There are no black cats

There are no black (domestic small) cats. You may think so, but if you
check carefully your cats coat, you will find at least a few white
hairs. According to Desmond Morris, a leading zoologist, this fact,
of no black cats, is because of the witchcraft trials of a few
centuries ago. They put cats to death, but only if the cat was all
black, did these Renaissance prosecutors consider the cat a
participant in witchcraft.

a new state of matter discovered

I am quoting here from scienceblog.com.  I dare not paraphrase  something I so totally do not have a clue about  I guess 'new state of matter' is not a label physicists throw around..?.. Anyway this work was done at McGill University.


"Working with one of the purest semiconductor materials ever made, they discovered the quasi-three-dimensional electron crystal in a device cooled at ultra-low temperatures roughly 100 times colder than intergalactic space. The material was then exposed to the most powerful continuous magnetic fields generated on Earth. Their results were published in the October issue of the journal Nature Physics.

Two-dimensional electron crystals were discovered in the laboratory in the 1990s, and were predicted as far back as 1934 by renowned Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner.

"Picture a sandwich, and the ham in the middle is your electrons," explained Dr. Guillaume Gervais, director of McGill's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab. "In a 2D electron crystal, the electrons are squeezed between two materials and they're very two dimensional. They can move on a plane, like billiard balls on a pool table, but there's no up and down motion. There's a thickness, but they're stuck."

Until an accidental discovery during one of Gervais's earliest ultra-low temperature experiments in 2005, however, no one predicted the existence of quasi-three-dimensional electron crystals.

"We decided to tweak the two-dimensionality by applying a very large magnetic field, using the largest magnet in the world at the Magnet Lab in Florida," he said. "You only have access to it for about five days a year, and on the third day, something totally unexpected popped."

Gervais's "pop" was the startling transformation of a two-dimensional electron system inside the semiconducting material into a quasi-three-dimensional system, something existing theory did not predict.

"It's actually not quite 3-D, it's an in-between state, a totally new phenomenon," he said. "This is the kind of thing the theoreticians love. Now they're scratching their heads and trying to fine-tune their models."

The importance of this discovery to micro-electronics and computing could be profound."

Halloween and Academe hauntings

We think of Bram Stoker around Halloween since about 100 years he
became famous as the author of "Dracula." Less well known is the fact
that earlier, at Trinity College, in Dublin, Bram Stoker presided
over the university historical society and also the university
philosophical society.

key loggers

On some technical blog in the past week I read that typing on a
computer keyboard generates an electro magnetic transmission that
theoretically could be used to tell what you typed. Lots of keylogging
programs can be set to do this, but what I found amazing was that it
could be done remotely like the above indicates.

early city discovered with novel aspects

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/22/cucuteni-neolithic-art.html

This links to an article about a city discovered in eastern Europe, one of the earliest cities, and
their unique layout, AND, the inhabitants burned them every 80 years.

Arizona and Alaska---how far is the view?

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2008/09/20/20080920dormverdict0920.html

The link above is to a story about a murder in Arizona, a murder of a
college student by her dormitory roommate. This in conjunction with
the high profile of women in the 2008 national elections in the United
States, leads to conclusions about the shifting status of women.
Inevitable and not nearly so clear as people would assume,
conclusions. Conclusions about inconclusiveness.

Species changes habits to survive

Tumors Alter Sex Life, from BBC Science News, Mark somebody July 16 2008
I am quoting the article in full, but you must go to the BBC website
to see a cute picture of a cute Tasmanian Devil.

A disease that threatens to wipe out the wild population of Tasmanian
devils has triggered an abrupt change in their breeding habits, a
study shows.

Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) has led to the animals mating at an
unusually young age and females having just one litter, say
scientists.

The observed changes in the creatures' life cycle could affect the
chances of saving the iconic species, they added.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A team of Australian scientists said they believed it to be the first
known case of an infectious disease leading to increased early
reproduction in a species of mammal.

The researchers, lead by Dr Menna Jones from the University of
Tasmania, analysed data from five sites where devil (Sarcophilus
harrisii) populations had been studied before and after the arrival of
the disease.

"Devils have shown their capacity to respond to this disease-induced
increased adult mortality with a 16-fold increase in the proportion of
individuals exhibiting precocious sexual maturity," they reported.

Devil dynamics

At all five sites, DFTD had significantly changed the age structure of
the devil populations.

DEVILS IN DETAIL
Tasmanian devils (Getty Images)
Weight: males 11kg; females 7kg
Jaws are more powerful than a tiger's
Opportunistic feeders, not specialised predators
Can smell food up to one kilometre away
Devils have at least 11 distinct vocal calls
Became "devils" in 1803 when sailors reported "unearthly" calls

The team noted that before the arrival of the disease, there was a
much higher proportion of adults more than three years old.

They also observed that the disease appeared to influence the number
of litters female devils produced.

Before the emergence of DFTD at one of the sites, the Freycinet
Peninsula on the east coast of the island, a typical female began
breeding aged two, and went on to produce annual litters for three
years, before dying in its fifth or sixth year.

"Females now generally have one breeding opportunity and may not
survive long enough to rear that litter. Hence they are now largely
semelparous [breed only once]."

Symptons of DFTD were first reported in 1996, and by 2007 the disease
had spread to more than half of the species' range on Tasmania.

The cause of the disease, which first appears as lumps or lesions
around the mouth, is unknown. There are no historical records
describing disfigured devils; although cancer was normal in the
creatures, it was usually internal.

There are a number of theories explaining the rapid emergence of the
disease, including pesticides, population dynamics, and a dormant
virus in the animals.

"This consistently fatal disease is an infectious cancer... with
tumour cells spread directly between devils biting," the researchers
explained.

"Evidence shows that most penetrating biting injuries occur among
adult males and females in the mating season."

Populations in areas where the disease has spread have experienced
declines of up to 89%, with the tumours primarily affecting adults
aged two or more, killing the animal within five months of
manifestation.

The team suggested that the disease may be frequency-dependent,
meaning that it did not disappear even when the number of hosts fell
to very low levels.

As a result, they added, there were concerns that the world's largest
carnivorous marsupial could become extinct in the wild within 20-25
years.

"This novel disease could have catastrophic consequences for the
Tasmanian devil," they warned