Today is the Ada Lovelace Day – An international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!). The aim of this day is to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. The idea is to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they did or still do.

For this reason I wanted to mention Dr Ada Yonath, a 2009 Chemistry Nobel prize winner. Dr Ada Yonath best known for her groundbreaking work on the structure of the ribosome. In 2009, she received recognition in the form of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her research on the structure and function of the ribosome, becoming the first Israeli woman to win the Nobel Prize, the first woman from the Middle East to win a Nobel prize in the sciences, and the first woman in 45 years to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Yonath focuses on the mechanisms underlying protein biosynthesis, by ribosomal crystallography, a research line she pioneered over twenty years ago despite considerable skepticism of the international scientific community. In 1980, she created the first ribosome crystals. Her idea for doing so was the use of robust ribosomes from thermophilic (heat-loving) and halophilic (salt-loving) bacteria. Ribosomes from these bacteria yield well-diffracting crystals, while ribosomes from E. coli and all other sources had failed to crystallize. Dr. Yonath was also a pioneer in the use of cryocrystallography–flash-freezing crystals–to minimize damage caused by intense X-rays.

Dr. Yonath’s record of innovative techniques and approaches continues today. In a recent paper, she used controlled heating and an mRNA analog to trigger protein biosynthesis in ribosomal crystals. She then preserved the activated ribosomal crystals using various chemical compounds.

Yonath accepted postdoctoral positions at the Carnegie Mellon University and MIT. In 1970, she established what was for nearly a decade the only protein crystallography laboratory in Israel. Then, from 1979 to 1984 she was a group leader with Heinz-Günter Wittmann at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. She was visiting professor at the University of Chicago in (1977-78). She headed a Max-Planck Institute Research Unit at DESY in Hamburg, Germany (1986–2004) in parallel to her research activities at the Weizmann Institute. Currently she is the director of the Helen and Milton A. Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

In a recent publication NASA warns that there may not be any more shuttle flight missions for at least a year. This is because of the continues fuel tank problems and damages from hurricane Katrina.

NASA’s Michoud facility in New Orleans has been affected by the recent storm.

According to a new analysis the world is fast approaching a new dark age. That is the conclusion of Jonathan Huebner, a physicist working at the Pentagon’s Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. He says the rate of technological innovation reached a peak a century ago and has been declining ever since. Huebner sees the end of innovation looming dead ahead. His study will be published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change.

The comparison between the foreseen future human technological advancement and the dark ages is all wrong. The lack of advancement and innovation in the dark ages was the result of external (theological) pressure and not because of technological difficulties. The inability to discover and innovate was not related to technology at all. While the rate of innovation may decline gradually until a new scientific breakthrough is reached the decline is not permanent and research will not be halted like it was during the dark ages.

The laws of physics seem to permit time travel, and with it, paradoxical situations such as the possibility that people could go back in time to prevent their own birth. But it turns out that such paradoxes may be ruled out by the weirdness inherent in laws of quantum physics.

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While the death toll of recent Tsunami in Southeast Asia now stands at more than 85,000 dead, scientists in Israel are starting to test a new method to predict earthquakes. To date, nobody has been able to predict earthquakes reliably enough and over short enough time scales to allow the evacuation of threatened cities. Some scientists have entirely lost faith in earthquake prediction. They say that so many factors decide whether a fault will rupture that earthquakes could well be inherently unpredictable in a practical sense.

The new research conducted by Akiva Flaxer, a geologist and geophysics professor at the University of Tel-Aviv, and Dr. Yossi Gutman from the Mekorot Company is based on changes in the water table. So far, in previous earthquakes, it’s been discovered that water start to rise soon before an earthquake. In an earthquake on February 11th water started to rise up to 4½ meters (14 feet) higher than their usual level 45 minutes before the quake hit. The same phenomenon was observed before two other minor quakes in July and August this year.

During this research specialized measuring equipment will be planted in 10 wells along the Jordan Rift Valley, which is part of the Syrian-African fault line, and other parts of Israel. Later researches will wait for the next several quakes in hopes they will all be minor ones to view how water tables change in the various wells. Though no major earthquake hit this area for a long time, the Syrian-African fault line that is the meeting point of the European, Asian and African platelet is prone to earthquakes in catastrophic levels.

Russian scientists are selecting volunteers to be locked in a capsule for 500 days to test plans for a trip to Mars.

A team of six men will be physically cut off from the outside world to test equipment intended to make them self-sufficient for long periods.

During the 500 Days study, the six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water. A doctor will accompany volunteers inside the module to treat illnesses and injuries. Volunteers will be allowed to quit the experiment only if they develop a severe ailment of psychological stress.

Their capsule will consist of a bedroom, a kitchen and a laboratory. The capsule’s own equipment should make all of the oxygen they need, repeatedly recycle three tones of water and grow some food to add to five tones of supplies packed inside.

NASA has been invited by Russian scientists to join in on the Mars mock mission, but a final decision by the U.S. space agency is pending, Guy Fogleman, NASA director of the Office of Biological and Physical Research’s Bioastronautics Research Division, told Russian reporters.

The 500 Days experiment will include only male volunteers. At the moment they have only two of their six volunteers and will not begin the mock-up mission until some time in 2006. So who wants to join the Big Brother RKA style?