Reliance on commercial launch services will provide many other benefits. It will open the doors to more people having the opportunity to go to space. It has the potential of creating thousands of new jobs, largely the kind of high-tech work to which our nation should aspire. In the same way the railroads opened the American West, commercial access can open vast new opportunities in space. All of this new activity will expand the space enterprise, and in doing so, will improve the economic competitiveness of our country.The pair make a strong argument for privatization of parts of the space program. And he's right -- Republicans should support such efforts.
A refinement of models first devised in the Netherlands, Galileo's slim, brown stick was puny even by the standards of something one might buy in a hobby shop today. But his eight-powered telescope, and the more powerful models he soon produced, when pointed skywards led Galileo to a series of groundbreaking conclusions.HT to Google, whose main-page logo commemorates the event.Technorati Tags: Galilei Galileo, Telescope
The moon was not, as long believed, completely smooth. Another planet, Jupiter, also had moons. Meanwhile Venus showed a range of moon-like phases, something which could not happen if both it and the sun orbited the Earth.
This latter phenomenon had been predicted by Nicolaus Copernicus when, nearly a century before, he had proposed the notion of a planetary system with the sun at the centre, not the Earth.
The NASA web site lists 128 hints for Project Managers. Although clearly written from a build perspective, all can be generalized to any industry.
There are lessons that most of us have learned the hard way:
To those that are obvious but bear repeating:
To tips and tricks:
To the obvious but humorous:
But my favorite has to be:
Amen!
Hat tip to Timothy M. Rooney, PMP, CPM via a LinkedIn posting.
Yet another study, this one performed with an MRI, suggests that even though your mouth can't taste the difference between Splenda and sugar, your brain can. The study indicates that while the brain's reward system is activated by the artificial sweetener, it isn't satiated, leading researchers to theorize that the artificial sweeteners don't lead to satisfying the craving. Moreover:
Recent research indeed suggests a correlation between artificial sweetener intake and compromised health. In one large survey, diet soda consumption was found to be associated with elevated cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk. A different study reveals a possible mechanism behind this effect: rats that were fed artificially sweetened yogurt in addition to their regular feed ended up eating more and gaining more weight than rats that ate yogurt with real sugar. The study’s authors suggest that exposure to an artificial sweetener may undermine the brain’s ability to track calories and to determine when to stop eating.
Eat (and drink) the real thing.
The little beauty pictured at right is a Scorpion, a 300-horsepower bit of technology that runs on gas and . . . wait for it . . . water.
That's right, the Scorpion carries a gas tank and a 1½-gallon water tank. An onboard unit splits water molecules and mixes the hydrogen with gasoline to create a 40% hydrogen/60% gasoline mix.
Not only does this unique approach give the vehicle at least 40 miles per gallon, the hydrogen consumes the carbon waste which further reduces emissions.
Although using hydrogen is not new, Ronn Motors is taking a new approach by producing the hydrogen on board, eliminating the need to find a gas/hydrogen station in the neighborhood:
This hydrogen on demand system uses dual computer processor controls to produce hydrogen and induct it through the air intake manifold as required, meaning there is no need for high pressure storage tanks or hydrogen fueling stations, just a small on board water tank. . . .
The Scorpion will feature a hand built carbon fiber body over a chrome-moly chassis powered by an Acura
V-Tech, V-6, Type S, 3.5 Liter power-plant with a close ratio six-speed transmission. Highway fuel economy is predicted to be in the 40 mpg range but there will be plenty of power when required - estimated at 289 horse in stock form but with a twin turbo option producing 450 hp. Other design highlight include Lamborghini
You can buy one beginning in December for a mere $150,000.
Let's see, if I get 20 additional miles to the gallon and drive 15,000 miles per year, I'll make up the difference in price of my current car in just 36.6 years.
Hmmm. I don't think AlphaWife will go for that one.
Imagine a contact lens with electronic circuitry and light emitting diodes embedded right in the soft, flexible surface.
That's just what the University of Washington has created.
Applications for this exciting new technology is seemingly unlimited. They are talking about heads up displays for use in everything from manufacturing to combat. Overlay displays to enhance the viewing experience of everything from watching a sporting event to visiting a foreign country("augmented reality").
They're talking about "bionic eye" capabilities, making it so you can magnify close objects or zoom in on distant events.
But there's even more:
"There is a large area outside of the transparent part of the eye that we can use for placing instrumentation," Parviz said. Future improvements will add wireless communication to and from the lens. The researchers hope to power the whole system using a combination of radio-frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens, Parviz said.
Contact lenses that talk to the computer you are wearing. It's a brave new world, my friends.
The heck with flying cars. I want a bionic eye!
Darpa-funded scientists have discovered that snorting a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin (via nasal spray) reverses the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys.
The monkeys were deprived of sleep for 30 to 36 hours and then given either orexin A or a saline placebo before taking standard cognitive tests. The monkeys given orexin A in a nasal spray scored about the same as alert monkeys, while the saline-control group was severely impaired.
The study, published in the Dec. 26 edition of The Journal of Neuroscience, found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look "awake" in PET scans.
Just think, a couple of snorts in the morning and the all-nighter you just pulled won't affect your performance the next day. Sign me up!
"We have these other precedents, and it's not clear that you can't use orexin A temporarily to reduce sleep," said Siegel. "On the other hand, you'd have to be a fool to advocate taking this and reducing sleep as much as possible."
Call me a fool, but I think sleep is a gigantic waste of time. Another 8 or 9 hours of life added back every single day. Hell yeah. Maybe I could find the time to study for my certifications.
Imagine an America without the interference of the FEC. Thanks to Harry Reid, we may actually achieve that dream -- at least for a little while.
Lorie Byrd is beginning to get excited about Fred Thompson again.
A new Senate minority report lists over 400 scientists that have the doubts about Gorebal Warming.
A star-studded USO show is in the midst of a six-day, 14-show tour. Entertainers include Robin Williams, Lance Armstrong, Kid Rock, comedian Lewis Black and Miss USA Rachel Smith. Stops include Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Europe.
Meanwhile, Oscar-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave paid half of the legal fees required to release suspected al-Qa'ida operative Jamil el-Banna from Guantanamo Bay. El-Banna is said to have distributed propaganda produced by Osama bin Laden and helped run a cell called the Islamic Alliance, recruiting people to fight jihad in Afghanistan and Indonesia. Redgrave said it was her "profound honor" to help release the accused terrorist. The irony is that el-Banna will probably be extradited to Spain where he will face up to 15 years in prison for running an al-Qa'ida cell within Spain's borders.
Ooops, looks like dark chocolate may not be so good for you after all.
An astroid some 50 yards across (about the size of the one that hit Siberia in 1908 and wiped out 60 million trees) might be slamming into Mars next month, near the site where rover Opportunity is still operating. "Speeding at 8 miles a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is nearly a mile wide and was created by an object roughly 50 yards across 50,000 years ago." This is of particular interest to me because I, along with my son and brother, visited Meteor Crater last October.
What happens when you seal a half-empty bottle of water at 6,000 feet, and then drive to 242 feet below sea level?
It gets a little crushed, of course.
And who says physics isn't fun?
The best thing since aluminum and Teflon, "frozen smoke". Aerogel will do everything from clean up oil spills to being the key to innovative space suits for Mars.
Speaking of Mars, a new look at the samples collected by Viking 30 years ago suggest that there may be microbes in the soil, possibly based on hydrogen peroxide.
What of life in space? Physicists have discovered inorganic space dust can organize and interact in ways that mimic biological molecules.
Scientists have extracted 8-million-year-old bacterium from the oldest known ice on earth and have succeeded in making it grow in the laboratory. [Just what I need, yet another reason to need to wash my hands every two hours.]
Frictionless nano-machines by reversing the Casmir force.
Four large galaxies have been spotted colliding, which will yield a single galaxy up to 10 times larger than our own.
Two German scientists claim they have made light travel, well . . . faster than the speed of light by using quantum tunneling. Not so fast, says ars technic, because in their analysis the claim is "silly".
Speaking of growing things, we may be on a path to regenerate brain cells.
Want to avoid cancer? Get some sun! Researchers say just ten minutes per day of soaking in a few rays would give people enough Vitamin D to stop 30,000 cases of breast and colon cancer in Britain alone. [Makes sense to me. We didn't evolve in a cave, ya know.]
Women are from . . . the Pink Planet. Turns out that girls liking pink and boys liking blue may be genetic.
Brush your teeth with chocolate. Really. The white crystalline powder that is extracted from Cocoa, helps harden teeth enamel, making users less susceptible to tooth decay and may be more effective than fluoride. [Which is great, 'cause I never was comfortable with brushing my teeth with rat poison.]
Speaking of sweets, an Australian scientist has found that adding a plant sugar called inulin to flu vaccine makes them 50 to 100 times more effective. [If true, we can say bye-bye Birdie to the bird flu!]
Running water through windows on those big glass office towers reduces cooling costs up to 70%. [Who knows what vistas this could open up, maybe some green dye on St. Patrick's Day, red dye at Christmas? What happens if a window in one of those massive office towers springs a leak on Easter? The streets would be awash with bright blue water!]
A paper-thin, flexible, bio-degradable battery. Not only can it be wrapped around electronics and stuffed into weirdly-shaped spaces, there are very real medical applications.
Concrete that changes color when an electrical current is applied. [Cool pic of a digital clock embedded in a concrete wall.]
A cardboard bridge has been built in France. [Gee, you wouldn't think the French would be that clever. Oh wait . . . the architect is Shigeru Ban, the Japanese guy that built the paper church.]
At least, a recent study suggests that aspartame (APM), which is the primary ingredient in today's diet drinks due to the hysteria over saccharine, will do so:
The results of this mega-experiment indicate that APM is a multipotential carcinogenic agent, even at a daily dose of 20 mg/kg body weight, much less than the current acceptable daily intake. On the basis of these results, a reevaluation of the present guidelines on the use and consumption of APM is urgent and cannot be delayed.
... to create human stem cells, according to Japan’s leading genetics researcher:
The potential of Professor Yamanaka’s breakthrough work – in which the skin cells of laboratory mice were genetically manipulated back to their embryonic state – has been hailed as the equivalent of “transforming lead into gold”. If the research develops in the way he hopes, runs the excited logic, the ethical problems that have swirled around embryonic stem-cell research would disappear.
Turns out that the girly embrace-your-emotions-through-therapy claptrap that liberals have been shoving down our throats since the 60s is bad for you:
... girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed. ...
“When girls co-ruminate, they’re spending such a high percentage of their time dwelling on problems and concerns that it probably makes them feel sad and more hopeless about the problems because those problems are in the forefront of their minds. Those are symptoms of depression,” Rose said. “In terms of anxiety, co-ruminating likely makes them feel more worried about the problems, including about their consequences. Co-rumination also may lead to depression and anxiety because it takes so much time – time that could be used to engage in other, more positive activities that could help distract youth from their problems. This is especially true for problems that girls can’t control, such as whether a particular boy likes them, or whether they get invited to a party that all of the popular kids are attending.”
Talk about your problems, get depressed. Be a man and repress your emotions, push them deep down inside where they can't hurt anybody, and you get on with your life.
This is supported by the findings that boys who talked to friends about their problems did not exhibit anxiety or depression. Why? I suspect that it's because boys don't get on the phone for hours and obsess about their problems. We'd rather go play football.
Liberals. Bah!
It must be Junk Science Thursday: a study shows that black women who feel that they regularly encounter racial discrimination are more likely to develop breast cancer than their peers, especially in those under 50.
In other words, if Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton hadn't been making the entire black population feel like victims, then there wouldn't be as many black women with breast cancer. But because they have been, black women are victims — of cancer.
In Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "42" was the answer to the ultimate question, of Life, the Universe and Everything. The answer was calculated by hypercomputer Deep Thought, after thinking about it for a mere 7.5 million years.
In a somewhat bizarre coincidence, an international group of astronomers have determined that the universe weighs three times 10 to the power of 42 kilograms — a number written as 3 followed by 42 zeroes.
Cool Invention: We just bought a Dyson vacuum, and it is indeed a superior product. Now Dyson has come up with a better way to dry your hands. Cool.
Cloaking: Lenses that bend light "the wrong way" could lead to an invisibility shield — or maybe just better glasses.
Now that's black! How about a surface that reflects no light.
Self-healing plastic skin: next stop, robots that bleed.
Synthetic Life: Scientists have created a new life by transferring genetic material from one bacterium into another. Once perfected, it is hoped that they can create custom microbes designed to produce fuel or eat up oil spills.
Ancient Rome -- digitally restored.
Faster Ocean Waves: Global warming is making "planetary waves" move faster. Sounds like a good source of energy, to me.
Fast Matter: Scientists have clocked matter shooting out of a dying star at 99.999% the speed of light.
No Black Holes? The event horizon of black holes contradicts quantum mechanics, and two researchers think they can explain what really happens: black holes are really just black stars.
3 Petaflops: IBM's Blue Gene/P supercomputer can do 3 quadrillion operations a second, or 3 petaflops. It can do 1 petaflop continuously in real-world operations.
Air Muscles: Japanese robot maker Squse unveiled a robotic hand weighing only 14 ounces with five human-sized fingers and artificial fibres that can be controlled by air pressure delicately enough to pick up an egg without breaking it.
DARPA Arms: But DARPA is overseeing the development of prosthetics that give feedback for pressure and eventually even temperature.
Tetrachromat: Some women may have four colour receptors rather than the usual three.
Blood Pressure Vaccine: A Swiss company claims to have a vaccine that combats high blood pressure. Just a shot every six months.
Marijuana Works: A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial indicates that pot helps HIV-positive patients gain weight, is well tolerated and does not impair cognitive performance. Think anyone stubbornly fighting medical marijuana is listening? Me either.
HIV Hope: Two advances in the multi-billion dollar War on AIDS. First, scientists have engineered an enzyme that appears to attack and remove the HIV virus from an infected cell. Second, there are prostitutes in Nairobi that are immune to HIV. Research indicates the women have unique protein molecules that help cells identify foreign invaders.
Fantastic Voyage: Israeli scientists have created a tiny robot that can navigate through tubes the width of human veins and arteries. It crawls along with tiny arms, and could even go upstream. A nice idea, but it's a long way from medical deployment.
