James Hardine writes "Wikileaks is reporting that the CIA has funded covert research on torture techniques, and that the NSA has pushed tens or hundreds of millions into academia through research grants using one particular grant code. Some researchers try to conceal the source of funding, yet commonality in the NSA grant code prefix makes all these attempts transparent. The primary NSA grant-code prefix is 'MDA904'. Googling for this grant code yields 39,000 references although some refer to non-academic contracts (scolar.google.com 2,300). The grants issue from light NSA cover, the "Maryland Procurement Office" or other fronts. From this one can see the broad sweep of academic research interests being driven by the NSA."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  prostoalex writes "Scientific American is reporting on scientific work done to map the euphoric religious feelings within the brain. As a result, it's now quite possible to experience 'proximity to God' via a special helmet: 'In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence — a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is — or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language — terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.""Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  Jamie found a story of NASAs Giant "Science" Roller Coaster. It will be used as an escape chute on rocket launchpads, and will be the 3rd highest drop in the world. More like the Cedar Point Demon Drop than a roller coaster, but still, I'd ride it.Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  SimonNight writes "Attaching a heatsink to the brain can reduce the severity of epileptic seizures, Japanese researchers say. They've developed a surgically implanted heat conduit that connects a brain region to a heatsink on the outside of the skull. Seizures get worse when they abnormal activity of brain cells overheats the brain and causes more abnormal firing patterns."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  Scientists have designed a new "heart-reinforcing corset" to help combat congestive heart failure. While there isn't a large degree of understanding of the condition, many believe that the heart expands in order to pump more blood as a reaction to damage or valve problems. This expansion generally exacerbates the problem, so the new reinforcing band is attempting to control the expansion of the heart thereby reducing the chance of failure.Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  An anonymous reader writes "'Gene targeting,' which allows scientists to isolate stem cells in mice and reproduce genetically modified offspring, has won the Nobel Prize for medicine. Having allowed pathologists to better understand diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and cystic fibrosis for close to 20 years, the technology is just now getting its big day in the sun. From Nobel's full how-it-works: 'Their [i.e. ES cells] use as a vehicle for the transfer into the mouse genome of mutant alleles, either selected in cell culture or inserted into the cells via transformation with specific DNA fragments, has been presented as an attractive proposition. In many of these studies the use of pluripotential cells directly isolated from the embryos under study should have great advantages.'"Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  Hugh Pickens writes "The difference in coloring between Iapetus' leading and trailing hemispheres is striking. NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs has just released a report on a bizarre 'runaway' process that may explain the strange and dramatically two-toned appearance recently revealed in images collected during a close flyby by the Cassini spacecraft. Scientists believe that initially dark material on one side of Iapetus may have come from other moons orbiting Saturn in the opposite direction. Since Iapetus is locked in synchronous rotation about Saturn, as dusty material from the outer moons spiraled in and hit Iapetus head-on, the forward-facing side began to darken. As it absorbed more sunlight, its surface water evaporated, and vapor was transported from the dark side to the white side of Iapetus. Thermal segregation then proceeded in a runaway process as the dark side lost its surface ice and got darker still. Now the leading hemisphere is as dark as a tarred street and the trailing hemisphere resembles freshly fallen snow."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  penguin_dance writes "The UK is apparently rethinking its ban on human hybrid experiments. If approved by regulators, '[t]he move opens the door to experiments involving every known kind of human-animal hybrid. These could include both "cytoplasmic" embryos, which are 99.9% human, and "true hybrids" carrying both human and animal genes.' Previous calls for an outright ban on all human-animal embryos outraged scientists, according to the article, who believe that 'work on human-animal hybrid embryos will greatly speed up progress in stem cell research.' The report claims there will be a provision for regulation of the research to incorporate any 'unforeseen developments.' Let the Island of Dr. Moreau comparisons begin!"Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  KentuckyFC writes "The Universe is about to flip from having three dimensions of space and one of time to having four dimensions of space. That's the conclusion of a group of Spanish astrophysicists who have calculated that observers inside such a Universe would see it expanding and accelerating away from them just before the flip (abstract, full paper pdf on the physics arXiv). 'We show that regular changes of signature on brane-worlds in AdS bulks may account for some types of the recently fashionable sudden singularities. Therefore, the fact that the Universe seems to approach a future sudden singularity at an accelerated rate of expansion might simply be an indication that our braneworld is about to change from Lorentzian to Euclidean signature. Both the brane and the bulk remain fully regular everywhere.'" Update: 10/09 16:06 GMT by Z : A few readers have written in to point out that the article is not peer-reviewed; your mileage may vary.Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  netbuzz writes "The University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute says it's the first full census of the 'visible Internet' since David Smallberg canvassed a piddling 315 allocated addresses in 1982. They're talking about 3 billion pings directed toward 2.8 million addresses over the course of 62 days. Oh, and they credit the comic strip xkcd for sparking the idea of presenting the data using a Hilbert curve." The main page for the census project has links to versions of the census at various scales.Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  A number of readers made sure we are aware that the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg for simultaneously and independently discovering giant magnetoresistance. This property has allowed the explosion of disk-space growth and is cited as being one of the first nanotechnology breakthroughs. From the announcement: "Very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance in a GMR system. A system of this kind is the perfect tool for reading data from hard disks when information registered magnetically has to be converted to electric current."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  An anonymous reader writes "Cosmos Magazine reports on a design for a lunar habitat that is 90 to 95 percent self-sufficient. The proposed habitat uses a closed-loop life support system that recycles and regenerates air, water, and food, reducing the need for costly supply trips. The north pole of the moon is chosen as a location because of its access to sunlight and useful resources. About 11 astronauts could live and work in the habitat for 2 to 3 years. The project would also help the environment on Earth with recycling and other sustainable practices." The designers say it could be 20 to 30 years before such a habitat could be up and running on the moon.Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  URSpider alerts us to two separate research reports published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pointing to the rapid breakdown of nitric oxide in donated blood as a reason why such blood loses its ability to transfer oxygen, and is sometime implicated in problems such as strokes and heart attacks. Nitric oxide depletion is significant after 3 hours of storage; yet current guidelines allow for storing donated blood for up to 42 days. The article notes: "Several of the researchers, including Stamler, have consulting and/or equity relationships with Nitrox/N30, a company developing nitric oxide based therapies."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.

  hhavensteincw writes "Scientists at Tufts University are researching the use of light aimed at the forehead to measure the stress, work overload, or distraction a computer user may be feeling, as a way to adjust the UI to adapt to a user's emotional state. The research combines biomedical engineering and machine learning to adjust the UI. The project, which requires users to wear a futuristic head band, uses light to measure the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain that signals a user's rising stress levels typically associated with increasingly difficult tasks."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.