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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
'Killer bees' seem resistant to disorder
Post Date: 2007-04-13 17:51:11 by Tauzero
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'Killer bees' seem resistant to disorder By Dan Sorenson arizona daily star Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.30.2007 Although experts are stumped about what's causing the colony-collapse disorder die-off in U.S. commercial beehives, there is some speculation that Arizona's famed Africanized — or "killer bee" — wild-bee population is somehow immune. Dee Lusby's bees are doing fine. Actually, they're doing better than that, says the owner of Lusby Apiaries & Arizona Rangeland Honey of Arivaca. Lusby has 900 hives of "free range" organic bees spread out over ranches from Benson to Sasabe. "I've only lost one or two, maybe ...
French Beekeepers Brace For Asian Sting
Post Date: 2007-04-13 17:42:08 by Tauzero
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French Beekeepers Brace For Asian Sting Hornets From China Invade France's Hives, And Beekeepers Wait To Feel The Sting PARIS, Apr. 13, 2007 (AP) Ambushing locals as they return home from work, foreign invaders are dismembering French natives and feeding them to their young. This horror scenario is playing out in France's beehives, where an ultra-aggressive species of Asian hornets _ who likely migrated in pottery shipped from China _ may be threatening French honey production. The hornets are thought to have reached France in 2004 after stowing away on a cargo boat, said Claire Villemant, a lecturer at Paris' Natural History Museum. She said a France-based bonsai merchant ...
Car Runs on Water
Post Date: 2007-04-13 15:06:32 by Lod
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The Enemy Within
Post Date: 2007-04-13 10:41:57 by intotheabyss
18 Comments
The Enemy Within Hormones move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform. As the body’s chemical messengers bring about adaptive physiological responses to environmental change. How elegantly appropriate it would be if, in chaotic and fractal fashion, they served precisely the same purpose on a global scale. Even manufactured substances that mimic hormones, a rogue element as far as we are concerned, may effect adaptive physiological changes. These substances, often called “endocrine disrupters,” disturb normal sexual development in a wide variety of vertebrates, including humans, causing lower sperm counts, undeveloped or malformed genitalia, repeated failure of embryo ...
T. Rex Related to Chickens
Post Date: 2007-04-12 23:19:40 by Ferret Mike
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An adolescent female Tyrannosaurus rex died 68 million years ago, but its bones still contain intact soft tissue, including the oldest preserved proteins ever found, scientists say. And a comparison of the protein's chemical structure to a slew of other species showed an evolutionary link between T. rex and chickens, bolstering the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs. The collagen proteins were found hidden inside the leg bone of the T. rex fossil, according to two studies published in the April 13 issue of the journal Science. Collagen is the main ingredient of connective tissue in animals and is found in cartilage, ligaments, tendons, hooves, bones and teeth. It yields ...
Coulter cleverly exposes Intelligent Design with hoax
Post Date: 2007-04-11 17:29:58 by Mekons4
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The Coulter Hoax: How Ann Coulter Exposed the Intelligent Design Movement By Peter Olofsson posted: 07 April 2007 09:11 pm ET In the summer of 2006, I heard that a new book called Godless presented an insightful and devastating criticism of the theory of evolution. Although I learned that its author, Ann Coulter, is not a scientist but a lawyer turned author and TV pundit, she nevertheless appeared to be an intelligent and well-educated person, so I started reading. At first I was puzzled. There did not seem to be anything new; only tired and outdated antievolution arguments involving moths, finches, and fruit flies. But it wasn’t until Coulter dusted off the old Piltdown man ...
Can Royal Dutch Shell's Shale Extraction Technique End 'Peak Oil' Paranoia?
Post Date: 2007-04-10 22:32:47 by Indrid Cold
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Over the past few years, more and more apocalyptic stories have been popping up about a supposed phenomenon known as "peak oil." The theory is that we're running out of oil, the big powers are keeping it quiet, and as supplies dwindle, world-wide economic chaos will ensue. This is hardly a new theory. According to the Chicken Littles of the world, we've been "about to run out of oil" for over thirty years. Obviously it hasn't happened yet. With the recent upswing in strife in the Middle East, however, the notion has gained in popularity. The thing is, this theory is utterly false, and can be laid to rest with a single well-established fact: there is more ...
