Water in Earth's Mantle Key To Survival Of Oldest Continents

This is an image of a sample of cratonic mantle root from Kimberley, South Africa. The rock consists of dark green olivine, whitish-green enstatite, emerald green diopside and purple garnet. (Credit: David R. Bell / ASU)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Earth today is one of the most active planets in the Solar System, and was probably even more so during the early stages of its life. Thanks to the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet's surface, remnants of crust from Earth's formative years are rare, but not impossible to find. A paper published in Nature Sept. 2 examines how some ancient rocks have resisted being recycled into Earth's convecting interior.

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High-Tech Effort Underway to Protect Magna Carta

One of four existing copies of the 1297 Magna Carta. Credit: National Archives & Records Administration

From Live Science:

The Magna Carta helped form the foundation for modern English and U.S. law. Now one of two copies known to exist outside England is headed for a special new case to preserve it.

The very first Magna Carta dates to 1215, when English barons forced King John to write down the traditional rights and liberties of the country's free persons. A copy of the Magna Carta signed by King Edward I in 1297 currently resides within a helium-filled casement at the National Archives Building in Washington. But the medieval document is scheduled for a temporary removal in 2011 so it can be re-measured for a new case filled with argon.

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NASA Flies First Drone Over Hurricane

From Wired Science:

Hurricane Earl is waning as it moves northward up the east coast of the United States. Some of the first researchers to notice the weakening had front row seats, watching the eye of the hurricane via drone flights.

In addition to the usual cadre of satellites, NASA is using a small fleet of unmanned aircraft into, over and around the hurricane as it tracks north from the Caribbean. While flying into a hurricane is nothing new, Earl is the first hurricane that NASA has observed using their unmanned Global Hawk observation aircraft (pictured above).

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Canadian To Command Space Station In 2013

From Space Daily:

Astronaut Chris Hadfield in 2013 will become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station (ISS), the Canadian Space Agency announced Thursday.

Hadfield, 51, will rocket on his third trip into space aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in December 2012 and assume command of the station during the second part of a six-month mission.

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Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers?

Jodi Cobb / National Geographic Creative / Getty Image

From Time Magazine:

One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.

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My Comment: I am convinced .... and yes .... I need a drink.

One Reason Dieting Does Not Work

That’s The Way The Cookie Crumbles -- The Economist

One reason dieting does not work.

IF, BY chance, you are served an unusually large slice of pizza, compared with what others appear to be getting, would that experience incline you, some minutes later, to eat more cookies or fewer when platefuls came your way? That depends, it turns out, on whether you are on a diet. Those who are not eat fewer cookies, whereas those who are see the excessive pizza as a licence to pig out. It is a demonstration of what Janet Polivy, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, refers to as the “what the hell” effect—a phenomenon familiar from real life to which Dr Polivy has given scientific respectability, most recently in a paper published in the latest edition of Appetite.

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Why Food Is Costing Us The Earth

Coffee prices have risen sharply Photo: SIMON RAWLES

From The Telegraph:

The fight is on over how to solve our food crisis, but if we choose the wrong food policy at this juncture there could be no going back, says Rose Prince.

Hardly a morning passes without food making the headlines. This week has brought us the burger that thinks it's a pizza and news that eating asparagus makes you stay slim (fingers crossed it's the type covered in melted butter). And we heard that, if you eat pickled squid guts and single cream together, it tastes like strawberry shortcake.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab: Firm Joins Forces With Google By Launching Tablet to Take On Apple's iPad

iPad killer? People compare the performance of Apple's iPad (L) and Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablet devices at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin today

From The Daily Mail:

Apple faces a killer blow to its iPad after Samsung unveiled its own device amid rumours it could could be just half the price.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab with its seven inch touchscreen is smaller than the iPad, however it matches the Apple device in virtually all other functions.

Initial details suggest some aspects of the Tablet are even more sophisticated than the Apple creation.

At the same time, Apple faces competition from other technology giants which are racing to get their own touchscreen tablets into the shops before Christmas.

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My Comment: I prefer the size of the iPad, but others prefer something smaller. At last there is choice now, and that is a good thing.

Doctors Seek Way To Treat Muscle Loss

Participants in a University of Florida study use ankle weights to increase strength and balance. Researchers say muscle deterioration is a major reason some of the elderly lose mobility and cannot live independently. Steve Johnson for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

Bears emerge from months of hibernation with their muscles largely intact. Not so for people, who, if bedridden that long, would lose so much muscle they would have trouble standing.

Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists, drug and food companies, let alone aging baby boomers who, despite having spent years sweating in the gym, are confronting the body’s natural loss of muscle tone over time.

