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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Perfect Space Storm Could be Catastrophic on Earth, Study Concludes
Post Date: 2009-04-10 16:03:02 by farmfriend
6 Comments
Perfect Space Storm Could be Catastrophic on Earth, Study Concludes By Robert Roy Britt Editorial Director posted: 07 January 2009 09:03 am ET The sun works on a pretty well known 11-year cycle of activity, all measured by sunspots and solar flares. But like the stock market, the sunspot cycle is unpredictable. And just when astronomers thought it had hit bottom, it went lower. It has been a bear market for sunspots for many months now. That also means there have been no major space storms, which can zap satellites and threaten power grids on Earth. There were no sunspots observed on 266 days during 2008, or 73 percent of the time. The last year things were quieter was 1913, which had ...
Boston hospital performs face transplant
Post Date: 2009-04-10 11:11:00 by christine
2 Comments
Boston hospital has performed the nation's second face transplant on a man who suffered traumatic facial injuries from a fall. Hospital spokesman Kevin Myron said the 17-hour operation took place Thursday at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital. A team led by plastic surgeon Dr. Bohdan Pomahac (Bow-DAWN POE-mahawk) replaced the man's nose, palate, upper lip, and some skin, muscles and nerves with those of a dead donor. The hospital would not identify the donor or the recipient, but plans a news conference Friday afternoon. The first U.S. face transplant was done in December by doctors at Cleveland Clinic who replaced 80 percent of a woman's face with that of a ...
Microsoft ‘security software’ is virus
Post Date: 2009-04-08 23:06:38 by DeaconBenjamin
4 Comments
SAN FRANCISCO: Hackers are increasingly hiding viruses in bogus computer security software to trick people into installing treacherous programme s on machines, Microsoft warned on Wednesday. The software giant said in a security intelligence report that "rogue security software" is a growing threat as hackers take advantage of people's fears of worms such as the notorious Conficker. "Rogue security software is the number one threat worldwide," said George Stathakopoulos, general manager of the Trustworthy Computing Group at Microsoft. "If you think about the Conficker case, how many people went looking for a security solution and downloaded rogue ...
Russian Space Capsule Lands Safely With 3 Aboard
Post Date: 2009-04-08 12:47:53 by Brian S
1 Comments
DZHEZKAZGAN, Kazakhstan (AP) — A Russian spacecraft carrying a crew of three including U.S. billionaire space tourist Charles Simonyi landed safely in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, officials said. The Soyuz capsule touched down around 11:15 a.m. (0715 GMT, 3:15 a.m. EDT) Wednesday, about three hours after leaving the international space station. It descended on parachutes and then hit the ground in a jarring puff of dust and dirt. Russian and American space officials and relatives of the Soyuz's crew applauded as the landing was announced at Russian Mission Control in Korolyov, on Moscow's northern outskirts. Within 20 minutes of the landing, Simonyi, Russian Yuri Lonchakov and ...
Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees
Post Date: 2009-04-07 12:57:33 by Prefrontal Vortex
7 Comments
Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees The mysterious ailment called colony collapse disorder has wiped out large numbers of the bees that pollinate a third of our crops. The causes turn out to be surprisingly complex, but solutions are emerging By Diana Cox-Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp Dave Hackenberg makes a living moving honeybees. Up and down the East Coast and often coast to coast, Hackenberg trucks his beehives from field to field to pollinate crops as diverse as Florida melons, Pennsylvania apples, Maine blueberries and California almonds. As he has done for the past 42 years, in the fall of 2006 Hackenberg migrated with his family and his bees from their central ...
GM introduces self-propelled rickshaw to combat congestion
Post Date: 2009-04-07 07:11:58 by Tatarewicz
6 Comments
General Motors and Segway have developed a two-wheel, side-by-side passenger electric vehicle which aims to reduce traffic congestion in cities. Called PUMA, it will have a 35-mile range on a charge of its Li-ion battery and travel at up 35 mph. While still in its prototype stage this self-propelled rickshaw is estimated to cost (ownership and operation) a third or quarter of that of a car. POSTER COMMENT: How's that for beating the Chinese at their own game? Pictures on DFP link. Click for Full Text! Click for Full Text!
