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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Scientists say Midwest quakes poorly understood
Post Date: 2008-04-20 10:41:21 by Ada
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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) - Scientists say they know far too little about Midwestern seismic zones like the one that rumbled to life under southern Illinois Friday morning, but some of what they do know is unnerving. The fault zones beneath the Mississippi River Valley have produced some of the largest modern U.S. quakes east of the Rockies, a region covered with old buildings not built to withstand seismic activity. And, when quakes happen, they're felt far and wide, their vibrations propagated over hundreds of miles of bedrock. Friday's quake shook things up from Nebraska to Atlanta, rattling nerves but doing little damage and seriously hurting no one. It was a magnitude 5.2 temblor ...
Why flowers have lost their scent
Post Date: 2008-04-19 23:35:02 by Horse
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Pollution is stifling the fragrance of plants and preventing bees from pollinating them – endangering one of the most essential cycles of nature, writes Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean Pollution is dulling the scent of flowers and impeding some of the most basic processes of nature, disrupting insect life and imperilling food supplies, a new study suggests. The potentially hugely significant research – funded by the blue-chip US National Science Foundation – has found that gases mainly formed from the emissions of car exhausts prevent flowers from attracting bees and other insects in order to pollinate them. And the scientists who have conducted the study fear that ...
Scientists hark back 30,000 years to give Neanderthal Man a voice
Post Date: 2008-04-18 06:47:58 by Ada
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The voice of Neanderthal Man has been synthesised 30,000 years after the human relatives became extinct. Scientists in the US have used a reconstruction of the larynx of Homo neanderthalis and computer models to mimic the way that the species probably spoke. Only one sound – the “e” – has been generated so far, which seems strangulated and nasal in comparison with its human equivalent. Robert McCarthy, of Florida Atlantic University, who is leading the research, said that he hoped eventually to produce an entire sentence. He told New Scientist magazine that the species lacked the “quantal vowel” sounds typical of modern speech. The Neanderthal “e” ...
Sokal affair
Post Date: 2008-04-16 19:12:40 by Horse
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The Sokal affair was a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated on the editorial staff and readership of the postmodern cultural studies journal Social Text (published by Duke University). In 1996, Sokal, a professor of physics at New York University, submitted a paper of nonsense camouflaged in jargon for publication in Social Text, as an experiment to see if a journal in that field would, in Sokal's words: "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."[1] The paper, titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"[2], was ...
Life at Four Cells Old
Post Date: 2008-04-13 22:45:46 by RickyJ
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ROME, APRIL 13, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Stem cell research using material taken from human embryos continues to be hotly debated. Advocates of using embryos maintain that at such early stages, the cells cannot be considered a human person. However, a recent book by two philosophers argues the contrary. Robert P. George, who is also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, and Christopher Tollefsen, avoid religious-based arguments and lay out a series of scientific and philosophical principles in favor of the human status of the embryo. In "Embryo: A Defense of Human Life" (Doubleday), they maintain that the status of a human being commences at the moment of conception. ...
Unusual earthquakes measured off Oregon
Post Date: 2008-04-12 21:54:00 by richard9151
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Sat Apr 12, 5:06 PM ET GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area. Scientists don't know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University. There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles southwest of Newport. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two ...
Wikipedia's Zealots: Solomon
Post Date: 2008-04-12 20:13:31 by farmfriend
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Wikipedia's Zealots: Solomon Posted: April 12, 2008, 3:07 PM by Lawrence Solomon Lawrence Solomon, Junk Science, The Deniers, Climate change, global warming, propaganda, Wikipedia, Intergovernmental Panel on Climare Change, IPCC, Peiser, Oreskes(see above link for these links) As I'm writing this column for the Post, I am simultaneously editing a page on Wikipedia. I am confident that just about everything I write for my column will be available for you to read. I am equally confident that you will be able to read just about nothing that I write for the page on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia page is entitled Naomi Oreskes, after a Professor of History and Science Studies at the ...
Denmark on top for ICT (Information Communication Technology), US in 4th place
Post Date: 2008-04-12 19:48:08 by robin
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Denmark on top for ICT 10/04/2008 The World Economic Forum (WEF) has reported that Denmark is the most networked economy in the world. Sweden, Switzerland and Korea were some of the countries that made up the top ten of the 2007-2008 Global Information Technology Report. The report offers record coverage of 127 economies around the world, placing particular emphasis on the effective use of information communication technology (ICT). This year there was also a focus on network readiness in stimulating innovation. Senior economist of the WEF global competitiveness network and co-editor of the report Irene Mia said: 'Coherent government vision on the importance of ICT, coupled with an ...
