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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
The future of cars in America.....
Post Date: 2007-06-24 14:04:27 by richard9151
10 Comments
Cheap cars allow Indians to jump off motorcycles MUMBAI (AFP) - Trading a motorcycle for a car in India has long been too expensive for many, but manufacturers plan to offer models at 3,000 dollars or less to attract new buyers, analysts say. The push by Nissan Renault, Tata Motors and Global Automobiles -- a subsidiary of the Kolkata-based Xenitis group and China's Guangzhou Motors -- comes as car sales in India fell in April and May to a combined 1.52 million from 1.6 million a year earlier. It was the first back-to-back monthly decline in three years, a period of annual double-digit growth. But a new sales strategy is about to be unleashed. "TataÂ’s small car is ...
Rising sea levels could divide and conquer Antarctic ice
Post Date: 2007-06-24 01:11:11 by robin
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Rising sea levels could divide and conquer Antarctic ice EARTH'S largest ice sheet has till now seemed well able to withstand the effects of climate change, but it may have a hidden weakness. While models predict the air over the East Antarctic ice sheet will remain chilly enough to prevent significant melting for at least a century, a new study suggests that rising sea levels - caused by melting elsewhere - could be its undoing (Geology, vol 35, p 551). A team led by Andrew Mackintosh at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, gauged the ice sheet's past thickness by measuring how high the ice had deposited boulders in Antarctica's Framnes mountains during a period ...
Amazon Longer Than Nile River, Scientists Say
Post Date: 2007-06-23 19:06:48 by Ada
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The Amazon River, not the Nile, is the longest in the world, a team of Brazilian scientists claims. The scientists claim to have traced the river's source to a snow-capped mountain in southern Peru, adding a new twist in the swirling debate over the longest river label. (See a map of the region.) The Amazon is considered the world's largest river by volume, but scientists have believed it is slightly shorter than Africa's Nile. The Brazilian scientists' 14-day expedition extended the Amazon's length by about 176 miles (284 kilometers), making it 65 miles (105 kilometers) longer than the Nile. According to the team's results, which have not been published, the ...
The K7RA Solar Update
Post Date: 2007-06-22 22:14:40 by Tauzero
2 Comments
The K7RA Solar Update June 23-24 is ARRL Field Day, and it follows a week with no sunspots. As expected, there was a mild geomagnetic upset on Thursday, June 21 when a solar wind stream pushed against Earth's magnetic field. The planetary A index went to 14, a moderate level, but the mid-latitude A index, which affects most of us more directly, was only 8. That number comes from the Fredericksburg Geomagnetic Center near Corbin, Virginia, which is at 38.2 degrees north latitude. Boulder, Colorado provides the mid-latitude A index that we hear on WWV at 18 minutes after each hour, and at 40 degrees north latitude, it produced an A index of 12 for June 21. For the weekend, we might see ...
Firstborns found to have higher intelligence
Post Date: 2007-06-22 12:16:02 by robin
24 Comments
Firstborns found to have higher intelligence A study of 240,000 Norwegian men says eldest children have IQs 2 to 3 points greater than younger siblings'. By Denise Gellene, Times Staff Writer June 22, 2007 Wading into an age-old debate, researchers have found that firstborn children are smarter than their siblings — and the reason is not genetics, but the way their parents treat them, according to a study published today. The study of 240,000 Norwegian men in the journal Science found the IQs of firstborns were 2 to 3 points higher than that of younger siblings. (The average IQ is 100.) Though that may not sound like a lot, experts said even a few IQ points could make a big ...
Forget warming - beware the new ice age
Post Date: 2007-06-21 22:06:56 by rack42
4 Comments
In the 1970s, leading scientists claimed that the world was threatened by an era of global cooling. Based on what we've learned this decade, says George Kukla, those scientists - and he was among them -- had it right. The world is about to enter another Ice Age. Dr. Kukla, in 1972 a member of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences and a pioneer in the field of astronomical forcing, became a central figure in convincing the United States government to take the dangers of climate change seriously. In January of that year, he and another geologist, Robert Matthews of Brown University, convened what would become a historic conference of top European and American investigators in ...
Another step toward a liquid telescope on the moon
Post Date: 2007-06-21 17:03:13 by farmfriend
5 Comments
Contact: Jean-François Huppé Jean-Francois.Huppe@dap.ulaval.ca 418-656-7785 Université Laval Another step toward a liquid telescope on the moon Quebec City, June 20, 2007 – An international team including researcher Ermanno Borra, from Université Laval’s Center for Optics, Photonics, and Laser, has taken another step toward building a liquid telescope on the moon. The researchers have found a combination of materials that allows the creation of a highly reflective liquid mirror capable of functioning even under harsh lunar conditions. The details of the discovery made by Borra and his colleagues will be published in the June 21 edition of Nature. ...