Nuclear Rockets: A scientist says using nuclear rockets will mean building the moonbase in 9 trips instead of 12 and will save $4.5 billion. A few modifications on the 40-year-old technology would mean not "spewing radioactivity" on Earth.
Opportunity Descending: Mars rover Opportunity is about to crawl into Victoria crater. It has been investigating from the rim since last September. Watch a cool NASA animation about the crater.
Smart Cooking: A new theory says cooking meat made our ancestor's brains bigger. Way to go Homo erectus!
Giant Penguins roamed the earth 40 million years ago in Peru.
Erectus Rising: Speaking of Homo erectus, it is thought that our ancestor starting settling down about 10,000 years ago. But a German professor claims to have evidence that this actually started happening about 400,000 years ago. That changes everything.
Kitty Roots: Research indicates that domestic cats came from wild cats that interbred over 100,000 years ago in the Middle East. All I know is that if I see any of my cats facing east six times a day, I'm going to shoot the little bastard. That's all I need, a furry terrorist under my own roof. Careful, they're cunning!
Bad Burqa: God created us naked for a reason. Turns out that Muslim women who cover themselves completely are deficient in vitamin D, which others get from the sun. In other words, strict Islam makes women sick.
Hatshepsut Found: In the "find of the century", the 3,000-year-old mummy of Queen Hatshepsut has been found. Hatshepsut was Egypt's most powerful female ruler, often appearing in a fake beard.
Peanut Butter Diamonds: Yes, it's possible to squeeze and heat peanut butter until it turns into a diamond. But this isn't really news — we've been doing it for the last 50 years.
Changing Stripes: A tiger may not be able to change its stripes, but Jupiter can. New images from the Hubble and the spacecraft New Horizons. And speaking of stripes, this is the strangest looking zorse, ever.
Which pic is cooler? The very real shot of a White Bengal Tiger going for a swim?
[Click the link to see all the full-sized pics and watch a video.] HT to Digg.
Or this rather fanciful shot of battling squirrels with light sabers?
[Click the link to see the full-sized pic.]
Hurricanes and typhoons distribute the Earth's heat more than allowed for in current weather models, moderating the warming trend and driving yet another stake into the heart of Gore's convenient lie.
Nazi Adolf Eichmann's Passport Found in Argentina after a judge found it in a musty old court file.
Imagine a plant that can be 20 ft wide and 6 ft tall but only has two leaves, each of which can be up to 80 ft long. This guy grows in one particular desert and can live to be 2,000 years old! It's called a welwitschia and is arguably the ugliest (but most unique) plant on Earth. [via Digg]
Cool, low-mass stars called red dwarfs account for 75% of the stars in the Milky Way, and their planets could be more hospitable to life than previously believed.
Astronomers have determined that a super-massive black hole at the center of the galaxy is spinning at least 98.7% of the maximum spin rate allowable by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Now that's fast.
The tech blogs are buzzing with the announcement of Microsoft's Surface computer.
The coffee-table shaped device is exactly that -- a table on which you can place objects (cell phones, wireless cameras, PDAs) which the device recognizes and connects with, as well as a 30-inch touch screen that accepts input from multiple points at once.
Six years in the making, it will be priced between $5K and $10K. So you'll be initially seeing this at hotels, casinos and retail outlets (you'll be able to use it to help pick out a phone at T-Mobile stores). But as with all technology, prices will drop soon making this the next cool toy for all the guys.
Watch this video from Popular Mechanics to see just how cool (click on the link for a larger version):
This is not only a radical new technology (new to the consumer world, anyway), it is a new approach to product development and marketing by Microsoft.
Microsoft Watch declares that Surface signals a sea change in how Microsoft does business:
Surface, which was developed in part by Microsoft Research, is coming to market from the Entertainment and Devices division—the same folks responsible for the Xbox and Zune. At least in the early years, Microsoft will provide the basic end-to-end hardware and software. There will be plenty of third-party software developer opportunities, as with Xbox and Xbox Live, but much less for hardware. Microsoft has no immediate plans to license Surface to other manufacturers.
In a separate article, Joe Wilcox applauds Microsoft's marketing of the product:
The blog and broader news media reaction to this announcement will be interesting. If Jobs had made the announcement, it would have been heralded as another breathtaking Apple innovation—that "one more thing"—that sets the company apart from others. Will Microsoft get as much fanfare or credit? Probably not. Should Microsoft deserve big buzz as innovator. Probably yes.
One parting thought: "Home 2.0" — you heard it here first, folks.
The results of a St. Jude study:
The researchers found that childhood leukemia survivors faced 13.5 times more threat of developing other types of cancers than the general population.
Research at St. Jude indicates that some people may be immune to Bird Flu, perhaps because of seasonal flu shots.
Courtesy of NASA, a historical perspective on global warming. In the following graphs, the dotted line represents the present global average temperature of about 15° C (59° F) [which is far too cold for my taste].
It looks like we are coming out of an ice age, an event that happens about once every 100,000 years.
A closer look at just the last ten thousand years or so (modern times, in geological terms) reinforces this perspective.
Note that while the birth of man predates the beginning of the Holocene epoch by more than a hundred thousand years, it is this period that saw modern man's transition from a tribal savage to the builder of civilizations. The natural warming cycle created an environment that was favorable to Homo sapiens sapiens' success.
Zooming in even closer shows that even with our huge belching factories and miles of chugging SUVs, we haven't managed to bring up the temperature to when dudes used to ride around in steel suits and heavy wool underwear:
The most recent small drop in average temperature caused the Little Ice Age of 1500-1700 AD, which history describes. Mountain glaciers advanced in Europe and rivers like the Thames in England froze solid, which doesn't happen now.
Hmmm, I wonder if the fact that the sun is warming again up has anything to do with our little temperature "problem". I heard a rumor that the sun somehow influences our weather.
Image from Global Warming Art.com, which notes:
It is widely believed that the low solar activity during the Maunder Minimum and earlier periods may be among the principle causes of the Little Ice Age. Similarly, the Modern Maximum is partly responsible for global warming, especially the temperature increases between 1900 and 1950. Residual warming due to the sustained high level of activity since 1950 is believed responsible for 16 to 36% of recent warming.
Hat Tip to Say Anything, who quips:
It’s almost like the globe has been getting warmer and colder for hundreds of thousands of years with or without humans being around to cause problems.
Weird huh?
Update: Yet another scientist questions the models used for calculating man's impact, saying that cosmic rays have a larger impact than previously believed. Hat Tip to Bill Hobbs, who links to yet another explanation.
Marketing Stunt Terrorizes Boston. Chaos Ensues! Mayor Furious!
Boston authorities shut down a highway and turned out the bomb squads on fears of terrorism after spotting a "slew of blinking electronic signs" on bridges and other high-profile spots across the city.
Yep, that dangerous looking milkshake in LED looks like a terrorist to me!
Of course, the signs turned out to be nothing more than a creative advertising campaign for "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a cartoon about a group of mystery-solving fast food items to be shown on Cartoon Network TV. Still, the mayor is threatening to sue Turner Broadcasting.
BTW, which Aqua Teen Hunger Force character are you? (I'm Master Shake)
Al Franken to run for Senate
Speaking of terror, rumor has it that failed radio mogul Al Franken is going to run for the US Senate in Minnesota, taking on incumbent Norm Coleman.
The news was not unexpected. Franken has been calling members of the Minnesota congressional delegation for their input on a run and he announced this week he would be leaving his show on Air America Radio on Feb. 14. He told listeners he would be making a decision on a race soon.
The only stunning news in all this is that Franken still has listeners.
BTW, Franken's political action committee is the "Midwest Values PAC", which (according to OpenSecrets.org) seems to rake in the most money from NY, CA, OR, WA, and in general every but the Midwest!
Look at the size of that tumor. It's huge!*
A woman kept telling the doctors that her weight gain wasn't due to her eating habits. Diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, Taquela Hilton finally got a doctor to listen after at least 12 years.
The result was an operation that removed a 93 pound benign tumor - an ovarian cyst.
* Said in your best "Tiny Elvis" voice
Idiotic Headline of the Day
Bush, Dems Have Different Economic Views
Hey Planet Earth, Put a Cork In IT!
Volcanic pressure in Indonesia has been pushing out mud since May of last year, displacing 10,000 people and closing 20 factories. And it doesn't show any signs of slowing.
To stop it, geophysicists are going to drop 4,000 concrete balls that have been chained together in sets of four into the volcano's mouth. Even they don't think they can stop the flaming-hot mud's progress all together, but hope to create enough "friction" as the mud has to navigate through the barrier to significantly slow the flow. Says one "scientist":
It will make the mud tired. We're killing the mud softly.
Uh-huh. Sounds more like using BB's to stop a fire hose to me. This is the volcanic force of the planet Earth we're talking about here — the same forces that move tectonic plates around.
Milk Beer
When the United States gets a surplus of milk, our government turns to subsidies to prop up the dairy farmers. In Japan, an innovative liquor store owner turned his region's excess milk inventory into beer, soon to be marketed under the brand name "Bilk".
I wonder how it'll taste on cereal?
A new study indicates that participating in online prayer groups often results in better mental health for the patient. According to Bret Shaw, author of the study, this is the first study that focused on the psychological effects of such behavior:
From a psychological standpoint, there are a variety of reasons why cancer patients may benefit from prayer - whether on the Internet or elsewhere. In reviewing the messages, some of the most common ways study participants used religion to cope with their illness included putting trust in God about the course of their illness and consequently feeling less stressed, believing in an afterlife and therefore being less afraid of death, finding blessings in their lives and appraising their cancer experience in a more constructive religious light.
In pigs, that is. Tiny pigs, at that:
Using stem cells harvested from the extracted wisdom teeth of young adults, researchers have successfully generated tooth root and supporting tooth ligaments to support a crown restoration in experiments using miniature pigs.
Note that this was another ADULT stem cell success. No baby pigs were killed to grow these teeth.
Imagine walking into a room and your cell phone starts charging — without even taking it out of your pocket. It's called "evanescent coupling":
The current travels round the circuit, generating a magnetic field as it passes through the inductor loop and an electric field as it passes through the capacitor. This pulsing magnetic field extends up to 5 metres around the device.
The magnetic field created by the wireless charger is relatively weak, meaning it consumes little power. However, if a mobile gadget fitted with a similar circuit, with the same resonant frequency, is brought into the room, the charger's magnetic field induces an electric current in the gadget's inductor loop.
So a little ol' cell phone causes brain tumors, yet we're supposed to walk around in magnetic fields all day?
Stem cell research has led to the creation of an RNA-blocking drug that helped dogs with muscular dystrophy to walk again. The drug is now in clinical trials.
Oh yeah, and the stem cells? They're adult stem cells.
Your Tax Dollars at Work: University of Portland professor Bret Tobalske was in France writing about hummingbirds when he got word that the US government is giving him $360,000 to continue research in how hummingbird's flight differs from other birds and insects.
Tobalske says his research has already disproved the myth that hummingbird flight mimics that of insects. Instead, he found they can hover and fly so well thanks to a downstroke of their wings that appears unique to their species.
And why is the government interested in Tobalske's research? 
Because, Tobalske says, the Feds told him that they want to build a "robotic aircraft that can hover with the stability of a hummingbird."
Uh, yeah, 'cause building planes that have mechanisms that work like birds have worked out so well in the past.
Purple Tomatoes may be coming your way soon. Oregon State professors are working on a hybrid between the fruit you know and a South American species that contains the same phytochemical found in blueberries that is thought to reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease.
Hundreds of years ago, explorers discovered purple tomatoes in the wild, but the species never made it to the table because the fruit was small and some were poisonous, as all tomatoes once were thought to be.
Anti-Pygmalion: 
In tests, women who were told that men and women were equally capable of performing math scored better than women who were told that there are environmental reasons why females aren't very good at math (like teachers paying more attention to boys).
Women who are told that girls just aren't as good as boys when it comes to math did worse of all, getting only half as many questions right as those in the best group.
The study was about how stereotypes affect performance and did not explore if there is any basis for the stereotype.
Life Sans Sun: Several species of bacteria have been discovered 3 to 4 kilometers underground in a South African gold mine, the first known organisms to live totally independent of the sun. Living in water that has been trapped underground for 20 million years, the bacteria uses high-energy hydrogen gas created by radiation hitting the water molecules:
The bacteria exploit this hydrogen gas to turn sulphate (SO4) molecules from the rock into hydrogen sulphide (H2S). It is the energy-trapping equivalent of photosynthesis. The energy of radiation, which makes hydrogen gas energetic enough to form these bonds, replaces the energy of the Sun.
Woody Plastic: Scientists are extracting nonocrystals of cellulose from wood. Adding just one ounce of nonocrystals to a pound of plastic results in a plastic that is 3,000 times stronger and degrades easier in landfills. The work may lead to advances in ceramics and in biomedical applications such as artificial joints and disposable medical equipment.
Koreans Killing Cancer: South Korean scientists say they have genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold so that it quickly and effectively targets and kills cancer cells, leaving normal cells untouched.
Following three rounds of injections, more than 90 percent of cancer cells in the brains, liver, lungs and womb of mice disappeared within 60 days, the team said.
Clinical tests will be carried out early next year and last 18 months, Yun said.
Not so fast, says Dr. Colleen Sweeny, a professor of Molecular Medicine and researcher at the UC Davis Cancer Center. She says the study may be flawed and, worse yet, the virus may actually promote the cancer's ability to metastasize in humans.
Ant Navigation: 
Now we know just how ants navigate. The first trip to a pile of nasty goodness, the ant follows a chemical trail laid down by a scout. But this is a slow way to travel, necessitating walking with antennae to the ground.
The ant takes note of landmarks (a remarkable feat, given their poor eyesight) and on subsequent trips the ant uses a combination of landmarks and memories of the whole landscape. And they use different landmarks depending on whether they are on their way to the food or are full and on their way back:
To show that ants use visual memory to navigate we trained ants to find food 10cm from a cylinder. We then doubled the size of the cylinder and the ants searched for the food at 20cm away where the retinal size of the landmark was the same
Technorati tags: Science and Technology, Hummingbirds, Wasting Taxpayer Dollars, Ants, Cancer, Medicine, Bacteria.
How about a virus-detecting napkin that changes color when it detects pathogens like E. Coli or the bird flu? Or a bacteria killing mouse for your computer?