Zombie Computers Decried As Imminent National Threat
Post Date: 2008-04-10 11:49:34 by robin
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Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff speaks about computer security at the RSA Conference on information security in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 8, 2008. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma SAN FRANCISCO -- Gangs of thousands of zombie home computers grinding out spam, committing fraud and overpowering websites are the most vexing net threat today, according to law enforcement and security professionals. Today's botnet herders have hundreds of thousands of computers at their command and use technically sophisticated ways to hide their headquarters, making it easy for them to make millions from spam and credit card theft. They can also be used to direct floods of fake traffic at a targeted ...
Credit Bust: Avoid Being the Little Guy
Post Date: 2008-04-09 10:23:16 by tom007
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Credit Bust: Avoid Being the Little Guy by: Tim Iacono posted on: April 06, 2008 | about stocks: AXP / BSC / MA / V * Font Size: * Print * Email The long (and maybe not-so-slow-anymore) unwinding of the credit excess of recent years is starting to show up as missed payments in all the usual places - mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans. Maybe someday they'll look back at this period in history and think that we all should have seen what was coming - to think that asset prices would rise indefinitely, forever masking the amount of credit and debt that was being created, seemed like an awfully stupid way to run an economy. Bloomberg reports that late payments just hit a high not ...
Teleportation and forcefields possible within decades, says Professor Michio Kaku
Post Date: 2008-04-09 06:29:20 by Ada
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Teleportation and forcefields could become scientific realities within decades, and time travel will also be possible in the future, according to one of the world's leading physicists. Interview with Michio Kaku, Mr Parallel Universe Extended extracts from Prof Kaku's new book 'Physics of the Impossible' Future of science: 'We will have the power of the gods' Professor Michio Kaku of City University in New York has studied a range of scientific "impossibilities" and concluded that most will almost certainly be achieved as our knowledge expands. Prof Kaku: 'What is unthinkable today might not be forbidden in a few decades or centuries' Applying ...
Search engines warned over data
Post Date: 2008-04-08 00:19:01 by robin
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Search engines warned over data By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website Google has faced criticism in the past Search engines should delete personal data held about their users within six months, a European Commission advisory body on data protection has said. The recommendation is likely to be accepted by the European Commission and could lead to a clash with search giants like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google and Yahoo anonymise user data after 18 months, while MSN does the same after 13 months. The body said search companies were not clear enough on data protection. Google said its privacy policy "strikes the right ...
'Ruthlessness gene' discovered
Post Date: 2008-04-07 22:53:02 by Tauzero
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'Ruthlessness gene' discovered Dictatorial behaviour may be partly genetic, study suggests. Michael Hopkin Selfish dictators may owe their behaviour partly to their genes, according to a study that claims to have found a genetic link to ruthlessness. The study might help to explain the money-grabbing tendencies of those with a Machiavellian streak — from national dictators down to 'little Hitlers' found in workplaces the world over. Researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem found a link between a gene called AVPR1a and ruthless behaviour in an economic exercise called the 'Dictator Game'. The exercise allows players to behave selflessly, or like ...
Big Brother Monitors Investment Activity (Ron Paul Here)
Post Date: 2008-04-07 22:27:42 by tom007
1 Comments
Big Brother Monitors Investment Activity by: Michael Shedlock posted on: April 07, 2008 | about stocks: DIA / QQQQ / SPY * Font Size: * Print * Email Previously, and by charter, the Fed only lent directly to banks. On March 17, the Fed overreached that charter and started direct lending to broker dealers via the Primary Dealer Credit Facility [PDCF]. As one might expect, Investment firms have already tapped the Fed for billions. The Fed, for the first time, agreed to let big investment houses temporarily get emergency loans directly from the central bank. This mechanism, similar to one available for commercial banks for years, will continue for at least six months. It was the broadest ...