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming
Post Date: 2009-04-06 01:03:41 by farmfriend
2 Comments
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming Plants and trees are growing faster because of rising carbon dioxide levels, potentially buying Earth more time to address global warming, according to scientists. By Urmee Khan Last Updated: 1:06PM BST 05 Apr 2009 The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops. It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change. Plants survive by extracting CO2 from the air and using sunlight to convert it into proteins and sugars. Since ...
O'Hare UFO video surfaces on Youtube
Post Date: 2009-04-01 11:39:04 by gengis gandhi
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O'Hare UFO video surfaces on Youtube March 24, 5:23 PM · 27 comments ShareThis Feed Recently posted Youtube video purports to be O'Hare UFO. A video posted March 21, 2009, on Youtube claims to be the real deal of the Nov. 7, 2006, Chicago O'Hare Airport UFO sighting. The video is posted with the headline - "Chicago O'Hare Airport UFO Witness Breaks His Silence." The username is ohareufowitness, age 39, someone who joined Youtube on the same day as the posting. Illinois MUFON Director Sam Maranto, who has studied this case extensively, was able to watch the video from his Chicago area home today. "The footage is shot at an impossible angle," ...
April Fool's Day computer virus is activated... but fails to cause internet chaos
Post Date: 2009-04-01 09:57:39 by christine
1 Comments
A computer virus that has wormed its way into millions of PCs was activated today... but with little effect. The Conficker virus, which has infected up to 15million computers since last autumn, has so far lurked harmlessly - but experts were braced for it to change the way it operated first thing this morning. The 'worm' started looking for new instructions on what it should do next by scanning 50,000 different websites at midnight last night. Experts feared the virus was about to be used by its creators to control an army' of 15 million 'zombie PCs' to steal bank details, send spam emails or even crash a major website. But so far, nothing untoward has taken place. ...
Genomic variations in African-American and white populations
Post Date: 2009-03-27 12:15:27 by Prefrontal Vortex
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Genomic variations in African-American and white populations Deletions, duplications or rearrangements of genomic regions in the human genomes produce differences in gene copy numbers, referred to as copy number variations (CNV). Those variations account for a substantial portion of human genetic diversity, and in a few cases, have been associated with behavioural traits or increased susceptibility to disease. A study published today in the open access journal BMC Genetics, describes a CNV map of the African American genome, and compares frequencies of CNVs between African American and white American/European populations. Joseph P McElroy and colleagues from the Department of Neurology, ...
Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s son commits suicide (Scientist/Professor in Alaska).
Post Date: 2009-03-23 08:16:08 by noone222
2 Comments
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent The son of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has taken his own life, 46 years after his mother gassed herself while he slept. Nicholas Hughes hanged himself at his home in Alaska after battling against depression for some time, his sister Frieda said yesterday. He was 47, unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a professor of fisheries and ocean sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Dr Hughes’s death adds a further tragic chapter to a family history that has been raked over with morbid fascination for two generations. Obsession set limits on Sylvia Plath's poetry Charity shop finds rare Plath poetry ...
interesting thread on chemtrails/morgellons link
Post Date: 2009-03-21 13:24:10 by gengis gandhi
1 Comments
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread275225/pg1
Five minds for success
Post Date: 2009-03-21 07:53:58 by Tatarewicz
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The current economic downturn stems from education's failure to cultivate the right kind of minds and this is what brought about reckless disregard for experience, due diligence, caution and contemplation of the downside of decisions according to psychologist Howard Gardner of Harvard. The cognition professor said if anything, "deciders" were selected and rewarded on the basis of whether they could cut corners...make it appear as if they were gaining ever greater profits. The author of Five minds for the future said that in order for markets to work, one needs wise policies and policymakers, tough regulation and above all, individuals who behave in an ethical way and demand ...