Glad you're smart? You should be, because geniuses are "less prone to hangovers". You may be thinking that this must be why college kids party so much, but you'd be wrong:
The researchers suspect people with high IQ scores suffer fewer hangovers because they respond better to advice not to binge drink.
Speaking of geniuses, how 'bout those clever French! They have performed the first weightless operation on a human. Uh, that is, not having a decent space program of their own, they performed near-weightless surgery in intervals of 22 seconds as the aircraft they were in soared and dived so they could pretend that they had a space program. Yep, they removed a "yellow growth". Impressive.
The Mars rover Opportunity has traveled more than six miles and stands at the precipice of a crater 200 feet deep and a half mile across. Scientists call the find a "geologist's dream come true."
Bad news for those hoping to one day meet a Martian. New interpretations of data collected from the Viking landers in the 70s suggest that life as we know it may be impossible on Mars due to tiny things like peroxide snows:
All in all, he said, "the intense ultraviolet exposure, the low temperatures, the lack of water and the oxidants in the soil would make it difficult for any microbe to survive on Mars."
In one of their papers, Delory and his colleagues demonstrate that the electrical fields generated in storms and smaller tornadoes - called dust devils - could split carbon dioxide and water molecules apart, allowing them to recombine as hydrogen peroxide or more complicated superoxides. All of these oxidants react readily with and destroy other molecules, including organic molecules that are associated with life.
A second paper, co-authored by Delory, demonstrates that these oxidants could form and reach such concentrations near the ground during a storm that they would condense into falling snow, contaminating the top layers of soil.
DVE stands for Digital Video Eyewear and it is already here, as Popular Science tells us:
Connect your device to a personal-display headset, and movies will appear on a virtual three-foot screen that seems to float several feet in front of your face.
The goggles let you watch movies from media players, phones and laptops; they can also show films in stereoscopic 3-D.
Pictured at right is the DV920, a "home theatre experience that fits in your pocket!" according to the vendor. Yours for only $499 from Icuiti.
If blocking out reality makes you nervous, try the PD-20 series from Lumus. The PD stands for Personal Display and it certainly is personal -- the display is beamed right into your eye.
But while potential applications include everything from watching movies to viewing technical diagrams while working on equipment, they're not yet being touted as replacements for computer monitors.
Too bad. Imagine being able to put your laptop in your shirt pocket, wearing your monitor on your eye glasses and setting up your virtual keyboard on the conference table when you go to meetings. Add a Bluetooth earpiece and you are in nerdvana!
After more than 3 1/2 years, the American space program resumes.
Atlantis carried one of the heaviest payloads ever launched into space - a 17 1/2 ton truss section that will be added to the half-built space station. It includes two solar arrays that will produce electricity for the orbiting outpost.
The astronauts will make three spacewalks during the 11-day flight to install the $372 million addition.
"In terms of spacewalk tasks, clearly these are the most complicated spacewalk and assembly tasks that ever have been done before," said Wayne Hale, NASA shuttle program manager.
The crew consists of five Americans and a Canuck.
Watch the launch video. It's a happy sight!
I was privileged to hear Robert Loudom, a genetics researcher at the University of Memphis, speak tonight on the topic of When Does Life Begin. Favorite quote:
We've had rat embryonic stem cells for over 25 years and nobody has ever cured a rat of anything.
One other item that I noted: he said that recently he received word of the 75th condition that had been cured as a result of adult stem cells, while none have been cured with embryonic stem cells.
Technorati tags: Stem Cell Research, Embryonic Stem Cells, Adult Stem Cells, Medical Science.
A EuroRocket got to the moon yesterday:
"That's it - we are in the Lake of Excellence," said Octavio Camino, chief of spacecraft operations, as applause broke out in the European Space Agency's mission control center in Darmstadt. "We have landed."
Well . . . yeah . . . if by "landing" you mean smacking into something at 7,200 kilometers an hour, then they landed.
So ends a 3-year test of ion propulsion. Now that they've figured out how to get something up there, maybe they'll start working on the brakes.
Technorati tags: European Union, EU, Space Program, Landing on the Moon, Pelting Luna with Eurotrash.
In a large epidemiological study, researchers found that people who drank three or more servings of fruit and vegetable juices per week had a 76 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who drank juice less than once per week.
Read all about it at FuturePundit.
Technorati tags: Health Care, Alzheimers.
Two Russian journalists claim to have cooked an egg using two cell phones. Great Fun Place has the details with pictures.
Don't marry a career woman! Professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. And even "feminists" are happier when the man brings home the biggest paycheck!
Got Carpel Tunnel? It may be a sign of impending diabetes. A UK study shows that the problem can predate the onset of diabetes by up to 10 years.
For 50 years Detroit has been experiencing white flight, and now blacks are following suit. For first time, Detroit's black population falls. "The numbers suggest Detroit may be at the start of a black exodus rivaling that of whites after World War II." Most worrying is that it's middle-class blacks that are leaving and they are the ones sustaining the city.
Lordy, lordy! Who woke up Al Sharpton?
Many black youths fall under a spell of "gangster mentality," preventing them from becoming leaders and making a positive impact in politics, the Rev. Al Sharpton said.
The civil rights activist faulted Hollywood and the record industry for making "gangsterism" seem cool and acceptable.
"I think we've allowed a whole generation of young people to feel that if they're focused, they're not black enough. If they speak well and act well, they're acting white, and there's nothing more racist than that."
I think he's channeling Bill Cosby!
When Mannequins attack! A California woman (of course) is suing JC Penney because as a sales assistant took a blouse off the ferocious mannequin, the arm "flew off" and struck the dingbat lady in the head. This is one magical arm: not only did it gash her scalp, it also allegedly cracked a molar and left the woman with recurring shoulder pain. This is in California, folks. I wonder, did the store have a license for a "deadly dummy" license and, if so, did they comply with those strict trigger arm lock rules?
Woman goes to San Fran to protest the impending liberation of Iraq, woman (and a friend) stands on the upper deck of a bus, woman (nor friend) doesn't see Broadway Tunnel signs, woman's head slams into ceiling of tunnel, woman (and a friend) dies, woman's family sues. Tragic, yes, but doesn't this just reek of hippiedom?
The vehicle was a former school bus topped by the joined upper sections of two Volkswagen vans with sunroofs, the court said. Its height was 12 feet, 10 1/2 inches.
Canning and several other passengers were standing in the upper level, their heads through the sunroofs, when the bus entered the tunnel's nearly 20-foot-high west end under Hyde Street. At the eastern exit, which dips abruptly to 13 feet, 6 inches, she and Anthony Hernandez, 43, of Woodacre, were fatally injured when their heads struck the ceiling.
Thankfully, the court threw out the family's suit.
And while we're on the subject of courts doing the right thing (a subject rarely discussed), a federal judge in Oklahoma (Bush by 32 points) ruled that a Ten Commandments monument did not have to be removed from a courthouse lawn. The ACLU lawyer described the decision as "a loss for religious freedom".
From the "good news, bad news" department, far fewer Vietnam veterans suffered from combat stress than previously thought. A study in the 80s indicated that as many as 1 in 3 combat vets suffered from PTSD, whereas a new study puts this number at 1 in 5. The bad news, of course, is the 20 percent that did suffer the condition and the fact that 9 percent are still suffering over 30 years after the war.
Wanna kiss your cousin but are afraid of the stigma? Only in America, it seems -- and only in 24 states. John Stossel informs us that the genetic risks are minimal and worldwide 20 percent of all married couples are cousins:
The laws date back hundreds of years to the time when the Catholic Church campaigned against cousin marriages because in the Bible Leviticus says, "none of you shall approach to any that is near of kin."
Yet another reason I'm glad I'm a man:
According to research, attractive parents are 26% more likely to have a daughter than a son as their first child. It is an inexorable process that has resulted in women becoming increasingly more attractive than men.
This is because of differing “evolutionary strategies” that each sex has adopted to survive, claim researchers at the London School of Economics.
While reproductive success for males depends largely on the status of the father (as sons from higher-status families inherit their position and are in turn able to protect and invest in their offspring), daughters’ reproductive successes mostly depend on their youth and attractiveness. ...
He said the phenomenon was rooted in men’s natural promiscuity, noting: “Females can only reproduce so many times in their lives whereas for men, theoretically, the limit is all of the females in the world times the number of reproductive opportunities (those females) have.”
Now if only we can stop ugly people from kicking out kids . . .
[HT to Just Call me Linda]Gritty rats and mice living in sewers and farms seem to have healthier immune systems than their squeaky clean cousins that frolic in cushy antiseptic labs, two studies indicate.In the UK, playgrounds have been made so safe that kids would rather play "in dangerous areas such as railway lines and roadsides":The lesson for humans: Clean living may make us sick.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents believes places to play should be exciting and stimulating to contribute to youngsters' physical and psychological development. ...And don't put kids in childcare!He warned that parents have to accept children may get hurt while playing. ...
"If the play area is not exciting and stimulating, children are going to play somewhere else," he added.
Younger children with stay-at-home parents have a better chance of healthy emotional and behavioural development than some children in formal care, a national study has found.
But a Mexican epidemiologist believes that it was a native hemorrhagic virus (think Ebola, Marburg or Lassa), probably spread by rodents during particularly wet years, that repeatedly swept through the native population.
Excellent article, from a tip received from non-blogging Advised by Wolves.
Mining 2002 data, it noted that even then, more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age. By the time students reach college nowadays, they're already apt to know about these drugs, obtained with or without a prescription.The article refers to Provigil, which is the American brand name for modafinil. You may recall that the military is experimenting with modafinil for long missions.
I used to drag around due to unexplained insomnia, but now have a prescription for Provigil. The great thing about this drug is that it not only make you more awake when you are awake, it actually increases REM sleep when you sleep, thus reducing the number of hours that you must spend in bed each night.
One day perhaps I'll post my experience like this journalist at Slate but for now I will just say that modafinil is the best drug since novocaine and I have a whole new lease on life. The only bad thing about it is that I have to be grateful to the French; they invented it in the late 70's.
Technorati Tags: Provigil, Alertec, Vigicer, Modalert, Smart Pills, Insomnia.
Kerry Watch: The hubris of a billionaire's self defense fund.
Economy Watch: US Steelmakers are expecting robust demand for the rest of the year, making it the third year in a row that demand has remained strong.
Tax Watch: It looks like Republican lawmakers will succeed in extending some of the tax cuts for another year or two.
UN Watch: U.N. peacekeepers, aid workers and teachers are having sex with Liberian girls as young as 8 in return for money, food or favors.
MSM Watch: The New York Times has once again been caught plagerizing.
Illegal Alien Watch: An Arizona sheriff is using an old tactic to find and arrest those entering our country illegally: posses.
Health Watch: Cancer resistant mice have been discovered. "When white blood cells from the mice are injected into other mice, they eradicate advanced tumours and provide lifetime protection against the disease. ... Even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with very large tumours were eradicated."
Looney Watch: PETA has launched an ad campaign in which PETA President and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk is quated as saying, "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it." [One supposes the same goes for cancer.]
Fun Facts for Lefties: Fidel Castro is apparently worth $900 million and ranked seventh on the Forbes magazine list of wealthy heads of state.
Can't wait to try this at work tomorrow. Maybe I'll kick the Dew habit.
Update: So much for that. After 15 minutes of "too much coffee" I am still dragging and more than a little irritated at listening to a monotone for that long. Other settings fared no better. I know that I may have wrecked part of my auditory range by listening to a lot of loud music in my youth, but I just don't think this works (nor does a younger, more sedate colleague after listening for a few minutes). Now excuse me, gotta pop a Dew for my morning caffeine and then order new speakers for my car— I sorta blew mine out on Metallica, Ozzie and Ramstein.
| Country | IQ | Country | IQ | |
| Germany | 107 | Spain | 98 | |
| Netherlands | 107 | Hungary | 98 | |
| Poland | 106 | Russia | 96 | |
| Sweden | 104 | Greece | 95 | |
| Italy | 102 | France | 94 | |
| Austria | 101 | Romania | 94 | |
| Switzerland | 101 | Turkey | 90 | |
| Britain | 100 | Serbia | 89 | |
| Belgium | 99 |
Of course, there's other applications as well:
Professor Lynn ascribes the differences between British and French intelligence levels to the results of military conflict.Of course, that whole north/south thing doesn't exactly apply here in the States. After all, we're a melting pot and evolution doesn't apply for a country just a couple of centuries old. Of course, a whole lot of French settled down around New Orleans and we all saw what happened to those guys . . .He described it as "a hitherto unrecognised law of history" that "the side with the higher IQ normally wins, unless they are hugely outnumbered, as Germany was after 1942".
But wait, there's more! The Brits do pretty well in another category:
Britain does well in another of Professor Lynn's measures. He found that university students here have the second-highest undergraduate IQs in the world at 109, pipped only by those in America on 110.Them's our allies!
Note: This material is presented as a humorous "news" item only. I don't subscribe to utilizing standardized IQ tests to accurately measure the capacity for intellegence, especially across cultural boundries. So no need to flame me, unless you really feel the need to vent about people like me that generally hate the French.
Technorati Tags: Humor, IQ Tests, French Suck.
Mud volcanoes on the ocean floor are spewing forth massive amounts of methane, a discovery that prompted one scientist to remark, "It is a huge gap in our scientific understanding." Note that: Methane is 20 times more efficient as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide that is produced by burning fossil fuels and associated with global warming. Still, it must be Bush's fault. He probably ramped up military spending and a sub was testing a super-secret weapon that changed the balance of nature. Sure, that's it.
While we're on the subject of global warming, new research has brought man's impact on the Earth's temperature into question. American Spectator has the details.
The EPA is counting on eco-hysteria as it recommends yet more restrictive regulations that will cost our economy billions. That would be fine except the research supporting the regulations is suspect at best.
Scientists have created the hottest substance known: a superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit (the interior of the Sun is only about 15 million degrees Kelvin). The surprise is that they don't know how they did it, but they can do it again and again.
New debate on the viability of fusion reactors, or old debate rehashed, depending on your point of view.
A rat-faced squirrelly critter, believed to be extinct for 11 million years, has been found in central Laos.
To reappear after 11 million years is more exciting than if the rodent really had been a new species, said George Schaller, a naturalist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which unveiled the creature's existence last year. Indeed, such reappearances are so rare that paleontologists dub them "the Lazarus effect."Note that the Saber-toothed cat evolved several different times in several locations.