FTC official: Let's imprison spyware distributors
Post Date: 2007-04-10 20:38:08 by Indrid Cold
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WASHINGTON--Steep fines are nice, but one of the best weapons against spyware purveyors is locking them up, a federal regulator told senators on Tuesday. At a morning Senate Commerce Committee hearing here, Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic said most wrongdoers in the spyware arena "can only be described as vicious organized criminals." "Many of most serious wrongdoers we observed in this area, I believe, are only going to be deterred if their freedom is withdrawn," so it's important for the FTC to collaborate on its cases with criminal law enforcement authorities, Kovacic said. Kovacic's remarks came in response to a question from Sen. Mark Pryor ...
Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes
Post Date: 2007-04-10 11:40:15 by aristeides
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Pas de Deux of Sexuality Is Written in the Genes By NICHOLAS WADE Published: April 10, 2007 When it comes to the matter of desire, evolution leaves little to chance. Human sexual behavior is not a free-form performance, biologists are finding, but is guided at every turn by genetic programs. Desire between the sexes is not a matter of choice. Straight men, it seems, have neural circuits that prompt them to seek out women; gay men have those prompting them to seek other men. Women’s brains may be organized to select men who seem likely to provide for them and their children. The deal is sealed with other neural programs that induce a burst of romantic love, followed by long-term ...
Russian Soyuz Space Capsule Carrying U.S. Billionaire Docks At The International Space Station
Post Date: 2007-04-09 21:02:34 by Brian S
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(04-09) 17:22 PDT KOROLYOV, Russia (AP) -- Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. billionaire bringing a gourmet meal arrived at the international space station Tuesday — to a warm welcome from current crewmen and the earthbound applause of Martha Stewart. The lifestyle guru was among Russian and American officials and visitors monitoring the docking at Russian Mission Control, on Moscow's outskirts, as onboard TV cameras showed the Soyuz nearing the station and then jerking to a stop. Stewart is a friend of Charles Simonyi, the American who shelled out $20-25 million to be the world's fifth paying private space traveler. The Soyuz capsule docked automatically with the ISS and ...
Neal Stephenson's Past,Present, and Future
Post Date: 2007-04-08 17:14:06 by YertleTurtle
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If you met the novelist Neal Stephenson a decade ago, you would have encountered a slight, unassuming grad-student type whose soft-spoken demeanor gave no obvious indication that he had written the manic apotheosis of cyberpunk science fiction (1992's Snow Crash, in which computer viruses start invading hacker minds). It wasn't his debut--he'd published two earlier novels in the 1980s--but the book was such a hit that it put his name on the science fiction map in a way the earlier efforts had not. Meet Stephenson today, and you'll meet a well-muscled, shaven-headed, bearded fellow who's just published a highly acclaimed, massively popular trilogy of 900-page novels set ...
Software to detect fake photos
Post Date: 2007-04-06 19:46:52 by Zipporah
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Software to detect fake photos When the Associated Press thinks that a photo may have been manipulated, they sometimes call Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College computer scientist. As previously reported on BB, Farid has spent several years developing a suite of software that helps automate the detection of manipulation in digital photos. For example, it looks for pixel repetitions, analyzes shadows, and examines the pupils of people in photos to determine if they were composited into the image. From Science News: "The eyes are a partial mirror into the world in which you're photographed," Farid says. If there are two white dots in each eye, there had to have been two separate ...
Solar power breakthrough at Massey
Post Date: 2007-04-06 13:40:55 by gengis gandhi
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Solar power breakthrough at Massey By MERVYN DYKES - Manawatu Standard | Thursday, 5 April 2007 Email a Friend | Printable View | Have Your Say MURRAY WILSON/Manawatu Standard COLOUR THEIR FUTURE GREEN: Wayne Campbell, left, and Ashton Partridge with a tiny demonstration solar panel filled with synthetic dye. Not only is it environmentally friendly and capable of being made in New Zealand, but it costs a fraction of the price of silicon cells. Related Links • Subscribe to Archivestuff • Have your say Advertisement Advertisement New solar cells developed by Massey University don't need direct sunlight to operate and use a patented range of dyes that can be impregnated in ...