Understanding Body Language
Post Date: 2009-03-21 07:36:16 by Turtle
1 Comments
Understanding body language in the workplace isn't just a game - it's a career necessity Imagine this scenario: You're talking to your boss about why you feel you're due for a raise. You itemize what you've done beyond your job requirements, and he says, "Fair enough. I'll consider it and get back to you." That sounds good, except that you didn't notice the steeple he formed with his hands while listening to you, and the distracted way he rubbed his nose. Meaningless? Absolutely not. Fact is, he's already given you an answer, but you may not have noticed the telltale signals. It's easy to miss subtle messages in the way someone positions his ...
Study gives more proof that intelligence is largely inherited
Post Date: 2009-03-19 18:58:19 by Prefrontal Vortex
2 Comments
Study gives more proof that intelligence is largely inherited UCLA researchers find that genes determine brain's processing speed By Mark Wheeler| 3/17/2009 They say a picture tells a thousand stories, but can it also tell how smart you are? Actually, say UCLA researchers, it can. In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience Feb. 18, UCLA neurology professor Paul Thompson and colleagues used a new type of brain-imaging scanner to show that intelligence is strongly influenced by the quality of the brain's axons, or wiring that sends signals throughout the brain. The faster the signaling, the faster the brain processes information. And since the integrity of the brain's ...
Opt Out Of Google’s Interest-Based Advertising
Post Date: 2009-03-14 14:29:58 by Brian S
3 Comments
For years, privacy advocates have warned that we are becoming an Orwellian society. We are being monitored and tracked more than ever. Thankfully, our society is very different from George Orwell’s 1984. However, we do face daily threats to our privacy. Case in point: Google has launched an interest-based advertising program. Basically, your browsing history is tracked. You are then shown ads based on your interests. Certain sensitive interests won’t be tracked, according to Google. But you will want to take steps to protect your privacy. Google’s collection of information on its users must be vast. This makes me uncomfortable. In the wrong hands, it could be downright ...
"Vampire" unearthed in Venice plague grave
Post Date: 2009-03-13 04:11:43 by farmfriend
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"Vampire" unearthed in Venice plague grave Matteo Borrini, an anthropologist from the University of Florence, said the discovery on the small island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in the Venice lagoon supported the medieval belief that vampires were behind the spread of plagues like the Black Death. "This is the first time that archaeology has succeeded in reconstructing the ritual of exorcism of a vampire," Borrini told Reuters by telephone. "This helps ... authenticate how the myth of vampires was born." The skeleton was unearthed in a mass grave from the Venetian plague of 1576 -- in which the artist Titian died -- on Lazzaretto Nuovo, which lies around three km (2 ...
Pollution and Green Energy
Post Date: 2009-03-12 18:45:22 by Turtle
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Yet one more breathless announcement of renewable energy, green and clean, just around the corner. Of course it costs about five times as much as we're using, and they can use a few billion more for development to make it economic, but there will be Green Pie in the Sky Bye and Bye. Somehow if it's green we need not pay attention to the laws of physics, nor yet of economics. It's Green! Isn't that enough? Well, no. Pollution control, like economic growth, is primarily a function of the cost of energy. As I pointed out in A Step Farther Out, with cheap energy we can take pollutants apart, down to their constituent elements if that's needed; there is never a pollution ...
Husky short field landing and takeoff
Post Date: 2009-03-12 15:59:35 by X-15
3 Comments
Poster Comment:Pay particular attention to the uber-steep takeoff at 1:30...almost no forward movement due to the stiff headwind.
