Science and Exploration

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/electric-airplane-wins-big-money-224503447.html

Electric airplane wins NASA prize.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/3-weird-alien-planets-found-around-sun-star-200007406.html

News from the Kepler telescope.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/snapshots-week-of-june-3-1307133161-slideshow/milky-way-and-the-northern-lights-photo-1318537744.html

I just thought this was pretty flippen cool.
Milky Way a meteor and the Northern Lights all in one shot.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/debris-doomsday-comet-elenin-pass-earth-sunday-164605072.html

Near earth comet this Sunday.

[dreadgeek]

http://news.yahoo.com/debris-doomsday-comet-elenin-pass-earth-sunday-164605072.html

Near earth comet this Sunday.

Just to be clear (because there's some Internet memes that are taking this pass altogether the wrong way) what is going to pass us is the debris of the comet. It's dust, rocks, little bits at this point. A solar storm broke the comet up in August so what's going to go by us is what is *left* of the comet.

Remember that comets are, essentially, large space snowballs. As they approach the inner solar system they start to melt which is why comets have tails--the tail is the melting ice and the dust that is going with it. As they exit the solar system, provided they had enough mass to survive the trip to the inner solar system, they refreeze the further they get from the Sun. Don't know what this comet will do on its way out but if anyone tells you that there is the least thing to be concerned about, you can tell them with confidence that there's absolutely *nothing* to worry about. Nothing. As one of the scientists quoted in the article said, your *car* exerts a whole lot more gravitational influence on the Earth than this comet will.

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

Just to be clear (because there's some Internet memes that are taking this pass altogether the wrong way) what is going to pass us is the debris of the comet. It's dust, rocks, little bits at this point. A solar storm broke the comet up in August so what's going to go by us is what is *left* of the comet.

Remember that comets are, essentially, large space snowballs. As they approach the inner solar system they start to melt which is why comets have tails--the tail is the melting ice and the dust that is going with it. As they exit the solar system, provided they had enough mass to survive the trip to the inner solar system, they refreeze the further they get from the Sun. Don't know what this comet will do on its way out but if anyone tells you that there is the least thing to be concerned about, you can tell them with confidence that there's absolutely *nothing* to worry about. Nothing. As one of the scientists quoted in the article said, your *car* exerts a whole lot more gravitational influence on the Earth than this comet will.

Cheers
Aj

Yep just a minor comet that has been blasted away essentially, one will be hard pressed to see it.

[dreadgeek]

A few weeks ago, quite a bit of buzz was created when CERN announced that preliminary results from an experiment ran clocked neutrinos moving faster than light. As it turns out it may be that this is a calculation error having to do with using a time signal from a GPS satellite to synchronize the clocks. The problem is that the *satellite* is in motion in relationship to the Earth which means it's in motion relative to the detector. The upshot of this is that there was an error of ~32 nanoseconds on both the sending and detector ends of the experiment. That would equal an error of ~64 nanoseconds. The FTL-neutrinos were arriving ~60 nanoseconds ahead of the light. Meaning that in reality the neutrinos were likely moving at a substantial portion of the speed of light but not exceeding it.

It appears that once again, Special Relativity has stood up to yet *another* challenge. As I hear more I'll post here.

Full article is here (http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/not-so-fast-neutrinos-possible-explanation-for-cerns-faster-than-light-claims.php).

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/rapidly-inflating-volcano-creates-growing-mystery-142805969.html

Rapidly inflating supervolcano creating mystery.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/2-000-old-supernova-mystery-solved-nasa-telescopes-203402466.html

Supernova mystery solved.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/archeologists-believe-shipwreck-found-off-japan-belongs-kublai-145206810.html

Kublai Kahn's fleet found off Nagasaki Japan.

[Corkey]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/blackbeards-cannon-lifted-sea-north-carolina/story?id=14818314

Blackbeard's canon.

[Midnight]

Swarms of Flying Ants Invade Oahu

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/102720113

[Midnight]

200-inch Full HD Glasses Free 3D Display Unveiled at CEATEC Japan 2011

http://www.shoppingblog.com/blog/1026201119

I can see me buying one of these in 5 - 10 years!!

[Midnight]

Perhaps something in the future for those long distance relationships!

Japanese Scientists Create Balloon Input Device

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/102620115

[Corkey]

Perhaps something in the future for those long distance relationships!

Japanese Scientists Create Balloon Input Device

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/102620115

Ok that one just freeked me out. I don't hug much in real time much less virtually LOL

[Midnight]

Japan Ministry of Defense Shows Off Its Spherical Flying Machine

This only cost $1,400 US ...... imagine if they had won the electric airplane for NASA!!

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/102520114

ps can you tell I follow science on twitter? LOL

[SoNotHer]

I'm looking for articles for students writing on a couple different topics. Please let me know if you've seen good articles any from reputable sources in your travels:

Obesity and the advancing age of puberty in young women (there's evidence that young girls are coming into puberty much younger now, and there may be a nexus between this and the obesity epidemic)

The rise of superbugs and antibiotic resistant strains

The evolution and future of the motorcycle

Cell phones and brain cancer

The video game rating system

Thank you!
SNH

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-wwii-submarine-found-off-Papua-guinea-094359650.html

Mini subs off Papua New Guinea.

[Corkey]

I'm looking for articles for students writing on a couple different topics. Please let me know if you've seen good articles any from reputable sources in your travels:

Obesity and the advancing age of puberty in young women (there's evidence that young girls are coming into puberty much younger now, and there may be a nexus between this and the obesity epidemic)

The rise of superbugs and antibiotic resistant strains

The evolution and future of the motorcycle

Cell phones and brain cancer

The video game rating system

Thank you!
SNH

Have you tried WebMD? Usually google has a ton of resources on the subject as well as Dr. Oz.

[SoNotHer]

I don't allow WebMD, but they have accessed Dr. Oz in the past. They've got articles from Newsweek, Science Daily, The Guardian, The NY Times, The Economist and others. I think they're set, but let me know if you find something.

Thank you. :-)

Have you tried WebMD? Usually google has a ton of resources on the subject as well as Dr. Oz.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-crack-discovered-antarctic-glacier-212405650.html

Huge crack in Antarctic glacier.

[SoNotHer]

"When the iceberg breaks free, it will cover about 340 square miles (880 square kilometers) of surface area. Radar measurements suggested the ice shelf in the region of the rift is about 1,640 feet (500 meters) feet thick, with only about 160 feet of the shelf floating above water and the rest submerged.

It is likely that once the iceberg floats away, the leading edge of the ice shelf will have receded farther than at any time since its location was first recorded in the 1940s."

Good post. Thank you.



http://news.yahoo.com/huge-crack-discovered-antarctic-glacier-212405650.html

Huge crack in Antarctic glacier.

[Midnight]

http://news.discovery.com/space/big-pic-monster-sunspots-solar-flare-111105.html

[Softhearted]

Researchers discover how carriers of the sickle-cell anaemia gene are protected from malaria.

source: http://www.nature.com/news/sickle-cell-mystery-solved-1.9342

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/bronze-artifact-found-alaskas-seward-peninsula-012113020.html

Bronze artifact found in Alaska

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/huge-eruption-of-dr-congo-volcano-27262300.html


Congo volcano eruption.

[SoNotHer]

Wow - I'm sorry it will take out a lot with it as this gentleman describes:

http://screen.yahoo.com/nyamuragira-volcano-in-drc-continues-to-27202652.html

http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/huge-eruption-of-dr-congo-volcano-27262300.html


Congo volcano eruption.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/why-milky-way-may-facing-midlife-crisis-210401548.html

Milky ways midlife crisis.

[Midnight]

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/111420111

I don't think I would want to hand feed them! lol

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/surprising-sunken-islands-discovered-near-Australialia-155612029.html (http://news.yahoo.com/surprising-sunken-islands-discovered-near-australia-155612029.html)


Sunken Islands discovered near Australia.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/physics-atom-smashers-antimatter-surprise-232412931.html

More news in Physics

[SoNotHer]

"Scientists think the universe started off with roughly equal amounts of matter and antimatter. (Particles of antimatter have the same mass of their twins but an opposite charge.) Somehow over the ensuing 14 billion years, most of the antimatter was destroyed, leaving a leftover universe of mainly matter.

One potential explanation for this outcome is called "charge-parity violation." CP violation means that particles of opposite charge behave differently from one another..."

To quote my favorite Vulcan, "fascinating."

http://news.yahoo.com/physics-atom-smashers-antimatter-surprise-232412931.html

More news in Physics

[SoNotHer]

I have so been waiting for the opportunity to talk about "corona mass ejections."

Good ScienceCast about last month's northern lights and CoRoT-2B.

d94ZZFU8PWM&feature=digest_fri

[Corkey]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-15917921

New Stonehenge discovery.

[Midnight]

Remember the good ol muppets -Pigs in Space .... well I'm afraid the worms are going there first.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15897803

[SoNotHer]

Frank Herbert was onto something :-)

Remember the good ol muppets -Pigs in Space .... well I'm afraid the worms are going there first.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15897803

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/arabian-artifacts-may-rewrite-africa-theory-225406521.html

Arabian artifacts may rewrite out of Africa theory.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/milky-way-radiation-reveals-itself-distant-nasa-probes-190602808.html

Milky way radiation as seen by NASA probe.

[Corkey]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111125-neanderthals-sex-humans-dna-science-extinct/?source=link_tw20111129news-human

More on the Neanderthal front.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/astronomers-discover-18-huge-alien-planets-211802669.html

18 Huge new alien planets

[Midnight]

Frank Herbert was onto something :-)

I loved Dune :)

[Midnight]

Well maybe not but scientists now know how frogs leap so high and long!

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/120220112

[Corkey]

12,000 Years Old Unexplained Structure - YouTube


Gobekli Tepe. Interesting though need more information.

[SoNotHer]

"Almost seven thousand years older than Mesopotamia...it has now doubled the history of humanity."

Turkey is one of the most layered and interesting palimpsests of human history in the world and a place I would very much like to visit.

12,000 Years Old Unexplained Structure - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo0ZkgqM1TE)


Gobekli Tepe. Interesting though need more information.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-telescope-confirms-alien-planet-habitable-zone-162005358.html

NASA confirms alien planet in habitable zone.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-monster-black-holes-biggest-yet-162552569.html

Scientists find massive black holes.

[Midnight]

Ever wanted to hug a wooly mammoth? Well in five years you just might be able too!

http://news.discovery.com/animals/woolly-mammoth-cloned-111205.html

[Corkey]

Ever wanted to hug a wooly mammoth? Well in five years you just might be able too!

http://news.discovery.com/animals/woolly-mammoth-cloned-111205.html

The ethic of this creeps me out. There's a reason they went extinct, and no it wasn't human hunting, it was habitat.

[Midnight]

The ethic of this creeps me out. There's a reason they went extinct, and no it wasn't human hunting, it was habitat.


I agree, there is definitely a moral issue to this kind of science.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/species-dinosaur-discovered-museum-basement-160847154.html

New species of dinosaur found in museum basement.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/experts-stumped-ancient-jerusalem-markings-071348189.html

Experts stumped by markings under Jerusalem

[SoNotHer]

"With the experts unable to come up with a theory about the markings, the City of David dig posted a photo on its Facebook page and solicited suggestions. The results ranged from the thought-provoking — "a system for wood panels that held some other item," or molds into which molten metal would could have been poured — to the fanciful: ancient Hebrew or Egyptian characters, or a 'symbol for water, particularly as it was near a spring.'"

Fascinating...

http://news.yahoo.com/experts-stumped-ancient-jerusalem-markings-071348189.html

Experts stumped by markings under Jerusalem

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-super-predator-eyes-found-australia-032344743.html

Ancient super- predator eyes found in Australia.

