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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Centuries-old Maya Blue mystery finally solved
Post Date: 2008-02-26 18:00:14 by farmfriend
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Centuries-old Maya Blue mystery finally solved Production of the renowned, extremely stable pigment was part of ritual sacrifices at Chichén Itzá Contact: Greg Borzo gborzo@fieldmuseum.org 312-665-7106 Field Museum CHICAGO—Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500. First identified in 1931, this blue pigment (known as Maya Blue) has puzzled archaeologists, chemists and material scientists for years because of its unusual chemical stability, ...
Attack on computer memory reveals vulnerability of widely used security systems
Post Date: 2008-02-26 17:49:13 by farmfriend
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Attack on computer memory reveals vulnerability of widely used security systems Contact: Steven Schultz sschultz@princeton.edu 609-258-3617 Princeton University, Engineering School A team of academic, industry and independent researchers has demonstrated a new class of computer attacks that compromise the contents of “secure” memory systems, particularly in laptops. The attacks overcome a broad set of security measures called “disk encryption,” which are meant to secure information stored in a computer’s permanent memory. The researchers cracked several widely used technologies, including Microsoft’s BitLocker, Apple’s FileVault and Linux’s ...
Earth's Final Sunset Predicted [it's not too late but time's running out]
Post Date: 2008-02-26 17:20:59 by a vast rightwing conspirator
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Earth's Final Sunset Predicted Clara Moskowitz Staff Writer SPACE.com Tue Feb 26, 6:45 AM ET "Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," wrote the poet Robert Frost. Astronomers, it turns out, are in the former camp. A new calculation predicts that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in 7.6 billion years, capping off a longstanding debate over whether the sun's gravitational pull will have weakened enough for Earth to escape final destruction or not. Other theorists have predicted that our planet will fry as the sun expands in its old age. But the time estimates have varied by a couple billion years. "Although people have looked at these ...
Fresh Tests on The Shroud of Turin
Post Date: 2008-02-26 06:03:54 by Ada
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The Oxford laboratory that declared the Turin Shroud to be a medieval fake 20 years ago is investigating claims that its findings were wrong. The head of the world-renowned laboratory has admitted that carbon dating tests it carried out on Christendom's most famous relic may be inaccurate. The Turin Shroud on display in Turin's Cathedral Carbon dating tests carried out 20 years ago on the Shroud of Turin suggested that the relic was a forgery Professor Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, said he was treating seriously a new theory suggesting that contamination had skewed the results. Though he stressed that he would be ...
CHAPTER 7: Introduction to the Atmosphere - Causes of Climate Change
Post Date: 2008-02-25 22:03:19 by robin
25 Comments
CHAPTER 7: Introduction to the Atmosphere Causes of Climate Change Figure 7y-1 illustrates the basic components that influence the state of the Earth's climatic system. Changes in the state of this system can occur externally (from extraterrestrial systems) or internally (from ocean, atmosphere and land systems) through any one of the described components. For example, an external change may involve a variation in the Sun's output which would externally vary the amount of solar radiation received by the Earth's atmosphere and surface. Internal variations in the Earth's climatic system may be caused by changes in the concentrations of atmospheric gases, mountain building, ...
Honey bee invaders exploit the genetic resources of their predecessors
Post Date: 2008-02-25 17:56:01 by Tauzero
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Honey bee invaders exploit the genetic resources of their predecessors Like any species that aspires to rule the world, the honey bee, Apis mellifera, invades new territories in repeated assaults. A new study demonstrates that when these honey bees arrive in a place that has already been invaded, the newcomers benefit from the genetic endowment of their predecessors. The findings appear online the week of Feb. 25 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers, University of Illinois entomology professor Charles Whitfield and postdoctoral researcher Amro Zayed, analyzed specific markers of change in the genes of honey bees in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. ...
Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2008-02-25 17:02:23 by angle
59 Comments
Posted by angle at the request of Cynicom: Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average." China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too ...
Jekyll-Hyde neutron star discovered by researchers
Post Date: 2008-02-24 00:03:37 by farmfriend
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Contact: Mark Shainblum mark.shainblum@mcgill.ca 514-398-2189 McGill University Jekyll-Hyde neutron star discovered by researchers NASA and McGill scientists find star which morphs from pulsar to magnetar Like something out of a Robert Louis Stevenson novel, researchers at NASA and McGill University discovered an otherwise normal pulsar which violently transformed itself temporarily into a magnetar, a stellar metamorphosis never observed before. Powerful X-ray bursts from the pulsar in the Kes 75 supernova remnant were discovered by former McGill PhD Dr. Fotis Gavrill, currently assigned to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in collaboration with Dr. ...