Evidence of liquid water has been found on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, causing excitement in the scientific community as researchers hope that life may have developed on the tiny sphere. Say goodbye to carpal tunnel syndrome. A computer dubbed the "mental typewriter" is controlled by thought alone. Users can learn to control it in just 20 minutes.
The Soldier Treatment and Regeneration Consortium, backed by the U.S. military, is attempting to grow human body parts like ears and fingers. Their five-year goal is to create a fully functional finger. Too cool.
Technorati Tags: Science, Global Warming, Evolution.
[Two immediate questions leap to mind. First, what the hell are DJs doing that brings them into contact with more germs than a doctor? Second, where do politicians fall in this list — or are politicans the "germs" that cause professions six through nine appear on the list?]
This is according to research performed by University of Arizona microbiologist Charles Gerba, PhD, and colleagues.
Phones are the workplace's top spots for bacteria, according to Gerba's team. Next are desks, computer keyboards, and computer "mice." ...The top five most germy items in public places (at least in Korea) are:"Desks are really bacteria cafeterias," Gerba says, in the news release. "They're breakfast buffets, lunch tables, and snack bars, as we spend more and more hours at the office."
The best way to prevent contamination from bacteria is to do what your mom always said: Wash your hands. The Korean board, however, found that most people don't listen to their mom.That matches my observations here, although I'm surprised it isn't higher in Korea because so many people smoke. It has been my experience that smokers are the least likely to wash their hands after using the restroom.More than 77 percent of people were aware of the importance of washing their hands, but only 47.9 percent did so after using public facilities.
Technorati Tags: Bacteria, Germs, Health News, Medical News.
In our 24x7 society, sleep is getting so hard to come by that perfectly healthy young couples are foregoing intimacy just so they can keep up. 20 to 30% of Americans are afflicted with insomnia and 10% turn to pharmacueticals for solutions, a 60% increase over the past five years. (I am one of them. I have a prescription but use it rarely — a handful of times a year — because it leaves me feeling tired and fuzzy-headed the next day.) Sleeping pills and sleeping aids are a $10 billion a year industry.
On the one hand, scientists are studying hibernation and near-hibernation (torpor):
Most members hibernate or go into torpor, a suppressed metabolic state just shy of deep hibernation. The animals bulk up in the summer -- often doubling their weight -- and then go dormant through the winter. During the down time, the hibernators stop eating and switch their metabolisms to burn fat instead of carbohydrates and protein.Scientists hope that these studies can help solve human obesity, diabetes — and even Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (did you know that infants cooled to super low temperatures stop breathing for a long time and enter a state similar to hibernation? Check out the article.).
But hibernation, or even torpor, is not sleep. So the quest for a full night's rest continues. Which is where a group of Swiss scientists comes in.
They are working on sleeping pills that blocks the orexin system. Testing indicates that subjects experience an increase in dream sleep and side effects may include improved memory. (Current medications actually reduce the dream phase which is why you wake up groggy and tired the next day.) Strangely enough, the orexin system is also associated with feeding and addiction so taking this drug could theoretically help you sleep, improve your memory, keep you from over eating and may even prevent addictions. And oh yeah, this drug, possibly due out in 2012, is non-addictive and does not decrease in effectiveness over time. How cool is that?
Ah, blissful sleep. Sounds good, eh? But who has time for that? At least 8 hours of sleep a night, 56 hours a week, four months a year spent in wasted slumber? By the time you are 75 you will have spent a quarter century asleep!
What if you could turn that into just a little over six years of sleep over your entire lifetime?
An article in New Scientist magizine details work that is being done to develop pills that will make so you only have to sleep two hours a night, and you will sleep deeper and get more REM sleep than if you slept unaided for 8 hours so you wake up feeling even more refreshed. The work builds on the existing drug Modafinil which already allows you to cut sleep down to for or five hours per night.
As one of my friends put it, "Sign me up!"
Technorati Tags: Sleep, Insomnia, Modafinil, Medicine, Medical Technology.
In other news:
Every day a different picture (even on Sundays) with "a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer."
A researcher at Harvard says that he knows the answer to a question that has troubled naturalists for centuries: why the dickens does the narwhal whale have an eight-foot tooth sticking out of its head?The tooth, or tusk, emerges from the left side of its upper jaw and its unique spiral, asymmetry, and odd distribution among most males and some females are all unique expressions of teeth in mammals. ...Of course, why didn't I think of that?Nweeia determined the tooth has hydrodynamic sensor capabilities, capable of detecting changes in water temperature, pressure and particle gradients. Nweeia said there's no comparison in nature and certainly none more unique in tooth form, expression, and functional adaptation.
Now if someone could only explain this guy (other than being God's little joke).
Picture courtesy of Probert Encyclopaedia
Far from being a simple matter of how much you have to drink, the researchers have devised a complex formula which takes into account the level of light in the pub or club, the drinkers' own eyesight, the smokiness of the room and the distance between two people.
"Open up an older pillow and it's a cesspool of mold, mildew, fungus, dust mites and mite feces," said bedding expert Dan Schecter. ..."The conditions for fungal growth are so perfect: We put 20 gallons of sweat into our beds each year."
So, using a grant from England's Fungal Research Trust, [Ashley Woodcock, professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester in England] examined five feather and five synthetic pillows. His findings, published in the Allergy journal, showed what Woodcock called a "miniature ecosystem" at work within both types, with dust mites eating fungi, and fungi using mite waste as a source of nitrogen and nutrition. ...
New research shows pillows may be a breeding ground for fungal spores, which could aggravate allergies or asthma. To help reduce problems:
- Use a breathable, moisture-repellent pillow cover fabric, such as Gore-Tex.
- Wash pillows at least four times a year.
- When laundering, wash on the gentle cycle, two at a time.
- Fluff the pillows halfway through the dryer cycle to prevent lumps.
This study was completed early this year, but I just came across it and can't resist.Four MIT students seem to have performed a very serious study on a not-so-serious topic. It's fun, with pictures and everything! Bottom line — it's all a government plot!
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.
Now Spirit is headed back down to examine a rock outcrop named "home plate". Think NASA engineers have World Series fever?
Here's a sample from the middle of San Francisco:
Clicking on any square brings up as much information as the state provides: picture, offense, date of conviction, state offense occured in. Interestingly, I clicked on a square in San Francisco and a list of 22 names popped up to select from; it's probably a halfway house.
I actually like this site a little better than the one I previously blogged that uses Google maps.
Here's a sample from the south side of Houston:
I wasn't surprised to see a few near me but my parents are living in a swarm of 'em!
HT to Say Anything
Gardasil, a genetically engineered vaccine, blocks infection with two of the 100-plus types of human papilloma virus, HPV 16 and 18. The two sexually transmitted viruses together cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers.Other types of HPV also can cause cervical cancer and painful genital warts. About 20 million Americans have some form of HPV.
Cervical cancer is the second-most common cancer in women and their No. 2 cause of cancer deaths, resulting in about 3,000 deaths in the United States and nearly 300,000 around the world each year. At least half of sexually active men and women become infected with genital HPV at some point.
One of the longest and most detailed studies of UK childcare has concluded that young children who are looked after by their mothers do significantly better in developmental tests than those cared for in nurseries, by childminders or relatives.I with they had included children with a man as a primary caregiver.The study on children from birth to three will reignite the controversy over the best way to bring up young children. It found babies and toddlers fared worst when they were given group nursery care. Those cared for by friends or grandparents or other relatives did a little better while those looked after by nannies or childminders were rated second only to those cared for by mothers.
He found that pathological liars have on average more white matter in their prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is active during lying, and less grey matter than people who are not serial fibbers. White matter enables quick, complex thinking while grey matter mediates inhibitions.The natural extention, of course, is to begin scanning lawyers, politicians and activists and see if pathological liars are drawn to those professions. Now that would be fascinating. After all:
But pathological liars are a distinct group who systematically manipulate others, lie or use aliases for financial gain or personal pleasure, such as to get sickness benefits or to skip work. “It’s almost like a livelihood,” says Raine.I can see it now! Headlines: Michael Moore Brain Devoid of White Matter and Striesand's Grey Matter Makes Her See Everything in Shades of Grey.
Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.Of course, that won't keep the press from jumping on every scientific paper that meets their agenda and reporting it as truth. Or the government, as pointed out by John Stossel when tells us about government spending based on junk science.
So we should probably take most of the following stories with a big grain of salt.
A survey of 24,000 students shows that men really are smarter than women, by an average of 5 IQ points.
They showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rise. There were twice as many with IQ scores of 125, a level typical for people with first-class degrees.Astounding! Which is why, on the average, men in the workplace make more money than women. We're smarter, so we make more! [Heh. Just kidding. No hate mail please.]When scores rose to 155, a level associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.
Eat beef and combat cancer, body fat and the onset of Diabetes. So finds Sigmund, Carl and Alfred.
Brit soldiers are getting germ-fighting underwear:
Not noted is the infamous question once posed to Willie Clinton: boxers or briefs?A military spokesman said the underwear is not only coated to prevent bacterial infection, developers tried to arrange the seams so they don't chafe.
Good news on the Ozone front: the famed layer of toxic O3 gas that protects us from UV radiation has stopped shrinking, even though the hole over the Antartic is bigger than ever. The press, of course, is hailing the 1987 international agreement that banned ozone-depleting gases such as CFC. Meanwhile, studies that show that the ozone loss is related to sun activity and solar winds, bands of atmospheric energy (or "long waves") and even increasing number of stratospheric clouds in the winter don't get any press. But hey, blame industrial man (i.e., America) first! (Note: cute NASA animation here.)
Speaking of cosmic forces and earthly climate, it turns out that dust from a recent meteoroid explosion is 1,000 times larger than expected — large enough to affect the weather:
Researchers warn this could contribute to climate change, as dust particles can reflect sunlight, promote cloud formation and even cause ozone depletion.
Meanwhile, scientists are at a loss to explain why the hottest spot on Saturn's moon Enceladus is at the south pole, nor why it is hotter than the hottest temperature they expected to find at the equator. Possible theories include decaying radioactive material below the moon's surface or perhaps gravitational tides but "neither theory adequately explains the heat" emanating from the fissured area of the moon. If it turns out that the heat is caused by volcanic activity then Enceladus joins the very exclusive club of active moons in the solar system; at present only Jupiter's moon Io and Neptune's Triton are known to be active.
That women experience more pain than men has been established fact for some time, but now scientists think they know why: sex hormones. Studies of sex-change patients has shown that 30% of men who have been given oestrogen and anti-androgens report developing pain during their treatment (predictably, this is usually in the form of chronic headaches — thus all the "not tonight Dear, I've got a headache" jokes are indeed based on fact!). In another study, over half of women that were given testosterone reported a decrease in their aches and pains. According to one researcher, "They seemed to feel better generally." Yet another reason to only have men in the workplace [just kidding!].
Remember your mother saying, "Don't make that face or it'll freeze that way!"? Here's what she should have said: "Don't daydream or your brain will freeze that way!"
So much for all those sex therapists that tell you to have a rich fantasy life. Or is that daydreaming?The parts of the brain that young, healthy people use when daydreaming are the same areas that fail in people who have Alzheimer's disease.
And the way people use their brains could actually lead to Alzheimer's disease. ...
"The regions of the brain we tend to use in our default state when we are young are very similar to the regions where plaques form in older people with Alzheimer's disease," Professor Buckner said.
A group of Portuguese scientists went looking for allergies to genetically modified foods but didn't find any. So how long before the EU gives up its ridiculous ban on GM foods? My guess is for as long as Africans continue to die because of it.
Scientists at the University of Illinois have proved that the Earth's core is rotating faster than the rest of the planet, gaining between .3 and .5 degrees every day. That means it makes one extra revolution every 700 to 1200 years. That has to be interesting to someone, somewhere, I reckon.
Scientists in India have unveiled what they claim to be the world's safest nuclear reactor:
India unveiled before the international community Thursday its revolutionary design of 'A Thorium Breeder Reactor' that can produce 600 MW of electricity for two years 'with no refuelling and practically no control manoeuvres.' ...Most significantly for India, ATBR does not require natural or enriched uranium which the country is finding difficult to import. It uses thorium -- which India has in plenty -- and only requires plutonium as 'seed' to ignite the reactor core initially.
Small surveillance unmanned aircraft are being developed with shape-shifting wings inspired by seagulls. The articulated wings can change from an "M" shape to a "W" shape, making the craft highly maneuverable (prototypes have executed three continuous 360° rolls in one second — an F-16 can do only one per second). (Crude video of test flights here — 17MB.)
Speaking of aircraft, the Pentagon is another step closer to putting a laser in theirs. The High Energy Laser Area Defence System (HELLADS), scheduled for deployment in 2007, is about the size of a refrigerator, weighs just 750 kg (1,675 lbs) and will be capable of knocking a missile out of the sky. [Just 750 kg! Can't be long until I get my light saber!]
Asthma sufferers should avoid stress, as research has linked emotions and asthma.
A group of scientists is predicting that artificial wombs could be a reality within twenty years, allowing premature babies to be nurtured to full term or even allow otherwise-childless couples to grow kids without a mother's touch at all. This, of course, is already setting of debates of ethics and morality. Besides the question of "manufactured children" and babies grown by gay couples or the wealthy ("too posh to push" — heh!), there's this:
But Richard Ashcroft, reader in medical ethics at Imperial College London, fears a “foetal rescue act” to force drug or alcohol-addicted mothers to have their foetuses surgically removed. “I couldn’t think of anything worse,” he said.Ah yes, better to have irresponsible women kill their kids "naturally".
Faster: The TurboTap fits onto existing beer taps, pours a perfect beer every time in just four seconds and gets 30% more beer out of a keg:
Younkle found that by reducing the foaming, the speed of delivery could be increased to four gallons per minute, which is four times faster than conventional dispensing systems. ...At Wrigley Field the average time taken to pour a beer decreased to four seconds from nine seconds and keg yields increased from a stadium wide 87.5% to 103% resulting in extra revenue of US$90 per keg as a result of TurboTap’s yield advantage.