[Midnight]

Play "close encounters of a third kind music" LOL

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/12268632/spacecraft-spotted-near-mercury/

[Corkey]

Play "close encounters of a third kind music" LOL

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/12268632/spacecraft-spotted-near-mercury/

It was actually the planet itself during a coronal mass ejection.

[Midnight]

It was actually the planet itself during a coronal mass ejection.

From the story it seems to be more an effect from photoshopping. I love conspiracy theories though :D

[SoNotHer]

See I knew someone would find a way to get "coronal mass ejection" in a sentence. Almost needs it's own thread, doesn't it?

It was actually the planet itself during a coronal mass ejection.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-oldest-bedding-discovered-cave-190303977.html

Worlds oldest bedding discovered in cave.

[Midnight]

http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-oldest-bedding-discovered-cave-190303977.html

Worlds oldest bedding discovered in cave.

You beat me to it! lol I was just about to post this :)

Bed bugs anyone? lol

A pic of it can be seen here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111208-oldest-mattress-africa-archaeology-science/

[SoNotHer]

SpaceX Dragon To Launch From Cape Canaveral In February 2012: First Commercial Launch To Space Station
Spacex Cape Canaveral

By MARCIA DUNN 12/ 9/11 10:54 PM ET AP

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/435092/thumbs/r-SPACEX-CAPE-CANAVERAL-large570.jpg

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A private California company will attempt the first-ever commercial cargo run to the International Space Station in February. NASA announced the news Friday, one year and one day after Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, became the first private business to launch a capsule into orbit and return it safely to Earth.

On Feb. 7, SpaceX will attempt another orbital flight from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This time, the unmanned Dragon capsule will fly to the space station and dock with a load of supplies. NASA stressed it is a target date. "Pending all the final safety reviews and testing, SpaceX will send its Dragon spacecraft to rendezvous with the International Space Station in less than two months," said NASA's No. 2, deputy administrator Lori Garver. "So it is the opening of that new commercial cargo delivery era." NASA has turned to industry to help stock the space station now that the space shuttles are retired, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in this startup effort. The station currently is supplied by Russian, European and Japanese vessels.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule will fly within two miles of the space station, for a checkout of all its systems. Then it will close in, with station astronauts grabbing the capsule with a robotic arm. The Dragon ultimately will be released for a splashdown in the Pacific. None of the other cargo carriers come back intact; they burn up on re-entry. If the rendezvous and docking fail, SpaceX will try again. That was the original plan: to wait until the third mission to actually hook up with the station and delivery supplies. SpaceX wanted to hurry it up. None of the supplies on board the Dragon will be one-of-a-kind or crucial, in case of failure.

SpaceX – run by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk – is one of several companies vying for space station visiting privileges. It hopes to step up to astronaut ferry trips in perhaps three more years. In the meantime, Americans will be forced to continue buying seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

"Every decision that we make at SpaceX is focused on ... taking crew to space," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday at a forum in Seattle about NASA's future. She said the company is "thrilled" at the prospect of delivering cargo to the space station early next year, and noted that the company is shooting for 2014 with astronauts. Congress has appropriated $406 million for the commercial crew effort for 2012, considerably less than NASA's requested $850 million. "It is nevertheless a significant step," Garver said at the forum, televised by NASA. She said NASA is evaluating whether it can speed up when U.S. companies "deliver our precious astronauts to and from the space station."

[Midnight]

Looks difficult but fun!

http://au.sports.yahoo.com/banzai/ocean/feature/-/12297271/zapata-s-flyboard-the-human-dolphin/

[Midnight]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/national/watch/27578222/

I want one lol

ps: I know this probably doesn't fall under the science category but I reckon it fits the exploration part!

[Corkey]

Awww and cute and want all in one lil package...

[SoNotHer]

Three calls for the same seal and he makes that incredible journey to the couch? Wow. It was fun hearing and seeing New Zealand. It's a gorgeous place. Thank you for the post, Midnight. I think a cute, tenacious seal put is science enough.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/national/watch/27578222/

I want one lol

ps: I know this probably doesn't fall under the science category but I reckon it fits the exploration part!

[Corkey]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

But noooo we're still denying climate change aren't we?

[Midnight]

Should be trapping the methane and using it as an energy source. I believe it burns clean! Whether its man made climate change or part of the cycle the earth goes through who knows. Wonder what has died under there to release so much methane? Trapped Mammoth flatulance? lol

[Corkey]

Should be trapping the methane and using it as an energy source. I believe it burns clean! Whether its man made climate change or part of the cycle the earth goes through who knows. Wonder what has died under there to release so much methane? Trapped Mammoth flatulance? lol

It's been trapped for thousands of years could be all the whale poop :|

[Midnight]

It's been trapped for thousands of years could be all the whale poop :|

So THAT's why they come up for air! :crap:

[SoNotHer]

Methane and ancient whale poop... diving deep for humor, eh? ;-)


http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/tmc/lowres/tmcn85l.jpg

[Greyson]

Found this in Time Magazine in the Top Ten of Everything 2011





http://http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101344_2101330,00.html

[Greyson]

Oops..........try this.



http://http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101344_2101330,00.html (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101344_2101330,00.html)

[Corkey]

Oops..........try this.



http://http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101344_2101330,00.html (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101344_2101330,00.html)

Like a fire hose is even going to stop it....:vigil:

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/comet-lovejoy-survives-fiery-plunge-sun-nasa-says-015706403.html

Lovejoy lives!

[SoNotHer]

http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images2/1216-lovejoy-death-defying-comet/11248560-1-eng-US/1216-LOVEJOY-DEATH-DEFYING-COMET_full_380.jpg

"A newfound comet defied long odds on Thursday (Dec. 15), surviving a suicidal dive through the sun's hellishly hot atmosphere, according to NASA scientists.

Comet Lovejoy plunged through the sun's corona at about 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT on Dec. 16), coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star's surface. Temperatures in the corona can reach 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), so most researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed.

But Lovejoy proved to be made of tough stuff. A video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft showed the icy object emerging from behind the sun and zipping back off into space..."

http://news.yahoo.com/comet-lovejoy-survives-fiery-plunge-sun-nasa-says-015706403.html

[Midnight]

Great pic! Got to love an "Against all odds" story! Go Lovejoy - see ya next time!

[Midnight]

A christmas special from Hubble :)

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/121720111

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-texts-tell-tales-war-bar-tabs-150403211.html

Ancient texts of war and bar tabs.

[SoNotHer]

- this makes me smile every time I see it....

sBWPCvdv8Bk&feature=digest_sun

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/origin-stonehenge-rocks-discovered-154814786.html

Origin of Stonehenge rocks discovered.

[Midnight]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/origin-stonehenge-rocks-discovered-154814786.html

Origin of Stonehenge rocks discovered.

I wonder if it was just going to be someones house and they ran out of $$ to build it. "Darrrlink I just have to have those beautiful big stones from Craig Rhos-y-felin - nothing else will do!"

[Midnight]

Such a shame that throughout history such destruction has occured :(

http://www.writerswrite.com/blog/122020111

[Corkey]

Such a shame that throughout history such destruction has occured :(

http://www.writerswrite.com/blog/122020111

The knowledge of the world will be forever changed because of this.

[Ashton]

Seasonal well being fellow planetiers!

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k79/myspacebrand/holiday/Kwanza/th_kwanza5.gif (http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k79/myspacebrand/holiday/Kwanza/kwanza5.gif)http://a1.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/14/2f6003ffcff34433beabe0e02282927c/m.jpghttp://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/274819_100002122985230_6374254_n.jpg[IMG]http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/372410_100001013928944_1244943302_n.jpg[IMG]http://www.knowbiblefactsfromfiction.com/uploads/5/3/9/4/5394373/7177750.gif?150
http://site.bumperstickermagnet.com/googleimages/happy-festivus-for-the-rest-of-us-plain-magnet.jpg [img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7161/6547289185_9e4de8628b_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bastoneking/6547289185/)

[mariamma]

Hi all,
I'm kind of new to the site. Love science and love to read about the many new and wonderful things that are being studied and illuminated in this day and age.
I work with hormones and neurotransmitters in my practice and love that the metaphysical and spiritual aspects of hormones and neurotransmitters. Here's a link on estrogen.....one of my favorite hormones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18estrogen-t.html

[mariamma]

Another one about humans interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110825141635.htm

[mariamma]

This blog can be addictive. Fair warning.
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/08/the_physics_of_nothing_the_phi.php

[Corkey]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2074145/Supernova-SN-2011fe-spotted-just-11-hours-exploded.html


Supernova spotted 11 hours afterwards by astronomers.

[Midnight]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/odd/a/-/odd/12435680/pen-removed-from-womans-stomach-after-25-years-and-still-works

Just in case you ran out of ink for your Christmas cards ..... !

[Midnight]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2074145/Supernova-SN-2011fe-spotted-just-11-hours-exploded.html


Supernova spotted 11 hours afterwards by astronomers.

So stunning in its destruction!

[Midnight]

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/122320111

Another satellite returning to Earth in January. One would think if it was made to gather samples from a Martian moon that it would survive re entry to Earth!

[Corkey]

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/122320111

Another satellite returning to Earth in January. One would think if it was made to gather samples from a Martian moon that it would survive re entry to Earth!

Yea well, we have an atmosphere and Mars is sorely lacking one.

[Midnight]

Yea well, we have an atmosphere and Mars is sorely lacking one.

Very true but I would have thought they would need to bring the samples back home to study

[Midnight]

New particle discovered

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16301908

[Midnight]

Note to self: DO NOT eat escargot in Miami

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/917111

[Corkey]

Very true but I would have thought they would need to bring the samples back home to study

They do the hard landing for everything LOL and this one is gonna be a splat in a bunch of places.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/spectacular-christmas-comet-amazes-skywatchers-chile-051310793.html


Ahhh Lovejoy, what an amazing comet tho art.

[mariamma]

Mayans lived in North Georgia 1100 years ago. They even built a pyramid. Wonder where they went? Wonder if they merged with the local peoples?

[mariamma]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/22/1100-year-old-mayan-ruins-found-in-north-georgia/

oops, forgot something...

Mayans lived in North Georgia 1100 years ago. They even built a pyramid. Wonder where they went? Wonder if they merged with the local peoples?

[Corkey]

hummmmm, interesting.

[SoNotHer]

"Golden Chief" Tomb Treasure Yields Clues to Unnamed Civilization
"Spectacular find" includes gold, jewels, and a small army of likely sacrifices.

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/458/cache/personal-treasures-of-chief_45813_600x450.jpg

A seahorse pendant is among gold ornaments found in a chief's grave at El Caño, Panama. Photograph by David Coventry, National Geographic

It's really a very spectacular find. ... probably the most significant" for this culture since the 1930s, when the nearby Sitio Conte site, also in central Panama, yielded a wealth of gold artifacts, anthropologist John Hoopes said. Until now, Sitio Conte provided the only major evidence of the golden-chiefs culture, which can be traced from about A.D. 250 to the 16th century, when Spanish conquerors arrived on the scene. Dating to between A.D. 700 and 1000, the new artifacts were excavated about two miles (three kilometers) from Sitio Conte, at a site called El Caño.

Striking Gold, Second Time Around

El Caño's field of stone monoliths and sculptures had drawn treasure seekers in the early 20th century, but as luck would have it, they dug up only artifact-poor graves of common people. A few years ago, after having worked at Sitio Conte—also marked by ancient monoliths—archaeologist Julia Mayo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute decided to reinvestigate El Caño. Mayo's ground surveys, beginning in 2005, traced the circular outline of a series of burials, about 260 feet (80 meters) wide.

