Granted, mobile phones are usually utilized for communication purposes. Recently, however, these gadgets have taken on an entirely new role: that of saving lives when medical practitioners aren't physically around. The key word here is telemedicine. Find out all about it in the full article after the jump.

Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking recently authored a children's book about the cosmos. During an interview session with several reporters in Cambridge University, Hawking said he has plans to make real science as exciting as science fiction to increase awareness especially among the youth.

The said book is titled "George's Secret Key to the Universe" and will be released in French language this Thursday and in English a week from now. This book is actually part of a trilogy and will mostly revolve around the workings of the solar system, asteroids, and black holes among others.

The book was co-written with Hawking's daughter Lucy and Christophe Galfard - the first Frenchman to write a doctorate thesis on Hawking's observation. According to Hawking, the only fictional thing that readers can found in this book is a supercomputer named Cosmos that opens a door allowing travel into space aboard an asteroid.

The second entry in the trilogy is expected to come out some time next year.

 

A new optical system is now giving an audience on earth a view of the great beyond far sharper than even space-based telescopes can offer. Named "Lucky," the new camera system was developed thanks to a collaborative effort between between Cambridge University (UK), and the California Institute of Technology (US).

The Lucky camera uses two methods to achieve its phenomenal clarity. The first is by means of a sensitive light-detection system. At the heart of this is a chip with very little electrical noise, which allows the Lucky camera to see images in greater detail.

The second part of the system is software that allows the camera to work around the leading cause of clarity loss - atmospheric distortions. As Dr. Craig Mackay of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy explained, atmospheric distortions are very much like heat waves on the horizon. Lucky's software allowed the camera a workaround for this problem.

The object is distorted by the haze most of the time. But every now and again there are moments when the haze drops and you can see it very clearly.

Working together, these two systems generated images reportedly double that of the Hubble telescope. A fascinating feat, considering that Hubble isn't hindered by an atmosphere. As with regards to Lucky's limits, Dr. Mackay further said,

The images space telescopes produce are of extremely high quality but they are limited to the size of the telescope. Our techniques can do very well when the telescope is bigger than Hubble and has intrinsically better resolution.

There are currently two published images for the Lucky Camera: One of the Globular cluster M13, and of the Cat's Eye Nebula. The image we posted at the top is of the Cat's Eye Nebula; the image on the right was taken with a Palomar 200-inch camera, while the image on the left was taken with the Lucky camera.

 

There's this theory that asserts that all modern humans stem from a single group of Homo sapiens who emerged from Africa 2,000 generations ago, and spread throughout the world over thousands of years. Up until now, one of the main problems with this "Out of Africa" theory was the existence of inconsistent evidence in Australia. The skeletal and tool remains that have been found there are strikingly different from others found along the "coastal expressway" taken by the early settlers. It was a problem until these new findings.

Research has shown that both the Aborigines and the Melanesians from New Guinea, both share the genetic features that have been linked to the exodus of modern humans from Africa 50,000 years ago. This research results show that the "Out of Africa" settlers replaced other early humans in the areas they moved into (Home erectus and Neanderthals) and did not interbreed with them.

Geneticist Dr. Peter Forster, the fellow who led the research has this to say about the new data:

Although it has been speculated that the populations of Australia and New Guinea came from the same ancestors, the fossil record differs so significantly it has been difficult to prove. For the first time, this evidence gives us a genetic link showing that the Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations are descended directly from the same specific group of people who emerged from the African migration.

As for the differences in the tools they used, evidence shows that the Australian and Melanesian populations progressed in relative isolation from each other and from the rest of the world after colonization. Dr. Toomas Kivisild of the Cambridge University Department of Biological Anthropology explains:

The evidence points to relative isolation after the initial arrival, which would mean any significant developments in skeletal form and tool use were not influenced by outside sources.

There was probably a minor secondary gene flow into Australia while the land bridge from New Guinea was still open, but once it was submerged the population was apparently isolated for thousands of years. The differences in the archaeological record are probably the result of this, rather than any secondary migration or interbreeding.

