Black hole rips apart screaming star: In a distant galaxy, a star orbiting a massive central black hole strays too close to the insatiable giant and is torn apart. But before it can be devoured, the star lets out one last scream in a flare of light that slowly echoes across the galaxy. Astronomers on Earth pick up this faint call and use it to map the nucleus of the galaxy from which it emanated. [msnbc]

How did our planet form?: It’s astonishing what you can achieve with just a bit of gas and dust. Kate Ravilious guides us through the birth of our solar system. [Guardian]

Scars on Mars suggest recent glaciers: Orbiter images show that planet may have gone through many ice ages. [msnbc]

May 7th, 2008 at 9:27 am

This article is filed under Cosmology, Blog.

The New China: Shenzhen, once a sleepy fishing village, is now a teeming city of skyscrapers and factories, artists and laborers. But will this microcosm of modern China be the model of metropolitan life, or a lesson in getting too big too fast? [Good]

China’s next-generation nationalists: As human rights protesters dogged the Beijing Olympics’ torch relay around the world, as supporters of Tibet condemned the violent crackdown in Lhasa, and as Darfur activists demanded change in China’s Sudan policy, Chinese young people worked themselves into a different form of righteous anger. In online forums and chat rooms, they blasted Beijing’s leaders for not being tougher in Tibet. They agitated for boycotts against Western businesses based in nations that object to Beijing’s policies, and they directed venomous fury against anyone critical of China. [LA Times]

China and Japan - A blossoming relationship?: FIRST came the “ice-breaking”, then the “ice-melting”. Now, comes the “cherry-blossom viewing”, admittedly late in the season. A succession of reciprocal visits by the two countries’ leaders have taken Sino-Japanese relations out of the cooler over the past 20 months. [Economist]

May 6th, 2008 at 9:40 am

This article is filed under Asia Rising, Blog.

Brazil defends ethanol in food-versus-fuel fight: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says the bad publicity is unwarranted and uninformed. Many biofuel experts agree. Critics, they say, fail to distinguish between the different kinds of ethanol. Brazilian ethanol from sugar cane is up to eight times more energy efficient to produce than ethanol derived from corn, beets, wheat, or other temperate crops. [CSM]

Oxygen-starved ocean ‘deserts’ emerging: Underwater “deserts” are emerging in tropical oceans as the oxygen vanishes from seawater, warns a new study. One of the consequences of a changing climate, the warmer oceans, is causing a decrease in the oxygen concentration and creating oxygen-starved, or “hypoxic” conditions underwater. [Telegraph]

Breeding toxins from dead PCs: Thousands of discarded computers from western Europe and the US arrive in the ports of west Africa every day, ending up in massive toxic dumps where children burn and pull them apart to extract metals for cash. [Guardian]

Air Pollution Impedes Bees’ Ability to Find Flowers: Air pollution interferes with the ability of bees and other insects to follow the scent of flowers to their source, undermining the essential process of pollination, a study by three University of Virginia researchers suggests. [Washington Post]

Antarctic Penguins Reveal Steady DDT Levels: Although use of the pesticide DDT was banned in the Northern Hemisphere in the 1970s, and DDT levels in the Arctic have declined steadily since then, new measurements show that DDT levels in Antarctic Adélie penguins have remained constant. [Discovery]

May 6th, 2008 at 9:38 am

This article is filed under Environment, Blog.

Avoiding caricature in an American sitcom about Islam: Two summers ago, when Moses Port and David Guarascio, both television writers, pitched their unorthodox and potentially controversial premise for “Aliens in America” - a comedy built around a Pakistani Muslim exchange student who moves in with a somewhat reluctant family in small-town Wisconsin - they were pleased to discover that studio and network executives at CW were enthusiastic about the idea. [IHT]

In the library with a leading Islamic liberal: Egyptian Gamal Banna backs women’s right to lead prayers and thinks clerics should adapt to modern times. [LA Times]

Al-Jazeera chief ‘fired for being white Christian’: A television executive has demanded more than £1 million in compensation from the Arabic station al-Jazeera claiming that she was fired because she was not a Muslim. [Telegraph]

May 6th, 2008 at 9:36 am

This article is filed under Integrating Islam, Blog.

Trunk calls: I am looking at a tree that is bearing some very strange fruit. Pairs of headphones have sprouted from its branches and are dangling invitingly at head height. Put on a pair and you’ll hear something surprising - the secret soundtrack of trees. The inner life of trees has been a lifelong obsession for the artist Alex Metcalf. [Guardian]

Many-colored Glass: Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke do windows: By the lights of many in the international art world, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke are the leading painters of our day, though it’s hard to find anyone who will declare them equally great. (I’m an exception.) Their careers are intertwined by biography and circumstance. [New Yorker]

Dubai Auction Sets Records: Parviz Tanavoli’s sculpture “The Wall (Oh Persepolis)” set a new world record for modern Iranian art when it sold for $2.84 million at Christie’s International Modern and Contemporary Art auction in Dubai on Wednesday night. The sale also marked the highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction in the Middle East. Mr. Tanavoli’s piece, a nearly 6-foot-tall bronze sculpture covered in hieroglyphics, was one of many works by Middle Eastern artists that dominated the auction. [NY Sun]

May 6th, 2008 at 9:34 am

This article is filed under Art, Blog.