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Stephen Hawking Says There's No Theory Of Everything

From New Scientist:

Craig Callender, contributor

Three decades ago, Stephen Hawking famously declared that a "theory of everything" was on the horizon, with a 50 per cent chance of its completion by 2000. Now it is 2010, and Hawking has given up. But it is not his fault, he says: there may not be a final theory to discover after all. No matter; he can explain the riddles of existence without it.

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The Secret To The Immortality Of McDonald's Food

Salon/iStockphoto/xxxnake

From Salon:

The chain's burgers can resist rot for years. Scientists explain why they have the shelf life of the undead.

Ever since Morgan Spurlock held up that jar of mysteriously well-preserved fries in "Super Size Me," the list of exhibits in the McDonald’s museum of food-that-refuses-go-bad has grown exponentially. The latest entrant is the Happy Meal Project, a burger and a packet of fries that have soldiered on undecayed for 143 days.

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My Comment: I have a confession .... I am addicted to sausage egg McMuffins. Don't know why .... just need a fix once in a while.

Hubble Observations of Supernova Reveal Composition Of 'Star Guts' Pouring Out

A team of astronomers led by the University of Colorado at Boulder is charting the interactions between Supernova 1987A and a glowing gas ring encircling the supernova remnant known as the "String of Pearls." (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Observations made with NASA's newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope of a nearby supernova are allowing astronomers to measure the velocity and composition of "star guts" being ejected into space following the explosion, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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Mass Extinction Threat: Earth On Verge of Huge Reset Button?

From Live Science:

Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems.

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China's Militarization of Space Continues

Chinese Satellite Test -- Inside The Ring, Washington Times

China recently conducted a space test involving two satellites that rendezvoused several hundred miles above Earth in a maneuver analysts say will likely boost Beijing's anti-satellite weapons program.

Read more ....

More News On China's Space Program

Two Chinese Satellites Have Close Encounter in Orbit -- Discovery News
Close Encounters of the Worrisome Kind? Chinese Satellites Meet in Space -- Discover Magazine
China’s Secret Satellite Rendezvous ‘Suggestive of a Military Program’ -- The Danger Room
Satellite pulls new manoeuvre in space -- Toronto Sun
Two Chinese Satellites Rendezvous in Orbit -- Universe Today
Chinese On-orbit Rendezvous Analyzed [The Space Review] -- Space News
Two Chinese satellites rendezvous in orbit -- New Scientist

Hurricane's Path Unfamiliar to U.S. Northeast

From CBS News:

Earl Heads Uncomfortably Close to Area Relatively Few Hurricanes Tend to Go.

(AP) Pushed by an ill-timed trough of low pressure, Hurricane Earl is heading uncomfortably close to an area relatively few hurricanes tend to go: the northeastern United States coastline.

Earl's path may in fact be foreshadowing more northerly big storms to come with global warming, two hurricane experts said Thursday.

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Counting Down To Commercial Space Launches

Image: Space pioneer: This image shows an artist’s rendering of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Credit: SpaceX

From Technology Review:

The next few years will see at least two new commercial spacecraft put into orbit.

A small fleet of privately developed spacecraft will head into orbit in the next few years--assuming that current levels of public and private funding can be sustained. If it happens, this will mark a new chapter in space exploration and research, as NASA comes to rely more on private companies for the technology to put manned and unmanned vehicles in space.

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Global Energy Use In The 21st Century

World energy consumption by type in 2006 - Image: Wikimedia

From Watts Up With That?:

Guest Post by Thomas Fuller

This is a great time to talk about energy use worldwide. Not because it’s topical, or politically important, or anything like that. It’s a great time because the math is easier now than ever before, and easier than it ever will be again.

It’s similar to a time a few years ago when there were almost exactly 100 million households in the United States. It made a lot of calculations really easy to do. And this year, the United States Department of Energy calculates that the world used 500 quads of energy. Ah, the symmetry.

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DARPA's Cyber Insider Threat Program Is The Agency's Great Hope For Ending Leaks

Protecting Military Networks Thinking about WikiLeaking? Think again. U.S. Navy

From Popular Science:

The recent WikiLeaks exposure was a huge black eye for the U.S. Department of Defense, supposedly one of the more secure state organizations we have working for us. Its impact clearly wasn’t lost on the Pentagon, whose blue sky research arm has launched a new project designed to ferret out malicious behavior on DoD networks. Named CINDER – Cyber INsiDER Threat – the project is designed not to sniff out people, but adversarial actions as they happen.

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My Comment: I am skeptical that such a program will be successful .... but hey .... Darpa has surprised us on many occasions and should not be underestimated.

