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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Soap remedy is a mystery (helps restless legs, leg cramps)
Post Date: 2007-02-16 14:18:51 by gengis gandhi
10 Comments
Soap remedy is a mystery By JOE GRAEDON and TERESA GRAEDON 2/15/2007 Sometimes a remedy defies logic. Usually there's no science to support it, either. That's certainly the case when it comes to putting a bar of soap under the bottom sheet to stop leg cramps or restless legs. One reader (who happens to have doctorates in biomedical engineering and physics) took us to task for suggesting this remedy. He asked: "What is the mechanism of action for a bar of soap under your sheets for relieving any type of pain? Answering that this is anything but an old wives' tale discredits everything you have done in the name of science. "As a fellow scientist and university ...
A Brain Cell is the Same as the Universe
Post Date: 2007-02-16 13:08:58 by gengis gandhi
7 Comments
A principle tenet of Taoism is from macrocosm to microcosm, that man is a little version of the universe, but both according to the same template. you can see this theme repeated throughout nature. now science is verifying what taoists knew some 5,000 years ago. A good primer on taoism is the tao te ching, by lao tzu, available for free download at http://www.sacred-texts.org. A Brain Cell is the Same as the Universe by Cliff Pickover, Reality Carnival Physicists discover that the structure of a brain cell is the same as the entire universe. "Oh God, guide me, protect me; make of me a shining lamp and a brilliant star." -- Abdu’l-Bahá Image Source ...
Cosmic Rays Blamed for Global Warming
Post Date: 2007-02-16 06:38:20 by Ada
1 Comments
Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research. Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought. In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet. High levels of cloud cover blankets the Earth and reflects radiated heat from the Sun back out into space, causing the planet to cool. Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the ...
Genetic Reality of Race
Post Date: 2007-02-16 03:05:11 by Tauzero
1 Comments
The Genetic Reality of Race In WHERE DO WE COME FROM: The Molecular Evidence for Human Descent (Springer, 2002) Klein and Takahata write, on page 381, ''The species, as the only biologically definable category, provides a dividing line in biological classification. Most of the other categories (genus, family, order, etc) are positioned above the species level, while only a few are in the sub-species level. The latter, which include variety, subspecies, and race, are poorly defined and ambiguous. Any deviation from the holotype, the specimen on which the description of a new species is based, is referred to as a variety, even when the deviation is in a single morphological ...
Honey Bee Die-off Alarms Beekeepers [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2007-02-15 20:57:42 by Jethro Tull
55 Comments
Honey Bee Die-off Alarms Beekeepers Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News Feb. 5, 2007 — Something is wiping out honey bees across North America and a team of researchers is rushing to find out what it is. What’s being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has now been seen in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and way out in California. Some bee keepers have lost up to 80 percent of their colonies to the mysterious disorder. "Those are quite scary numbers," said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s lead apiarist. Whatever kills the bees targets adult workers which die outside the colony — with few adults left inside, ...
Special Lens Seems To Help Dyslexic Patients See Better
Post Date: 2007-02-15 13:31:21 by gengis gandhi
10 Comments
Special Lens Seems To Help Dyslexic Patients See Better Jan 15, 2007 05:15 PM EST By Lori Lyle (LOUISVILLE) -- Up to 15 percent of American students struggle through school, unable to read simple words and sentences because of dyslexia. After decades of research, science is still looking for answers, but as WAVE 3's Lori Lyle reports, many are convinced the solution is right here in Louisville. About 25 million Americans are functionally illiterate, struggling to read the simplest words and sentences, and that often leads to struggling in life. It's the life a Louisville veterinarian Dr. Robert Dahlem's didn't want for his oldest son who has dyslexia, and many now ...
President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' Questions Gore's Sanity
Post Date: 2007-02-12 20:39:26 by Horse
1 Comments
President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity Mon Feb 12 2007 09:10:09 ET Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis. In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions: Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?• A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is ...
Quantum Leap: Computer to 'Make Computer History'
Post Date: 2007-02-12 18:43:09 by gengis gandhi
2 Comments
Canadian Firm Promises Computer Based on Quantum Physics, Many Times Faster Than World's Best quantum computer Part of the inner workings of a quantum computer. Its maker, D-Wave Systems of British Columbia, says such a machine could solve massive problems beyond the reach of today's digital computers (D-Wave Systems, Inc. ) Technology Headlines By NED POTTER Feb. 12, 2007 — "Quantum Computing." It's one of those things that bring a sparkle to the eyes of propellerheads — and make the rest of us just scratch our heads. But it's been a holy grail in the arcane world of supercomputers — and a Canadian firm claims it will be unveiling one on ...
Future Weapons - .416 Barrett
Post Date: 2007-02-12 15:18:06 by Lod
3 Comments
Soon on the Discovery Channel they'll be showing the new Barrett.