It must be noted that Australia's archaeological record shows several inconsistencies with the "Out of Africa" theory. For one thing, some of the earliest skeletons found are slender while younger skeletons are more robust. This suggests interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Homo erectus, or a second migration into Australia, followed by interbreeding. Theories of a second migration has led to many disputes regarding the single point of origin theory.

For now, we guess it's safe to say that whoever you are, you are our cousin, from some ancient mother.

Far-out. Strange. Weird. It's what astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts think of their newest find, the planet HAT-P-2b, the second planet found with the HATnet global network of automated telescopes, as Kate Ravilious of National Geographic News reports.

The superdense gas giant, spotted 440 light-years away in the constellation Hercules, astounded astronomers by not only being the largest planet found so far, but by having a plethora of features so unique that those who have been studying it up to now can't stop talking about how weird it is.

In a statement given to National Geographic, Center of Astrophysics Gaspar Bakos had this to say:
"This planet is so unusual that at first we thought it was a false alarm—something that appeared to be a planet but wasn't. But we eliminated every other possibility, so we knew we had a really weird planet."

So what's really weird about HAT-P-2b anyhow? Well, for starters, its gravity is fifteen times stronger than that of our planet's, which would mean walking around with fifteen times your own body weight. Second, temperatures in HAT-P-2b can reach up from 1000° to 2000ºC, which is pretty hot. Third, a year on HAT-P-2b equals less than six days on Earth (Birthday parties every week! Yay!). Fourth, it's slightly bigger than Jupiter, but eight times as dense - and weighs just as much as 2,500 Earths.

But that's not really weird, you say, when you take into consideration that they're other planets, hence they're not really 'ordinary'. It's not just those factoids that have the astronomers over at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center all starry-eyed, though - it's HAT-P-2b's unusual boomerang orbit that's got their attention. To wit - HAT-P-2b closes to within 3.1 million miles (that's 5 million kilometers) of its star before swinging out to around 9.6 million miles (15 million kilometers) away, all in the span of 5.6 days. Now THAT's weird.

Despite all the weirdness, however, the boys in white may have an answer - another planet, hiding in the shadows of space, could be causing HAT-P-2b's elliptical orbit. "It is possible that [HAT-P-2b] is interacting with another planet further out that we haven't seen," Bakos says.

The MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge, the Medical Research Council Mammalian Genetics Unit in Oxfordshire, and some of their associates based in New York University have discovered that an "after-hours gene" may explain the nocturnal predisposition of some people. The said gene is currently being referred to as "after hours" or Afh. It is a variant of another gene called Fbxl3 which to date has not been linked to any body clock functions in the human body.

Their tests, which involved monitoring the exercise routine of mice on a wheel, have shown that those which possessed the after hours version of the Fbxl3 gene were running on a 27 hour body clock instead of the normal 24.

"The internal body clocks of mice with the after hours gene run on a longer cycle than mice that have a normal copy of the gene, who like most of us live on a 24 hour schedule." said Patrick Nolan of the MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit. He then gave a brief, if rather complicated explanation on this phenomenon saying "We found that mice that carried the after hours gene also had a delayed Cry protein (which is one of the key proteins that determine our body clock) breakdown rate, leading to a slowdown in the molecular feedback loops and a lengthening of the body clock cycle."

So nocturnal people unite, we finally may have the answer to why our bodies prefer night to day. Hopefully, further research will be done on this to confirm whether or not their findings really hold true.

Don't you just hate it when a size zero person walks in the restaurant, orders the same amount of food as two-fully grown man can have, and nonchalantly eats it up without any fear of gaining any of those unwanted pounds?

More than just having a hyperfast metabolism, this could actually be because of the fact that the size-zero person, who happens to be the source of insecurity of a lot of other people, is blessed with good genes. Literally. Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School and Oxford University have found the "fat gene", or that clear link between the genes and obesity.

Those who had two copies of the "fat" version of a gene actually have 70% more risk of being obese, and would weigh 3kg (6.5 lb) more than the size-zero person, who does not have any "fat gene" at all. 3kg. That doesn't seem too bad. However, Professor Andrew Hattersly of the Peninsula Medical School said that "it is still enough to make a big change in the risks of obesity."