More Power: This is one of the five finalists in Chrysler Group's "What Can You HEMI?" contest:
With the power and torque of the 5.7-liter V-8 HEMI engine, the grill can cook 240 HEMI dogs in three minutes and is covered by more than 330 square feet of steel. ...I also like the paper shredder built into a desk.The five finalists included a Snowblower, Ice resurfacer, a Merry-go-round and the world’s most powerful Paper Shredder.
Somewhere, Tim Allen is smiling.
A single sea sqirt is tiny but its population is exploding: millions of them are linked together forming a vast blanket that blocks the sunlight from everything it covers as it creeps across the ocean floor towards one of the richest fish habitats off the Canadian coast. It's the Blob come true, only a less-scary Canadian version.
Mark your calenders for Friday, August 12 just before sunrise: the 2005 Perseid meteor shower (it comes around every year so if you miss it, no worries).
A giant lake of ice on Mars in an impact crater, 23 miles across and over a mile deep.
Which is good, because NASA has just outlined the plans for our space exploration: four astronauts on the moon by 2018, the establishment of a manned outpost, and then a six-person trip to Mars. A mere $217 billion through 2025. Sign me up!
Speaking of space exploration, no word yet what we are going to call the newly discovered 10th planet in our solar system, although there are reports that astronomers have been calling it Xena. (Astronomers are geeks that really need to get out more.)
Back here on Earth but staying in the futuristic realm, pictured is Repliee Q1Expo, a "female" android created by Japanese scientists. She has flexible skin and can react in a human-like manner:
She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe. ...Advised by Wolves cautions that as these machines get more and more like real women, the Japanese scientists must remember to include a mute button!"Repliee Q1Expo can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet."
Turning to the more mundane, it turns out that the eco-Chicken Littles are wrong again: we're not yet running out of oil.
For all you global warming freaks, there's evidence that the Earth's ice ages are the result of our solar system's passage through immense, snakelike clouds of exploding stars in the Milky Way galaxy. That's right, it's all about the cosmic rays, dude!
For all you bike-riding, SUV-hating hippies, a story to warm your heart from California's San Joaquin Valley, one of the most polluted counties in the country. It turns out that the biggest polluters in the county are ruminating dairy cows.
Which means that the whole "global warming as a result of human transportation" thing started with ox-drawn wagon trains. Thank you, but I'll keep my SUV.
Finally, for all you science nuts out there, Dr. Billy Goldberg's book, Why Do Men Have Nipples? is available from Amazon. It's chock full of information like the fact that the typical office desk harbors some 400 times more disease-causing bacteria than the average toilet seat (I'm cleaning mine first thing tomorrow the morning). And that nipple thing?
While only females have mammary glands, we all start out in a similar way in the embryo, the authors explain. The embryo follows a female template until about six weeks, when the male sex chromosome kicks in.But that's OK, with the testosterone kicking in we go on to develop brains.Men, however, have already developed nipples.
The Mekong giant catfish was caught and eaten in a remote village in Thailand along the Mekong River, home to more species of giant fish than any other river in the world, the researchers said.
That means CD-quality sound, multi-casting capabilities (potentially up to eight different stations could be put on a single station's frequency) and text data services, such as artists names, weather reports and school closings.
Other potential features for HD radio are: 5.1 surround sound in your car; the ability to store and replay audio, meaning you could digitally record an entire program to play back at another time, sort of like TIVO for radio. Another feature could be the ability to order products or services advertised with the interactive click of your radio button.
Cold fusion has been achieved, including the reproduction and verification by other teams of scientists. The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent explanation for the layman.
A date plant grown from a seed nearly 2,000 years old is almost a foot high. They're hoping it's a girl.
The magnetic North Pole [HT to Slashdot again] has picked up speed and is now outside of Canada's borders on its way to Siberia.
A previously unknown aria by Johann Sebastian Bach, written in 1713, was found in a box of birthday wishes.
The history of the world is undergoing some changes as archaeologists in Europe are uncovering a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.
It's not official, but metrosexual man may be dead. (I blame Bush.)
Sounds like progress to me.
But not MSNBC:
However, recent outbreaks of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases in major cities around the country offer a hint that new infections may be as high as 60,000 cases a year, rather than the government estimate of 40,000, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University professor of medicine.Wow. 60,000 people a year contracting a disease that is completely preventable. And whose fault is it?
“The U.S. has had a clear failure in HIV prevention — I think the increase in prevalence is a reflection of that, of the poor job we do in HIV prevention,” del Rio said.The "U.S." Let's not fault the people who have unprotected sex or share drug needles. Let's blame the establishment.
Don't get me wrong. AIDS is a devastating illness and not everyone who is infected participated in high-risk behavior.
But let's keep some perspective. Like these stats from 2004:
According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), more than a half million Americans will die of cancer in 2004–that is more than 1,500 people a day. One of every four deaths in America is from cancer. About 1.4 million new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in 2004. This estimate does not include diagnoses of in situ (preinvasive) cancer (except for urinary bladder cancer) or the approximately 1 million cases of nonmelanoma skin cancer that will be diagnosed this year.How many people have you known or known someone who knew someone with AIDS? Now compare that to the people you know that have had cancer. According to the CDC, 35 times more people will get cancer this year than AIDS. And if you are in a long-term and drug-free monogamous relationship, the odds of getting AIDS are astronomical.The National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that about 9.6 million Americans with a history of cancer were alive in January 2000. Although some of these individuals were considered to be cured or cancer free, others continued to live with the disease and may have been receiving treatment.
Who's setting our healthcare priorities around here? Hillary?
So the thinking is this: Even if too much sun leads to skin cancer, which is rarely deadly, too little sun may be worse.Someone should tell Michael Jackson to lose the guy with the umbrella that hovers over him all the time. Maybe sunshine is good for normalcy, too.No one is suggesting that people fry on a beach. But many scientists believe that "safe sun" - 15 minutes or so a few times a week without sunscreen - is not only possible but helpful to health.
One is Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard University professor of medicine and nutrition who laid out his case in a keynote lecture at a recent American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Anaheim, Calif.
His research suggests that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer.
Scientists once thought that the bony plates that run along the Stegosaurus' back offered protection from predators. But research indicates that they were not strong enough to offer any real protection, nor were they designed to radiate heat. So what were they for?The plates that lined the backs of this oddly adorned dinosaur may have had no other function than to help them identify each other, like the colorful feathers on birds, scientists said today.Personally, I think they look like big leaves and were a form of camouflage, but scientists never listen to me.
The researchers said they found evidence that women who gave birth to boys consistently outperformed moms of girls in tests that specifically taxed memory in areas of listening, computational and visualization skills. ...See? Just having a Y chromosome that close helps women out. No wonder they can't do without us.In three cognitively-challenging tests, the women pregnant with boys performed significantly better, the researchers said.
Not stated in the article is that blonde women giving birth to blonde girls performed on the level of developmentally-challenged monkeys.
Today it is nearly reality.
Rutan has a deal with Virgin Galactic, part of the United Kingdom's Virgin Group, to build five spaceships that will blast paying customers into space as early as 2008. Tickets are $200,000 each — and 29,000 people have already signed up, Virgin Galactic says.I sure hope that whole genetic research "live a thousand years" thing pans out soon, otherwise I'll never live long enough to afford a quick pop up above the mesosphere.Rutan told the House Science subcommittee on space and aeronautics that his vision goes far beyond that. He said once space travel becomes relatively safe — something he described as possible but not yet in reach — tens of thousands of paying customers will go into space, opening scientific and educational frontiers along the way.
"... and when there's a lot of capital and investment in it because it's profitable, we'll get out there and we'll solve the reasons to make it also safe to go into orbit and go to the moon and we will also find out new uses for it." ...
[Virgin Galactic President] Whitehorn said that while the first space tourists will pay $200,000 each, his company expects ticket prices to drop to $25,000 to $30,000 each within several years.
The sex androids developed by aircraft mechanic Michael Harriman from Nuremberg have 'hearts' that beat harder during sex.As long as he doesn't teach them to talk, he just might hit that "better than the real thing" goal. [Just kidding honey. You know that talking afterwards is my favorite part. Really. Ignore the snoring sounds.]They also breathe harder and have internal heaters to raise the body temperature - but their feet stay cold "just like in real life", according to Harriman.
He said: "They are almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing, but I am still developing improvements and I will only be happy when what I have is better than the real thing."
The model can also be made to move by remote control, wiggling her hips under the bedclothes and making other suggestive movements - all at the touch of a button.
Two former Cornell University entomologists, who recently had the job of naming 65 newly discovered species of slime-mould beetles, named three species after the American leaders, dubbing them: Agathidium bushi Miller and Wheeler, Agathidium cheneyi Miller and Wheeler and Agathidium rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler. ...Thus proving that not everyone in academia is a moonbat.Naming the beetles after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had nothing to do with physical features, but was intended to pay homage to them, said Quentin Wheeler, a former professor of entomology and plant biology at Cornell for 24 years until October.
"We admire these leaders as fellow citizens who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to do the very difficult and unpopular work of living up to principles of freedom and democracy rather than accepting the expedient or popular," said Wheeler, now the head of entomology at the Natural History Museum in London.
Yale University researchers say their study that used lasers to create remote-controlled fruit flies could lead to a better understanding of overeating and violence in humans.Using the lasers to stimulate specific brain cells, researchers say they were able to make the flies jump, walk, flap their wings and fly.
Even headless flies took flight when researchers stimulated the correct neurons, according to the study, published in the April 7 issue of the journal Cell.
The US, South Korea and Japan want to build it in Japan. China, Russia and the EU want to build it in France.
Japan continues to insist that theirs is the better proposal. The EU is getting a little miffed by Japan's refusal to kowtow. In fact, they are saying that construction will begin in France by the end of the year whether the Japanese participate or not.
In Brussels on Monday, European Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik said the EU wanted to start building the reactor by the end of 2005 with or without an international agreement.In other words, they want to be multilateral and build a coalition, but are perfectly willing to make a unilateral move if they have to."I intend to pursue a six-party agreement until the last possible moment," Potocnik said in a statement after briefing EU research and industry ministers.
How terribly Bushonian of them.
We weighed dozens of variables, from the number of homes with wireless internet to the number of robotic surgeries performed at local hospitals, to rank U.S. cities by tech quotient.And the winner is Minneapolis
What made Minneapolis our high-tech champ? It ranked first among U.S. cities in innovative transportation solutions, fourth in energy technology. The city fell above the 50th percentile in every category measured, a broad-based showing of tech savvy that set it apart from the competition. With everything averaged together, there is no city in America where a culture of high technology has a more pervasive presence.Winners for individual categories are (winner of Energy category not given):
| San Diego | Medical & Emergency Tech |
| San Jose | High-Tech Jobs |
| Boston | High-Tech Education |
| Seattle | Connected Citizenry |
| Minneapolis | Transportation |
Mean score for all cities is 66. The top-ranked city in Tennessee is 69th-ranked Memphis with a score of 62 -- four points below average. Next is capitol city Nashville, ranked 87th with a score of 58. University-town Knoxville comes in at a disappointing 104th with a score of 55. Finally, Clarksville was second from the bottom at 126 with a score of 42.
We may be sub-average but by golly Memphis is the most technologically advanced city in Tennessee. Frightening, isn't it?
A WOMAN who keeps quiet during an argument with her husband is four times more likely to die from heart disease and other causes, according to a study published in the American Heart Association (AHA) journal.So what I'm hearing is that if you marry a real bitch, she's sure to outlive you.Researchers believe women who argue with their husbands are warding off heart disease and other causes of death.
'While medical care providers are not specifically trained to intervene on psychosocial issues such as marital characteristics, they may be the most likely contact to observe or uncover these characteristics or emotions.'So what I'm hearing is that doctors will consider it their duty to start asking intrusive, personal questions when all I want them to do is get around to developing those nano-robots that can be injected into the bloodstream to do some roto-rooter work like they promised they would do thirty years ago.
At least one British doctor has disputed the research published in the AHA, saying it should be treated with a 'pinch of salt'.Ya think?'We need to remind ourselves that we self-select into certain groups. People who choose to get married have different characteristics from those who do not. So they may be more or less at risk of developing health problems.
Hat tip to DocB at ...Right Justified.
Saturn's northern hemisphere is presently a serene blue, more befitting of Uranus or Neptune, as seen in this natural color image from Cassini.Light rays here travel a much longer path through the relatively cloud-free upper atmosphere. Along this path, shorter wavelength blue light rays are scattered effectively by gases in the atmosphere, and it is this scattered light that gives the region its blue character. Why the upper atmosphere is the northern hemisphere is so cloud-free is not known, but may be related to colder temperatures brought on by the ring shadows cast there.
Mimas drifts along in its orbit against the azure backdrop of Saturn's northern latitudes in this true color view. The long, dark lines on the atmosphere are shadows cast by the planet's rings.
People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure.It turns out that worrying about failure takes up space in short-term memory, thus lowering performance. On implication:A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure....
Working memory, also known as short-term memory, holds information that is relevant to performance and ensures task focus. It’s what allows us to remember and retrieve information from an early step of a long task, such as long-division math....
Since working memory is known to predict many higher-level brain functions, the research calls into question the ability of high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who will succeed in future academic endeavors.
A breakthrough in molecular computing could be the beginning of the end for the transistor, according to scientists at HP.Ain't technology wonderful?Researchers have successfully demonstrated a "crossbar latch", a technology that behaves just like a transistor, but is much smaller, and simpler to make. HP's quantum science research (QSR) group says the new technology paves the way for machines that are thousands of times more powerful than anything available today.
Researchers in Boston have pinpointed a primary trigger for the most common form of diabetes and have uncovered evidence that simple, inexpensive aspirin-like drugs could keep the disease that affects millions in check....Second, good news on the nervous system front:Reasoning that aspirin-like drugs are used to quell inflammation, they successfully used the drugs, called salicylates, to eliminate the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in mice. Human tests are already underway in Boston, though no results have been published.
Scientists have for the first time created motor neurons in laboratory dishes. The feat could lead to new insights into -- and perhaps treatments for -- Lou Gehrig's disease and related ailments.Third and finally, from the counter-intuitive department (second item):Su-Chun Zhang and Xue-Jun Li of the University of Wisconsin at Madison started with human embryonic stem cells, which are derived from 5-day-old human embryos.