The REAL inconvenient truth: Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change
Post Date: 2008-04-06 22:46:05 by farmfriend
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The REAL inconvenient truth: Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change NIGEL LAWSON Over the past half-century, we have become used to planetary scares. In the late Sixties, we were told of a population explosion that would lead to global starvation. Then, a little later, we were warned the world was running out of natural resources. By the Seventies, when global temperatures began to dip, many eminent scientists warned us that we faced a new Ice Age. But the latest scare, global warming, has engaged the political and opinion-forming classes to a greater extent than any of these. The readiness to embrace this fashionable belief has led the present ...
Coming soon: superfast internet
Post Date: 2008-04-06 19:51:54 by robin
24 Comments
THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds. At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds. The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call. David ...
Fossilized feces upends timeline of human's arrival in North America
Post Date: 2008-04-03 16:13:08 by robin
3 Comments
Fossilized excrement found in an Oregon cave has given scientists the hardest evidence to date that humans roamed the New World at least 1,000 years earlier than previously believed. more stories like this The prehistoric poop, deposited in a cave some 14,300 years ago, contains DNA from the forebears of modern-day Native Americans, according to the research. The discovery reported today by the journal Science added fresh weight to emerging theories that Stone Age people from Asia somehow bypassed ice sheets sealing off North America before 11,000 BC. Nearly all scholars agree that humans were present by then, but until recently few archaeologists accepted that an earlier arrival was even ...
Smallest Black Hole Found
Post Date: 2008-04-02 20:50:41 by blackeagle
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NASA scientists have discovered the smallest known black hole to date. The object is known as 'XTE J1650-500'. Weighing in at a scant 3.8 solar masses and measuring only 15 miles across, this finding sheds new light on the lower limit of black hole sizes and the critical threshold at which a star will become a black hole upon it's death, rather than a neutron star. XTE J1650-500 beats out the previous record holder, GRO 1655-40, by about 2.5 solar masses. Click for Full Text!
Texas wind generation creates power-market turmoil
Post Date: 2008-04-02 08:12:02 by DeaconBenjamin
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HOUSTON, April 1 (Reuters) - Being the national leader in wind generation has created recent turmoil in the Texas deregulated power market. Booming electric production from wind has created new headaches for power-market participants and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the independent agency that oversees the power market. For instance, the unexpected loss of wind production amid changing weather conditions has been blamed, in part, for curtailment of electric service to industrial customers in late February and for real-time power prices hitting a market cap of $2,250 per megawatt-hour in early March, according to ERCOT. In recent weeks, strong spring wind capacity ...
Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene
Post Date: 2008-04-01 16:04:26 by FOH
8 Comments
Poster Comment:See y'all later...gotta run, and NOT for Congress!
Radical New Gas Alternative That Your Kids Will be Using
Post Date: 2008-03-30 17:10:48 by richard9151
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By Darshan Goswami, M.S., P.E. Hydrogen, produced from tap water, could become the forever fuel of the future, generating power for homes, industry, and cars. A new day is dawning for a revolutionary way to generate electric power from renewable energy sources. Imagine a future where the electrical power needed to run your computer, TV and DVD is generated from a small appliance about the size of a dishwasher located in your home. Envision generating electricity without combustion, and producing heat and pure drinking water as by-products. Picture a world powered almost entirely by an infinitely abundant and totally clean fuel. Hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, is that ...
The Fluoride Deception (Interview With Christopher Bryson)
Post Date: 2008-03-30 00:25:57 by buckeye
1 Comments
Poster Comment:Stunning with its directness and well-supported background information.
Time to kill crop-derived biofuels
Post Date: 2008-03-29 18:56:31 by F.A. Hayek Fan
4 Comments
Yet another prominent scientist has joined the chorus against crop-derived biofuels, as Lewis Page reports. Dr Richard Pike, chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry, has said that biofuels are a "dead end" and "extremely inefficient", and that the government was wrong to impose a requirement for 5 per cent biofuel content in motor fuel by 2010. Dr Pike points out that "the 80 tonnes of kerosene used for a one-way commercial flight to New York is equivalent to the annual biofuel yield from an area of approximately 30 football pitches." At this rate it would take the whole of Britain's farmland just to run Heathrow. It really is time to stop this nonsense. ...
FBI Focusing on 'About Four' Suspects in 2001 Anthrax Attacks
Post Date: 2008-03-29 15:54:26 by Ada
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WASHINGTON — The FBI has narrowed its focus to "about four" suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned. Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID. The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the ...
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
Post Date: 2008-03-29 10:33:59 by ...
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More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice. None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe. Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure. The world’s physicists have spent 14 years ...
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