What The Electric Company Doesn't Want You To Know
Post Date: 2007-02-11 23:41:14 by Indrid Cold
5 Comments
Candle Power - Who Needs Batteries? - video powered by Metacafe
Poster Comment:What the hell? Anybody got an explanation?
Engineer: GPS shoes make people findable
Post Date: 2007-02-11 05:55:41 by Itisa1mosttoolate
2 Comments
Engineer: GPS shoes make people findable MIAMI - Isaac Daniel calls the tiny Global Positioning System chip he's embedded into a line of sneakers "peace of mind." He wishes his 8-year-old son had been wearing them when he got a call from his school in 2002 saying the boy was missing. The worried father hopped a flight to Atlanta from New York where he had been on business to find the incident had been a miscommunication and his son was safe. Days later, the engineer started working on a prototype of Quantum Satellite Technology, a line of $325 to $350 adult sneakers that hit shelves next month. It promises to locate the wearer anywhere in the world with the press of a ...
Rep. Rohrabacher: Global Warming May Have Been Caused By ‘Dinosaur Flatulence’
Post Date: 2007-02-10 19:06:43 by Zipporah
4 Comments
Rep. Rohrabacher: Global Warming May Have Been Caused By ‘Dinosaur Flatulence’ » This week, Congress held its first hearing on the landmark IPCC report on climate change. That report concluded that global warming is “unequivocal” and human activity is the main driver, “very likely” causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950. During the hearing, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) — one of the 87 percent of congressional Republicans who do not believe in man-made global warming — questioned the authors of the report about a period of dramatic climate change that occured 55 million years ago. “We don’t know what those other cycles ...
HAPPY DARWIN DAY (February 12)
Post Date: 2007-02-10 15:03:48 by robin
0 Comments
Happy Darwin Day Posted: Friday, February 09, 2007 6:48 PM by Alan BoyleThe calendar boasts plenty of religious holidays, but how many scientific holidays can you name? One of the red-letter days is coming up on Monday, when more than 850 events around the globe will mark Darwin Day, the 198th anniversary of the evolutionary theorist's birth. You can hear about Charles Darwin and the revolution he sparked from hundreds of church pulpits this weekend, as part of a program called Evolution Sunday.AP fileCharles Darwin in an 1875 photo. Are those godless secularists trying to take on the trappings of religion? Not at all, says Robert Stephens, one of the organizers behind Darwin Day. ...
The brain scan that can read people's intentions
Post Date: 2007-02-10 11:08:31 by innieway
7 Comments
A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act. The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future. The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way. "Using the scanner, we ...
Cosmic 'DNA': Double Helix Spotted in Space
Post Date: 2007-02-09 12:35:14 by Tauzero
2 Comments
Cosmic 'DNA': Double Helix Spotted in Space By Bjorn Carey http://SPACE.com Staff Writer posted: 15 March 2006 01:00 pm ET Magnetic forces at the center of the galaxy have twisted a nebula into the shape of DNA, a new study reveals. The double helix shape is commonly seen inside living organisms, but this is the first time it has been observed in the cosmos. "Nobody has ever seen anything like that before in the cosmic realm," said the study's lead author Mark Morris of UCLA. "Most nebulae are either spiral galaxies full of stars or formless amorphous conglomerations of dust and gas—space weather. What we see indicates a high degree of order." These ...
Strange lights over the Midwest: are they meteors, UFO’s or the glow of global warming?
Post Date: 2007-02-09 12:17:13 by Tauzero
2 Comments
Strange lights over the Midwest: are they meteors, UFO’s or the glow of global warming? Dan Brawner February 6, 2007 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of more than 2,500 of the world’s top environmental scientists from 130 nations, meeting in Paris announced that there is a “90 percent” chance that the earth is getting warmer. Oh, really. I wish I had known that heart-warming bit of news earlier this week as I was wriggling across the dirt-floor crawl space under the house with a heat gun to THAW OUT MY FROZEN WATER PIPES! Okay, okay. I’m calm now. But all this talk about how the Midwest could turn into some kind of steamy, equatorial ...
The Mysteries of Mental Age (The parents of a severely disabled 9-year-old Seattle girl have stunted her growth)
Post Date: 2007-02-08 15:06:22 by Jethro Tull
15 Comments
By Randy Dotinga 02:00 AM Feb, 07, 2007 The parents of a severely disabled 9-year-old Seattle girl have stunted her growth and had her breasts and uterus removed in what they say is an effort to keep her comfortable, happy and portable. She does, after all, have the mind of a three-month-old baby. Or does she? No one is arguing that an intellectual mind is hidden inside the now-famous girl known only as "Ashley." But determining mental age is not a precise science. While assigning a mental age may give Ashley's parents some comfort, determining that number is based largely on guesswork. "How do we know how a three-month-old thinks? We don't," said Cory ...
The Alarm Clock as a Moving Target. Catch It if You Can.
