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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
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 ...
13 Unsolved scientific puzzles
Post Date: 2009-03-04 02:47:44 by X-15
2 Comments
Author Michael Brooks has investigated some of the most puzzling anomalies of modern science, those intractable problems that refuse to conform to the theories. Here he counts down the 13 strangest. 1. MOST OF THE UNIVERSE IS MISSING We can only account for 4 per cent of the cosmos If you’re wondering what the LHC might do for you, how’s this: it might just find a whole quarter of the universe. The collider is hoping to create some particles of what physicists call “dark matter”, an enigma that is thought to make up roughly 25 per cent of the universe. Then there is the “dark energy”, a mysterious force that seems to be ripping space and time apart. In ...
Moon Landing A Fake or Fact
Post Date: 2009-03-02 22:10:08 by richard9151
28 Comments
This is a youtube series of 9 tapes, and I would say that it pretty well settles the entire issue about the moon landing. By all means, give your opinion! This goes to part 3; www.youtube.com/watch?v=G...=3545A9A873E4000F&index=6 Click for Full Text!
Silencing the Lambs: Scientists Target Sheep Belching to Cut Methane
Post Date: 2009-03-02 14:33:42 by Prefrontal Vortex
4 Comments
Reducing Gas in Livestock Could Help World Breathe Sigh of Relief Over Global Warming By PATRICK BARTA PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand -- On a typical day, researchers in this college town coax hungry sheep into metal carts. They wheel the fluffy beasts into sealed chambers and feed them grass, then wait for them to burp. The exercise is part of a global effort to keep sheep, deer, cows and other livestock from belching methane when they eat and regurgitate grass. Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and researchers now believe livestock industries are a major contributor to climate change, responsible for more greenhouse-gas emissions than cars are, according to the United ...
Carbon Regulation: One Scientist's Unscientific Dream?
Post Date: 2009-03-01 19:32:02 by farmfriend
2 Comments
February 27, 2009 Carbon Regulation: One Scientist's Unscientific Dream?By Marc Sheppard There's an understandably growing unease about the likely prospect that the Obama administration will soon choose to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. But that disquiet would likely turn quickly to rage if more people knew the truth about the scientific conclusions on which this unprecedented incursion on both industry and individual freedom was based. You see, it appears that those conclusions weren't based on accepted scientific procedure at all, but were instead predetermined -- and perhaps by a single man. Our story unfolds just weeks after Barbara Boxer's pet cap-and-trade bill -- the ...
Why so many minds think alike
Post Date: 2009-02-28 07:12:24 by Disgusted
18 Comments
(CNN) -- You're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something, but you hold the opposite view. Do you say something? Or do you just go along with the others? Imaging techniques help scientists look at the basis for principles of social psychology in the brain. Decades of research show people tend to go along with the majority view, even if that view is objectively incorrect. Now, scientists are supporting those theories with brain images. A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group, their brains produce an error signal. A zone of the brain popularly called the "oops area" becomes extra active, while ...
Men, Women Admire Beauty Differently in Brain
Post Date: 2009-02-26 06:39:38 by Turtle
5 Comments
Feb. 24, 2009 -- Beauty is in the brain of the beholder. Go to any museum and there will be men and women admiring paintings and sculpture. But it turns out they are thinking about the sight differently. Men process beauty on the right side of their brains, while women use their whole brain to do the job, researchers report in Tuesday's electronic edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. They even explain it differently. Novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Essayist David Hume: "Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." Researchers were surprised by the finding. "It is well ...
Why are unmarked military jets spraying chemicals over our towns and cities?
Post Date: 2009-02-25 02:21:29 by wudidiz
6 Comments
Why are unmarked military jets spraying chemicals over our towns and cities?I first discovered the frightening reality of Chemtrails by reading about them on the Internet and then going outside and looking up into the sky.The day came when I was shocked to realize that what I had been reading was actually taking place above my head.IN THE BEGINNING.Cloud seeding began in the late 1940s. The basic idea at the time was to use aircraft or rockets to inject silver iodide into the atmosphere so that the clouds would become more efficient at generating ice crystals that would either fall as snowflakes or melt to produce raindrops, depending on temperatures in and beneath the clouds.At first ...
