchers led by University of Queensland biologists Ellen Garland and Michael Noad in a study published April 14 in Current Biology. For decades, researchers have studied the elegant, ululating songs of male humpbacks, which are thought to attract females or challenge rival males.

In any given year, all the males in a population sing the same song, but the songs change from year to year. The changes are more than incremental; they represent whole new repertoires. In the new study, Garland and Noad recorded songs in six Pacific populations between 1998 and 2009. The songs could be carried by males who move between populations, bringing new tunes. Luke Rendell, St. See Also: 7 Science-Education Battlegrounds of 2011 | Wired Science.

Help Identify These Mysterious Scientific Objects | Wired Science. Fresh Evidence Adds Weight to Human Ancestor’s Identity | Wired Science. Biggest Spider Fossil Ever Found | Wired Science. Pesticide Use Tied to Lower IQ in Children | Wired Science. Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place | Wired Science. Australia Pistachio Disaster Hints at Agricultural Breakdown | Wired Science. Ancient Teeth Show Neanderthals Were Righties | Wired Science. Experiment Confirms Hints of Dark Matter | Wired Science. Sonic Resonators Take the Quantum Out of Lasers | Wired Science. Floating Gyroscopes Vindicate Einstein | Wired Science. Mysterious Maine Earthquakes Caused by Ice Age Rebound | Wired Science. ‘Coal Cares’ Hoax Website Backed by Science | Wired Science. Quantum Calculations Can Make Atomic Clocks of the Future Far More Accurate | Wired Science. Theory of Recycled Universe Called Into Question | Wired Science.

Sharing Information Corrupts Wisdom of Crowds | Wired Science. Entropy Is Universal Rule of Language | Wired Science. Scientists Fight University of California to Study Rare Ancient Skeletons | Wired Science. Satellites Spot Illegal Logging of Uncontacted Tribes’ Home | Wired Science. Milky Way Galaxy Has Mirrorlike Symmetry | Wired Science. Top 10 New Species Discovered in 2010 | Wired Science. Electrons Are Near-Perfect Spheres | Wired Science. The Man Who Swims With Coelacanths | Wired Science. Book Excerpt: The Dinosaur Fossils That Changed Everything | Wired Science.

6 Strange Fossils That Enlightened Evolutionary Scientists | Wired Science. Fossil Finger DNA Points to New Type of Human | Wired Science. The Curious Evolution of Holiday Lights | Wired Science. Fossil Jaw Could Be From World’s Oldest Known Dog | Wired Science. Meteor Crater Discovered With Google Earth | Wired Science. Math Is No Match for Locust Swarms | Wired Science. Two Is the Magic Quantum Number | Wired Science. Glow-in-the-Dark Shark Turned on by Hormones | Wired Science | W.

Silence! The Last of the Giant Radio Telescopes Is Listening to. Peers criticise food industry secrecy on nanotechnology | Busine. Nanotechnology | Science. Because they were worth it? Research finds Neanderthals enjoyed. DNA Reveals New Hominid Ancestor | Wired Science. First steps on land, giant leap for evolution | Adam Rutherford. Warning over claims of stem cell cures | Society. Great Pyramid tombs unearth 'proof' workers were not slaves | Wo.

It's called Apophis. It's 390m wide. And it could hit Earth in 3. 95-Million-Year-Old Bugs Found in African Amber Surprise Scienti. Footprints show tetrapods walked on land 18m years earlier than. Climate Change Caused Radical North Sea Shift | Wired Science | Scientifically Haunted House Suggests You’re a Sucker | Wired Sc. Oldest Preserved Spider Web Dates Back to Dinosaurs | Wired Scie. New Giant Lizard Discovered in the Philippines | Wired Science | Ron Howard Was Wrong: Apollo 13 Would Have Burned, Not Frozen | Hunt for Missing Genetic Killer Comes Up Empty | Wired Science | Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists | Wired Science | W. Chemical Fingerprints Could Finger Weapons Makers | Wired Scienc. Cover Shmover: Judge an Old Book by Its Odor | Wired Science | W. New Evidence of Ice Age Comet Found in Ice Cores | Wired Science. Bats Use Sun to Calibrate Geomagnetic Compass | Wired Science |

New RFID Tag Could Mean the End of Bar Codes | Wired Science | W. Fossil Turtle Had Extra-Thick Shell to Fend Off World’s Largest. Think You’re Good at Driving While on Your Cellphone? You May Be. Skydiver Aims to Jump From 120,000 Feet, Break the Sound Barrier. Video: The Chemistry of Thanksgiving | Wired Science. Phew, It Works! Science Begins at the LHC | Wired Science | Wire. Human-Chimp Gene Comparison Hints at Roots of Language | Wired S.

Possible New Human Ancestor Discovered | Wired Science | Wired.c. Russian Physicists Synthesize New Superheavy Element 117 | Wired. Mystery Object Defies Astronomical Classification | Wired Scienc. First Animals Found That Live Without Oxygen | Wired Science | W.