Debris Threat to International Space Station; Crew Evacuating to Soyuz as Precaution
Post Date: 2009-03-12 12:45:51 by Brian S
4 Comments
March 12, 2009 12:20 PM A moderately large piece of space debris has only recently been identified as a threat to the International Space Station - too recently for the station to be moved out of the way. The object is now projected to pass close enough to the ISS to put it into the high threat category. As a result, the astronauts onboard the ISS will be moving from the station into the Soyuz escape capsule as a safety precaution. The closest approach is predicted to occur at 11:39 CDT - about 20 minutes from now. The crew is currently preparing to board the Soyuz. If all goes well, they'll be in the Soyuz from 11:34-11:44 - the ten minute period that brackets the closest approach.
U of Texas research funding up 20% despite slump
Post Date: 2009-03-12 03:57:02 by Tatarewicz
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As of January the University of Texas secured nearly $224-million in research funding, up from $180-million a year ago. This does not include research funds from Congress' $8-billion science stimulus allocation. The current larger amount still will fund less than ten percent of the University's research proposals (compared to the funding of 25% of submissions six years ago). POSTER COMMENT: Encouraging to see that in an area where the U.S. excels things are not being cut back. Click for Full Text!
Climate Change: Driven by the Ocean not Human Activity
Post Date: 2009-03-11 20:09:52 by farmfriend
2 Comments
Climate Change: Driven by the Ocean not Human Activity by William M. Gray Professor Emeritus, Dept of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University Prepared for the 2nd Annual Heartland Institute sponsored conference on Climate Change. New York City, March 8-10, 2009 Paper also available at tropical.atmos.colostate.edu (under News) Abstract This paper discusses how the variation in the global ocean’s Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) resulting from changes in the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation (THC) and deep water Surrounding Antarctica Subsidence (SAS) can be the primary cause of climate change. (MOC = THC + SAS) is the likely cause of most of the global warming that ...
Which of Consumer Reports' picks for best used cars gets the best gas mileage?
Post Date: 2009-03-09 22:33:55 by richard9151
10 Comments
Posted Wed Mar 4, 2009 7:37am PST Consumer Reports released its annual list of best cars recently, naming the 2009 Toyota Prius as the overall best-value new car. It's in its own class in terms of fuel economy, as The Daily Green's Most Fuel-Efficient Cars and SUVs of 2009 feature shows. It bests its nearest rival (the Honda Civic Hybrid) in city driving by 20%. But the annual report also includes a list of the most reliable used cars on the market -- reminding us that for fuel efficiency, "sticker" price, and often reliability, used cars are the best value. (The 2000 Honda Insight -- if you can find one -- achieves a combined 53 mpg, which would easily beat the 2009 ...
Tilt! [No The Earth's Tilt on It's Axis Has Not Changed]
Post Date: 2009-03-09 04:38:59 by IndieTX
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Tilt! I have received several emails about a website claiming that the Earth is tilting wildly from its usual 23.5º inclination, and that this is causing global catastrophe that has been covered up by the government. Of course. The website is called Divulgence.net. It goes on for page after page with breathless warnings of Doom and Coverups. From what I have read, it appears the author is claiming that solar activity has caused the polar ice to melt, tilting the Earth an additional 26 degrees, moving the positions of sunrise, changing weather patterns, and so on. Image of the new tilt of the Earth from divulgence.net. Now, you’d think you’d notice this, right? But as ...
Union of Concerned Scientists Says No to GMO Corn for Biofuel
Post Date: 2009-03-04 09:43:24 by richard9151
2 Comments
Corn-based ethanol has fallen from favor in the past year amid reports that corn ethanol has a heavier carbon footprint than originally thought. Now a new debate looms over whether the U.S. should allow genetically altered corn to be grown for use as biofuel. The Union of Concerned Scientists says no, arguing that genetically modified corn will inevitably mix with and contaminate corn grown for food products. Syngenta, a multi-national company that has readied a new genetically modified corn intended for ethanol production, has already applied for permission to sell its corn seed in the U.S., telling officials that it would control where the crops are grown so the GMO corn would not mix ...
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