Professor Hattersly further explains that the presence of the "fat gene" could actually explain how come two people may engage in the same lifestyle or diet, doing the same amount of exercise, and still, one of them would be struggling more to lose weight than the other.

"The typical message has been that if you are overweight it is due to sloth and gluttony and it is your fault. This work is suggesting that there is also a genetic component."

What makes this finding significant is that it has presented a clear evidence "for the first obesity susceptibility gene," as lauded by Dr. Sadaf Farooqi of the University of Cambridge's Department of Clinical Biochemistry in UK. With this, the researchers just might have opened the gate for a better understanding at the causes and probable preventive measures, as well as treatment, for obesity.

Still, let us not sit back, nod our heads, and just resign to the fact that if the "fat gene" is in your genes, there's nothing you can do about your weight anymore.

No, no, not THAT mind reader, silly! Ushering a possible "Minority Report" age to our lives, a brain-scan technique developed by neuroscientists now can help pattern a person's thoughts in their brain before they act. Something like thinking about someone and then hearing the phone ring a few seconds after...

How do they do it exactly? Well, it revolves around the principle that the brain generates certain thought patterns whenever it sends signals to the rest of the body or thinks. It is also believed that a thought is formed right before it becomes action, which is called intention.

Predicting, or reading, intention, is what functional magnetic imaging resonance does. Well, actually it is used to scan the brain for thought patterns in periods before the targeted thought occurs or while it is occurring. Coupled with software that spots subtle differences in brain activity, the method predicts a person's intention with a 70% accuracy.

So you can be sure 70% of the time, you know what your date is going to do (hurray?). While it isn't anything precognitive (precognition is knowing the future before it happens), it does make us think about the ethical ramifications of it's uses. No one likes a telepathic Big Brother...well, not yet.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University, said that a neuroethics society was formed following the rapid advances in neuroscience. It was to monitor and single out the impact of each research being conducted in the field. She said:

Do we want...a 'Minority Report' society where we're preventing crimes that might not happen? A lot of neuroscientists in the field are very cautious and say we can't talk about reading individuals' minds, and right now that is very true, but we're moving ahead so rapidly, it's not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someone's making up a story, or whether someone intended to do a crime with a certain degree of certainty.

Professor Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and director of the Medical Research Council, said that people shouldn't go overboard about the power of these techniques at the moment, but what others can be absolutely sure of is that the developments will continue to roll out. By then they will have more ability to probe people's intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions.

The method is now being looked into, so it can be made to discern between an actual intention and just a passing thought.

We've done flex-displays before, we even imagined a day and age when we will fold our laptops and keyboards out of our pockets. Well, how about rolling them out? Complementing the advent of flexible display technologies is the development of "morphing materials" by Cambridge University researchers. These "morphing materials" are capable of retaining up to three structures and be fully-functional electronic devices - in other words, literally, laptops on paper?

The tech isn't exactly there yet, and the Cambridge team is still studying their creation, but the team can't help but imagine what a future made of "morphing materials" would look like.

In these photographs (taken by Gemma Simpson for Silicon.com), Dr. Keith Seffen shows off a mockup of the envisaged "roll-up PDA." The screen would be made of a thin copper alloy less than a millimeter thick. The electronics would be contained in the vertical endpieces, which would also serve as a convenient way to hold the screen open.

   

Imagine: one day, you could fold a DS or a PSP into your pocket. "Morphing materials." Redefining portability.

The fox, a natural predator for the endangered prairie dog, is having an easier time of hunting and killing prairie dogs.  The improved bagged rate is due, surprisingly, to closer than usual contact with human beings. Normally prairie dogs live in groups, and will post a sentinel to watch for predators. However, because of the incursion of humans into prairie dog habitat, over time the prairie dogs have become used to the nearness of the humans, and consequently have become complacent in warning their comrades to seek cover. 

What have the prairie dogs been doing with all their new-found time on their paws? According to John Hoogland of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge, "The males [prairie dogs] were so obsessed with sex they couldn't watch for predators." Hoogland is concerned that the sex obsession will further deplete already declining prairie dog populations.

At least they'll die happy.