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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
The Importance of Escape
Post Date: 2009-10-29 06:44:46 by Ada
4 Comments
"As I understand it, laws, commands, rules, and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway." -- Anne Hutchinson, 1591-1643 Running away from your problems might just be the best thing you could ever do. No, I'm not talking about skipping out on your child-support payments, your court hearing, or your carping spouse -- though come to think, of it, maybe I am. I'm talking about moving on when the society around you becomes too unjust, chaotic, or hidebound. I'm talking about heading for open spaces and starting over again in brand new territory. BHM readers know instinctively the importance of moving on, as they leave behind traffic ...
A novel form of fusion power
Post Date: 2009-10-28 20:50:35 by Horse
5 Comments
An alternative approach to achieving nuclear fusion in the laboratory LIKE conquistadors seeking El Dorado, physicists cannot leave the idea of fusion power alone. Some spend billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on the huge machines they believe are the best way to generate the temperatures and pressures needed to persuade atomic nuclei to merge with one another. Others still think there is something to the idea of “cold” fusion, and tinker hopefully with desktop apparatus full of electrodes made from exotic metals and electrolytes containing obscure isotopes of hydrogen. Eric Lerner, however, believes there is a third way. His experimental device does not quite fit on ...
Researchers Create Artificial Memories in the Brain of a Fruitfly
Post Date: 2009-10-28 14:51:16 by Prefrontal Vortex
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Researchers Create Artificial Memories in the Brain of a Fruitfly By NICHOLAS WADE Published: October 19, 2009 As part of a project to understand how the brain learns, biologists have written memories into the cells of a fruitfly’s brain, making it think it had a terrible experience. The memory trace was written by shining light into the fly’s brain and activating a special class of cells involved in learning how to avoid an electric shock. The goal of the research is not to give flies nightmares but rather to understand how learning in general works, from flies to people. “In the case of the fly, where we have a numerically rather simple nervous system that does ...
Cockroach Superpower No. 42: They Don’t Need to Pee
Post Date: 2009-10-28 14:46:08 by Prefrontal Vortex
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Cockroach Superpower No. 42: They Don’t Need to Pee By Brandon Keim To survive in hostile environments, cockroaches rely on their own vermin: Blattabacterium, a microbe that hitched a ride inside roaches 140 million years ago, and hasn’t left since. Researchers who sequenced the Blattabacterium genome have found that it converts waste into molecules necessary for a roach to survive. Every cockroach is a testimony to the power of recycling — thanks to their microbes, they don’t even need to pee. “Blattabacterium can produce all of the essential amino acids, various vitamins, and other required compounds from a limited palette of metabolic substrates,” write ...
NASA's New Rocket Lifts Off On Short Test Flight
Post Date: 2009-10-28 11:32:58 by Brian S
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(10-28) 08:30 PDT Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) -- NASA's newest rocket has blasted off on a test flight that may pave the way for a return to the moon. After a one-day weather delay, the Ares I-X rocket rumbled away Wednesday morning from a former shuttle launch pad at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. No people or payloads are on board. The prototype moon rocket should fly for just two minutes. That's how long it will take for the first-stage booster to burn out. The booster will be recovered from the Atlantic for analysis. The 327-foot rocket is nearly twice as tall as the spaceship it's supposed to replace, the shuttle. It's the first step in NASA's effort to ...
Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet
Post Date: 2009-10-27 10:20:19 by christine
1 Comments
People will need to turn vegetarian if the world is to conquer climate change, according to a leading authority on global warming. In an interview with The Times, Lord Stern of Brentford said: “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.” Direct emissions of methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases. Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Lord Stern, the author of the influential 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling global warming, said that a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference ...
Windows 7 Upgrade Woes Mount: Endless Reboots and Product Key Problems
Post Date: 2009-10-26 14:50:24 by christine
11 Comments
Call it the legacy of Microsoft's Vista operating system. PC users upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 have run into a variety of hair pulling problems since last Thursday when Windows 7 launched. Complaints range from endless reboots to refusals by Windows to accept Microsoft's assigned product keys. As of Monday morning, Microsoft had answered about 2600 questions that poured into support forum regarding upgrades. At last count, around 1400 questions remained unanswered. Unable to Unpack On Microsoft's support forum, users are complaining of receiving "unspecified errors" when unpacking Windows 7 Home Premium from the student download, and about getting the ...
Lunar Hoax Material
Post Date: 2009-10-24 19:28:33 by Kamala
8 Comments
Lunar Hoax Material October 23, 2009 Dr. Stephen Rorke, has provided a series of images related to the lunar hoax theory. Seen here is a side-by-side comparison of two photos, one taken in zero gravity and one allegedly taken in deep space, which look suspiciously similar. View the complete gallery of images here.