Not long after digging had begun, in 2008, the team uncovered the skeleton of a high-ranking chief, clad in circular breastplates embossed with ghoulish faces, patterned arm cuffs, and a belt of large golden beads—a taste of the bounty to come.

More at -

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/111221-gold-panama-cano-chiefs-tombs-science/?source=hp_dl1_news_panama20111224

[Corkey]

Fascinating!

[Corkey]

http://www.greeceindex.com/About_Greece/Greece_Geography_Caves_Petralona.html

Skull found in Greece.

[Midnight]

Discovery of a faceless, brainless fish in Scotland

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/122920111

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/satellite-photo-shows-island-rising-earths-red-sea-170703840.html

New island in Red Sea.

[Corkey]

Discovery of a faceless, brainless fish in Scotland

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/122920111

I wonder how it eats....

[mariamma]

I love this blog.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/protists_not_animals.php

[SoNotHer]

Indeed and in a land of eat or become ... ~s

I wonder how it eats....

[SoNotHer]

The year 2012 is starting off with a big bang, displaying all five visible planets within the course of a single night. By visible planet, we mean any planet that has been known since time immemorial, and can easily be seen with the unaided eye. In their outward order from the sun, the five visible planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

The sky’s brightest and second-brightest planets – Venus and Jupiter, respectively – pop out first thing at dusk. Look for the moon, the brightest heavenly object in the nighttime sky, and you simply can’t miss nearby Jupiter. And Venus, the most brilliant heavenly body after the sun and moon, blazes away in the southwest corner of the sky after sunset. Venus sets at early evening while Jupiter stays out till well past midnight.

http://en.esimg.org/upl/2012/01/12Jan01_3001.jpg
The evening planets after dark on Sunday, January 1, 2012.

For the fun of it, we show the solar system’s two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, on our sky chart. Uranus, the seventh planet outward from the sun, was discovered in 1781, and Neptune, the eighth planet outward, was first seen in 1846. You’ll need an optical aid and a detailed sky chart to see either planet in the evening sky.

Where is the ecliptic in relation to the Milky Way?

As viewed from mid-northern latitudes, the moon and Jupiter swing pretty much due west around 11:00 p.m., at about the time the red planet Mars comes up in the east. Some three hours thereafter, at roughly 2:00 a.m. local time, Jupiter sets in the west as the ringed planet Saturn rises in the east. Watch for Mercury, the innermost planet, to climb above the southeast horizon some 80 to 60 minutes before sunrise.

http://en.esimg.org/upl/2012/01/12Jan01_300text.jpg
Morning planets - Mars, Saturn and Mercury - at early dawn.

You don’t have to stay up all night long to see all five visible planets. Watch Venus and Jupiter beautify the evening shortly after sunset, and then catch Mars, Saturn and Mercury as the predawn darkness begins to give way to dawn.

From - http://earthsky.org/tonight/five-visible-planets-light-up-first-night-of-the-new-year

[SoNotHer]

Scientists rediscover rarest US bumblebee

Cockerell’s Bumblebee was last seen in the United States in 1956.

http://en.esimg.org/upl/2011/12/cockerells_bumblebee-300x199.jpg

A team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside recently rediscovered the rarest species of bumblebee in the United States, last seen in 1956, living in the White Mountains of south-central New Mexico. Known as “Cockerell’s Bumblebee,” the bee was originally described in 1913 from six specimens collected along the Rio Ruidoso, with another 16 specimens collected near the town of Cloudcroft, and one more from Ruidoso, the most recent being in 1956. No other specimens had been recorded until three more were collected on weeds along a highway north of Cloudcroft on Aug. 31, 2011.

Most bumblebees in the U.S. are known from dozens to thousands of specimens, but not this species. The area it occurs in is infrequently visited by entomologists, and the species has long been ignored because it was thought that it was not actually a genuine species, but only a regional color variant of another well-known species. Yanega said that there are nearly 50 species of native U.S. bumblebees, including a few on the verge of extinction, such as the species known as “Franklin’s Bumblebee,” which has been seen only once since 2003. That species, as rare as it is, is known from a distribution covering some 13,000 square miles, whereas Cockerell’s Bumblebee is known from an area of less than 300 square miles, giving it the most limited range of any bumblebee species in the world.

Yanega pointed out that it is not especially surprising for an insect species to be rediscovered after decades, when people might otherwise imagine that it may have gone extinct. When an insect species is very rare, or highly localized, it can fairly easily escape detection for very long periods of time,” he said. “There are many precedents – some of them very recently in the news, in fact – of insects that have been unseen for anywhere from 70 to more than 100 years, suddenly turning up again when someone either got lucky enough, or persistent enough, to cross paths with them again. It is much harder to give conclusive evidence that an insect species has gone extinct than for something like a bird or mammal or plant.

Entomologists rediscover many such “lost” insect species and discover entirely new species on a regular basis, at the rate of several dozen species every year, primarily in groups such as bees, wasps, beetles, and plant bugs. According to recent estimates, approximately 8 million species are in existence, the vast majority being insects of which only about 1 million have been described.

Bottom line: A team of scientists from the University of California, Riverside recently rediscovered Cockerell’s Bumblebee, the rarest species of bumblebee in the United States, in the White Mountains of New Mexico. The bee was last seen in the U.S. 1956.

http://en.esimg.org/upl/2011/12/douglas_yanega..jpeg
Douglas Yanega is senior museum scientist at UC Riverside.

From -

http://earthsky.org/biodiversity/scientists-rediscover-rarest-us-bumblebee

[Midnight]

Fly away fly away little bees. They have found you again! lol

[Midnight]

Poor little bees :(

http://www.sciencenewsblog.com/blog/10320122

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-pompeiis-trashy-tombs-explained-130608439.html

The mystery of Pompeii's trashy tombs explained.

[SoNotHer]

Scientists Look to European Bats for Answers on White Nose Fungus in U.S.

By Rachel Bogart

According to the Associated Press, Craig Willis, a biologist from the University of Winnipeg, is looking for a solution to control white nose fungus, a disease that is killing bats in several U.S. states, by studying a similar fungus in European bats. Numerous bats in Europe have survived the fungus and scientists believe white nose fungus spread to the U.S. from Europe. Willis' research has focused around finding this link and proving that the fungus is an invasive species. This would ultimately lead to scientists researching why the fungus has been so fatal in the U.S. and help scientists manage the disease. Here are some facts about white nose fungus and how its impacted bats in the country:

* The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported that white nose fungus, also known as white nose syndrome, was first found in February 2006 in a cave about 40 miles of Albany, N.Y.

* As of October 2010, white nose syndrome has been confirmed in New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Maryland, as well as several areas in Canada.

* Government agencies have continued to close off caves to the public in hopes of quarantining the disease while scientists try to find out more about the spread of the problem, according to Wired.

* By declaring the fungus an invasive species, wildlife agencies would have increased access to funds in order to fight it.

* Since March of 2008, scientists estimate that more than one million bats have died from the disease, with a majority being little brown bats, according to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center.

* Infected bats can be identified by having white fungal growth on their muzzles and or wing tissue, though infected bats don't always have these symptoms, in addition to displaying abnormal behavior.

* An article from ABC News noted that the abnormal behavior associated with white nose syndrome is what kills the bats, specifically causing them to end their hibernation early and starving to death in winter.

* In some areas hit by the disease, the mortality rate of infected bats is as high as 90 percent.

* Bats are especially susceptible to white nose syndrome during hibernation since bats congregate in large numbers in caves, reported the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.

* Indiana bats are likely the most vulnerable it's a state and federally endangered species with 50 percent of the bats hibernating in a former mine that has been confirmed as having white nose syndrome.



http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/img/news/2011/White-Nose-Syndrome_CavesClosed.jpg

[Midnight]

Wonder if its like when "civilized" nations went to new countries and killed off the indiginous population with TB, small pox etc.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/complete-civil-war-submarine-unveiled-first-time-004714070.html


Hunley

I just want to know how 7 people got into that thing...

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/researchers-tribes-clash-over-native-bones-160144542.html

I would rather the remains go to the tribes than remain with researchers.

[SoNotHer]

Carefully.... ;+)

http://news.yahoo.com/complete-civil-war-submarine-unveiled-first-time-004714070.html


Hunley

I just want to know how 7 people got into that thing...

[mariamma]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scientists-spacetime-dimension.html

A bit over my head. Maybe y'all can understand it.

[Corkey]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087568/Scientists-discover-1-100-year-old-Egyptian-tomb-female-singer.html?ITO=1490


New 1,100 y/o tomb in Egypt.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/science-15749654/sun-puts-on-spectacular-show-27916671.html

This is just cool, so enjoy!

[SoNotHer]

Absolutely gorgeous...


http://news.yahoo.com/video/science-15749654/sun-puts-on-spectacular-show-27916671.html

This is just cool, so enjoy!

[SoNotHer]

Latest ScienceCast from NASA exploring the snow drought (despite evidence to the contrary this weekend) and describing the effects of La Nina and the Arctic Oscillation:

pdUa820fT1g&feature=digest_fri

[Softhearted]

"Fossils of ancient sea creature discovered
Toronto researchers make 500-million-year-old find in Tulip Beds in Canadian Rockies"

source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/01/19/sci-tulip-beds-creature.html

[Softhearted]

"Dirty dancing: dung beetles get down to walk the line
The meticulous insects pirouette atop their dung balls to get their bearings and correct navigational errors."

source:http://www.nature.com/news/dirty-dancing-dung-beetles-get-down-to-walk-the-line-1.9868

[Softhearted]

"Aye-aye lemur 'heats up' its special foraging finger
By Ella Davies
Reporter, BBC Nature"

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16577537

[SoNotHer]

How The Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005 Is Going to Affect You

By Jesus Diaz
Jan 23, 2012 8:42 PM

http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x258/s_v/solar-storm_620x258.jpg

There's a solar Coronal Mass Ejection travelling towards us at 1,400 miles per second, the largest solar storm since 2005. It will hit Earth around 9am Eastern Time, causing fluctuations on the power grid and disruptions to the Global Positioning System.

Don't worry, you won't die.

But there's something else, a strong proton storm—ranking S3 on a 5-level scale—which is in full rage now and gradually increasing. While CMEs are normal—about 2,000 every 11-year solar cycle—proton storms are very rare. Only a couple of dozen happen per solar cycle. And this one can be dangerous.

The storm has already affected aircraft traffic and may affect satellites' computers. On a telephone interview, NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center physicist Doug Biesecker told me that, fortunately, there are measures to avoid most dangers.

"Many airliners have been avoiding the North Pole routes because they are more exposed to the proton storm, which disrupts High Frequency radio communications," he said on a telephone interview. HF datalinks are crucial to modern airflight, as they keep aircraft connected to Air Traffic Control. Due to the structure of the magnetic field that surrounds Earth, the polar cusps have very little protection against outbursts of solar radiation, so any airplane crossing that area could be exposed to this mayhem.
We're experiencing technical difficulties

He also said that satellites may be affected, causing reboots on onboard computers as well as noise in imaging systems and interferences in telemetry caused by something called single event offsets. These events may change the values of the telemetry data. Since we are aware of these interferences in advance, engineers on ground bases can take them into account and make corrections before firing any commands that may jeopardize the life of the spacecraft.

The only real unpredictable danger is a total hardware failure, with a proton hitting an electronic component and killing it. But according to Biesecker, this "is a very remote possibility."

Global positioning systems are also affected—and will be even more affected tomorrow. Regular humans will not notice this. You will be able to keep using your GPS normally, but people using high precision GPS equipments—like oil drilling, military, engineering and mining operations—will definitely notice the problems.