A Fresh Look Inside Mount St. Helens
Post Date: 2008-02-23 23:48:18 by farmfriend
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A Fresh Look Inside Mount St. Helens Email: Jennifer Donovan February 19, 2007--Volcanoes are notoriously hard to study. All the action takes place deep inside, at enormous temperatures. So geophysicists make models, using what they know to develop theories about what they don’t know. Research led by Gregory P. Waite, an assistant professor of geophysics at Michigan Technological University, has produced a new seismic model for figuring out what’s going on inside Mount St. Helens, North America’s most active volcano. Waite hopes his research into the causes of the earthquakes that accompany the eruption of a volcano will help scientists better assess the hazard of a ...
CCTV Busting Infra-Red Headset Makes You Invisible
Post Date: 2008-02-22 11:57:59 by gengis gandhi
7 Comments
CCTV Busting Infra-Red Headset Makes You Invisible By Charlie Sorrel EmailFebruary 21, 2008 | 8:10:31 AMCategories: Hacks, Hacks, Security, Security iredeye.jpg A German art project could help the British avoid the oppressive proliferation of surveillance cameras in their country. The I-R.A.S.C is simple, consisting of a circle of infra-red LEDs mounted on a headband. The infra red is invisible to The Man, but will cause CCTV cameras to flare out over the face of the wearer, obscuring his identity and making this the digital equivalent of a hooded sweatshirt. This is not a production unit, but given that you'd only need a hat, a battery and a few LEDs, you could easily knock one up ...
Have Scientists Discovered a Way of Peering Into the Future?
Post Date: 2008-02-21 14:04:45 by gengis gandhi
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Have Scientists Discovered a Way of Peering Into the Future? Print Paranormal & Unexplained, Written by Danny Penman images-1 Deep in the basement of a dusty old library in Edinburgh lies a small black box that churns out random numbers. At first glance the box looks profoundly dull, but it is, in fact, the ‘eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future. The machine apparently sensed the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened, and appeared to forewarn of the Asian Tsunami. "It's Earth shattering stuff," says Dr Roger Nelson, Emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the USA. "But ...
Lunar eclipse going on right now
Post Date: 2008-02-20 22:41:49 by Jethro Tull
3 Comments
It should be the last one for a couple years. If you can brave he cold (us Northern folk at least) it's worth a peek.
Rogue Satellite's Rotten, $10 Billion Legacy
Post Date: 2008-02-20 21:12:52 by robin
1 Comments
That satellite that's due to be shot down this week was bad news, even before it got off the ground. The failed orbiter, USA-193, is widely believed to be part of a classified surveillance in space program known as Future Imagery Architecture, or FIA. And FIA is known as one of the biggest defense-technology boondoggles in recent history -- "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects," The New York Times once wrote. FIA was originally supposed to be a constellation of satellites using electro-optical and radar sensors to "gather clearer and more-frequent images -- even at night and when there is a cloud ...
Weather May Delay Shootdown of Satellite [Best Military Weapons Money Can Buy...LOL!!!]
Post Date: 2008-02-20 11:47:37 by Brian S
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Weather May Delay Shootdown of Satellite By ROBERT BURNS – 1 hour ago WASHINGTON (AP) — High seas in the north Pacific may force the Navy to wait another day before launching a heat-seeking missile on a mission to shoot down a wayward U.S. spy satellite, the Pentagon said Wednesday. Weather conditions are one of many factors that U.S. military officers are taking into account as they decide whether to proceed with the mission Wednesday or to put it off, according to a senior military officer who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on condition that he not be identified. The officer said the assumption had been that the mission would go forward Wednesday night, unless conditions ...
GLOBAL WARMING? IT’S THE COLDEST WINTER IN DECADES
Post Date: 2008-02-19 20:43:11 by farmfriend
26 Comments
GLOBAL WARMING? IT’S THE COLDEST WINTER IN DECADES By Tony Bonnici NEW evidence has cast doubt on claims that the world’s ice-caps are melting, it emerged last night. Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature. It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming. But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back. Ice levels which had shrunk from 13million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October, are almost back to their original levels. Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in ...
Global warming impact may be overstated
Post Date: 2008-02-19 20:40:47 by farmfriend
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Global warming impact may be overstated Scientists have discovered that glaciers survived for hundreds of thousands of years during an era when crocodiles roamed the Arctic, reports Roger Highfield The most pessimistic predictions of sea level rises as ice sheets are melted by global warming may have to be scaled back as a result of an extraordinary discovery that ice persisted when the Earth was much hotter than today. Scientists have discovered that glaciers survived for hundreds of thousands of years during an extraordinary era when crocodiles roamed the Arctic and the tropical Atlantic Ocean was as warm as human blood. They had thought that Earth was ice free during the so called ...
CU laser device analyzes breath to detect disease
Post Date: 2008-02-19 17:41:05 by farmfriend
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CU laser device analyzes breath to detect disease By Katy Human The Denver Post The Greek doctor Hippocrates sniffed the breath of his patients for clues about their health — 2,400 years ago. Now, Boulder physicists have developed a more precise way to study the air we exhale, they reported Monday. Their new laser-based technique could someday be used to diagnose cancer before it spreads, catch an ulcer before it deepens or identify early diabetes, said Jun Ye and Mike Thorpe at the University of Colorado at Boulder. By blasting breath samples with laser light, the scientists could cheaply and simultaneously measure dozens of chemicals, they said. "We really hope this is a ...