Web Bot for Dummies. What is the Web Bot?
Post Date: 2009-10-24 10:24:55 by christine
2 Comments
32 planets discovered outside solar system
Post Date: 2009-10-22 20:00:13 by christine
2 Comments
(CNN) -- Thirty-two planets have been discovered outside Earth's solar system through the use of a high-precision instrument installed at a Chilean telescope, an international team announced Monday. The existence of the so-called exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- was announced at the European Southern Observatory/Center for Astrophysics, University of Porto conference in Porto, Portugal, according to a statement issued by the observatory. The announcement was made by a consortium of international researchers, headed by the Geneva Observatory, who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. The device can detect slight wobbles of stars as they ...
Cosmic pattern to UK tree growth
Post Date: 2009-10-19 15:37:48 by farmfriend
9 Comments
Cosmic pattern to UK tree growth By Matt Walker Editor, Earth News The growth of British trees appears to follow a cosmic pattern, with trees growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space. Researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees have varied over the past half a century. As yet, they cannot explain the pattern, but variation in cosmic rays impacted tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation. The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist. "We were originally interested in a different topic, the climatological factors influencing forest growth," says Ms Sigrid Dengel a postgraduate ...
Borrowing Trouble on our Dime
Post Date: 2009-10-18 21:09:54 by Ada
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In their tireless quest to squander our money as foolishly as possible, Our Rulers run a series of "federal laboratories" to "[advance] federal research and technology." Perhaps they aren’t aware that American ingenuity is – or used to be – world-famous; that inventors like Thomas Edison, while working for their own and their investors’ profit, serendipitously benefit us all; and that even in today’s corporate State, private companies often allocate part of their budgets to R&D. But governments verging on the totalitarian do as they please. And R&D pleases ours. Obviously, the nefarious Department of Defense and NASA require rafts of ...
Sexual tsunami
Post Date: 2009-10-17 01:54:40 by Armadillo
6 Comments
Scientists at the University of Toronto found that by genetically tweaking fruit flies so they failed to produce a particular type of pheromone or odour, it turned them irresistible to their species. ... They discovered that when the pheromone was removed, it created a "sexual tsunami" where the bugs proved attractive to one another, regardless of sex. The research found that male fruit flies with no history of homosexuality attempted to mate with their pheromone-free males, according to the research published in journal Nature. Even flies of a different species were interested, according to the research team. This is cool. If they could make that work for humans, maybe even I ...
Were the moon landings faked? [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2009-10-17 00:54:11 by RickyJ
171 Comments
Watch this video and see if you can tell what is very wrong if this was actually filmed on the moon as NASA says it was. Hint: It is not the bad dropping, but that is suspect too for supposedly taking place on the moon.
Global Warming on the Rocks
Post Date: 2009-10-16 19:04:47 by farmfriend
2 Comments
Global Warming on the Rocks Written by Rebecca Terrell Friday, 16 October 2009 11:06 Global-warming alarmists are gearing up for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December with increasingly threatening tales of pending eco-disaster. The latest of these comes in the form of a Reuters article that predicts "the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free during the summer within twenty years." The claim is based on research that compares current sea ice cover at the North Pole to measurements taken in 2007. According to scientists quoted in the article, more sea ice is melting in the summer than should. They claim it will have a snowball effect on global warming by ...
Al Gore Ignores Inconvenient Questions
Post Date: 2009-10-16 19:03:00 by farmfriend
3 Comments
Al Gore Ignores Inconvenient Questions Written by Steven J. DuBord Friday, 16 October 2009 14:20 Al Gore was attending the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 19th Annual Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, held from October 7-11 this year, when one of the journalists asked some inconvenient questions. That journalist was Phelim McAleer, the director of Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria, a video documentary that, according to its website, “shows how Global Warming alarmism and the tax increases that go along with it are going to increase costs for working families during one of the worst recessions in living memory.” Not Evil Just Wrong ...
Is the Global Warming Debate Over?
Post Date: 2009-10-16 18:29:31 by farmfriend
1 Comments
Is the Global Warming Debate Over? Written by Rebecca Terrell Thursday, 15 October 2009 17:00 An article published by the BBC has shocked both sides in the global-warming debate because it quotes scientific research that disproves the claims of climate-change fearmongers. In "What Happened to Global Warming?" the author, Paul Hudson, raised eyebrows by admitting that the Earth has been cooling since 1998. But don't be fooled by his white flag. Hudson gives less-than-equal coverage to skeptics and ends with quotes from global-warming proponents that seem to undermine the opposition. He opens by explaining that global temperatures have steadily decreased over the past ...