Post Date: 2007-02-07 22:31:47 by Morgana le Fay
3 Comments
If a screeching buzzer is not enough to get you moving in the morning, consider Clocky. This alarm clock doesn’t just make noise, it breaks the snooze-button habit: after the first snooze period, Clocky rolls off the nightstand and runs away. Clocky generated Internet buzz in 2005 when it was just a conceptual design project by Gauri Nanda, then a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is now an actual product, available for $50 at http://www.nandahome.com. The clock can survive a two-foot drop and the alarm beeps randomly, ensuring that its frantic squalling won’t be easily forgotten. It comes in white, light blue and light green. The snooze time ...
Hackers Stage Massive Internet Attack; Briefly Overwhelm Some Key Internet Traffic Computers
Post Date: 2007-02-06 18:06:40 by Brian S
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(AP) Hackers briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks against the Internet since 2002. Experts said the unusually powerful attacks lasted for hours but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to the resiliency of the Internet. Behind the scenes, computer scientists worldwide raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened to saturate some of the Internet's most vital pipelines. Experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their origin, but vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South Korea. The attacks appeared to target UltraDNS, ...
American Experience: The Living Weapon
Post Date: 2007-02-05 15:58:10 by Kamala
0 Comments
American Experience: The Living Weapon Monday, February 5, 9:00pm Central PBS “The Living Weapon” explores the history of America's biological-weapons program, which began in 1942 with a group that worked parallel to the Manhattan Project, and continued to 1969, when President Nixon terminated it.
Arcade extinction is almost upon us
Post Date: 2007-02-04 18:28:45 by orangedog
16 Comments
It's difficult to write a eulogy for the arcade, that once ubiquitous quarter-eating staple of malls, bowling alleys and college campuses everywhere. Like Saturday morning cartoons and the NHL, it still exists, but has been slowly fading from the American consciousness since its 1980s heyday. But it's hard not to wax poetic about one of the last of the old neighborhood arcades -- the kind of place Norman Rockwell would have painted had he been a Gen-X-er who felt romantic notions about Double Dragon. For many teens in the late '70s and '80s (before the advent of Xbox, cellphones and MySpace), arcades were actually prime destinations. It wasn't just that my generation was ...
46 Nations Back New Environmental Body
Post Date: 2007-02-03 20:54:31 by robin
11 Comments
46 Nations Back New Environmental Body 46 Nations, Minus U.S., Sign on to Call for New World Body to Protect Warming Planet By ANGELA CHARLTON The Associated Press PARIS - Forty-five nations answered France's call Saturday for a new environmental body to slow inevitable global warming and protect the planet, perhaps with policing powers to punish violators. Absent were the world's heavyweight polluter, the United States, and booming nations on the same path as the U.S. China and India. The charge led by French President Jacques Chirac came a day after the release of an authoritative and disturbingly grim scientific report in Paris that said global warming is "very ...
Top energy scientists agree, Bush wrong on alternative fuels
Post Date: 2007-02-02 21:19:12 by DeaconBenjamin
1 Comments
Published on Thursday, February 1, 2007 by Global Public Media Washington, DC--At an all-day Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee conference on "renewable biofuels," witnesses from three of America’s premier energy research institutions cast grave doubt on the feasibility of reaching President Bush’s State of the Union goal of manufacturing 35 billion gallons a year of alternative fuels by 2017. The witnesses agreed that DOE’s spending on alternative fuels was far, far below what was necessary to meet the president’s goal, much less the more critical goals of increasing the country’s energy security while decreasing carbon emissions. ... ...
Russia probes smelly orange snow
Post Date: 2007-02-02 21:06:21 by robin
2 Comments
Russia probes smelly orange snow Russia has flown a team of chemical experts to a Siberian region to find out why smelly, coloured snow has been falling over several towns. Oily yellow and orange snowflakes fell over an area of more than 1,500sq km (570sq miles) in the Omsk region on Wednesday, Russian officials said. Chemical tests were under way to determine the cause, they said. Residents have been advised not to use the snow for household tasks or let animals graze on it. "So far we cannot explain the snow, which is oily to the touch and has a pronounced rotten smell," said Omsk environmental prosecutor Anton German, quoted by the Russian news agency Itar-Tass on ...
Unsettled Scores
Post Date: 2007-02-02 13:14:20 by Tauzero
2 Comments
Unsettled Scores HAS THE BLACK-WHITE IQ GAP NARROWED? BY MARINA KRAKOVSKY This much is uncontested: for most of the 20th century, blacks worldwide have scored, on average, 15 points lower on most IQ tests than whites have. What scientists cannot agree on is why. Most attribute the gap to differences in education, health and other environmental influences. Hereditarians, on the other hand, view the black-white difference as largely genetic in origin. They note, among other indirect evidence, that the disparity persists across time and around the world — a permanence that is crucial to the debate over what explains group differences. “If black-white differences converged—if ...
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