Susanne Osthoff, a 43-year-old German archeologist, has been kidnapped in northern Iraq. Osthoff, who speaks fluent Arabic and has converted to Islam, disappeared on November 25, several months after first being warned by American authorities that she was a potential abduction target. Osthoff was working in Iraq to witness the looting of Iraqi historical sites and gather information about the destruction of ancient sites. It is thought that she was kidnapped to put pressure on the German government to cease cooperation with the Iraqi government and American forces. Osthoff is married to a Jordanian and has one daughter. (via Archaeology)

The Monterey Bay Aquarium in California has a number of live web cams featuring marine life in their exhibits and off their oceanfront decks. The cams run from 7 am to 7 pm Pacific Time, but you can view recorded video in the off hours. The online exhibits include a kelp cam, otter cam, shark cam, aviary cam, penguin cam, outer bay cam, and a Monterey Bay cam, that can catch anything that happens to sail by from fish to boats. The shark cam in the Australia Gallery shows pelagic stingrays and scalloped hammerhead sharks like the one shown at right. The penguin exhibit contains 19 new penguins that were rescued from the aquarium in New Orleans. You can watch them feed the penguins at 10:30 am and 3:00 pm.

Opentopia, the free online encyclopedia, has a cool online world sunlight map that shows the current sunlight and cloud cover in a rectangular projection as well as a spherical projection. The map app was created by Aaron Hopkins using NASA satellite images and the Linux app Xearth, which is freely available on the web.

Academics tend to shun pop culture, but some have learned how to use a famous face to shed light on their obscure little corner of science. Carl Hepburn at the University of Essex attracted attention a few years ago for not only figuring out how to weave the words 'Britney Spears' and 'semiconductor physics' in the same sentence, but for designing an entire online course around the two in The Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics. Earlier this year, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, esteemed Columbia University economist and advisor to Kofi Annan, toured Kenya with actress Angelina Jolie for an MTV special The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa: "Spending two long days in Sauri, Sachs exposes Jolie to every corner of village life to reveal his vision for ending extreme poverty by 2015." So, how do you keep students from falling asleep in science class? You can try flashing pictures of a famous actress or pop music icon in between slides, but be careful about whom you choose, because today's pop sensation is tomorrow's tabloid fodder.

• National Geographic Tour of NYC Underground [National Geographic]
• Politics Imitate Science in the Graceful-Exit Problem [Cosmic Variance]
• NSF FY 2006 Budget Increases Three Percent to $5.65 Billion [NSF]
• Contact Lenses That Improve Your Vision While You Sleep [NASA]
• The Illusion of Design, by Richard Dawkins [Natural History Magazine]

You can tell Christmas is in the air with all the cool science gifts we're finding lately. What better way to express your passion for science than with hip What's Your Poison? coasters from London-based design studio Frank. From the Frank website, "Based on the standard periodic table this set of 8 elemental drinkmats allows you to send coded messages to your guests - arsenic for your love rival, gold for the object of your desire." They'll make great stocking stuffers or gifts for the office Secret Santa party. (via inkycircus)

Google ads are a bit funny. No matter what the ad is actually for, if an advertiser bids enough for certain keywords, like say, "Darwin" or "science research," pretty much any advertisement could show up in our little Google ads space. Nevermind whether Element List readers, typically academic researcher types, own a European automobile or care about the latest creationist buzz. We've been bombarded lately by creationist and intelligent designs ads in particular. If we can't figure out a way to get rid of the ads, the least we can do is click on the ads until their Adwords account reaches its limit blog about them. Heh-heh. So we're creating a new game called Find the Creationist Google Ad. (Hmm, doesn't quite have the same ring, but we're open to suggestions.) So click away happy Element Listers. Click any creationist ads that you find here and post a comment on any sites you find interesting or at least humorous.

The science blog world has been abuzz ever since the Royal Academy, UK's national academy of science, released a statement on Nov. 24 regarding distribution of research results funded by the Research Councils UK (RC UK). Essentially, the RC UK proposes that effective October 1, 2005 "a copy of any published journal articles or conference proceedings resulting from Research Council funded research should be deposited in an appropriate e-print repository (either institutional or subject-based) wherever such a repository is available to the award-holder." Sounds reasonable, no? The Royal Society, however, is afraid that the new proposals will divert funds and readership away from their publications, namely the Philosophical Transactions, one of the world's oldest journals, and "has written to RC UK proposing that a study be commissioned to assess the relative merits of the various models that have been proposed under the rather broad banner of open access, including that outlined by RC UK in its consultation document" (read: delay tactic). Nevermind that such journals are rapidly being sidelined by online open access scientfic journals such as Public Library of Science and arXiv.org. If the Royal Society were savvy enough, they'd make their articles open over the web (i.e., be the repository) and include Google ads or the like on the webpages for revenue. Alas, they're behaving like another dinosaur, slow to adapt to a changing environment.