Natural Explanation Found for UFOs
Post Date: 2009-02-24 17:38:25 by PSUSA
7 Comments
Mysterious UFO sightings may go hand in hand with a puzzling natural phenomenon known as sprites — flashes high in the atmosphere triggered by thunderstorms. The dancing lights have appeared above most thunderstorms throughout history, but researchers did not start studying them until one accidentally recorded a sighting on camera in 1989. "Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said Colin Price, a geophysicist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. "We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft." Researchers have detected the flashes between ...
North Korea Announces Plans for 'Satellite' Launch
Post Date: 2009-02-24 11:28:29 by Brian S
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24 February 2009 North Korea has spelled out in its clearest terms yet its intention to launch what it describes as a "communications satellite." Official North Korean media broadcast a statement Tuesday from the country's science ministry saying "preparations to launch an experimental communications satellite are now making brisk headway." North Korea has not specified when it will conduct the launch, which it says will carry a satellite named Kwangmyongsong 2 into orbit. North Korean media says the successful launch will be "another giant stride forward in building an economic power." It is the clearest confirmation Pyongyang has given of U.S. and ...
Rocket With NASA Global Warming Satellite Crashes
Post Date: 2009-02-24 11:26:04 by Brian S
0 Comments
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — A rocket carrying a NASA satellite crashed near Antarctica after a failed launch early Tuesday, ending a $280 million mission to track global warming from space. The Taurus XL rocket carrying the Orbiting Carbon Observatory blasted off just before 2 a.m. from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. But minutes later, a cover protecting the satellite during launch failed to separate from the rocket, a preliminary investigation found. The 986-pound satellite was supposed to be placed into a polar orbit some 400 miles high to track carbon dioxide emissions. The project was nine years in the making, and the mission was supposed to last two ...
Anonymous Caller? New Service Says, Not Any More
Post Date: 2009-02-23 18:24:16 by Prefrontal Vortex
5 Comments
Anonymous Caller? New Service Says, Not Any More By Kevin Poulsen February 16, 2009 | 11:43:10 PM Categories: Hacks and Cracks A new service set for launch Tuesday allows cellphone users to unmask the Caller ID on blocked incoming calls, obtaining the phone number, and in some cases the name and address, of the no-longer-anonymous caller. The service, called TrapCall, is offered by New Jersey's TelTech systems, the company behind the controversial SpoofCard Caller ID spoofing service. The new service is likely to be even more controversial — and popular. "What’s really interesting is that they’ve totally taken the privacy out of Caller ID," says former ...
Simple elixir called a 'miracle liquid'
Post Date: 2009-02-23 05:52:50 by Kamala
15 Comments
www.latimes.com/business/...2009feb23,0,2307567.story From the Los Angeles Times Simple elixir called a 'miracle liquid' Electrolyzed water cleans, degreases -- and treats athlete's foot. The solution is replacing toxic chemicals. By Marla Dickerson February 23, 2009 It's a kitchen degreaser. It's a window cleaner. It kills athlete's foot. Oh, and you can drink it. Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S. regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job. The stuff is a simple ...
UFO's and Nukes: Launch in Progress!
Post Date: 2009-02-19 00:49:42 by X-15
3 Comments
Launch in Progress! Of all the interviews I’ve conducted with former or retired ICBM launch officers over the past three decades, this was perhaps the most disturbing. According to the source, David H. Schuur, a UFO had apparently activated the launch sequence in most of his Minuteman missiles. In August 2007, Schuur told me, “I saw your request for information in the [June 2007] Association of Air Force Missileers Newsletter. I was involved in a UFO incident at Minot AFB in the mid-1960s. I had read your earlier article [in the September 2002 AAFM Newsletter] but was hesitant to respond.” I asked Schuur why he had been hesitant. He replied, “Well, we were basically ...
Cameras in Digital Convert Boxes! BEWARE!!!! [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2009-02-18 19:24:39 by Itistoolate
44 Comments
I could not believe my eyes. I have a friend who is kind of a conspiracy theorist. He was trying to convince me that the many of the digital TV convert boxes that our coming out have microphones and cameras built into them. Knowing a bit about electronics I bought one of these devices opened it up fully intending on proving him wrong. To my surprise was right. This device has both a miniature camera lens and what looks like a microphone. I was so shocked I took pictures and video Please send this out to every one you know who is using one of these devices. Hear are the details on the device I bought. Its the MAGNAVOX TB110MW9 Digital to Analog Converter Below is a video and images of the ...
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