According to Karen Fox at NASA Goddard Space Center, "NASA alerted operators of their satellites that the CME was coming, so those operators can take whatever shielding precautions they can."

The biological danger

NOAA's scale says that an S3 proton storm may pose danger to passengers in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes, which is why some airplanes below the 65th parallel north are now actually flying at lower altitudes to avoid any kind of radiation nastiness.

They also recommend for astronauts to stay home and avoid space walks but—according to Biesecker—this type of storm is "far below the level needed for the ISS to take any extraordinary protection measures." If it's ok for them, you can be sure it's perfectly fine for you and me down here on good old planet Earth.
What will happen when the CME hits tomorrow morning?

When the Coronal Mass Ejection arrives to Earth at 1,400 miles per second, we will have a geomagnetic storm and a radio blackout. This, apart from the possibility of awesome auroras at latitudes as low as New York, means several things.

How The Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005 Is Going to Affect YouFirst, the radio blackout will be level R2, which is moderate. According to the NOAA scale, it will cause "limited blackout of HF radio communication on the sunlit side and loss of radio contact for tens of minutes," as well as "degradation of low-frequency navigation signals for tens of minutes." Nothing that you should worry about.

The geomagnetic storm will only be "strong G2 with possibilities of G3," according to Bisecker. In the best case scenario, only power lines will be affected. You will not notice it because any power fluctuations will be handled by companies at the grid level. If the storm is long enough, however, it may damage power grid transformers.

Other than all this, and unless something extraordinary happens, you shouldn't worry about the world ending tomorrow. It won't. But keep your eyes open for auroras happening near you. Those living up north in particular will have a great show today and tomorrow.

[SoNotHer]

Snowy owls soar south from Arctic in rare mass migration
By Laura Zuckerman | Reuters – 5 hrs ago

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/d_fx.RWfu2jlLHaDdeXQDg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0zNTg7cT04NTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2012-01-28T175336Z_1_BTRE80R1DPI00_RTROPTP_2_OWLS-MIGRATION.JPG

A snowy white owl takes flight in this undated handout photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called "unbelievable."

Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts. A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions.

"What we're seeing now -- it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana. "This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades.

Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese.

An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said. Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal.

Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia, he said. The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests.

"For the last couple months, every other visitor asks if we've seen a snowy owl today," said Frances Tanaka, a volunteer for the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Olympia, Washington. But accounts of emaciated owls at some sites -- including a food-starved bird that dropped dead in a farmer's field in Wisconsin -- suggest the migration has a darker side. And Holt said an owl that landed at an airport in Hawaii in November was shot and killed to avoid collisions with planes.

He said snowy owl populations are believed to be in an overall decline, possibly because a changing climate has lessened the abundance of vegetation like grasses that lemmings rely on. This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature.

"There's a lot of speculation. As far as hard evidence, we really don't know," Holt said.

[SoNotHer]

Non-native Burmese pythons are the likely cause of a staggering mammal decline in Florida's Everglades.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58199000/jpg/_58199219_lostman_s_river-1.jpg

In PNAS journal, they report that observations of some mammal species have declined by more than 99%. A team studied road surveys of mammals in the Everglades National Park before and after pythons became common. Researchers found a strong link between the spread of pythons and drops in recorded sightings of racoons, rabbits, bobcats and other species. “They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there.” The national park covers the southern 25% of the original Everglades - a region of subtropical wetlands that has been drained over the last century to reclaim it for human use. The origins of Burmese pythons in south Florida are unknown, but many were imported into the US through the pet trade. As the pythons have made it from captivity into the wild, the absence of natural predators has allowed populations to balloon. Intermittent sightings were recorded for 20 years before the snakes were recognised as being established across the Everglades in 2000.

The pythons are now established across thousands of sq km in southern Florida. Although there are no accurate figures for how many there are, the numbers removed from the Everglades reached nearly 400 in 2009 and this has been increasing year-on-year (apart from a slight drop in 2010 due to a cold spell).


"Any snake population - you are only seeing a small fraction of the numbers that are actually out there," said Prof Michael Dorcas, one of the study's authors, from Davidson College in North Carolina. He told BBC News: "They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there."

"We have documented pythons eating alligators, we have also documented alligators eating pythons. It depends on who is biggest during the encounter."
Earlier this month, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the US was poised to approve a ban on importing Burmese pythons. But some observers remarked that the move was about 30 years too late. Prof Dorcas and his colleagues looked at data on mammals found during roadkill surveys from 1993-1999, and on live and dead mammals encountered during nighttime road surveys from 1996-1997. They then compared these results with similar data collected between 2003 and 2011, after the pythons were recognised as being established.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58198000/jpg/_58198805_58198801.jpg


They found that observations of raccoons and opossums had dropped by about 99%. There had been a 94.1% fall in observations of white-tailed deer and an 87.5% decrease in sightings of bobcats. No rabbits or foxes were seen during the more recent survey; rabbits were among the most common mammals in the roadkill survey between 1993 and 1999.

Getting ambushed?

The majority of these species have been documented in the diet of pythons found in the Everglades National Park. Indeed, raccoons and oppossums often forage at the water's edge, where they are vulnerable to ambush by pythons. Observations of rodents, coyotes and Florida panthers had increased slightly, but the overall number of sightings remained low.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58184000/jpg/_58184982_58178062.jpg

The researchers also found that the declines in mammals coincided geographically with the spread of Burmese pythons. Mammal species are more common in areas where pythons have only been recently introduced, and are most abundant outside the snakes' current range. Bill Nelson, with 17-foot python skin US Senate Bill Nelson holds up the 5m-long skin of a Burmese python at a hearing on Capitol Hill in July 2009

Prof Dorcas said more research was needed to assess the impact of such large declines. But he added: "It's not unreasonable to assume that any time we have major declines in mammals like this it's going to have overall impacts on the ecosystem. Exactly what those are going to be, we don't know. But it's possible they could be fairly profound." The ban on importing Burmese pythons has come after five years of debate and lobbying in Washington DC. Florida's Democrat Senator Bill Nelson was among those who campaigned for a ban, unravelling the skin of a 5m-long Everglades python at a 2009 Senate hearing to make his point.

But reptile breeders and collectors had disputed that the tropical snakes posed much risk beyond south Florida and argued that any ban would harm a multi-million dollar industry. Although the ban will not reverse the situation in southern Florida, where the reptiles are already established, Prof Dorcas said it could help prevent their spread to other suitable habitats in the US, such as southern Louisiana and south Texas.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16791094

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-puzzled-region-outside-solar-system-231423099.html

Interstellar gasses puzzle scientists.

[Sachita]

Non-native Burmese pythons are the likely cause of a staggering mammal decline in Florida's Everglades.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58199000/jpg/_58199219_lostman_s_river-1.jpg

In PNAS journal, they report that observations of some mammal species have declined by more than 99%. A team studied road surveys of mammals in the Everglades National Park before and after pythons became common. Researchers found a strong link between the spread of pythons and drops in recorded sightings of racoons, rabbits, bobcats and other species. “They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there.” The national park covers the southern 25% of the original Everglades - a region of subtropical wetlands that has been drained over the last century to reclaim it for human use. The origins of Burmese pythons in south Florida are unknown, but many were imported into the US through the pet trade. As the pythons have made it from captivity into the wild, the absence of natural predators has allowed populations to balloon. Intermittent sightings were recorded for 20 years before the snakes were recognised as being established across the Everglades in 2000.

The pythons are now established across thousands of sq km in southern Florida. Although there are no accurate figures for how many there are, the numbers removed from the Everglades reached nearly 400 in 2009 and this has been increasing year-on-year (apart from a slight drop in 2010 due to a cold spell).


"Any snake population - you are only seeing a small fraction of the numbers that are actually out there," said Prof Michael Dorcas, one of the study's authors, from Davidson College in North Carolina. He told BBC News: "They are a new top predator in Everglades National Park - one that shouldn't be there."

"We have documented pythons eating alligators, we have also documented alligators eating pythons. It depends on who is biggest during the encounter."
Earlier this month, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the US was poised to approve a ban on importing Burmese pythons. But some observers remarked that the move was about 30 years too late. Prof Dorcas and his colleagues looked at data on mammals found during roadkill surveys from 1993-1999, and on live and dead mammals encountered during nighttime road surveys from 1996-1997. They then compared these results with similar data collected between 2003 and 2011, after the pythons were recognised as being established.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58198000/jpg/_58198805_58198801.jpg


They found that observations of raccoons and opossums had dropped by about 99%. There had been a 94.1% fall in observations of white-tailed deer and an 87.5% decrease in sightings of bobcats. No rabbits or foxes were seen during the more recent survey; rabbits were among the most common mammals in the roadkill survey between 1993 and 1999.

Getting ambushed?

The majority of these species have been documented in the diet of pythons found in the Everglades National Park. Indeed, raccoons and oppossums often forage at the water's edge, where they are vulnerable to ambush by pythons. Observations of rodents, coyotes and Florida panthers had increased slightly, but the overall number of sightings remained low.

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58184000/jpg/_58184982_58178062.jpg

The researchers also found that the declines in mammals coincided geographically with the spread of Burmese pythons. Mammal species are more common in areas where pythons have only been recently introduced, and are most abundant outside the snakes' current range. Bill Nelson, with 17-foot python skin US Senate Bill Nelson holds up the 5m-long skin of a Burmese python at a hearing on Capitol Hill in July 2009

Prof Dorcas said more research was needed to assess the impact of such large declines. But he added: "It's not unreasonable to assume that any time we have major declines in mammals like this it's going to have overall impacts on the ecosystem. Exactly what those are going to be, we don't know. But it's possible they could be fairly profound." The ban on importing Burmese pythons has come after five years of debate and lobbying in Washington DC. Florida's Democrat Senator Bill Nelson was among those who campaigned for a ban, unravelling the skin of a 5m-long Everglades python at a 2009 Senate hearing to make his point.

But reptile breeders and collectors had disputed that the tropical snakes posed much risk beyond south Florida and argued that any ban would harm a multi-million dollar industry. Although the ban will not reverse the situation in southern Florida, where the reptiles are already established, Prof Dorcas said it could help prevent their spread to other suitable habitats in the US, such as southern Louisiana and south Texas.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16791094

When I lived in the Everglades I use to go out to the Indian Reservation where they have Billi Swamp Safari. I had friends that worked there. One day they get a call to pick up a python in the backyard of a home in Fort Lauderdale. This was in the suburbs. The snake was as big as the one in the pic above. In fact people in the neighbor complained about missing cats and dogs. They thought someone was stealing them. Can you imagine walking out into your back yard and seeing that?

They brought him back to the safari and fed him whole chickens

[MysticOceansFL]

I usually watch the NASA channel or go to the web site they have, Its more updated than any other places!

[Corkey]

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/02/02/first-video-of-the-dark-side-of-the-moon-95532?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=first-video-of-the-dark-side-of-the-moon-95532&utm_campaign=fb-posts

First video of the dark side of the moon.

[Corkey]

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/32622/astonishing+discovery+of+supergiant+crustaceans+ma de+off+new+zealand/

Makes me do this :|

[Hollylane]

That link, led me to read this story-->Canoeing legend Don Starkell, famous for journey to Amazon, dies at 79 (http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/blog/32590/canoeing+legend+don+starkell+famous+for+journey+to +amazon+dies+at+79/)

[SoNotHer]

Alien Planet 'Super-Earth' Called Best Candidate To Support Life
By: Denise Chow

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02127/space_2127323b.jpg

Published: 02/02/2012 10:16 AM EST on SPACE.com

A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star. The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the planet's surface. "It's the Holy Grail of exoplanet research to find a planet around a star orbiting at the right distance so it's not too close where it would lose all its water and boil away, and not too far where it would all freeze," Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com. "It's right smack in the habitable zone — there's no question or discussion about it. It's not on the edge, it's right in there."

