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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
8 Signs the Animal Kingdom Is Out of Whack
Post Date: 2008-07-18 17:09:50 by Con Vallian
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8 Signs the Animal Kingdom Is Out of Whack Jasmin Malik Chua Special to LiveScience LiveScience.com Fri Jul 18, 1:51 PM ET A polar bear clinging to a melting iceberg may the poster child for global warming, but rising temperatures, pollution and other human activity are also affecting the animal kingdom in far subtler ways. Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, the natural world could be giving us other signs that human intervention has knocked it way off kilter. ADVERTISEMENT Some recent examples: 1. Earlier Migration: Several bird species are making their annual northward jaunt slightly ahead of schedule in recent springs, as the East Coast of the United States heats up, ...
No smoking hot spot [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2008-07-18 13:33:59 by farmfriend
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No smoking hot spot David Evans | July 18, 2008 I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector. FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the ...
Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate
Post Date: 2008-07-17 22:02:51 by farmfriend
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Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate Michael Asher (Blog) - July 16, 2008 9:35 PM "Considerable presence" of skeptics The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible." In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific ...
NASA Spacecraft Shows Diverse, Wet Environments on Ancient Mars
Post Date: 2008-07-17 12:32:21 by gengis gandhi
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NASA Spacecraft Shows Diverse, Wet Environments on Ancient Mars 07.16.08 color-enhanced image of the delta in Jezero Crater A color-enhanced image of the delta in Jezero Crater, which once held a lake. Researchers report that ancient rivers ferried clay-like minerals (shown in green) into the lake, forming the delta. Clays tend to trap and preserve organic matter, making the delta a good place to look for signs of ancient life. Image credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/MSSS/Brown University › Full image and caption WASHINGTON -- Two studies based on data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed that the Red Planet once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet ...
Oil is NOT a fossil fuel and AGW is non-science - Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2008-07-16 10:22:18 by nikki
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We all grew up believing that oil is a fossil fuel, and just about every day this 'fact' is mentioned in newspapers and on TV. However, let us not forget what Lenin said - "A lie told often enough becomes truth." It was in 1757 that the great Russian scholar Mikhailo V. Lomonosov enunciated the hypothesis that oil might originate from biological detritus. The scientists who first rejected Lomonsov's hypothesis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were the famous German naturalist and geologist Alexander von Humboldt and the French chemist and thermodynamicist Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac, who together enunciated the proposition that oil is a primordial material ...
Bush lifts daddy's offshore drilling ban
Post Date: 2008-07-14 13:42:58 by Jethro Tull
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Even a blind pig finds an occasional acorn.
How to break free of oil
Post Date: 2008-07-13 14:20:10 by Esso
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How to break free of oil Follow the lead of the few countries doing it By GAL LUFT When the Founding Fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries. It would be roughly eight more decades before oil gushed from a well in Titusville, Pa., marking the beginning of the global oil economy. It took eight decades more for the United States to become a net oil importer. In 1973, when OPEC imposed its oil embargo, U.S. oil imports composed 30 percent of our needs. Today, they make up more than 60 percent, with a growing proportion of that crude coming from the world's least ...
CDC uses duct tape to seal off room with dangerous bacteria
Post Date: 2008-07-12 02:26:40 by TwentyTwelve
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CDC uses duct tape to seal off room with dangerous bacteria Cdc Government scientists are working with dangerous bacteria in a room where the containment door is sealed with duct tape, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The paper reports the tape was added to the door at the Center for Disease Control's new $214 million infectious disease lab last year after the ventilation system malfunctioned and pulled potentially contaminated air out of the lab and into an area designated as "clean," leading nine CDC workers to get tested for possible exposure to Q fever bacteria. CDC officials tell the newspaper that the lab's air containment systems have been working ...
Pointless to rush a carbon emissions plan
Post Date: 2008-07-10 18:28:42 by farmfriend
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Pointless to rush a carbon emissions plan NEIL REYNOLDS reynolds.globe@gmail.com July 2, 2008 OTTAWA -- Assuming - however briefly - that Canada must impose carbon taxes, when would be the best time to do it? Stéphane Dion says now. Right now. Yale University economist William Nordhaus says, well, slow down, friend. We have time. Let's do this thing properly. Dr. Nordhaus takes global warming seriously, anticipating that it may well "cast a shadow over the globe for decades, perhaps centuries, to come." When he says centuries, he means centuries. In his highly sophisticated computer analysis of global warming strategies, he includes the option of doing nothing at ...