People in happy relationships are more likely to be well adjusted four years after the death of a partner, while people in unhappy relationships are more likely to show signs of depression, according to new research that indicates relationships can influence emotional health long after they end...."The interesting thing is you benefit from a good relationship both before and after the death of a partner."
In 1990, as many as 2,000 babies were born infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; now, that number has been reduced to a bit more than 200 a year, according to health officials. In New York City, the center of the epidemic, there were 321 newborns infected with H.I.V. in 1990, the year the virus peaked among newborns in the city. In 2003, five babies were born with the virus.Across the country, mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V. has dropped so sharply that public health officials now talk about wiping it out.
With funding from the U.S. government, Sandia National Laboratories, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are researching how to manipulate the flow of energy within and between molecules, a field known as nanoenergentics, which enables building more lethal weapons such as "cave-buster bombs" that have several times the detonation force of conventional bombs such as the "daisy cutter" or MOAB (mother of all bombs).Hat tip to DefenseTech.org.Researchers can greatly increase the power of weapons by adding materials known as superthermites that combine nanometals such as nanoaluminum with metal oxides such as iron oxide...
"Superthermites can increase the (chemical) reaction time by a thousand times," Son says, resulting in a very rapid reactive wave....
Carpenter says the U.S. military has developed "cave-buster" bombs using nanoaluminum, and it is also working on missiles and torpedoes that move so quickly that they strike their targets before evasive actions can be taken.
I can hear the television commercial now:
Side effects include headaches, dizzyness, and an intense urge to hump everything in sight.
Perhaps this will remove some of the stigma from the failure of the Beagle Two, the probe sent to Mars and never heard from again.
Pictured is the first major advance in quite for one of the world's oldest tools: the wheel.
It is the integration of tire and wheel, minus the air, and it is the innovation produced by French-based Michelin:
"Major revolutions in mobility may come along only once in a hundred years," Terry Gettys, president of Michelin's research centre in the United States, told reporters. "But a new century has dawned and Tweel has proven its potential to transform mobility."Don't hold off buying that new set of tires, however. The company predicts that it will be 10 to 15 years before the Tweel is commercially available.
A 12-year study tracking mortality rates of more than 550 adults over the age of 65 found that those who attend services at least once a week were 35 per cent more likely to live longer than those who never attended church.So if Hillary gets her way and we go to government-subsidized medical care, would a doctor prescribing church attendance be sued for put God back into government?The research also found that going to church boosted an elderly person's immune system and made them less likely to suffer clogged arteries or high blood pressure.
Susan Lutgendorf, psychology professor at the University of Iowa, who carried out the study, said: "There's something involved in the act of religious attendance, whether it's the group interaction, the world view or just the exercise to get out of the house. There's something that seems to be beneficial."
Robert Wallace, a co-author of the report, added that doctors could even prescribe a course of church attendance to benefit patients.
First, it was tight pants. Then, it was saunas. Now, when it comes to fertility, men have something else to worry about: laptop computers.One of the reasons, believe it or not, is an unnatural posture:Scientists at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island have discovered that the male testes heat up after only an hour of laptop use, and the 4.9-degree Fahrenheit increase may be enough to impair fertility.
To keep the testicles at an ideal temperature — and for greater comfort — men naturally sit with their legs further apart than women. When working on a laptop, however, they will adopt a less natural position in order to balance it on their laps, which results in a significant rise in body heat between their thighs.You mean it isn't just all that porn surfing?
All humans are capable of committing torture and other “acts of great evil”. That is the unhappy conclusion drawn from an analysis of psychological studies.Well, duh!Over 25,000 psychological studies involving eight million participants support this finding, say Susan Fiske and colleagues at Princeton University in New York, US.
Some days the schedule is just too tight for a long stretch of exercise. So instead, you do a little bit here, a little bit there, and hope it all adds up. And yet you feel like you're cheating yourself.
A study published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise may reassure you: Three 10-minute workouts offer more benefit in reducing risk of one measure of heart disease than does a continuous 30-minute bout of the same exercise. The study, by researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia, found that intermittent exercise lowers levels of triglyceride, a type of heart-unhealthy fat in the blood, more effectively than continuous exercise.
Second is a better study that finds a correlation between lack of sleep and weight gain. So go to bed and shed a few pounds!
Mach 10: coast to coast in 20 minutes. NASA reached that goal today:NASA's X-43A research vehicle screamed into the record books today, demonstrating an air-breathing engine can fly at nearly 10 times the speed of sound. Preliminary data from the scramjet-powered research vehicle show its revolutionary engine worked successfully at approximately Mach 10, nearly 7000 mph, as it flew at an altitude of approximately 110,000 feet.
Mach 10: coast to coast in 20 minutes.NASA will attempt to shatter their previous aircraft speed record of Mach 6.83 (5,200 mph) next week.
So fast it could put satellites in space. So fast it could drop a cruise missile on an enemy target, almost like shooting a rifle....God speed, little scramjet.The flight will last perhaps 10 seconds and end with the pilotless aircraft plunging to a watery grave 850 miles off the California coast.
Harvard scientists have manipulated stem cells already present in the brains of mice to induce the birth of new neurons, an advance once considered impossible by most scientists.Note: no dead babies required.They induced the birth of new cells by killing nearby neurons in mice, which set off a cascade of events that led to stem cells, also called precursor cells, producing new neurons in the cerebral cortex. If scientists can turn this into a therapy for humans, it would mean that patients could literally heal themselves with stem cells already present in their brains.
"(The neurons) developed into mature neurons that not only took up proper locations within the brain, but reconnected to the spinal cord," Macklis said.
The newborn neurons took the place of many damaged neurons in the mice. The work could be a model for neuron replacement in spinal cord injury or diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's. And such a therapy would avoid any immune or other complications that might result from stem-cell transplantation.
Companies are marketing technologies that will allow you to appear as anyone you want to be to the phone you are calling. Imagine all the ways this could be abused: callers can obscure their real identity or perhaps even pose as police.
Citizen beware.
Is this just too gross to be interesting? I'm not certain, but a couple of guys are growing a "semi-living jacket" out of a combination of mouse and human cells. The goal, they say, is to create "victimless leather."
While there's still lots of research to be done before a fully formed live jacket can be created, the artists are quick to point out that they aren't interested in creating commercial products or even furthering scientific research. Calling themselves conceptual artists who create working prototypes, they say their aim is to bring to the forefront the philosophical implications of making living organisms tools for our own purposes."It's quite a scary thing, our attitude to life as it is at the moment," said Zurr. "And the more we manipulate life for human-centric purposes, I wonder now how compassionate we are going to be towards those living systems. Our work is more about questioning these things rather than saying, 'This is great, let's go for it.'"
Scientists have shown they can turn off a cancer-causing gene in mice, offering hope of new treatments for cancer patients....But of course, according to these people we shouldn't be doing animal testing. Even if they are rodents.According to Cancer Research UK, the gene may contribute to as many as one in seven cancer deaths.
Next time you go to the movies, look out. If the popcorn vendors have read this article, your cup of popcorn might contain fewer pieces than it used to. That's because the pieces could each be up to twice the volume they were previously.And this is one ride I will not be going on:On the other hand, that's good news if you make your own popcorn at home, because you'll be able to get two cups' worth from the number of kernels that previously gave you just one. What's more, there will be fewer of those annoying, crunchy unpopped kernels.
How is it done? The trick is simple: just pop the kernels at a lower pressure. Paul Quinn of Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and Joseph Both of the Stanford School of Medicine in California achieved this by fitting a simple vacuum pump to the pressure cooker in which they popped their corn.
Six Flags Great Adventure is opening the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster this spring — a thrill ride that accelerates to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds and rises 456 feet off the ground.Yowza! I think I'll save my money for a trip on Space Ship One.Plans for Kingda Ka, which is expected to be the cornerstone of new development at the central New Jersey amusement park, were to be unveiled Wednesday.
The current speed and height record holder is "Top Thrill Dragster" at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. Made by Intamin — the same company Six Flags hired to build Kingda Ka — Dragster shoots riders to 120 mph in 4 seconds and takes them to a height of 420 feet.
An animated depiction of Kingda Ka shows the coaster creeping slowly, stopping and then launching forward horizontally at nearly 130 mph before climbing at a 90-degree angle more than 45 stories above the park.
The coaster then spirals 270 degrees as it plummets, flattens out and climbs again as it shoots over a 129-foot hill, which the company says will make riders feel weightless. It's over in about 50 seconds.
The ship must reach the altiltude of 100 km in two flights during a two-week period to claim the prize. The Space Ship One team ambitiously scheduled their second flight for Monday, just five days away. But there was a problem during the flight:
SpaceShipOne, with astronaut Michael Melvill at the controls, dropped away from its mother ship above Mojave Airport, fired its rocket and pulled into a vertical climb. The ship appeared to roll severely for a time but then steadied as it apparently reached its intended altitude. It then began a gliding descent and landed at 8:33 a.m. PDC, about an hour and a half after it left.The cause of the problem has not yet been determined nor whether or not it will cause a delay of the second flight:
Rutan said the roll problem would be studied and a determination made about delaying the second flight.Official comfirmation of the altitude is expected later today.Melvill said he may have caused the rolling himself.
"You're extremely busy at that point," he said. "Your feet and your hands and your eyes and everything is working about as fast as you can work them, and probably I stepped on something too quickly and caused the roll. But it's nice to do a roll at the top of the climb."
Maverick aerospace designer Burt Rutan, with more than $20 million in funds from Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, secretly developed SpaceShipOne and is well ahead of two dozen teams building X Prize contenders around the world.
It's amazing that this could be accomplished for the trivial sum of $20 million, mainly because the returns are going to be enormous:
Two days ago, British billionaire Richard Branson announced that he was launching a commercial spaceflight service using a larger version of the SpaceShipOne rocket.And with the race for the X Prize not yet won, the next great race has already been started:Slated to begin service in 2007, the rocket would take up to five passengers to about 80 miles above Earth, where they would feel weightlessness and see the blue sky turn pitch black.
The service, Virgin Galactic, would charge about $190,000 for the two-hour flight.
Taking the space race one step further, a Las Vegas budget motel mogul announced this week the "America's Space Prize," which would give $50 million to the first team to build a commercial spaceship that can send five to seven astronauts into orbit.Personally, I'm placing my money on an American team.The prize is five times more than the X Prize because the challenge would be far greater than sending a person to the edge of space. The vehicle would have to dock with an already orbiting craft, such as the International Space Station, well over 100 miles above Earth and then survive a fiery reentry similar to the space shuttle.
Physicists in France have discovered a liquid that "freezes" when it is heated. Marie Plazanet and colleagues at the Université Joseph Fourier and the Institut Laue-Langevin, both in Grenoble, found that a simple solution composed of two organic compounds becomes a solid when it is heated to temperatures between 45 and 75°C, and becomes a liquid when cooled again....This is the first discovery coming out of France since Antoine Lavoisier came up with the concept of elements (substances that can't be broken down any further). BTW, this was five years before his French compatriots cut his head off with another great French invention, the guillotine.Solids usually melt when they are heated, and liquids turn into gas, although exceptions do exist when heating leads to chemical changes that cannot be reversed, such as polymerisation. However, a reversible transition in which a liquid becomes a solid when heated has never been observed until now.
First, controversy on Mars:
Methane and water vapour are concentrated in the same regions of the Martian atmosphere, say scientists studying data from Europe's Mars Express orbiter. They say the link may point to a common source - possibly life - but others remain sceptical about the detection....Ultraviolet sunlight takes about 300 years to destroy atmospheric methane. These detections suggest the gas is being replenished on Mars in the same way it is on Earth - by processes such as geothermal heating or by life forms, such as bacteria....But also, suggestions of life much further away:But Bruce Jakosky, an expert on the Martian atmosphere at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US, says these scenarios rely on too many "ifs”.
Astronomers have found a cloud of frozen sugar near the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, it was revealed yesterday.Finally, Pathetic Earthlings finds that scientists have finally been able to make a solar cell out of -- are you ready for this? -- spinach:The discovery heightens the possibility of early building blocks of life originating in interstellar space....
The discovery adds to the growing evidence that the foundations of life can be traced to chemical reactions within interstellar clouds.
A solar cell made with spinach has been developed that promises electronic devices incorporating photosynthesis, the highly efficient process plants use to produce energy from sunlight....How long before we finally have flying carrot cars?"We have crossed the first hurdle of successfully integrating a photosynthetic protein molecular complex with a solid-state electronic device," says MIT researcher Marc Baldo.
Everybody's favorite robots, Spirt and Opportunity, are getting a new lease on life as NASA has agreed to fund the rover project for yet another six months:The two robots have performed well-beyond the expected term of the project and likely will give a shot in the arm to the growing robotics industry. The project was originally expected to terminate in April after three months, but because the robots continued to function, NASA extended the project. Earlier this month, the rovers endured the climax of the Martian winter and lost contact with Earth for 12 days, but contact was recently recovered.So far, the two vehicles have traveled more than 3.2 kilometers and dug up mineral evidence that supports the theory that water once existed on the planet.
Scientists, however, said some fatigue has begun to set in. If the robots fail, NASA will pull the plug on funds.
So you have a cell phone with all those long distance minutes but you keep the home phone for (1) convenience of having extensions throughout the house and (2) it has to be hooked up to your TiVo to get the service. And how much is that home phone costing you each month?
Now comes Cellsocket:
Connect the Cellsocket to any standard telephone. Drop your cell phone into the Cellsocket, and start making and receiving phone calls from any desktop, cordless, or extension phone in your home or office using your wireless phone service!
After all, we don't want a repeat of the 2000 debacle in which Democrat lawyer Mark Herron supplied specific instructions on how to protest military votes. As Jeb Babbin writes on NRO:
Conveniently, the memo attached a form that could be duplicated and used to protest the validity of individual ballots. By the time the Herron memo made headlines, the Dems were challenging more than 1,500 absentee ballots (which grew to more than 2,400) mostly from soldiers overseas. This was almost three times the number of votes 537 that proved to be Bush's margin of victory. Had the Herron scam succeeded, and protests against those votes been sustained, Al Gore would be in the White House today.Last month I wrote about a new USPS system that was being implemented to expedite absentee voting by our military personnel. But there is more going on that I knew about: Rumsfeld has been planning for this day and the military will be ready:This problem is not unique to Florida, and it didn't just happen in 2000. According to the results of a survey by the Reserve Officers' Association, ROA estimates that the disenfranchisement rate among military personnel who try to vote in Florida, Missouri, and South Carolina is 40-45 percent.