Vogt is one of the authors of the new study, which was led by Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a private, nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. "This planet is the new best candidate to support liquid water and, perhaps, life as we know it," Anglada-Escudé said in a statement.

An alien super-Earth

The researchers estimate that the planet, called GJ 667Cc, is at least 4.5 times as massive as Earth, which makes it a so-called super-Earth. It takes roughly 28 days to make one orbital lap around its parent star, which is located a mere 22 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Scorpius (the Scorpion).

"This is basically our next-door neighbor," Vogt said. "It's very nearby. There are only about 100 stars closer to us than this one." Interestingly enough, the host star, GJ 667C, is a member of a triple-star system. GJ 667C is an M-class dwarf star that is about a third of the mass of the sun, and while it is faint, it can be seen by ground-based telescopes, Vogt said. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets] "The planet is around one star in a triple-star system," Vogt explained. "The other stars are pretty far away, but they would look pretty nice in the sky."

The discovery of a planet around GJ 667C came as a surprise to the astronomers, because the entire star system has a different chemical makeup than our sun. The system has much lower abundances of heavy elements (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium), such as iron, carbon and silicon. "It's pretty deficient in metals," Vogt said. "These are the materials out of which planets form — the grains of stuff that coalesce to eventually make up planets — so we shouldn't have really expected this star to be a likely case for harboring planets." The fortuitous discovery could mean that potentially habitable alien worlds could exist in a greater variety of environments than was previously thought possible, the researchers said.

"Statistics tell us we shouldn't have found something this quickly this soon unless there's a lot of them out there," Vogt said. "This tells us there must be an awful lot of these planets out there. It was almost too easy to find, and it happened too quickly." The detailed findings of the study will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

An intriguing star system

Another super-Earth that orbits much closer to GJ 667C was previously detected in 2010, but the finding was never published, Vogt added. This planet, called GJ 667Cb, takes 7.2 days to circle the star but its location makes it far too hot to sustain liquid water on its surface.

"It's basically glowing cinders, or a well-lit charcoal," Vogt said. "We know about a lot of these, but they're thousands of degrees and not places where you could live." But, the newly detected GJ 667Cc planet is a much more intriguing candidate, he said. "When a planet gets bigger than about 10 times the size of the Earth, there's a runaway process that happens, where it begins to eat up all the gas and ice in the disk that it's forming out of and swells quickly into something like Uranus, Jupiter or Saturn," Vogt explained. "When you have a surface and the right temperature, if there's water around, there's a good chance that it could be in liquid form. This planet is right in that sweet spot in the habitable zone, so we've got the right temperature and the right mass range."

Preliminary observations also suggest that more planets could exist in this system, including a gas giant planet and another super-Earth that takes about 75 days to circle the star. More research will be needed to confirm these planetary candidates, as well as to glean additional details about the potentially habitable super-Earth, the scientists said.

Finding nearby alien planets

To make their discovery, the researchers used public data from the European Southern Observatory combined with observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the new Carnegie Planet Finder Spectrograph at the Magellan II Telescope in Chile. Follow-up analyses were also made using a planet-hunting technique that measures the small dips, or wobbles, in a star's motion caused by the gravitational tug of a planet.

"With the advent of a new generation of instruments, researchers will be able to survey many M dwarf stars for similar planets and eventually look for spectroscopic signatures of life in one of these worlds," Anglada-Escudé said in a statement. Anglada-Escudé was with the Carnegie Institution for Science when he conducted the research, but has since moved on to the University of Gottingen in Germany. With the GJ 667C system being relatively nearby, it also opens exciting possibilities for probing potentially habitable alien worlds in the future, Vogt said, which can't easily be done with the planets that are being found by NASA's prolific Kepler spacecraft.

"The planets coming out of Kepler are typically thousands of light-years away and we could never send a space probe out there," Vogt said. "We've been explicitly focusing on very nearby stars, because with today's technology, we could send a robotic probe out there, and within a few hundred years, it could be sending back picture postcards."

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/namibia-sponge-fossils-worlds-first-animals-study-203340973.html

Namibia sponge fossils worlds first animals.

[Corkey]

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/missing-matter-of-the-universe-found-in-massive-wall-of-galaxies-400-million-light-years-away-.html

Missing matter of the Universe found.

[SoNotHer]

Oh, thank all imaginable deities. Now I can sleep at night. ;-)

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/missing-matter-of-the-universe-found-in-massive-wall-of-galaxies-400-million-light-years-away-.html

Missing matter of the Universe found.

[SoNotHer]

x8br4JiFEik&feature=g-all-u&context=G2ceb011FAAAAAAAAAAA

[Softhearted]

Communication during sex among female bonobos: effects of dominance, solicitation and audience

"Bonobo females frequently form close bonds, which give them social power over other group members. One potential mechanism to facilitate female bonding is the performance of sexual interactions. Using naturalistic observations and experiments, we found various patterns that determined female-female sexual interactions. First, while low-ranked females interacted with all females, sexual interactions between high-ranked females were rare. Second, during genital contacts, females sometimes produced ‘copulation calls’, which were significantly affected by the rank of the caller and partner, as well as the solicitation direction. Third, there was a significant effect of the alpha female as a bystander, while variables relating to physical experience had no effects. Overall, results highlight the importance of sexual interactions for bonobo female social relations. Copulation calls are an important tool during this process, suggesting that they have become ritualised, beyond their reproductive function, to serve as broader social signals in flexible and potentially strategic ways."

sources:
Clay, Z. and Zuberbühler, K. (2012). Communication during sex among female bonobos: effects of dominance, solicitation and audience. Scientific Reports, 2:291.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120301/srep00291/full/srep00291.html

[SoNotHer]

How can I resist the opportunity to once again post a video that includes the term "aurora mass ejections"? And now I know what other career tract I want to pursue - "astrophotographer."

WL_-Zz7JDoA&feature=g-all&context=G29f4625FAAAAAAAACAA

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/ethiopias-magnetic-stripes-hold-clues-ocean-formation-140401541.html

Magnetic strips hold clues to oceans formation.

[Softhearted]

"Space flight linked to eye, brain problems
CBC News



Space travel hurts eyes, brain


Astronauts who have spent prolonged periods in the zero gravity of space tend to show eye abnormalities linked to pressure around the brain, another study has confirmed.

The new study, which involved magnetic resonance imaging of the eyes and brains of 27 astronauts – a larger sample than previous studies — also found abnormalities in the pituitary gland and its connection to the brain in three cases. The gland, found at the base of the brain, secretes and stores a number of important hormones that regulate growth, metabolism and reproduction.

The findings, published online in the journal Radiology on Tuesday, may point to a "hypothetical risk factor and potential limitation to long-duration space travel," said study co-author Dr. Larry Kramer, a professor of diagnostic and interventional imaging at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, in a statement. That means they could pose a problem on future missions to places such as Mars.

An earlier study on eye problems in astronauts suggested that the issues might be caused by fluid shifting toward the head during extended periods of time in microgravity.

William J. Tarver, chief of the flight medicine clinic at NASA's Johnson Space Center, said in a statement that the U.S. space agency has "placed this problem high on its list of human risks, has initiated a comprehensive program to study its mechanisms and implications, and will continue to closely monitor the situation."

Astronauts have complained for decades about vision problems such as blurriness following trips into space. A recent NASA survey of 300 astronauts found correctible near and distance vision problems in 48 per cent of astronauts who had been on extended missions and 23 per cent of those who had been on brief missions. In some cases, they lasted for years after the astronauts returned to Earth.

Fluid shifting toward head causes problems

In the new study, the astronauts had spent an average of 108 days in space. Their eye abnormalities were similar to those seen in patients on Earth with idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Patients with the condition have increased pressure around their brains for no apparent reason.

Among the astronauts in the study:
33 per cent had expansion of the space filled with cerebral spinal fluid that surrounds the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain.
22 per cent had flattening of the rear of the eyeball.
15 per cent had bulging of the optic nerve.
11 per cent had changes in the pituitary gland and its connection to the brain.

An earlier NASA-sponsored study of seven astronauts, published last November in the journal Ophthalmology, found similar abnormalities and also noted that they were similar to those experienced by patients on Earth suffering from pressure in the head. But it noted that astronauts did not experience symptoms usually associated with that problem on Earth, such as chronic headache, double vision or ringing in the ears.

The earlier study suggested that the problems might be caused by fluid shifting toward the head during extended periods of time in microgravity. This could result in abnormal flow of spinal fluid around the optic nerve, changes in blood flow in the vessels at the back of the eye, or chronic low pressure within the eye, the researchers said."

Source: www.cbc.ca
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/03/13/science-astronauts-eye-vision-problems.html

[Softhearted]

In french, when we want to show skepticism or that we do not believe that an event will occur, we use the expression: "quand les poules auront des dents". It translates to: when hens will have teeth. It is the equivalent of the english expression of "When pigs fly". But behold...



Atavism: Embryology, Development and Evolution
By: Jill U. Adams, Ph.D. & Kenna M. Shaw, Ph.D. (Nature Education) © 2008

Humans do not have tails, but do we have “what it takes” for a tail? Hens don’t have teeth, but they have the genes for it. With atavism, it is as if our genomes serve as archives of our evolutionary past.


Hens do not have teeth, and humans do not have tails. Research suggests we have "what it takes" for a tail, and hens, indeed, have the genes that encode for a toothy grin; however, only in very rare situations do these traits manifest themselves as a phenotype. This phenomenon is called atavism—the reappearance of a trait that had been lost during evolution. Our genes do not determine who we are, but with atavism, they can sometimes serve as reminders of our evolutionary past.


Traits that appear or disappear over time are not the result of newly mutated genes encoding defective versions of the proteins associated with teeth or tails, nor are they caused by a loss of existing genes. Instead, a growing body of experimental evidence has shown such traits reflect changes in how, where, and when these genes are expressed.


Examples of "Teeth" in Chicken

Hen's teeth: As rare as we thought?

© 2006 Nature Publishing Group Bajaj, Arveen. Hen's teeth. British Dental Journal 200, 187. All rights reserved.


Even though birds lost teeth as physical structures between 60 and 80 million years ago, several studies have shown that those tissues within birds that would normally produce teeth still retain the potential to do so. For example, in 1821, Geoffrey St. Hilaire was the first scientist to publish the observation that some bird embryos exhibited evidence of tooth formation, but his contemporaries considered his work flawed. Since then, however, many investigators have unearthed molecular evidence that the genes involved in odontogenesis (tooth development) are indeed retained in chickens.


A primary step in reaching this conclusion occurred when researchers exposed chick jaws to certain proteins known to cue tooth development. As a result, toothlike structures grew, and other tooth markers were expressed (Chen et al., 2000). These findings were artificial in the sense that the prompting signal was experimentally administered; nonetheless, they were significant in showing that a chicken's jaw could produce teeth if specific conditions were present.


Despite this discovery, no one had yet demonstrated that chickens could develop teeth without external cues. This situation soon changed, however, when researchers Matthew Harris (a graduate student at the time) and John Fallon launched a study involving chickens with a particular kind of autosomal recessive mutation (Harris et al., 2006). These chickens, designated by the abbreviation ta2, displayed signs reminiscent of early tooth development.