Planetary line-up excites the sun
Post Date: 2008-07-10 16:13:42 by Tauzero
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Planetary line-up excites the sun Wednesday, 2 July 2008 Marilyn Head ABC Australian astronomers may have found a solution to how far-away Jupiter and Saturn drive the sun's solar cycle. In a paper published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, astronomer Dr Ian Wilson and colleagues from the University of Southern Queensland, suggest Jupiter and Saturn affect the sun's movement and its rotation, and hence its sunspot activity. Every 11 years the sun undergoes a period of intense solar activity, marked by flares, coronal mass ejections and sunspots. This period is known as the solar maximum and occurs twice each solar, or Hale, cycle. "The sun can ...
Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread': European scientists
Post Date: 2008-07-10 16:01:49 by christine
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New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday. Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release. "Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said. Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 ...
Internet flaw could let hackers take over the Web
Post Date: 2008-07-10 06:54:34 by Ada
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Computer industry heavyweights are hustling to fix a flaw in the foundation of the Internet that would let hackers control traffic on the World Wide Web. Major software and hardware makers worked in secret for months to create a software "patch" released on Tuesday to repair the problem, which is in the way computers are routed to web page addresses. "It's a very fundamental issue with how the entire addressing scheme of the Internet works," Securosis analyst Rich Mogul said in a media conference call. "You'd have the Internet, but it wouldn't be the Internet you expect. (Hackers) would control everything." The flaw would be a boon for ...
Brazil's National Indian Policy
Post Date: 2008-07-10 06:34:52 by Ada
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Imagine for a moment that, hovering just off of planet earth, there is a fleet of alien spacecraft. The ships are stocked with all of the fantasies of science fiction: cures for every disease encountered on earth, nano-robots that can maintain our bodies and allow individuals to live for millennia, production technology that makes toil a thing of the past, and replication machines that turn refuse into food. Yet, for now, the aliens do not allow humans to know of their presence – and thus, we remain in (what would be to them) extreme poverty. Something like this was proposed in the science fiction film Star Trek VIII: First Contact. Aliens close to Earth withhold contact because, in ...
The Science of Air Pharmacology or Chemtrails
Post Date: 2008-07-10 04:28:30 by wudidiz
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The Science of Air Pharmacology or Chemtrails
Mars Soil Fit for Life, Tests Confirm
Post Date: 2008-07-09 09:58:24 by gengis gandhi
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Mars Soil Fit for Life, Tests Confirm Alicia Chang, Associated Press Mars Arable Land? | View Images From the Mars Lander June 26, 2008 -- The Phoenix lander's first taste test of soil near Mars' north pole reveals a briny environment similar to what can be found in backyards on Earth, scientists said Thursday. The finding raises hope that the Martian arctic plains could have conditions favorable for primitive life. Phoenix landed a month ago to study the habitability of Mars' northern latitudes. "There's nothing about it that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly," mission scientist Samuel Kounaves of Tufts University said of the soil. ...
Tit-for-tat: birds found to repay wartime help
Post Date: 2008-07-07 15:37:20 by Tauzero
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Tit-for-tat: birds found to repay wartime help July 6, 2008 Special to World Science When it spots a lurking predator, the sparrow-like pied flycatcher reacts in a way common among some birds and mammals. It calls up a mob of its peers to drive the interloper away. But more than a feisty defender, the northern European bird is also a shrewd account keeper, researchers say: it remembers which of its neighbors answered its call to arms, and which stayed home. And it repays each in kind. Scientists say the behavior offers new ...
Flying Saucer Craft Set to Fly
Post Date: 2008-07-06 00:33:28 by Tauzero
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Flying Saucer Craft Set to Fly Eric Bland, Discovery News June 23, 2008 -- A new wingless, saucer-shaped aircraft is scheduled to take to the skies. Just don't call it a UFO. Subrata Roy, a scientist at the University of Florida, calls his aircraft a "wingless electromagnetic air vehicle," or WEAV, and if it flies he says it could usher in a new age of aircraft design. "If this works and we are able to fly it, this will be a quantum shift in how we see flying objects," said Roy. The WEAV will fly based on a physical phenomena known as magnetohydrodynamics. Sean Connery skippered a submarine powered by a magnetohydrodynamic drive in the movie "The Hunt For ...