Newton's fourth law: apocalypse
Post Date: 2007-06-21 06:34:04 by Ada
3 Comments
RENOWNED British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics and astronomy, predicted the world would end in 2060 in a 1704 letter that went on show in Jerusalem today. A famed rationalist, who secured a royal exemption so that he would not have to follow the teachings of the Church of England, Newton nonetheless based his prediction on a Biblical text. Working from verses in the Book of Daniel, the elaborator of the classical laws of gravity, motion and optics argued that the world would end 1260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire in western Europe in 800 AD. The letter, on show at Jerusalem's Hebrew University as part of an exhibition entitled ...
Millions of Missing Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight
Post Date: 2007-06-21 00:50:50 by robin
9 Comments
June 19, 2007 Millions of Missing Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight By VERLYN KLINKENBORG Last week, the Audubon Society released a new report describing the sharp and startling population decline of some of the most familiar and common birds in America: several kinds of sparrows, the Northern bobwhite, the Eastern meadowlark, the common grackle and the common tern. The average decline of the 20 species in the Audubon Society’s report is 68 percent. Forty years ago, there were an estimated 31 million bobwhites. Now there are 5.5 million. Compared to the hundred-some condors presently in the wild, 5.5 million bobwhites sounds like a lot of birds. But what matters is the 25.5 million ...
we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling
Post Date: 2007-06-20 20:23:04 by Horse
5 Comments
Read the sunspots The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world ...
Duckon 2007 Singing Tesla Coil
Post Date: 2007-06-20 19:40:25 by Zipporah
1 Comments
see video here This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear. What's not immediately obvious in this video is how loud this is. Many people were covering their ears, dogs were barking. In the sections where the crowd is cheering and the coils is starting and stopping, you can hear the the crowd is drowned out by the coil when it's firing.
Poster Comment:this is cool
Weizmann Institute scientists develop a general 'control switch' for protein activity
Post Date: 2007-06-19 11:39:25 by farmfriend
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Weizmann Institute scientists develop a general 'control switch' for protein activity The method may be used in biomedical research, and in the future could be used in gene therapy and in genetic engineering of plants Contact: Jennifer Manning jennifer@acwis.org 212-895-7952 American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science Our bodies could not maintain their existence without thousands of proteins performing myriad vital tasks within cells. Since malfunctioning proteins can cause disease, the study of protein structure and function can lead to the development of drugs and treatments for numerous disorders. For example, the discovery of insulin’s role in diabetes ...
Local scientist calls global warming theory 'hooey'
Post Date: 2007-06-18 17:41:11 by farmfriend
1 Comments
Local scientist calls global warming theory 'hooey' Samara Kalk Derby — 6/18/2007 8:01 am Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey. The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it. There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week. "However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been ...
Bye, Bye Birdies?
Post Date: 2007-06-17 18:23:48 by robin
0 Comments
(Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Mark Clayton. New data show the populations of some of America's well-known birds in a tailspin, thanks to the one-two punch of habitat fragmentation and, increasingly, global warming. From the heartland's whippoorwills and meadowlarks to the Northern bobwhite and common terns of the nation's coasts, 20 common bird species tracked by the National Audubon Society have seen their numbers fall 54 percent overall since 1967, with some down about 80 percent, the group reported Thursday. Most of the trouble lies with loss of bird habitat, and has for decades, due to expanding agriculture and suburban development. The Rufous ...
when the levees break
Post Date: 2007-06-17 11:03:22 by Itisa1mosttoolate
5 Comments
when the levees break
Poster Comment:Immediately "preceding" Katrena Cindy Sheehan was 'on a roll' against the WAR and Bush with the msm gaining in its' coverage of her resistance and the nations'. Thank the god of Mouloch AND Tesla technology.
Disable Windows Error Reporting? - video
Post Date: 2007-06-16 16:31:09 by Lod
2 Comments
http://live.pirillo.com/ / http://chris.pirillo.com/media/
Space Station Computers Up and Running
Post Date: 2007-06-16 12:10:26 by Brian S
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HOUSTON (AP) - Russian cosmonauts on Saturday began turning back on some crucial systems that had been shut down more than four days ago when a computer system on the Russian side of the international space station crashed. The first system turned on was a machine that scrubs carbon dioxide from the air inside the space station. Just a day earlier, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov were able to get four of six processors on two computers working again by using a cable to bypass a circuit board. It took four days to restore the capability of the computers. In addition, spacewalking astronauts on Friday were able to stitch up a peeled back thermal blanket near space shuttle Atlantis' ...
Rednecks Save the Space Program
Post Date: 2007-06-16 11:08:52 by Calamity
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Rednecks Save the Space Program I recently received an email with the subject of “Redneck Time Out”. Attached was this photo. At first I thought it looked like an obvious case of child abuse. Then I saw that the baby was pretty relaxed. [The condition of the stuffed duck was questionable. He looked miserable. He probably had spinal cord damage as a result of being hung by the neck.] Little did I know that the parents of this child were possibly NASA employees practicing standard agency procedural policy. Yep, today I learned the truth. Confused? That’s OK. Stick with me. The link was on tonight’s news: NASA’s in-flight emergency plans cover astronaut going ...