Russian women make gold-digging an art form: They sit at nearly every table in Moscow’s smartest restaurants, wearing designer jewellery and smiles that show they know they are the envy of every girl in Russia. But for the wives and girlfriends of Russia’s super-rich oligarchs, the good life has just got a little bit harder – thanks to a slew of books telling other women how to follow in their footsteps. [Telegraph]

For the Elderly, Being Heard About Life’s End: Edie Gieg, 85, strides ahead of people half her age and plays a fast-paced game of tennis. But when it comes to health care, she is a champion of “slow medicine,” an approach that encourages less aggressive — and less costly — care at the end of life. [NYT]

Want to take a city’s pulse? Head for the graveyard: Forget landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building or the Colosseum; cemeteries are the punctuation marks in between, quiet islands amid the city racket. A great one is an architectural jewel in its own right, a Vanity Fair party of spot-the-dead-celebrity, a stark warning from history, a store of cracking anecdotes or a life-affirming communion with past generations. [Guardian]

May 5th, 2008 at 10:38 am

This article is filed under Society, Blog.

Who Will Tell the People?: How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent — including Americans. [NYT]

Chinese firms bargain hunting in U.S.: Liu Keli couldn’t tell you much about South Carolina, not even where it is in the United States. It’s as obscure to him as his home region, Shanxi province, is to most Americans. But Liu is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China. Liu spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg — less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, Liu doesn’t have to put up with frequent blackouts. [LA Times]

May 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am

This article is filed under Asia Rising, Blog.

The Heatherwick Effect: What can a designer bring to the world of architecture?: For the past few years, an office development tucked away overlooking an old canal behind Paddington Station, in London, has been attracting clusters of people who come to see a footbridge. Made of steel and wood, and crossing the water in eight short sections, the bridge looks ordinary, but, when a boat needs to pass, it arcs up and back from one side like a scorpion’s tail, and folds itself into a neat octagon on the opposite bank. The Rolling Bridge is the best-known project of the British designer Thomas Heatherwick. [New Yorker]

New mayor of Rome threatens to scrap “disfiguring” Richard Meier museum: The famous American architect Richard Meier has denounced as incredible plans by Rome’s new right-wing mayor to dismantle a state-of-the-art museum designed by Mr Meier that opened just two years ago. The white marble, glass and steel structure housing the Ara Pacis, an ancient Roman altar with a sculptured frieze on the banks of the Tiber, is regarded by some architectural experts as a masterpiece. Others, however, find it hideous, with some critics dismissing it as being “like a suburban swimming pool or a giant petrol station”. [Times]

May 5th, 2008 at 10:34 am

This article is filed under Architecture, Blog.

S.F. is crime central - on the printed page: Modern crime fiction was born in a small apartment at 891 Post St. in San Francisco. That’s where Dashiell Hammett wrote “The Maltese Falcon,” using his digs as the model for Sam Spade’s urban lair. Published in 1929 to popular and critical praise, the novel slapped around the commonly held notion that mysteries were marginal diversions, merely clever puzzles for slumming intellectuals. [SF Chronicle]

Turning over an old leaf: Only 24 books are produced for every tree felled. But book-swapping websites could provide a solution for the eco-aware reader. [Guardian]

Harry Potter No Longer a Best Seller: After 10 enviable years of sales, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have fallen off the New York Times best-seller list for the first time. The Times Book Review’s senior editor, Dwight Garner, announced Thursday on Paper Cuts, the newspaper’s group book Web log, that the best-seller list for the May 11 issue of the book review does not include a single Harry Potter title. [NY Sun]

The baron of bibliomania: Bibliophilia: the love, and collecting, of books. No problems there: the odd fit of extravagance, possibly, but everything more or less under control. But watch out. The next step up may be bibliolatry: an extreme fondness for books. And beyond that lies bibliomania: a mania for the collection and possession of books. That can be very dangerous territory. [Guardian]

May 5th, 2008 at 10:33 am

This article is filed under Books, Blog.

Pieces in our evolutionary puzzle: New finds from Africa are fleshing out the possible beginnings of the human evolutionary line, with several candidate species vying for the title of our earliest ancestor. Genetic data suggests we shared a last common ancestor with our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, between about 5m and 7m years ago, and there are now three important fossil finds in that formerly empty window of time. [Guardian]

Neanderthals were a separate species: A SIMPLIFIED family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears. Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram published by the journal Nature declares. [Australian]

May 5th, 2008 at 10:30 am

This article is filed under Evolution, Blog.