Australian Researchers Warn of Global Cooling [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2008-07-04 01:00:25 by Original_Intent
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"Spin-orbit coupling" to blame; effects could last decades. A new paper published by the Astronomical Society of Australia is warning of upcoming global cooling due to lessened solar activity. The study, written by three Australian researchers, has identified what is known as a "spin-orbit coupling" affecting the rotation rate of the sun. That rotation, in turn, is linked to the intensity of the solar cycle and climate changes here on Earth. The study's lead author, Ian Wilson, explains further, "[The paper] supports the contention that the level of activity on the Sun will significantly diminish sometime in the next decade and remain low for about 20 - 30 ...
Why People Vote: Is it in the Genes?
Post Date: 2008-07-03 13:36:50 by Tauzero
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Why People Vote: Is it in the Genes? Studies Suggest a Link Between Voting Behavior and Genetics By Todd Zwillich WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MD July 2, 2008 -- Candidates trying to drive up their poll numbers this election year might want to target more than voters' politics. They may also want to consider their genes. That's what a pair of studies suggest by claiming the first-ever link between voting behavior and genetic factors. The studies -- based in part on the voting records of identical twins -- suggest that DNA may explain half or more of differences in peoples' participation in politics. Researchers even singled out a pair of genes that could play ...
Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug
Post Date: 2008-07-01 09:59:43 by angle
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In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project. She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open. But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day. "I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing," said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. "I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected." Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, ...
Poll: 74 percent support offshore oil drilling in U.S.
Post Date: 2008-07-01 08:01:05 by Disgusted
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Three in four likely voters – 74 percent – support offshore drilling for oil in U.S. coastal waters and more than half (59 percent) also favor drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a new Zogby International telephone poll shows. A majority of likely voters across the political spectrum support offshore oil drilling, with vast majorities of Republicans (90 percent) and independents (75 percent) in favor of drilling for oil off U.S. coastal waters more than half of Democrats (58 percent) also said they favor offshore drilling. Republicans (80 percent) and political independents (57 percent) are much more likely to favor drilling for oil in ANWR than Democrats (40 ...
Fire in the sky: Tunguska at 100
Post Date: 2008-06-30 19:44:29 by farmfriend
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Fire in the sky: Tunguska at 100 By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News At 7:17am on 30 June 1908, an immense explosion tore through the forest of central Siberia. Some 80 million trees were flattened over an area of 2,000 square km (800 square miles) near the Tunguska River. The blast was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and generated a shock wave that knocked people to the ground 60km from the epicentre. The cause was an asteroid or comet just a few tens of metres across which detonated 5-10km above the ground, 100 years ago today. Eyewitnesses recalled a brilliant fireball resembling a "flying star" ploughing across the ...
The Apocalyptic Temptation: A plea for scientific rationality - part 1
Post Date: 2008-06-30 12:16:31 by Tauzero
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The Apocalyptic Temptation: A plea for scientific rationality - part 1 Published on June 15th, 2008 in News and Views Tags: Apocalypse, economics, environment, Lysenko, rationality, science The Prologue Although some might construe this as an attack upon people I like and respect, that isn’t the intention and I don’t believe that the people I quote here would take it as a personal attack because they’re grown-up, mature people. If its a criticism of them, then its also a criticism of myself. The Apocalyptic Temptation It is historically axiomatic that humankind is obsessed with the future, the “undiscovered country”. It is also axiomatic that humankind has ...
The Worm Turns
Post Date: 2008-06-29 10:19:14 by Ada
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In the early 1990s, Joel Weinstock, a gastroenterologist, encountered a puzzle. The prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (I.B.D.) across North America increased markedly during the 20th century. Many thought that “bad” genes would eventually explain the spike, but Weinstock didn’t buy it. In areas where fewer than two generations ago the I.B.D. incidence might have been as low as 1 in 10,000, it was now 1 in 250. A defective gene couldn’t spread that quickly, he reasoned. It had to be something in the environment. But what? Stumped, Weinstock tried turning the question around. Instead of asking what triggered I.B.D., he asked what, before the 20th century, protected ...
Science by intimidation
Post Date: 2008-06-28 23:02:28 by farmfriend
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Science by intimidation REX MURPHY Commentator with The National and host of CBC Radio's Cross-Country Checkup Read Bio | Latest Columns June 28, 2008 Truth may enter the world by many doors, but she is never escorted by force. I thought that was a lesson learned long ago, and learned by none more tellingly than scientists. Real scientists, actually, have learned it. A new amalgam has emerged however, the scientist-activist, and for that specimen it's a lesson passed by. In the dawn of the Enlightenment, it was scientists who were hauled before tribunals and inquisitions. Galileo is the arch example, the pioneer empiricist who rejected the ancient Earth-centric model of the ...
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