The researchers needed a positive control with which to compare their hens' teeth-that is, a closely related animal in which teeth occur. Typically, the nonmutant or "wild-type" phenotype serves as a control in gene mutation experiments, but this was an exceptional case in that the wild-type chicken doesn't have teeth. Harris and Fallon specifically needed to compare the structures they believed to be teeth in their ta2 mutant chickens with the next best thing—the closest ancestor to the chicken that still has teeth—which in this case was the archosaur, otherwise known as the common crocodile. Therefore, the researchers examined the expression of several biomarkers in wild-type chicken embryos, ta2 mutant embryos, and crocodile embryos. They found that the ta2 mutant oral cavities appeared developmentally closer to those of the crocodiles than to those of their wild-type siblings. These results thus demonstrated that all the genetic pieces to the tooth-building puzzle exist in chickens, but the directions have evolved to tell those pieces to do something different over the last 80 million years.


Atavism and Human Tails

True examples of atavism, like the ta2 chicken, are data points indicative of common ancestry between species. In the case of human beings, the presence of a tail is a striking example of such ancestry. Many cases of people born with "tails" exist in the medical literature, but it is not always clear whether these appendages are "true" tails or not. In some instances, they are actually "pseudotails," or malformations that just happen to be located near a person's tailbone. True tails, however, result from a particular type of error during fetal development.



source: http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/atavism-embryology-development-and-evolution-843

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/mysterious-chinese-fossils-may-human-species-150805074.html

New human species fossils found in cave in China.

[Softhearted]

Neutrinos not faster than light

"ICARUS experiment contradicts controversial claim.
Geoff Brumfiel

16 March 2012

The ICARUS detector in Gran Sasso, Italy, has confirmed that neutrinos travel no faster than the speed of light.

INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory


Neutrinos obey nature's speed limit, according to new results from an Italian experiment. The finding, posted to the preprint server arXiv.org, contradicts a rival claim that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light.

Neutrinos are tiny, electrically neutral particles produced in nuclear reactions. Last September, an experiment called OPERA turned up evidence that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light (see 'Particles break light speed limit'). Located beneath the Gran Sasso mountain in central Italy, OPERA detected neutrinos sent from CERN, Europe's premier particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. According to the group's findings, neutrinos made the 731-kilometre journey 60 nanoseconds faster than predicted if they had travelled at light speed.

The announcement made international headlines, but physicists were deeply sceptical. The axiom that nothing travels faster than light was first formulated by Albert Einstein and is a cornerstone of modern physics. OPERA defended its announcement, saying that it could find no flaw in its measurement.

Now another experiment located just a few metres from OPERA has clocked neutrinos travelling at roughly the speed of light, and no faster. Known as ICARUS, the rival monitored a beam of neutrinos sent from CERN in late October and early November of last year. The neutrinos were packed into pulses just 4 nanoseconds long. That meant that the timing could be measured far more accurately than the original OPERA measurement, which used 10-microsecond pulses.

"Our results are in agreement with what Einstein would like to have," says Carlo Rubbia, the spokesperson for ICARUS and a Nobel prizewinning physicist at CERN. Neutrinos measured by the experiment arrived within just 4 nanoseconds of the time that light travelling through a vacuum would take to cover the distance, well within the experimental margin of error.

Because the pulses from CERN were so short, ICARUS only measured seven neutrinos during the late autumn run, but Rubbia says that the relatively low number does not matter. "How many times do you have to say 'zero' to make sure it's zero?" he asks.

The findings are yet another blow to OPERA, which was already under intense scrutiny from the wider experimental community. Almost as soon as the announcement was made, physicists began trying to poke holes in the OPERA analysis, and on 23 February researchers from within the OPERA team announced that they had uncovered possible timing problems with their original measurements (see 'Timing glitches dog neutrino claim'). Those problems could have led to the 60-nanosecond discrepancy.

Dario Autiero, a physicist at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyons, France, and physics coordinator for OPERA, welcomes the latest result. He notes that OPERA continued to detect faster-than-light neutrinos in October and November, when the shorter pulses were used. The team continues to search for possible sources of error, he says.

For some, the new measurements settle the matter once and for all. "The OPERA case is now conclusively closed," says Adam Falkowski, a theoretical physicist at the University of Paris-South in Orsay, France. But Rubbia says that he is still awaiting further measurements set to be made later in the spring by OPERA, ICARUS and two other experiments inside Gran Sasso.

"Had we found 60 nanoseconds, I would have sent a bottle of champagne to OPERA," Rubbia says. But as it stands, he suspects he will be toasting Einstein. "It's quite a relief, because I'm a conservative character," he says."

source: http://www.nature.com/news/neutrinos-not-faster-than-light-1.10249

[Corkey]

http://www.lifewithdogs.tv/2012/03/ancient-dog-lovingly-buried-with-his-bone/

Good dog

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/4-000-old-stone-monolith-likely-astronomical-marker-135405443.html

4,000 y/o monolithic stone

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/hot-humans-used-fire-1-million-years-ago-191003221.html

Humans using fire 1 million years ago.

[Corkey]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/science/dinosaur-dig-in-china-turns-up-largest-known-feathered-animal.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

Dino's n feathers.

[Hollylane]

-yk1J5EQDeY

[Midnight]

http://www.sciencespacerobots.com/blog/41020122

On a side note .... Hollylane ... are you keeping an eye on your mothers email to make sure she is behaving? or was it an email sent to you from your mum?? :tease:

[Corkey]

http://www.sciencespacerobots.com/blog/41020122

On a side note .... Hollylane ... are you keeping an eye on your mothers email to make sure she is behaving? or was it an email sent to you from your mum?? :tease:

Rut ro.......

[Midnight]

Rut ro.......

Rut ro? sounds ominous! :eek:

[Hollylane]

http://www.sciencespacerobots.com/blog/41020122

On a side note .... Hollylane ... are you keeping an eye on your mothers email to make sure she is behaving? or was it an email sent to you from your mum?? :tease:

HA! My mother sent me an that in an email. Context. It is important :)

[Corkey]

Rut ro? sounds ominous! :eek:

:chocolate: is always ominous....

[Midnight]

HA! My mother sent me an that in an email. Context. It is important :)

LOL it is indeed ..... hmmm haven't been here for a bit ... Ill have to check the context thread! Thanks :)

[Midnight]

:chocolate: is always ominous....

Still getting through the Easter :chocolate: so wont need the printer till next week LOL

[Corkey]

Still getting through the Easter :chocolate: so wont need the printer till next week LOL

Sounds like you had a good basket!

[Midnight]

Sounds like you had a good basket!

I was definitely spoiled :D

[Corkey]

I was definitely spoiled :D

Me too:sushi::cheesy:

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/distant-galaxies-confirm-accelerating-growth-universe-dark-energy-223402127.html

Distant galaxies confirm accelerating universal growth.

[MsDemeanor]

-yk1J5EQDeY

I have to share this with my lapidary friends. They will melt...

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/rare-photo-auroras-uranus-spotted-hubble-telescope-113201628.html

Rare light show on Uranus

[thedivahrrrself]

http://news.yahoo.com/rare-photo-auroras-uranus-spotted-hubble-telescope-113201628.html

Rare light show on Uranus

Oh, wow! I guess they don't get too much radiation from the sun back there. What a great catch!

I'd love to see our own Aurora Borealis in person someday.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/mexico-raises-alert-for-volcano-slideshow/

Mountain in Mexico blows off steam, folks preparing for evacuation.

[SoNotHer]

One of the most beautiful things I've seen. I could have it projected on a wall in my house. Just stunning....

-yk1J5EQDeY

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-mans-remotest-relative-lake-sludge-183424136.html

Bit of a reach but it may prove true.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/student-researcher-spies-odd-lava-spirals-mars-181146701.html

Lava spirals on Mars

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/monster-black-hole-caught-swallowing-unlucky-star-170950923.html

Death by Black Hole.

[Hollylane]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Supermoon_comparison.jpg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermoon)Clickity, click :)

[SoNotHer]

Like a cosmic sink hole or tar sands with no known exit - I never heard the terms "stellar murder" and "cosmic homicide" before. Just wow -

"Scientists first caught a black hole red-handed in a stellar murder last year.... Now researchers have determined...the culprit in a similar cosmic homicide..."


http://news.yahoo.com/monster-black-hole-caught-swallowing-unlucky-star-170950923.html (http://news.yahoo.com/monster-black-
hole-caught-swallowing-unlucky-star-170950923.html)

Death by Black Hole.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/worlds-smallest-mammoth-discovered-230741640.html

Worlds smallest Mammoth discovered.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/light-alien-super-earth-seen-1st-time-215909030.html

Light from Super-Earth seen for the first time.

[Corkey]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/120510-maya-2012-doomsday-calendar-end-of-world-science?source=link_fb05102012saturnomuralmaya

Mayan calendar doomsday debunked. Interactive.

[mariamma]

http://www.world-archaeology.com/news/ancient-language-discovered/
A link to a previously unknown language. They have a list of 144 women's name. From Turkey but is Assyrian in origin.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/200-old-shipwreck-found-gulf-mexico-133115035.html

200 Year old shipwreck found in Gulf of Mexico.

[Rockinonahigh]

http://news.yahoo.com/200-old-shipwreck-found-gulf-mexico-133115035.html

200 Year old shipwreck found in Gulf of Mexico.

I was just reading about this,oh how I would love to explore something like this.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/greek-experts-roman-wrecks-nearly-mile-deep-210340288.html

Greek experts find Roman wrecks.

[Hollylane]

Mount Lemmon SkyCenter Live Transit of Venus!

This is where the LIVE video for the Transit of Venus will be located. Please check in at 2:00pm MST on June 5th (one hour before the transit). If you follow the link by clicking to on directly on YouTube (bottom right corner of the video) you can make a larger image on your screen. Below is test video we generated to practice for the real event. (http://www.skycenter.arizona.edu/annoucement/live)

cWXN2qzRbGM

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/algae-blooms-discovered-beneath-arctic-ice-184514569.html

Algae blooms beneath arctic ice.

[Julien]

I'm not sure where to post this, but, I thought I would here. This has to do with medical science and cutting edge surgery. Does anyone know about the Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS) made by Cyberonics. It is an device implanted in the chest with a lead wire connected to the vagus nerve. It is used for primarily for people with epilepsy and now be used to treat people with treatment resistant depression. I am curious to find those who have been implanted with this device and what their experiences have been like with this treatment for either epilepsy or depression.

[Hollylane]

The VNS was a recommended device to treat my gastroparesis. However, I am avoiding it unless it becomes absolutely necessary. The need for maintenance is a big deterrent.

[Julien]

The VNS was a recommended device to treat my gastroparesis. However, I am avoiding it unless it becomes absolutely necessary. The need for maintenance is a big deterrent.

Thank you Hollylane for your post, I never knew VNS could be used to treat gastroparesis. It seems that there too few doctors willing to do the maintenance care once its been implanted. It does make for a rather frustrating situation when it is a viable treatment and the options are not there. Not to mention the problems with the insurance companies covering the surgery and the maintenance.

[Hollylane]

Thank you Hollylane for your post, I never knew VNS could be used to treat gastroparesis. It seems that there too few doctors willing to do the maintenance care once its been implanted. It does make for a rather frustrating situation when it is a viable treatment and the options are not there. Not to mention the problems with the insurance companies covering the surgery and the maintenance.

Exactly.......

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/universes-1st-objects-big-bang-possibly-seen-nasa-163220691.html

NASA- Universes 1st objects in big bang possibly seen.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/giant-tropical-lake-found-saturn-moon-titan-171440740.html

Tropical lake on Titan

[Midnight]

liquid methane ........ anyone got a match?

[Corkey]

liquid methane ........ anyone got a match?