Lunar Eclipse to Occur Wednesday Night
Post Date: 2008-02-19 14:39:20 by Tauzero
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Lunar Eclipse to Occur Wednesday Night By ALICIA CHANG LOS ANGELES (AP) — The last total lunar eclipse until 2010 occurs Wednesday night, with cameo appearances by Saturn and the bright star Regulus on either side of the veiled full moon. Skywatchers viewing through a telescope will have the added treat of seeing Saturn's handsome rings. Weather permitting, the total eclipse can be seen from North and South America. People in Europe and Africa will be able to see it high in the sky before dawn on Thursday. As the moonlight dims — it won't go totally dark — Saturn and Regulus will pop out and sandwich the moon. Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation ...
UH scientists observe flipping star
Post Date: 2008-02-19 13:30:36 by Tauzero
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UH scientists observe flipping star By Helen Altonn haltonn@starbulletin.com A University of Hawaii astronomer and international colleagues caught the star tau Bootis flipping its magnetic field from north to south, similar to the sun's magnetic behavior. "Now, for the first time, we are probing the magnetic cycles of stars other than the sun," said Evgenya Shkolnik, of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Hawaii-Manoa Institute for Astronomy. It is the first time such a change in magnetic field has been seen in a star other than the sun, the researchers said, reporting their work in the British journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ...
Gregg Braden: Awakening to Zero Point, video, pt 1
Post Date: 2008-02-19 10:53:50 by gengis gandhi
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'Frog from hell' fossil unearthed
Post Date: 2008-02-18 17:54:35 by robin
5 Comments
'Frog from hell' fossil unearthed Artist's impression of the "frog from hell" Enlarge Image A 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog has been unearthed in Madagascar by a team of UK and US scientists. The creature would have been the size of a "squashed beach ball" and weighed about 4kg (9lb), the researchers said. They added that the fossil, nicknamed Beelzebufo or "frog from hell", was "strikingly different" from present-day frogs found on the island nation. Details of the discovery are reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The team from University ...
NASA know-how helps swimmers rocket through water
Post Date: 2008-02-18 17:38:44 by Tauzero
2 Comments
USA : NASA know-how helps swimmers rocket through water February 18, 2008 World champion swimmer Michael Phelps knows a thing or two about swimsuits. He owns 29 U.S. national swimming titles and won six gold medals and two bronze at the last Summer Olympics four years ago in Australia. NASA researcher Steve Wilkinson doesn't know that much about swimwear, but he does know a thing or two about drag reduction … how to make something propel through air or water faster and more efficiently. The swimmer and the researcher met for the first time in New York City at the unveiling of a new product they both had a part in developing. It's called by its manufacturer the ...
It's time to herald the Arabic science that prefigured Darwin and Newton
Post Date: 2008-02-18 16:01:23 by robin
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It's time to herald the Arabic science that prefigured Darwin and Newton In this era of intolerance and cultural tension, the west needs to appreciate the fertile scholarship that flowered with Islam Jim Al-Khalili Wednesday January 30, 2008 The Guardian Watching the daily news stories of never-ending troubles, hardship, misery and violence across the Arab world and central Asia, it is not surprising that many in the west view the culture of these countries as backward, and their religion as at best conservative and often as violent and extremist. I am on a mission to dismiss a crude and inaccurate historical hegemony and present the positive face of Islam. It has never been more ...
Shark species face extinction amid overfishing and appetite for fins
Post Date: 2008-02-17 21:57:33 by robin
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Call for marine reserves to protect migration hotspots as scientists fear decline will affect other species
A scalloped hammerhead shark. Photograph: Stephen Frink/Corbis
Nine more species of shark are to be added to the endangered list as scientists warn that oceans are being emptied of the fish by overfishing and finning.
The scalloped hammerhead shark, which has declined by 99% over the past 30 years in some parts of the world, is particularly vulnerable and will be declared globally endangered on the World Conservation Union (IUCN) list.
"Sharks are definitely at the top of the list for marine fishes that could go extinct in our lifetimes," said Julia Baum of the Scripps ...
Canada's oil sands a massive disaster: green group
Post Date: 2008-02-17 21:34:55 by angle
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OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's massive oil sands are "the most destructive project on earth" and the federal government must intervene to clean up the mess, a leading green group said on Friday. Environmental Defence said excavation of the oil sands in the western province of Alberta -- home to the richest petroleum deposits outside the Middle East -- is producing vast amounts of greenhouse gases and poisoning local water supplies. "This is Canada's problem -- our federal elected leaders need to clean it up or shut it down," said Aaron Freeman of Environmental Defence. The group called on the Conservative government to impose a firm cap on emissions from the oil ...
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