Despite what Intelligent Design proponents would have you believe, biological evolution is in fact very efficient at creating complex individuals that are uniquely suited to a large, complex, and even poorly understood environment. The basic principals of evolution--selection and mating between highly fit individuals over many generations to create more fit offspring with the occasional mutation--are used today by computer scientists to create genetic algorithms, which find numerical solutions to problems with many variables quickly and efficiently. The basic idea is that more fit parents selected from a random starting population produce more fit offspring to find the global optimum in a large array of possible solutions to a given problem. Occasional mutations prevent the overall population from falling into a local optimum, of which Darwin's Galapagos Islands might be an example. Genetic algorithms have been applied to many different types of problems from a range of fields including economics, ecology, networking, finance, and others. Contrary to the assertion that the universe is too complex to have been designed randomly without a creator, evolution is in fact quite good at creating a well functioning universe without anyone's help.

New Scientist reports that a new type of computer disc that stores 300 gigabytes of data will be released in 2006 by InPhase Technologies and Hitachi Maxell. The discs, known as holographic-memory discs, store information through light interference and are written to with a single flash of light, allowing for very high data transfer rates compared to current discs. The discs are slightly wider and thicker than DVDs and will require new specialized drives for reading and writing. According New Science "the technique could theoretically be used to store up to 1.6 terabytes of data on the same size of disc and to read data at 120 megabits per second. This is 340 times the capacity of an ordinary DVD and 20 times the data rate."

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found a non-invasive way to map areas of the brain that are affected by psychological stress. The method involves using magnetically "tagged" water in the subjects blood, which flows to the brain and is detected with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Dr. John A. Detre and his team found "an increase in blood flow to the prefrontal cortex in individuals subjected to stress... [which] remained when the stressor was removed, suggesting the effects of stress are more persistent than once thought." This may give new insight into a person's inability to 'get over' a traumatic event. The results of the study were published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online edition.

This just in from the isn't-that-cool department. Elumens has created a low-cost 3D immersive viewing system for individual users called the VisionStation. Three-dimensional immersive environments are useful for various research, education, and scientific visualization applications, particularly in the military and oil and gas industry, but most are huge, expensive systems that cost many thousands of dollars. These small concave screens are about the size of the average office desk, provide a 180 field of view, and are designed to be easily portable. It's like having your own personal IMAX theatre. Definitely something to put on your Christmas wish list your next research proposal.

Charles Darwin can't get any rest. Nearly a century and a half after his death, some people are still trying to poke holes into his theory of evolution. Now the American Museum of Natural History has created an exhibit and accompanying website that examines Darwin's life and work and takes issue with creationists' opposing "theories." The AMNH website takes on creationists' opposition to evolution, saying "Creationism, including Intelligent Design, does not offer a scientific alternative to the theory of evolution.... For 150 years since the publication of Darwin's "Origins of Species", the theory of evolution by natural selection has not been seriously challenged by any other scientific explanation." The exhibit reveals some interesting facts about the famous naturalist: Darwin was sent to Cambridge by his father to study to be a doctor then a clergyman. Darwin's idea of "survival of the fittest," often applied to economic theories, was in fact inspired in part by political economist Reverend Thomas Malthus' "Essay on Population." And he was not the first person to think up the idea of evolution--his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, once speculated about it, among others. In fact, the idea of evolution was speculated upon by many scientists at the time, but it took someone like Darwin, and his fortunate opportunity to sail on the H.M.S. Beagle, to gather up the data needed to support it. According to a Telegraph report, the AMNH could not find a single corporate sponsor to cover the cost of the $3 million exhibit and relied on private donors instead.

Since this seems to be National Bash Bush Week, we thought we'd join in the fun and take a look at the Bush administration's record on science. In 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report entitled "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: An Investigation into the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science." This report has been adapted for an online exhibit by Michael Douma and IDEA. It examines the Bushies' record of suppressing or doctoring research findings from federal agencies, particularly NOAA and the EPA, and selecting senior agency appointees on the basis of ideology and loyalty rather than their qualifications to comprehend and report on the science. According to the report, "William Ruckelshaus, the first EPA administrator under President Nixon, and his successor, Russell Train, have spoken out about the matter. Specifically, Ruckelshaus told the press, "Is the analysis flawed? That is a legitimate reason for not releasing [a science-based analysis]. But if you dont like the outcome that might result from the analysis, that is not a legitimate reason.'" Now if only someone would teach Bush how to pronounce "nuclear."

Early this year a group of student researchers from MIT posted the results of a study on the effectiveness of aluminum helmets to protect against unwanted mind-reading or mind-control from nefarious elements (i.e., the gub'ment). Quoting from their abstract: "Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason." Thankfully, the researchers offer improved design suggestions for protecting your brain against The Man. But according to self-described paranoid Lyle Zapato in a report published Nov. 11, "there are serious flaws in this study." Zapato suggests that the MIT study is "NWO propaganda designed to spread FUD against deflector beanie technology, and aluminum shielding in general, in order to disembeanie paranoids, leaving them open to mind control." Now the question is, should teachers be required to present both sides of the debate to schoolkids?