Scientists Say Everyone Can Read Minds
Post Date: 2007-04-05 12:27:11 by gengis gandhi
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By Ker Than Special to LiveScience posted: 27 April 2005 07:01 am ET Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of others, to identify and understand their feelings and motives and see things from their perspective. How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science. Some scientists now believe they may have finally discovered its root. We're all essentially mind readers, they say. The idea has been slow to gain acceptance, but evidence is mounting. Mirror neurons In 1996, three neuroscientists were probing the brain of a macaque monkey when they stumbled across a curious cluster of cells in the premotor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for ...
Russia's Rival To US Satnav On The Horizon
Post Date: 2007-04-05 11:39:37 by Brian S
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Thursday April 5, 2007 It has been the source of frustration, enlightenment and missed turnings for millions of drivers across the world. But the United States' long monopoly on satellite navigation - used by generals to guide nuclear missiles and by motorists to get to Woking - is about to come to an end. Russia has announced that it is now close to completing Glonass, its own rival global navigation satellite system. Russia's space agency says it intends to launch eight satellites by the end of the year, bringing the number of its satellites orbiting the earth to 18. By the end of 2009 it says it will have 24 satellites in space - the number needed for a satellite network. ...
Attacks Escalate As Microsoft Announces Emergency .ANI Patch
Post Date: 2007-04-05 00:40:17 by RickyJ
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Attacks Escalate As Microsoft Announces Emergency .ANI Patch Microsoft is getting ready to release an off-cycle patch Tuesday for the bug that has spawned more than 100 malicious sites and a worm over the last few days. By Sharon Gaudin InformationWeek April 2, 2007 12:03 PM Microsoft is releasing an off-cycle patch Tuesday for the .ANI vulnerability that saw an escalating number of threats appearing over the weekend. "From our ongoing monitoring of the situation, we can say that over this weekend attacks against this vulnerability have increased somewhat," Christopher Budd, security program manager at Microsoft's Security Response Center, wrote in a blog Sunday. ...
A Shooter Looks At The Shot Heard ‘Round The World
Post Date: 2007-04-04 19:54:39 by tom007
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A Shooter Looks At The Shot Heard ‘Round The World Recently I finished reading the definitive book (which I highly recommend) on the obviously, government-sanctioned, JFK assassination. Written from the unique perspective of a professional shooter, "Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza," not only demolishes all the arguments of lone-assassin proponents, but examines the myriad reasons why Kennedy was killed. “The reason I knew that Oswald could not have done it, was because I could not have done it,” said former US Marine sniper, Craig Roberts. Credited with numerous kills while serving in Vietnam , Roberts turned an objective eye on the shot heard ...
Hunt's Deathbed Confession Reveals JFK Killers
Post Date: 2007-04-04 06:49:24 by Zoroaster
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Hunt's Deathbed Confession Reveals JFK Killers The Last Confession Of E. Howard Hunt - US government/CIA team murdered JFK By Larry Chin Online Journal Associate Editor 4-4-7 The April 5 issue of Rolling Stone features the deathbed confession of CIA operative and key Bay of Pigs/Watergate/Nixon administration figure E. Howard Hunt, The Last Confession of E. Howard Hunt by Erik Hedegaard. This piece is significant not only for its exploration of Hunt, but for breakthrough information that appears to thoroughly corroborate the work of key John F. Kennedy assassination researchers and historians. Who killed JFK? According to Hunt's confession, which was taken by his son, St. ...
Hydrogen: More polluting than petroleum?
Post Date: 2007-04-03 22:11:32 by mirage
7 Comments
Once touted as the clean wonder fuel of the future, hydrogen fuel cells for cars or homes are now routinely panned as inefficient and impractical, particularly when compared to technologies like electric cars or solar thermal water heaters. Joseph Romm, a physicist, author of, among other books, Hell and High Water: Global Warming--the Solution and the Politics--or Hydrogen and editor of the respected ClimateProgress, also points out that the gas can be worse for the atmosphere than regular gas, depending on the circumstances. Hydrogen burns clean out of the car's tailpipe, but producing hydrogen at a factory generates significant amount of CO2. The standard hydrogen process involves ...