Poof n the whole thing goes up :|

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/world-oldest-movies-discovered-prehistoric-caves-video-204120011.html

Prehistoric animated movies.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-cave-paintings-shown-oldest-world-180821995.html

Spanish cave paintings older than French.

[Midnight]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120525103917.htm

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/archaeologist-finds-oldest-rock-art-australia-134339160.html

Oldest known rock art in Australia.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/moons-peculiar-dust-gets-more-peculiar-still-101210873.html

Moons peculiar dust.

[Midnight]

I'm seeing a theme to your current posts Corkey! I love art though my talents lie with stick figures lol

[Corkey]

I'm seeing a theme to your current posts Corkey! I love art though my talents lie with stick figures lol


Loves me some dirt digging!!

[Midnight]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/news/article/-/13978923/microsoft-unveils-surface-tablet-in-ipad-challenge/

Be interesting to see how successful this is against the ipad. Hope you clean your nails Corkey :D

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-moon-craters-water-ice-supply-revealed-170854680.html

Polar moon craters may contain ice.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/mass-grave-giant-wombats-discovered-australia-201621035.html

Mass grave of prehistoric wombats found.

[Corkey]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/cavemen-bones-dna-humans_n_1636289.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009

7,000 y/o DNA oldest to date of Human genomes discovered in Spain.

[dreadgeek]

So this Wednesday, CERN is holding a big to-do where it is expected they will announce that the long sought Higgs boson (unfortunately named the 'God' particle in the popular press) has been found because of work done by the team at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

If it's true (and all the signs point toward that being the case) this would be the biggest piece of physics news in the best part of 100 years.

The Standard Model, which is the prevailing working explanation for why the particles exist and have the masses (energies) they do has had one piece of information missing: why do particles have mass at all? The Higgs boson (named after Peter Higgs who first proposed the existence of the particle four decades ago) is purported to be the particle that gives other particles their mass.

This is why it is called the 'God particle'. It has absolutely nothing to do with theism, it doesn't prove or disprove God, all it does is explain why particles have mass but that 'all' is a BIG deal because without that mass particles would never bind together to form atoms. No atoms, no anything else.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167188/God-particle-Scientists-Cern-expected-announce-Higgs-boson-particle-discovered-Wednesday.html
Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Here is an outstanding presentation on what the Higgs boson is and why it's a such a big deal:

http://vimeo.com/41038445

Cheers
Aj


So this Wednesday, CERN is holding a big to-do where it is expected they will announce that the long sought Higgs boson (unfortunately named the 'God' particle in the popular press) has been found because of work done by the team at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

If it's true (and all the signs point toward that being the case) this would be the biggest piece of physics news in the best part of 100 years.

The Standard Model, which is the prevailing working explanation for why the particles exist and have the masses (energies) they do has had one piece of information missing: why do particles have mass at all? The Higgs boson (named after Peter Higgs who first proposed the existence of the particle four decades ago) is purported to be the particle that gives other particles their mass.

This is why it is called the 'God particle'. It has absolutely nothing to do with theism, it doesn't prove or disprove God, all it does is explain why particles have mass but that 'all' is a BIG deal because without that mass particles would never bind together to form atoms. No atoms, no anything else.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167188/God-particle-Scientists-Cern-expected-announce-Higgs-boson-particle-discovered-Wednesday.html
Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

So it appears that both the ATLAS and CMS experiments found a particle that has the properties hypothesized for the Higgs Boson! Well, that would just about wrap up the Nobel prize in Physics this year (or possibly next).

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=higgs-cern-lhc-discovery

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

So it appears that both the ATLAS and CMS experiments found a particle that has the properties hypothesized for the Higgs Boson! Well, that would just about wrap up the Nobel prize in Physics this year (or possibly next).

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=higgs-cern-lhc-discovery

Cheers
Aj

Most excellent! Congrats to the physicists!

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/underwater-eruption-strews-ocean-surface-dead-fish-155619656.html

Underwater eruption off Canary Islands helps scientists with climate change.

[Linus]

So it appears that both the ATLAS and CMS experiments found a particle that has the properties hypothesized for the Higgs Boson! Well, that would just about wrap up the Nobel prize in Physics this year (or possibly next).

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=higgs-cern-lhc-discovery

Cheers
Aj


And to add some funny to it: http://minimumble.thebookofbiff.com/tag/hugs/

http://minimumble.thebookofbiff.com/comics-archive/2012-03-07-0058.png

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/planet-found-smaller-earth-orbiting-distant-star-203543868--abc-news-tech.html

Planet found 33 light years from Earth.

[Corkey]

http://io9.com/5927784/new-evidence-shows-that-neanderthals-understood-the-medicinal-value-of-certain-foods

I don't know why this is surprising. To me it is common sense. Neanderthals using medicinal plants.

[Kelt]

Hi all,

I don't know how to post a Vimeo video, so here is a link (http://gizmodo.com/5928072/the-most-spectacular-night-view-of-earth-ever-captured-by-nasa) to a page where I saw an eff'n amazing bit of time-lapse footage from the international space station.

3 minutes well spent.

:balloon:

[Corkey]

Because she belonged here.

RIP Sally Ride:bunchflowers:

[mariamma]

http://www.eisp.org/
They're digging up Easter Island. The heads are attached to bodies!

[mariamma]

This is why it is called the 'God particle'. It has absolutely nothing to do with theism, it doesn't prove or disprove God, all it does is explain why particles have mass but that 'all' is a BIG deal because without that mass particles would never bind together to form atoms. No atoms, no anything else.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2167188/God-particle-Scientists-Cern-expected-announce-Higgs-boson-particle-discovered-Wednesday.html
Cheers
Aj
Why can't we call it the "God daymn! particle" like it's supposed to be called. :poc-bleah:

[dreadgeek]

Why can't we call it the "God daymn! particle" like it's supposed to be called. :poc-bleah:

Damn publishers! "The Goddamn Particle" would have been the best science book title *ever*!

cheers
Aj

[Ginger]

http://www.eisp.org/
They're digging up Easter Island. The heads are attached to bodies!



Wow, that is cool. So freakin' huge, those statues.

I wonder if the Olmec heads in Mexico are actually statues buried up to their necks!

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/impossible-stars-found-super-close-orbital-dances-122640670.html

"Impossible" stellar dance.

[mariamma]

http://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/love-sex/sex/why-sex-makes-women-fall-in-love-1.1344679#.UBIruaD-2Sr
Men have their highest amount of estrogen right after orgasm and women have their highest amount of testosterone after orgasm (except while pregnant).

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/oldest-poison-pushes-back-ancient-civilization-20-000-190830216.html

Oldest poison pushes back ancient civilization 20 thousand years.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/photo-reveals-giant-greenland-iceberg-heading-sea-185911409.html


Tongue in cheek "But there's no evidence of global warming"

[Scuba]

First images from Mars...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ln1Lceklb_k/UCBktfddoDI/AAAAAAAAA3E/C2j2_9plAU4/s800/255240_504332439596214_1147023620_n.jpg

...y'all saw this coming a mile away **laughing** YAY for NASA!!

[Corkey]

First images from Mars...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ln1Lceklb_k/UCBktfddoDI/AAAAAAAAA3E/C2j2_9plAU4/s800/255240_504332439596214_1147023620_n.jpg

...y'all saw this coming a mile away **laughing** YAY for NASA!!


You must have George Takai on your FB LOL

[Scuba]

You must have George Takai on your FB LOL

**laughing* I need to go friend him...

[Midnight]

As will the researcher who seems to experimenting on himself :|

http://www.sciencespacerobots.com/blog/80520123

[Jesse]

FDA Bans BPA from Baby Bottles and Sippy Cups (http://www.greenjoyment.com/fda-bans-bpa-from-baby-bottles-and-sippy-cups)

Posted by Lisa Carey
On July 17, 2012 the Food and Drug Administration officially put an end to the use of Bisphenol A (BPA) in the manufacturing of baby bottles and children’s sippy cups. The FDA said that the decision was in response to a request by the American Chemistry Council that BPA be phased out of these products in order to boost customer confidence.
The FDA says that many manufacturers have already stopped using the chemical in baby bottles and sippy cups. The response to the American Chemistry Council makes the ban somewhat official. The FDA has originally declared BPA safe in 2008, but by 2010 had started expressing possible health risks associated with the use of the chemical. Specifically, the impact that BPA has on the brain and reproductive system of infants, babies and young children. Earlier this year the FDA’s stance was that BPA was safe. The agency denied a petition from Natural Resources Defense Council that called for a ban on the use of BPA in all food containers, not just baby bottles and sippy cups.
Experts are still divided on whether BPA is a health risk to humans. Some studies claim that the levels of BPA are safe while others claim that BPA plays a part in obesity issues, disruption of estrogen levels, and neurological issues. Tufts University Medical School concluded that BPA may increase cancer risk.
The FDA’s ban on BPA usage in baby bottles and sippy cups is considered a step in the right direction. According to the Bennington Banner, “ The chemical industry’s request may help curb years of negative publicity from consumer groups and head off tougher laws that would ban BPA from other types of packaging because of health worries. Legislation introduced by some members of Congress would ban BPA nationwide in all canned food, water bottles and food containers. Chemical makers maintain that the plastic-hardening chemical is safe for all food and drink uses.”
Dr. Sarah Janssen, senior scientist in the public health program at Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the FDA’s ban, “This is only a baby step in the fight to eradicate BPA. To truly protect the public, FDA needs to ban BPA from all food packaging. This half-hearted action –taken only after consumers shifted away from BPA in children’s products– is inadequate. FDA continues to doge the bigger questions of BPA’s safety.”
Our children are a little safer but BPA is still in a variety of other products that adults use every day.
In related news about BPA . . .
Canada declares BPA as toxic: What happens next? (http://www.greenjoyment.com/canada-declares-bpa-as-toxic-what-happens-next)
The Kid-Safe Chemical Act (http://www.greenjoyment.com/the-kid-safe-chemical-act)
Guest post by Linda St. Cyr
Linda St.Cyr is a freelance writer, blogger, and columnist. She covers a wide variety of topics from food to celebrity gossip. Read her work at Ecorazzi, Yahoo! Contributor Network, or The Hungry Kitchen.


http://www.greenjoyment.com/fda-bans-bpa-from-baby-bottles-and-sippy-cups

[Hollylane]

http://i46.tinypic.com/xbp8z.jpg

http://static.indianexpress.com/m-images/Fri%20Aug%2010%202012,%2015:44%20hrs/M_Id_307959_Rocks.jpg

Bizarre rock 'ice shelf' found in Pacific (http://news.yahoo.com/bizarre-rock-ice-shelf-found-pacific-104349304.html)

A huge cluster of floating volcanic rocks covering almost 26,000 square kilometres (10,000 square miles) has been found drifting in the Pacific, the New Zealand navy said Friday.

The strange phenomenon, which witnesses said resembled a polar ice shelf, was made up of lightweight pumice expelled from an underwater volcano, the navy said.

An air force plane spotted the rocks on Thursday about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) offshore from New Zealand and warned a navy warship that it was heading towards them.



Lieutenant Tim Oscar said that while he knew his ship the HMNZS Canterbury was in no danger from the pumice, which is solidified lava filled with air bubbles, it was still "the weirdest thing I've seen in 18 years at sea".

"As far ahead as I could observe was a raft of pumice moving up and down with the swell," he said.

"The rock looked to be sitting two foot (half a metre) above the surface of the waves and lit up a brilliant while colour in the spotlight. It looked exactly like the edge of an ice shelf."



Scientists aboard the ship said the pumice probably came from an underwater volcano called Monowai, which has been active recently.