It's not the hypocrisy of what the Florida Dems did that still rankles; what's most bothersome is who they tried to do it to. Every American has the right to vote, but were it not for the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who put themselves in harm's way, none of us would have that right. The warriors and their families have long memories, and this time they're determined to vote.
Rumsfeld's initiative is trying to reach all 1.4 million active-duty members as well as 1.3 million military family members, the majority of whom are living away from home, either overseas or stateside. And this initiative is serious: Every military unit, small or large, has a Voting Assistance Officer whose job it is to let the soldiers know how they can get their absentee ballots, and then help them do so. Abell told me that the goal was for the ratio to be one Voting Assistance Officer for every unit of 25 to 50 people.Just another reason why I like Rummy.The plan's niftiest aspect is the use of the internet to enable soldiers to request absentee ballots and then to download the actual ballot to fill out and send in. Right now, any soldier or family member can download the Federal Post Card Application from the government website designed to help all overseas voters and send it in. Better still, the Defense Department is getting all the state-ballot request forms and the ballots themselves loaded onto the system. Most of the states are cooperating by allowing internet and even faxed ballot requests.
Rumsfeld's memo says, "I want to ensure each service member is handed the Federal Post Card Application and is offered assistance in completing the form if needed." Voting Assistance Officers will help fill out the request forms and when soldiers ask help them properly fill out and mail back the actual ballots. Rumsfeld has tasked the commanders to designate October 11-15 as Absentee Voting Week. If the ballots are mailed by October 15, they'll all be where they need to be in time to be counted. And that is the ultimate goal.
Lazy monkeys became workaholics when scientists blocked a key chemical in their brains, it emerged today.Unsurprisingly, cheese-eating surrender monkeys were unaffected by the experiments. Perhaps their laziness is genetic rather than chemical.Researchers in the US found that when they stopped the primates brain cells from receiving dopamine the animals worked harder with better results....
But when dopamine was blocked they became extreme workaholics.
Russian scientists claim the wreck of an alien device has been found at the site of an unexplained explosion in Siberia almost 100 years ago.Anyone remember the last thing of importance that a Russian "scientist" did? Yeah, me neither.Interfax news agency said the scientists, who belong to the Tunguska space phenomenon public state fund, said they found the remains of an extra-terrestrial device that allegedly crashed near the Tunguska river in Siberia in 1908.
Cancer researchers at Stanford University have identified a small population of cells in leukemia that seed the growth of the cancer, making it deadly.The discovery of the cells, called cancer stem cells, explains past failures in leukemia treatments and holds the promise of refocused therapies.
"We were missing the boat because we were targeting the wrong cell," said researcher Catriona Jamieson, who wrote the study published in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
This finding adds to the growing understanding of cancer stem cells, thought to be pivotal to the disease. Previously published work has identified two other forms of cancer stem cells....
"I think it is a small but important step in understanding what happens in this particular form of leukemia and why patients begin to develop a more aggressive form of the disease," said Herman Kattlove, oncologist and spokesman for the American Cancer Society.
"The hope is by isolating this one factor ... maybe we could find a drug to suppress it and keep people from developing more aggressive forms of leukemia, which ends up being fatal."
It is news guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a glass or two: drinking half a bottle of wine a day can make your brain work better, especially if you are a woman.Yippee! No, really, Honey -- don't think it of really expensive scotch, think of it as really expensive preventive care medicine. (I will just continue to think of it as "nectar of the gods".)Research to be published tomorrow by academics at University College London has found that those who even drink only one glass of wine a week have significantly sharper thought processes than teetotallers.
The benefits of alcohol, which are thought to be linked to its effect on the flow of blood to the brain, can be detected when a person drinks up to 30 units of alcohol - about four to five bottles of wine - per week.Uh, ya think? Having talked to more than a few drunks during my years as a bartender, I can honestly say that getting drunk never made anyone smarter. Unless you are drunk too -- in which just about everything sounds smart. (Note to self: see if there is any research showing a correlation between alcoholism and voting Democrat.)The researchers were unable to test the effect of higher levels of alcohol consumption, although drunkenness probably negates any positive effects on the brain.
The study took into account all alcohol consumption and was not specific to wine. However, the results showed that those having even a single glass of wine a week scored significantly higher in the tests than more abstemious drinkers. Teetotallers were twice as likely as occasional drinkers to achieve the lowest scores.Hmm, perhaps smart people drink?
The benefits were most marked among women drinkers and, to the researchers' surprise, showed no sign of flattening out with increasing consumption.So women get both cuter and smarter the more the drink. Oh, wait, or is that the more I drink. I can't remember. Someone order me another drink!
Those who downed the equivalent of half a bottle of wine or two pints of beer a day scored best of all. The effects were apparent even after the results had been adjusted to take into account factors such as physical and mental health.I'm gaining a whole new respect for scientists. Or were they drinking when they did this study. ("I say, old chap, do you think the public will buy this one? What the hell, order another round and we'll make up some more numbers!")"Our results appear to suggest some specificity in the association between alcohol consumption and cognitive ability," said the team. "Frequent drinking may be more beneficial than drinking only on special occasions."
However, they acknowledge that the benefits of alcohol can be outweighed by the increased risks of getting diseases such as cancer and cirrhosis, and that the findings should not be used as an excuse for heavier drinking.Dammit! So which is it? Be smart or die a slow lingering death? Which is it? Ack, I can't decide! Someone get me a drink so I can figure this one out!
The United Kingdom's chief scientific advisor, David A. King, used Thomson ISI data to show that the US produced 1.265 million scientific and engineering publications between 1997 and 2001, more than three times the amount managed by the United Kingdom, which takes second place with 342,000.On the other hand, the 15 countries of the European Union, as it stood before expansion in May this year, now publish more papers combined than the United States "and are not far behind on citations," King wrote in Nature.
Overall, the European Union produced 37.12% of the total output, the United States 34.86%, the United Kingdom 9.43%, Germany 8.76%, and Japan 7.54%.
Children who watch a lot of television produce less melatonin, new research suggests - the "sleep hormone" has been linked to timing of puberty.Scientists at the University of Florence in Italy found that when youngsters were deprived of their TV sets, computers and video games, their melatonin production increased by an average 30 per cent.
Professor Thornton, of City Hospital, Nottingham, said: "Once it is born, you can't kill the baby but the law doesn't say anything about to what degree you resuscitate it."The way it is dealt with is by sensible doctors and sensible nurses keeping it under their hat and allowing the baby to pass away peacefully."
A naturally decaffeinated coffee plant has been discovered. Coffee from the new strain could be tastier than existing decaf brews, which can lose flavour compounds when caffeine is extracted with solvents.Other caffeine-free plants have been reported, but the latest comes from the same genetic stock as todays elite commercial strains. This means the decaffeinated trait should be relatively easy to breed into popular types of coffee.
The American government is funding the development of new technology for a polygraph machine that is capable of identifying whether a person is telling the truth, without physically attaching him to the equipment. There are also plans to develop a mat of sensors that will be used in airports to test the answers of passengers during questioning.
When times are bad men lust for women with big busts, but when the economy is booming men prefer smaller breasted women.
So goes a theory of social psychologist Dr. Terry Pettijohn.
Researchers in America examined photos of actresses and pored over back issues of Playboy to see whether there was a correlation between attraction and national prosperity.Hey wait a minute! How do I get that job? "No, really Honey -- I have to read this. It's for work!"
They found that women with mature facial features - smaller eyes, larger chins and stronger faces - were popular during recessions, while baby-faced actresses did well during booms.Pettijohn also included actresses in his study and found that the trend held true. In the prosperous 80s "fresh-faced stars" Sissy Spacek and Sally Field both won Oscars for Best Actress. But in the early 90s, when times were a bit gloomier, "mature-looking" Emma Thompson won Best Actress and the "cold-eyed temptress" of Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone, became popular.They concluded that Playboy's playmates of the year - academically referred to as PMOY - are likely to be taller, heavier and more mature-looking during hard times. They are smaller, more curvaceous and have bigger eyes when the economy is thriving....
Pettijohn said: "When times are difficult it seems we prefer types who are strong; independent and mature individuals who can take care of themselves, and possibly of us. When times are good, we're looking for people to have fun with - a fun-loving, big-eyed individual."
Note: The following is not work safe!
Leave it to The Sun to perform a corroborating study of their own.
We tested his theory by matching Page 3 beauties with UK economic and stock market figures. And we found his boob and bust theory really stacks up.
When the plant reaches full capacity in the fall, it will process 10 dump trucks of leftovers, one tanker truck of blood, and one tanker truck of discarded restaurant grease every 24 hours.Hat tip to non-blogging Advised by Wolves
But in most people in the study, the headache pain itself triggered these symptoms, he found. And in a smaller group of people, symptoms of allergic rhinitis, such as a runny nose, actually triggered a migraine.The most used medications were over-the-counter pain relievers followed by antihistamines. Only 10% used triptans:The misclassification of headaches can have a long-term impact on quality of life, as people are less likely to receive the most effective treatment, according to Eross.
Although triptans were used the least, people who took them were most satisfied with the treatment, according to Eross.He noted that people in the study had been experiencing what they thought were sinus headaches for an average of 25 years.
Eross encouraged people who think they are having sinus headaches to ask their doctor if they might have a migraine. In many cases, it may be a good idea to see a headache specialist, he said.
A growing number of researchers are studying a nutritional plan that offers the benefits of steadier-state blood sugar without the drawbacks of either the low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet: the low-glycemic diet. The low-glycemic diet is based on the scientific measurement of the impact of various foods on blood sugar.Basically, you control your diet with an eye on how it will affect blood sugar:
Because those foods are rapidly digested, they can cause sharp increases in blood sugar after eating. The resulting surge of insulin causes a drop in blood sugar to relatively low levels several hours later. That creates a sensation of hunger and may stimulate overeating. When blood sugar is low, in the battle between mind and metabolism, metabolism usually wins, says Ludwig. In addition, chronic spikes in blood sugar after meals may eventually cause vulnerable people to develop insulin resistance, a prediabetic condition strongly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
The method consists of taking the corpse's temperature to minus 321 Fahrenheit in a liquid-nitrogen bath and breaking the brittle body down into a rough powder through mechanical vibration.The idea is to mix the powder with compost and use it accordingly:The remains are then dehydrated and cleared of any metal, reducing a body weighing 165 pounds in life to 55 pounds of pink-beige powder, plus the remains of the coffin.
And like all compost, human remains should be used to feed plants and shrubs, planted by a dead person's family. She thinks the powder would be incorporated completely into the plant within a few years.I'm thinking Orthodox Jews would have a problem with this, as would a few other religions. Personally, I've instructed that my ashes be rubbed into the stage of Cheetah's strip club in Atlanta. What do you think?"The plant becomes the perfect way to remember the person. When a father dies, we can say, 'The same molecules that made up Daddy also built this plant,' " said Mrs. Wiigh, whose late cat Tussan currently nourishes a rhododendron bush in her front garden.
Until now, no-one knew whether the soft flaky skin of a dolphin, which they shed once every 2 hours, also plays a vital part in helping them reduce these 'drags' and travel faster.To try and understand the role of the soft, flaky skin, researchers from the Kyoto Institute of Technology in Japan devised a detailed computer simulation which models the flow of water over a dolphin's skin, modelling every individual flake of skin itself, and the way it peels off.
Professor Yoshimichi Hagiwara and colleagues found that the 'softness' or 'waviness' of the skin helps reduce drag caused by friction. They also discovered that the shedding of the skin itself reduces drag by disturbing tiny whirlpools of water called vortices, that occur in the flow around the surface of the dolphin and slow it down.
Back in December (on the 100Test pilot Brian Binnie then put SpaceShipOne into a steep climb. Nine seconds later, SpaceShipOne broke the sound barrier and continued its steep powered ascent.Today, it was tested again:At motor shutdown, 15 seconds after ignition, SpaceShipOne was climbing at a 60-degree angle and flying near 1.2 Mach (930 mph).
Built by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, the piloted vehicle was powered by a hybrid rocket motor to over 105,000 feet. The engine burned for 40 seconds, zipping to Mach 2, or two times the speed of sound, according to a source that witnessed the test flight high above Mojave, California skies.The team is making good progress towards the $10 million prize for sending up three people to 100 km twice within two weeks.
Yesterday, the US Department of Transportation announced that it had issued the world's first license for a sub-orbital manned rocket flight. That license was granted to the SpaceShipOne team.
The sky color is about what an astronaut would realistically see from the surface. A blue halo surrounds the Sun, because dust scatters blue light from the Sun in a forward direction more efficiently than red light, Bell said.You can watch a pretty cool animation of the sunset consisting of six images, but be warned that it is 2.26 MB.
The spacecraft slammed into the top of Mars' atmosphere at about 12,000 miles per hour (5.4 kilometers per second). That event was followed by a series of death-defying entry, descent and landing events.Great news, especially in conjunction with the news that Spirit's condition has been upgraded from Critical to merely Serious.Taking all of six minutes to plummet to the martian landscape, Opportunity bounced across Mars wrapped in its cocoon of airbags before coming to a complete stop.
"We're on Mars everybody. We're getting a strong signal," said Rob Manning, JPL's Entry, Descent and Landing manager.
He set up a dedicated Mars Rover Mission Blog (tagline: "A Very Unofficial Blog Following the Twin NASA Exploration Rovers: Spirit and Opportunity"). He has pictures and links to more, as well as a concise update of the progress. An example from today's entry:
Over 250 megabit of data was transferred during the course of the working day, the largest amount of data in one day so far. It is also more data than was transferred during the entirety of the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997.
The plan is supposed to include setting up a moon base (possibly a mining operation, but I doubt it) and using that as a stepping-stone in a long-term plan to send men to Mars.
I've seen the pictures of Mars. Flat as Kansas and not as fertile. Everything is red. Don't we have more interesting places to go?
American Mars rover Spirit succesfully landed on Mars this morning and is expected to send pictures shortly.A European probe called Beagle Two was sent hurtling towards the Red Planet last month and hasn't been heard from since.
America's second rover, Opportunity, is expected to land on 24 January.
Update: Davids Medienkritik has a succinct politically incorrect observation.