Solar Magnetic Decline
Post Date: 2009-10-16 17:19:56 by Horse
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What we suddenly have is a primary magnetic cycle that is not correlating with the sunspot cycle in a timely manner. Thus linking it to a demise of the sunspot cycle is a reasonable proposition that will now be tested over the next few months and years. The weakening of the magnetic field affects us in that many more cosmic rays enter the earth’s atmosphere. This has been linked to the creation of cloud cover and the possibility of alteration in the climate. As I have already said, this theory is about to be subjected to a full stress test. And to be fair, this process of cooling will actually be quite protracted. At the moment, for example, we are still quite warm and are sitting ...
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore's 'alarmist' climate change film
Post Date: 2009-10-16 10:59:25 by Jethro Tull
7 Comments
Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore's 'alarmist' climate change film Last updated at 08:38 11 October 2007 Comments (41) Add to My Stories A controversial documentary on climate change which has been sent to thousands of schools has been criticised by a High Court judge for being 'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'. Mr Justice Burton said former US vice-president Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, was 'one-sided' and would breach education rules unless accompanied by a warning. Despite winning lavish praise from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry, Mr Gore's documentary was found to contain 'nine scientific ...
The Flu Case
Post Date: 2009-10-15 23:13:29 by Jethro Tull
1 Comments
The Flu Case - Hit Me
Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip
Post Date: 2009-10-14 16:07:07 by Horse
8 Comments
Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically. Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years. The effects could be catastrophic. Powerful radiation bursts, which normally never touch the atmosphere, would heat up its upper layers, triggering climatic disruption. Navigation and communication satellites, Earth's eyes and ears, would be destroyed and migrating animals left unable to navigate. 'Earth's magnetic field has disappeared many times before - as a prelude to our magnetic poles flipping ...
Remote controlled bugs buzz off
Post Date: 2009-10-14 06:15:13 by wudidiz
1 Comments
Remote controlled bugs buzz off By Patrick Jackson BBC News Three varieties of beetles have been used in the project A Pentagon-sponsored project to control flying insects remotely has sent ripples of excitement across the scientific pond.Part insect, part machine, the "cyborg beetle" has been tested successfully by its developers at the University of California, Berkeley. Video footage shows a beetle being "flown" around a room by a man using a laptop. At one point it is tethered to a transparent plastic plate, and its tiny limbs can be seen twitching in response to the operator's joy stick. The developers, Michel ...
Sir Tim Berners-Lee Looks Back: the "//" in Web Addresses Was Unnecessary
Post Date: 2009-10-14 06:07:00 by wudidiz
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Sir Tim Berners-Lee Looks Back: the "//" in Web Addresses Was Unnecessary WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Asked what he would have done differently in creating the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says in this video that the double slash, the "//" after the colon in Web addresses, was unnecessary. Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet, was interviewed on stage by New York Times technology reporter Steve Lohr at a technology symposium at the Embassy of Finland in Washington on Thursday.He makes his comments about the "//" issue at 3:30 in the clip. (He has spoken about the unneeded symbols previously.)In the interview, Berners-Lee speaks about the importance for ...
Was H1N1 here in 1957?
Post Date: 2009-10-13 20:48:09 by Jethro Tull
12 Comments
Swine Flu Less Severe for Over-50s? Pre-1957 Flu Exposure May Protect Against H1N1 Swine Flu By Daniel J. DeNoon WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MDMay 20, 2009 -- People born before 1957 may be less susceptible than younger people to the H1N1 swine flu. CDC researchers have detected antibodies in the blood of older people that neutralize the new flu bug now sweeping the nation, Daniel Jernigan, MD, MPH, deputy director of the CDC's flu division, said today in a news conference. "We infer from that, there is some level of protection," Jernigan said. "But to prove protection, we look at the effect [the virus has] on the population, and at this point we ...
‘DNA Transistor’ Could Revolutionize Genetic Testing
Post Date: 2009-10-13 14:50:05 by Prefrontal Vortex
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‘DNA Transistor’ Could Revolutionize Genetic Testing By Priya Ganapati October 6, 2009 | 12:01 am | Categories: R&D and Inventions Researchers at IBM have found a way to meld biology and computing to create a new chip that could become the basis for a fast, inexpensive, personal genetic analyzer. The DNA sequencer involves drilling tiny nanometer-size holes through computer-like silicon chips, then passing DNA strands through them to read the information contained in their genetic code. “We are merging computational biology and nanotechnology skills to produce something that will be very useful to the future of medicine,” Gustavo Stolovitzky, an IBM researcher, ...
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