French set rail speed record: 357.2 mph
Post Date: 2007-04-03 17:27:17 by robin
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In this aerial photo jointly released on Tuesday, April 3, 2007 by the French railway company SNCF, Alstom Transport and the Reseau Ferre de France (RFF), or French Railway Infrastructure, the high-speed French train, with a souped-up engine and wheels, speeds on its way to break the world speed record for conventional rail trains in eastern France, Tuesday, April 3, 2007, reaching 574.8 kph (357.2 mph). The black and chrome train with three double-decker cars, named the V150, bettered the previous record of 515.3 (320.2 mph), set in 1990 by the French fast train. However, it fell short of the ultimate record set by Japan's non-conventional magnetically levitated train, which sped to ...
Breaking: New Gag Rule Issued on US Scientists
Post Date: 2007-04-03 13:46:46 by bluedogtxn
11 Comments
Breaking: New Gag Rule Issued on US Scientists by greendem [Subscribe] Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 10:34:54 AM PDT Here we go again. It's so amazingly blatant what is going on here. The Bushies are closet Stalinists. Any government scientist who practices their job with honesty, anyone who dares speak truth or share "non-approved" data with their employers (the American taxpayer) will run afoul of the Bush Politburo. Heads will roll. Under rules posted last week, these federal scientists must obtain agency pre-approval to speak or write, whether on or off-duty, concerning any scientific topic deemed "of official interest." greendem's diary :: :: CLIMATE AND OCEAN ...
Forecaster: "Very Active" Atlantic Hurricane Season Predicted
Post Date: 2007-04-03 11:04:11 by Brian S
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FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — The 2007 Atlantic hurricane season should be "very active," with nine hurricanes, including five intense or major hurricanes, a top researcher said Tuesday. Colorado State University researcher William Gray's forecast says there is a 74% probability of a major hurricane making landfall along the U.S. coastline this year, compared with the average of 52% over the past century. The forecast calls for a total of 17 named storms. The five intense or major hurricanes are expected to have sustained winds of 111 mph or greater. The hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. Last season had nine named storms and five hurricanes, two of them ...
Ways to Avoid a Climate Catastrophe
Post Date: 2007-04-02 23:08:08 by robin
4 Comments
SPIEGEL ONLINE - April 2, 2007, 03:43 PM URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,474218,00.html'TIME FOR A REVOLUTION'Ways to Avoid a Climate CatastropheBy Philip Bethge and Christian Wüst The rapid change in the world's climate and shrinking oil and natural gas reserves are forcing a radical shift in the way we think about energy. Declining prosperity seems unavoidable unless the global community chooses a more sustainable approach to producing and consuming energy. Editor's Note: Humanity only has 13 years left to take the actions needed to prevent a climate change hard landing. According to the recent United Nations climate report, annual carbon ...
Mercury in Energy-Saving Bulbs Worries Scientists
Post Date: 2007-04-02 22:27:24 by DeaconBenjamin
5 Comments
NEW YORK -- There's an old joke about the number of people it takes to change a light bulb. But because the newer energy-efficient kinds contain tiny amounts of mercury, the hard part is getting rid of them when they burn out. Mercury is poisonous, but it's also a necessary part of most compact fluorescent bulbs, the kind that environmentalists and some governments are pushing as a way to cut energy use. With an estimated 150 million CFLs sold in the United States in 2006 and with Wal-Mart alone hoping to sell 100 million this year, some scientists and environmentalists are worried that most are ending up in garbage dumps. Mercury is probably best-known for its effects on the ...
Elon Calls the Test Flight a Success
Post Date: 2007-04-02 17:09:16 by bluedogtxn
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Posted March 20, 2007 The second test launch of Falcon 1 took place today at 6:10 pm California time. The launch was not perfect, but certainly pretty good. Given that the primary objectives were demonstrating responsive launch and gathering test data in advance of our first operational satellite launch later this year, the outcome was great. Operationally responsive (i.e. fast) launch has become an increasingly important national security objective, so demonstrating rapid loading of propellants and launch in less than an hour, as well as a rapid recycle following the first engine ignition are major accomplishments. We retired almost all of the significant development risk items, in ...
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