In the first 26 years of this system, 22 leap seconds had to be added to keep atomic time synchronised with time measured by the Earth's rotation, because of the globe's slightly irregular spin.Peter Fisk, of the CSIRO's National Measurement Laboratory said that, overall, the rotation of the Earth had been slowing gradually during the past 100 years. The use of leap seconds was necessary to make sure that the time the sun rose was consistent from year to year in future. "Otherwise, in a few centuries, it would be rising later."
Dr Fisk said many factors could influence the rate of the globe's spin, including the movement of magma in the Earth's core and the melting of ice at the poles, leading to a rise in sea levels around the Equator.
"It's like a ballerina spinning on her toes who slows down when she extends her arms," he said.
Scientists have suspected for several years that Mars has been undergoing some global warming. Now it appears that Mars is emerging from an ice age.
No reaction from the Union of Concerned Scientists but I expect a loud outcry to stop all human interference with Mars to begin shortly.
Seagulls swirl and swoop in the gray winter skies above the dusty Permian Basin. The big white birds are as improbable as the prey that lures them: desert-grown shrimp.This is a surprisingly interesting article -- highly recommended (requires free registration).Never mind that this patch of wind-blown West Texas is better known for oil fields than seafood farms. All that drilling occasionally released underground saltwater, remnants of the Permian Sea that covered the area eons ago.
In 1992, a wildcatter's bust turned out to be a marine biologist's gusher. Dallas-raised Bart Reid and his wife, Patsy, punched holes in the ground looking for seawater, not oil. When they struck saline gold, the Reids pumped it into 16 four-acre manmade ponds and began farming shrimp on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.
In a conventional nuclear power station the splitting atoms inside radioactive material take place in a controlled chain reaction whose by-product is heat, which is used to generate electricity.Odds on favorite is Japan, but the decision will be made today at a Washington conference.Nuclear fusion takes a different approach, seeking to emulate the Sun.
Two atoms of deuterium - a heavy form of hydrogen - are forced together under extremely high temperatures - tens of millions of degrees.
When they fuse they release fast neutrons which can be used to heat a thermal blanket which in turn is used to generate electricity.
Advocates of fusion power point out there is an almost limitless supply of deuterium available as it can be derived from seawater.
The BBC has a nice pictorial of the fusion process.
Today marks the 100th Anniversary of a 12-second flight taken by Orville Wright, proving that a heavier-than-air machine was capable of carrying man through the air. It was an event that changed the world.Today, President Bush took two helicopters and Air Force One to get to the North Carolina beach where the first flights took place. It has been long rumored that the president would use the backdrop of Kitty Hawk to announce resumption of the US space program, with objectives as lofty as manned space exploration of the asteroids and Mars. But that didn't happen -- the analysis of possible space plans ordered by the president have not been completed.
President Bush did, however, vow to retain America's lead in aviation and aerospace.
"America has excelled in every area of aviation and space travel," he said. "And our national commitment remains firm. By our skill and daring, we will continue to lead the world in flight."
In a related event, privately funded SpaceShipOne underwent its first powered flight, breaking the sound barrier.
Privately built by Scaled Composites of Mojave, California, the SpaceShipOne cranked up its hybrid rocket motor after being released from the White Knight carrier plane high over Mojave, California.We've come a long way, baby!Test pilot Brian Binnie then put SpaceShipOne into a steep climb. Nine seconds later, SpaceShipOne broke the sound barrier and continued its steep powered ascent.
At motor shutdown, 15 seconds after ignition, SpaceShipOne was climbing at a 60-degree angle and flying near 1.2 Mach (930 mph).
Binnie continued the maneuver to a vertical climb, achieving zero speed at an altitude of 68,000 feet. He then configured the ship in its high-drag "feathered" shape to simulate the condition it will experience when it enters the atmosphere after a sub-orbital space flight.
At apogee, SpaceShipOne was in near-weightless conditions, emulating the characteristics it will later encounter during the planned space flights in which it will be at zero-g for more than three minutes.
The top guitar was created six years ago and is about the size of a red blood cell. The bottom guitar is new and about five times larger, but it is actually playable:
Its strings are really silicon bars, 150 by 200 nanometers in cross-section and ranging from 6 to 12 micrometers in length (a micrometer is one-millionth of a meter; a nanometer is a billionth of a meter, the length of three silicon atoms in a row). The strings vibrate at frequencies 17 octaves higher than those of a real guitar, or about 130,000 times higher.Ain't science wonderful?The researchers recently observed that light from a laser could cause properly designed small devices to oscillate, and this effect underlies the nanoguitar design. The nanoguitar is played by hitting the strings with a focused laser beam. When the strings vibrate they create interference patterns in the light reflected back, which can be detected and electronically converted down to audible notes.
Japan's Mars probe, Nazomi, is about to be finally written off after five years of a troubled history.Nozomi, which means "Hope" in Japanese, was launched on 4 July 1998, the first anniversary of the US Mars Pathfinder mission. But a stuck thruster valve during a course correction manuver depleted more of the onboard fuel than planned, causing the craft to miss the original insertion point in October of the following year. But some nifty calculations by the mission team led to a five-year course with not one, but two Earth swingbys.
In April of 2002, solar flares shut down one of Nozomi's communication systems. Scientists were able to get most systems functioning again by September (or so we were led to believe) and the second swingby took place as scheduled in June 2003.
Following the swingby rumors abounded that the craft was on a collision course with Mars, sparking concern of contaminating Mars with Earthly microbes. Last week Japanese scientists made assurances that the chances of collision are only 1%, but the claims of the Japanese are suspect. The craft carries 14 instruments from five nations (including a NASA Neutral Mass Spectrometer) and the Japanese team has been less than forthcoming with the truth for several months.
The Japanese are finally admitting that the team is making one last concerted effort to "repair its malfunction". Though not revealed in the Japanese statement, it is thought that the malfunction is the power system damaged by last year's solar flares.
In the meantime, the European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft, Mars Express, is scheduled to land on Mars on Christmas day.
NASA's twin missions of landing Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity are on schedule to make Mars-fall next January.
The time for a year-long review of the direction of our space program is drawing to a close, and towards a policy selection. Rumor has it that on 17 December (the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brother's first flight) President Bush will make a national address at Kitty Hawk, and use the opportunity to announce that direction:
As of late October, sources indicate that a central recommendation is likely, but not certainly to be resumption of manned lunar flights to develop advanced technologies that can support U.S. astronauts working beyond Earth orbit to not only the Moon, but eventually on near-Earth asteroids and Mars.In an early phase of the meetings, manned Mars expeditions were considered too expensive and risky to adopt as a central goal for the civil space program. But Bush is being urged to factor in future interplanetary manned flight capabilities as part of the justification for a return to the moon. The last U.S. manned lunar mission was conducted by the Apollo 17 crew in December, 1972.
Sources indicate the policy review has been a deliberative process "not driven by any crash program mentality" but focused on how a new major manned space goal could both mobilize the U.S. space industry as well as boost morale at NASA. One person who spoke directly with Bush early in the process said the president was initially skeptical that a manned return to the Moon could be conducted for reasonable costs. Bush allegedly said then that he would not seek a massive increase of space spending.
The Sun has been active lately, sending some pretty impressive coronal mass ejections shooting off into space.
As of Oct. 22, the sunspot region had grown to about the size of seven Earths, making it one of the larger sunspot groups seen this year.We may very experience problems with electrical grids and satellite communications on Friday. Worse, there's another area of activity that could produce more problems in the next two weeks.
Blood diamonds. Ever hear of them? Also called conflict diamonds, they are mined by children and slaves in Africa and serve as a source of funds for insurgent rebels and terrorists. Countries like Sierre Leone, Liberia and the Congo have undergone years of civil war as rebels have fought for control of diamond fields, resulting in the killing of an estimated 2 million people and uprooting 20 million more.
Say Uncle points the way to an article about how gem-quality diamonds can be manufactured.
They are grown in a warehouse in Florida by a roomful of Russian-designed machines spitting out 3-carat roughs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A second company, in Boston, has perfected a completely different process for making near-flawless diamonds and plans to begin marketing them by year's end. This sudden arrival of mass-produced gems threatens to alter the public's perception of diamonds - and to transform the $7 billion industry.
And the potential impact on the gem trade?
Weingarten [a gem trader] shifts uncomfortably in his chair and stares at the glittering gems on his dining room table. "Unless they can be detected," he says, "these stones will bankrupt the industry."
Hey, De Beers? I just wanted to say good-bye. Buh-bye, now. Buh . . . bye. And good riddance. Have I said that I hate monopolies? Especially European ones.
But I digress. If successful, this will, indeed, bankrupt the industry. Gems 'worth' tens of thousands of dollars are manufactured for less than a hundred bucks. The destruction of the global diamond trade should indeed reduce the armed conflict in Africa. No money - no guns. No diamonds - no need to hack off the limbs of defenseless civilians. On the other hand, it will remove an vital source of income from legitimate governments. Income to pay for little things like infrastructure and medication to fight AIDS.
Pity. But you just have to like the geek factor:
Diamond, it turns out, is a geek's best friend. Not only is it the hardest substance known, it also has the highest thermal conductivity - tremendous heat can pass through it without causing damage. Today's speedy microprocessors run hot - at upwards of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, they can't go much faster without failing.Diamond microchips, on the other hand, could handle much higher temperatures, allowing them to run at speeds that would liquefy ordinary silicon. But manufacturers have been loath even to consider using the precious material, because it has never been possible to produce large diamond wafers affordably. With the arrival of Gemesis, the Florida-based company, and Apollo Diamond, in Boston, that is changing.
Both startups plan to use the diamond jewelry business to finance their attempt to reshape the semiconducting world.
Nice!
Cox & Forkum has an excellent cartoon on environmentalists and DDT, and and follows up with an even more excellent post about it.
Peter Lynds is a 27-year-old college dropout that has the egghead world all abuzz with a new theory of time and motion. His views are being called "groundbreaking" by some, "based on profound ignorance" by others. But there is no denying that he has caused a stir and guaranteed himself a job, at least for now.
Do you remember sitting around with friends, maybe as a freshman in college, discussing philosophy? There is an ancient argument that a man running away from you can never be shot in the back with an arrow (or bullet from a gun) because the arrow must first travel halfway to the man but by that time the man has moved ahead, so the arrow must travel to the new position of halfway but again the man has moved ahead, and so on, ad infinitum, and so the arrow can never actually reach the man (I told my older brother this theory - he just smiled and suggested that I start running while he got out his archery stuff).
This is a variant of one of the forty or so paradoxes proposed by an ancient Greek philosopher/mathematician Zeno of Elea. Zeno's paradox is based on the rather obvious theory that time is made up of discreet instants, which are the smallest unit of time, yet measurable. Modern mathematicians thought they had solutions to Zeno's Paradox, but now Peter Lynds says they are barking up the wrong tree. He sees the physical world a little differently:
"There isn't a precise instant underlying an object's motion," he said. "And as its position is constantly changing over time -- and as such, never determined -- it also doesn't have a determined position at any time."
And that's not even the hard part. If Lynds is correct, then time cannot 'flow', because a flow requires the progression from one instant to another and that is precisely what Lynds says does not happen.
However, Lynds reasons that the lack of instants is what allows Nature to have time that we can, in turn, watch go by on our clocks. Confused? You are not alone. It will likely be some time before Lynds' ideas are shaken out by his new, lofty peers and determined to be revolutionary, interesting or just plain wrongheaded.
Perhaps this quote is a little clearer:
"No matter how small the time interval, or how slowly an object moves during that interval, it is still in motion and its position is constantly changing, so it can't have a determined relative position at any time, whether during an interval, however small, or at an instant," he said in a statement. "If it did, it couldn't be in motion".
Fascinating. This from a man who is currently earning a living as a broadcast school tutor. Ah, those whacky New Zealanders!
But for now Lynds is planning another series of papers:
"This includes a paper on cosmology and time, a paper relating time to consciousness, and also a philosophy paper on the foundations of assertion," he said.Madman or genius? Theorist or conman? Only time will tell.
It goes against all reason, but a new study shows that viewers are actually less likely to remember products advertised in violent or sexually explicit programs than "neutral" shows (like what, Leave It to Beaver?). "If the TV program bleeds, memory for the brand recedes," quips one of the researchers at the University of Michigan.
The researchers found that brand recall was 17 percent higher for participants who saw a neutral program than for those who saw a violent program, and 21 percent higher for participants who saw a neutral program than for those who saw a sexual program.
Yep, these bright minds have determined that if the viewer is distracted by sex or violence, they don't remember commercials. Dude! Maybe they remember the ads shown in "neutral programs" because they're more interesting than the show!
They also found that violent ads were 20 percent less memorable than the sexual ads and 18 percent less memorable than the neutral ads, regardless of the type of ad in the program. "These memory differences can't be attributed to brand familiarity because brand was held constant across type of ad," Bushman said.
That's why the old adage isn't "violence sells". But I'll bet they didn't test this on pre-pubescent boys. Then violence does sell. Any first-year ad-man will tell you, slant your ad to the demographic.
The research also showed that type of program did not interact with type of ad to influence memory for ads. "Showing violent or sexual ads in violent or sexual programs doesn't make the ads more memorable," Bushman said. "The bottom line is that matching ad type to program type doesn't change the basic fact that people are less likely to remember brands advertised in violent and sexually explicit programs. Sex and violence just don't sell, in other words."
Notice they didn't say anything about how sex in the ad compared to neutral ads, only that violence didn't sell as well. Sex sells. Our capitalistic way of life is based on it. Damned liberal academics want to ruin everything. I bet they end up voting for Dean.
Human beings as batteries? Researchers in Japan are developing a method that turns blood sugar into power, just like the body turns glucose into energy.
Although the scientists theorize that their "bio-nano generator" could pump 100 watts from one person, it would use all the food eaten by a person to do so. (Sounds like a great way to lose weight, eh?) So far, they've only managed low power levels, but the field is new and the technology will get better. The expected uses of the device are gadgets embedded in the body or perhaps sugar-fed robots (can you say 'nanotechnology'?).
Personally, I think it's a great add-on to wearable computers (no bulky batteries). Now excuse me, I have to go carb up. I've wearing my new IntelCoat from Dell and I'm expecting a fax in a little bit. (Don't ask me where I keep the paper.)
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