Weekend Links

• Magnetic 'superatoms' promise tuneable materials
• Search for dark matter goes deep, with Earth as a blocker
• Space rock yields answers about origins of life on Earth – Welcome to Earth, formic acid.
• Space shuttle exhaust hints comet caused Tunguska blast
• University of Texas at Austin 'Picosatellite' To Be Launched from Space Shuttle To Begin Milestone Small-Satellite Mission – Just testing the basics.
• NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day: Sarychev Peak Eruption, Kuril Islands – Be sure to follow the link to the original image.
• Mars Rover Yielding New Clues While Lodged in Martian Soil
• Next Mars Rover Gets Huge Heat Shield – …and a nifty "sky crane."
• Images Taken By KAGUYA (SELENE) - 3D movie composition using Terrain Camera Images during controlled impact operation – Watching the moon go by before colliding with it.
• Scrappy Post-Apollo Lunar Science Sets Stage for New Missions
• Biofuels could clean up Chernobyl 'badlands'
• Newly Uncovered Enzymes Turn Corn Plant Waste into Biofuel
• Ice on fire: The next fossil fuel – Methane clathrates, a vast store of untapped energy. I gather that they're also a ticking environmental time bomb, because rising temperatures could cause such methane to revert to its gaseous form, and methane is a much more troublesome greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
• Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please – Speaking of methane....
• Can Captured Carbon Save Coal-Fired Power? – Not so much "clean coal" as "less filthy coal."
• Car Exhaust Associated With Premature Births in Southern California
• Weed-Whacking Herbicide Proves Deadly to Human Cells – One specific inert ingredient [of Roundup], polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself [....]
• AIDS denial: A lethal delusion
• Help wanted: A new project for your home computer to help beat HIV, Alzheimer's and other conditions – How participating in this distributed computing project, as opposed to Stanford's long-established Folding@Home is not explained, but should have been.
• Dreaming of Nonsense: The Evolutionary Enigma of Dream Content
• Animals that count: How numeracy evolved
• Dinosaurs actually slimmer than we thought, say boffins
• Email patterns can predict impending doom
• 'Secret' questions leave accounts vulnerable
• Kodak to retire Kodachrome film – An era ends.
• "Hitler's Stealth Fighter" Re-created – Beautiful, but evil, engineering.