They said the phenomenon was unrelated to increased volcanic activity in New Zealand this week, including an eruption at Mount Tongariro (http://www.3news.co.nz/Tongariro-breaks-115-year-silence/tabid/309/articleID/264379/Default.aspx) that sent an ash cloud 20,000 feet into the atmosphere.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/unusually-strong-arctic-storm-spied-above-135552493.html

This winter is going to be really weird, if not non existent. Or we're gonna get slammed. Either way WTF?

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/earthquake-record-shakes-pacific-northwest-predictions-135556030.html

I really do worry about you folks in the PNW.

[mariamma]

Since most humans have three separate types of cones (making us trichromats), a total of (100)3 = 1 million colors are discernable to a typical human. Some humans are born without one of the three types of cones, creating a condition known as color blindness; color blind (dichromat) humans can only see (100)2 = 10,000 distinct colors. On the other hand, some humans have four distinct types of cones, making them tetrachromats and allowing them to distinguish up to (100)4 = 100 million separate colors!

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/08/14/how-many-colors-are-really-in-a-rainbow/

[mariamma]

BY FAR, the coolest thing I've seen in days! I enjoyed this waaaay more than the Mars rover landing.
http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/08/22/nasa-astronaut-don-pettit-examines-the-behavior-of-thin-films-of-water-aboard-the-international-space-station/

[Midnight]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/14702774/japan-toilet-maker-unveils-poop-powered-motorbike/

[Corkey]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/14702774/japan-toilet-maker-unveils-poop-powered-motorbike/

Oh shit, sorry couldn't resist...

[Midnight]

Oh shit, sorry couldn't resist...

Yeah it was a crappy story :P

[Hollylane]

On this date in 1859, a massive solar superstorm took place. It's sometimes called the "perfect space storm" or the Carrington Event, after British astronomer Richard Carrington. He reported witnessing a massive white-light solar flare: a bright spot suddenly appearing on the surface of the Sun. At the same time, the Sun produced a coronal mass ejection, or CME: a large eruption of magnetized plasma. CMEs usually take three to four days to reach Earth, but the magnetic burst from the superstorm of 1859 reached us in just under 18 hours.

People were growing accustomed to rapid communication over the telegraph, which had been in use for 15 years. Within hours of the CME, telegraph wires began shorting out, starting fires and disrupting communication in North America and Europe. Compasses were useless because the Earth's magnetic field had gone haywire. The northern lights were seen as far south as Cuba and Hawaii, and the southern lights — aurora australis — were seen in Santiago, Chile. People in the northeastern United States could read the newspaper by the light of the aurora, and the Sun itself was twice as bright during the event.

Subsequent solar storms have caused satellites, broadcast stations, and cell phones to malfunction; they've disrupted GPS systems on airplanes and have even knocked out entire power grids; in 1989, a storm much weaker than the superstorm of 1859 brought down the Hydro-Quebec power grid for more than nine hours. While scientists cannot predict the storms with any degree of confidence, some speculate that the Sun is expected to reach a period of peak activity in 2013, and the large flares often follow the peak periods. They're monitoring the Sun's activity closely, because with a little advance warning, power grids could be taken offline and satellites put in "sleep" mode for the duration of the storm, averting a global catastrophe from which it could take a decade and trillions of dollars to recover.

[puddin']

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=superfluid-can-climb-walls

[mariamma]

http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/09/01/how-the-sun-works-fusion-and-quantum-tunneling/
Quantum tunneling illuminated in about a minute.

[Midnight]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=superfluid-can-climb-walls

Great article. It seems that with this superfluid you could make a perpetual engine for power (once all the leaks are resolved!) Mind you that means the world economies would crash!

[dreadgeek]

Great article. It seems that with this superfluid you could make a perpetual engine for power (once all the leaks are resolved!) Mind you that means the world economies would crash!

Midnight:

Actually, whatever else you might be able to do with superfluid helium one thing you *can't* do is make a perpetual engine. The Second Law of Thermodynamics utterly precludes any type of perpetual motion machine. The reason is that perpetual motion machines violate either of the aforementioned laws.

Perpetual motion machines of the First Kind violate the First law of Thermodynamics because they do work without an input of energy. Energy is conserved in a closed system (the Universe is a closed system, the Earth is not) which means you cannot create new energy and you can't destroy existing energy you can only transform it from state to state.

Perpetual motion machines of the Second Kind (which is the kind under discussion here) violate the Second Law because in any system where work is done there is some loss due to inefficiencies. That can't be eliminated no matter how hard you try. This means that even if you could harness the superfluid helium to drive a turbine, say, you would *still* lose some energy due to friction which would, eventually, run down the power source.

You might be able to build an exceedingly long-lived power source from superfluid helium but it wouldn't be a perpetual energy source.

Cheers
Aj

[mariamma]

This looks interesting. I wonder if there will be real world applications for it.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/12/15544/

Note the limitations, though: you have to start with a penis. There are relatively few of those to spare, although since histocompatibility matching isn’t an issue, it ought to be doable as part of an organ donor program — we’ll just grab the penis as well as the corneas and kidneys. This procedure does not regrow the entire penis, but just the spongy erectile tissue in the core; this is implanted into the sheath of skin of the normal penis. I know all you body modification fans are dreaming of the day you can have multiple penises, but this isn’t quite there yet, and sorry, I should hope injured people who need the procedure get priority over cosmetic uses.

But here’s the astonishing thing: it works. The procedure has only been tested in rabbits so far, but with amazing success. I know what you are saying. You are saying, “Really? Then show me the bunny penises, with erections.” And I will.

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/enormous-roman-mosaic-found-under-farmers-field-191743498.html


Enormous Roman mosaic found under farmers field.

[Midnight]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/news/article/-/14879629/warp-speed-more-feasible-than-thought/

Make it so!

[Midnight]

Midnight:

Actually, whatever else you might be able to do with superfluid helium one thing you *can't* do is make a perpetual engine. The Second Law of Thermodynamics utterly precludes any type of perpetual motion machine. The reason is that perpetual motion machines violate either of the aforementioned laws.

Perpetual motion machines of the First Kind violate the First law of Thermodynamics because they do work without an input of energy. Energy is conserved in a closed system (the Universe is a closed system, the Earth is not) which means you cannot create new energy and you can't destroy existing energy you can only transform it from state to state.

Perpetual motion machines of the Second Kind (which is the kind under discussion here) violate the Second Law because in any system where work is done there is some loss due to inefficiencies. That can't be eliminated no matter how hard you try. This means that even if you could harness the superfluid helium to drive a turbine, say, you would *still* lose some energy due to friction which would, eventually, run down the power source.

You might be able to build an exceedingly long-lived power source from superfluid helium but it wouldn't be a perpetual energy source.

Cheers
Aj

Agreed. After further research (before I read your post) superfluids would just flow around, say a waterwheel, instead of exerting energy against it to create movement. Shame!

[dreadgeek]

Agreed. After further research (before I read your post) superfluids would just flow around, say a waterwheel, instead of exerting energy against it to create movement. Shame!

Isn't it though? But superfluids are one of those things that I just think are intrinsically cool. Even if there is *never* a practical application for them (and likely there will be practical applications we can't dream of now) from a purely aesthetic point of view, I like living in a universe where the laws of physics allow for such exotic states of matter.

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/50-million-old-redwood-chunk-found-diamond-mine-231502312.html


50 Million y/o chunk of Redwood found in diamond mine in Canada.

[Toughy]

The Science Channel has a new weekly series called The Code. It is about math holding the code or key to everything from music to how branches on a tree are formed to fractals......way good highly recommend it.

A new season of Curiosity is also starting.

I couldn't figure out where to post these fascinating little tidbits of news about good science related TV.........so I put it here.....

[Corkey]

The Science Channel has a new weekly series called The Code. It is about math holding the code or key to everything from music to how branches on a tree are formed to fractals......way good highly recommend it.

A new season of Curiosity is also starting.

I couldn't figure out where to post these fascinating little tidbits of news about good science related TV.........so I put it here.....



Good choice, I'll be looking for the shows.

[Kelt]

Sadly Code is not on either netflix or amazon

Curiosity is only on amazon for rent, not on the free list

(I hate commercials enough to disallow them, streaming or nothing in this house)

[dreadgeek]

Evidence of an alluvial fan showing that rocks were moved by water flowing at a steady clip.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120927.html

So it appears that at one point in its geological history, Mars had liquid water and where there is liquid water, there's the possibility of life.

Cheers
Aj

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/asteroid-dust-could-fight-climate-change-earth-132248031.html

Interesting theory, doubt I'll see it in my lifetime.

[Jesse]

Wasn't sure where to put this link, but medicine IS science so...

NEW YORK (AP) — The potential scope of the meningitis outbreak that has killed at least five people widened dramatically Thursday as health officials warned that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of patients who got steroid back injections in 23 states could be at risk...

http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-seen-risk-meningitis-outbreak-223337287.html;_ylt=AmELCe71uUC5sZZMrkU63xmPFs0F;_ ylu=X3oDMTQzZWw5MGg0BG1pdANBcnRpY2xlIFRvcFN0b3JpZX MEcGtnAzIwNTQ1NDRkLWI3NjYtM2ZiOS04MjhhLTFjY2QxODU0 Nzg5OQRwb3MDMgRzZWMDTWVkaWFTZWN0aW9uTGlzdAR2ZXIDOW VlZjdiNzEtMGU3YS0xMWUyLWIzYjUtNGYxNjcyN2E0YWRm;_yl g=X3oDMTJ2NDJmcnM5BGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3Rh aWQDZTI3YzczM2MtOGVjNi0zYTFkLTgyMjYtYWExZGMyZTU2NG VhBHBzdGNhdANob21lfHdlYXRoZXIEcHQDc3RvcnlwYWdl;_yl v=3

[Corkey]

Wasn't sure where to put this link, but medicine IS science so...

NEW YORK (AP) — The potential scope of the meningitis outbreak that has killed at least five people widened dramatically Thursday as health officials warned that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of patients who got steroid back injections in 23 states could be at risk...

http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-seen-risk-meningitis-outbreak-223337287.html;_ylt=AmELCe71uUC5sZZMrkU63xmPFs0F;_ ylu=X3oDMTQzZWw5MGg0BG1pdANBcnRpY2xlIFRvcFN0b3JpZX MEcGtnAzIwNTQ1NDRkLWI3NjYtM2ZiOS04MjhhLTFjY2QxODU0 Nzg5OQRwb3MDMgRzZWMDTWVkaWFTZWN0aW9uTGlzdAR2ZXIDOW VlZjdiNzEtMGU3YS0xMWUyLWIzYjUtNGYxNjcyN2E0YWRm;_yl g=X3oDMTJ2NDJmcnM5BGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3Rh aWQDZTI3YzczM2MtOGVjNi0zYTFkLTgyMjYtYWExZGMyZTU2NG VhBHBzdGNhdANob21lfHdlYXRoZXIEcHQDc3RvcnlwYWdl;_yl v=3


Thank you and WOW! I get steroid injections in my hip so thanks for the info and before the next injection me and the Doc are gonna have a lil discussion.

[Lasiurus_cinereus]

"Use of population-genetic data to predict economic success sparks war of words.

The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.” Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould was referring to purported links between genetics and an individual’s intelligence when he made this familiar complaint in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man.

Fast-forward three decades, and leading geneticists and anthropologists are levelling a similar charge at economics researchers who claim that a country’s genetic diversity can predict the success of its economy. To critics, the economists’ paper seems to suggest that a country’s poverty could be the result of its citizens’ genetic make-up, and the paper is attracting charges of genetic determinism, and even racism."

for the complete article:
http://http://www.nature.com/news/economics-and-genetics-meet-in-uneasy-union-1.11565