NASA Eyes Workarounds for Space Station Computer Glitch [Zillion Dollar Political Toy About to Burn Up Over Your House]
Post Date: 2007-06-15 17:36:54 by IndieTX
0 Comments
HOUSTON -- Russian and U.S. engineers are drawing up plans to work around the failure of critical computers aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in time for the departure of the shuttle Atlantis next week. NASA's ISS program manager Mike Suffredini said engineers are studying alternatives to help maintain control of the space station's orientation, including using rockets aboard docked Russian spacecraft, once Atlantis' STS-117 crew casts off from the orbital laboratory on June 19. "The highest priority would be maintaining attitude once the shuttle has departed," Suffredini said Friday. The space station's six Russian computers governing control and ...
Plastic that grows on trees
Post Date: 2007-06-15 16:10:42 by farmfriend
9 Comments
Plastic that grows on trees Fuel, polyester and other chemicals from biomass get a giant boost, PNNL team reports in the journal Science Contact: Bill Cannon cannon@pnl.gov 509-375-3732 DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory RICHLAND, Wash. -- It has been an elusive goal for the legion of chemists trying to pull it off: Replace crude oil as the root source for plastic, fuels and scores of other industrial and household chemicals with inexpensive, nonpolluting renewable plant matter. Scientists took a giant step closer to the biorefinery this week, reporting in the June 15 issue of the journal Science that they have directly converted sugars ubiquitous in nature to an alternative ...
French Say 'Non' to U.S. Disclosure of Secret Satellites
Post Date: 2007-06-15 11:41:26 by gengis gandhi
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French Say 'Non' to U.S. Disclosure of Secret Satellites By PETER B. de SELDING Space News Staff Writer posted: 08 June 2007 09:58 am ET BROYE-LES-PESMES, France - A French space-surveillance radar has detected 20-30 satellites in low Earth orbit that do not figure in the U.S. Defense Department's published catalogue, a discovery that French officials say they will use to pressure U.S. authorities to stop publishing the whereabouts of French reconnaissance and military communications satellites. After 16 months of operations of their Graves radar system, which can locate satellites in orbits up to 1,000 kilometers in altitude and even higher in certain cases, the French ...
Space station computers remain down: Cosmonauts work to repair failed system; no current plans to evacuate
Post Date: 2007-06-15 10:43:20 by aristeides
3 Comments
Space station computers remain down Cosmonauts work to repair failed system; no current plans to evacuate By Mike Schneider The Associated Press Originally published June 15, 2007, 9:57 AM EDT HOUSTON // Cosmonauts aboard the international space station struggled for a second day today to try to reboot failed computers that control the orbiting outpost's orientation. The Russians worked on the system through the night but only succeeded in getting one of three power channels to the station's computers operating before flight controllers told them to get some sleep, NASA flight director Holly Ridings said. Advertisement Valery Lyndin, spokesman for Russia's Mission Control ...
Testing nonlocal observation as a source of intuitive knowledge
Post Date: 2007-06-15 01:31:05 by Horse
6 Comments
This study explored the hypothesis that in some cases intuitive knowledge arises from perceptions that are not mediated through the ordinary senses. The possibility of detecting such “nonlocal observation” was investigated in a pilot test based on the effects of observation on a quantum system. Participants were asked to imagine that they could intuitively perceive a low intensity laser beam in a distant Michelson interferometer. If such observation were possible, it would theoretically perturb the photons’ quantum wave-functions and change the pattern of light produced by the interferometer. The optical apparatus was located inside a light-tight, double steel-walled ...
Plasma rocket breaks endurance record
Post Date: 2007-06-14 16:27:45 by farmfriend
1 Comments
Plasma rocket breaks endurance record Reuters and http://NewScientist.com A revolutionary plasma rocket engine has been tested for a record time of more than four hours at a test facility in Costa Rica. Scientists at the Ad Astra Rocket Company hope the engine will eventually be cheaper to operate than conventional models and will reduce travel time for space missions. The company, led by Costa Rican-born, former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, hopes to use its rocket engines to boost commercial spacecraft into higher orbits, stabilise space stations, and then to power a trip to Mars within two decades, cutting the travel time by about a third to around three months. The engine ...
Kill Your DirecPC Satellite Dish
Post Date: 2007-06-14 15:29:02 by richard9151
6 Comments
...NOW. Right now. Go on, you know you want to. The HughesNet/DirecPC lies and BS and rotten service and throttling down when you accidentally hit their daily limit, not to mention being on hold for one hour just to talk with Omar in Tent City, India as your tech rep, are enough to drive anyone over the edge. Go on. Do it. Kill the damn thing. I confess: I have an agenda here today. I hate the HughesNet/DirecPC satellite service, though I was one of its very first subscribers, back when it first started, about 12 years ago. Finally, I can get even with years of indignities and rotten service by cutting some of its revenue stream. For years, Verizon kept saying it didn't have DSL or ...
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