Charlie Bamforth Tells All About The Beer Industry

Charlie Bamforth
UC Davis, College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences

From Popular Mechanics:

In the forthcoming book, Beer Is Proof God Loves Us (to be published October 2010 by FT press), beer expert and master brewer Charlie Bamforth talks about the fast-changing world of beer. From the loss of the pub to the growth of homebrewing, corporate takeovers, and the rise of craft culture, Bamforth outlines the recent history of beer and helps beer-lovers, home brewers and aspiring brewmasters navigate the modern-day beerscape. We got Bamforth on the phone to talk about his views on Big Beer, home brewing and how to become a brewmaster.

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A Traffic Cop For Satellites

As more and more spacecraft are put into orbit, the chance of a collision increases.
Click to enlarge this image. ESA

From Discovery News:

Satellite crashes may be rare, but when they happen, the impact can be long-lasting.

Collisions in space don't happen very often, but when they do the impact is long-lasting. A coalition of satellite traffic cops, however, aims to prevent these episodes from occurring at all.

In orbit, chunks and fragments from a crash won't settle down. They'll keep moving -- extremely rapidly -- upping the odds of additional crashes.

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Black Holes Formed Soon After Big Bang

Supermassive black holes are found at the centre of galaxies - including our galaxy, the Milky Way. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos/AFP:

PARIS: The first supermassive black holes formed just a billion years after the Big Bang, showing that big structures build up quickly in the universe, scientists said.

Ordinary black holes are entities of mass whose gravitational pull is so huge that not even light can escape them. But they are dwarfs compared to so-called supermassive black holes, which are many orders of magnitude bigger.

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Recipe For Water: Just Add Starlight

Giant star IRC+10216. (Credit: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/MESS Consortia)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapour.

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Why Older People Repeat Stories

From Live Science:

There may be a reason grandparents repeat the same stories over and over again. According to a new study, older people are more likely than younger people to forget with whom they've shared information.

The study investigated two types of memory: source memory, or your recollection of who told you a piece of information; and destination memory, which is your recollection of which people you've informed. Not only were older people bad at remembering to whom they'd told information, they were very confident in their mistaken memories. [10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp]

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My Comment: I am repeating stories .... and I am 50. Oh .... oh ....

NASA Planning Mission To Visit The Sun

Artist Representation of Solar Probe Plus
(Credit: NASA)

From The CBS:

We know it's hot up there but NASA wants to know a bit more about the Sun and its environs. And so sometime before 2018, the agency intends to send a spacecraft into the solar atmosphere.

This will mark the first time that a spacecraft from earth will actually visit a star.

The decision to chart a mission to the Sun also realizes a dream that astronomers almost realized a half century ago, when the National Academy of Science's "Simpson Committee" in 1958 recommended a probe to investigate. Several studies were subsequently carried out testing the feasibility of the project. But nothing came of them.

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Robotic Storm Tracker Gets A Big Test With Earl

Bearing down: NASA'S Global Hawk flies over the eye of Hurricane Earl. Thus far it has made numerous passes over the eye and will continue to monitor the storm until Thursday evening. Credit: NASA/NOAA

From Technology Review:

The largest-ever storm monitoring mission is now gathering scientific data that was previously impossible to get.

As Hurricane Earl barrels toward the eastern seaboard of the United States, coastal residents don't know if they should evacuate in case the storm makes landfall. They rely on forecasters analyzing computer models, but those predictions differ. A new hurricane-monitoring mission that's now underway hopes to reduce this uncertainty by gathering atmospheric and environmental storm data never before obtained.

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My Comment: They must have spent a fortune on this system, but considering the damage that hurricanes can cause, any leg up on what they are about to do makes it all worth while.

Where Are The Solar Power Projects?

Electric towers and power lines cross the proposed site of a BrightSource Energy solar plant near Primm, Nev. The presence of existing towers make the area a prime site for solar development.

From Watts Up With That?:

From the Ventura County Star:

ROACH DRY LAKE, Nev. — Not a light bulb’s worth of solar electricity has been produced on the millions of acres of public desert set aside for it. Not one project to build glimmering solar farms has even broken ground.

Instead, five years after federal land managers opened up stretches of the Southwest to developers, vast tracts still sit idle.

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My Comment: A blunt and accurate assessment on the politics behind solar power.

Archive Gallery: 138 Years Of Architectural Landmarks

The Pentagon, 1943

From Popular Science:

PopSci's first looks at the Empire State Building, the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more.

We've heard it said that Rome wasn't built in a day. And while Popular Science isn't old enough to have witnessed the Colosseum going up, we have covered in our pages some of the 20th century's most important architectural achievements rise from nothing but a dream and a blueprint.

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Top 5 Ways The Universe Could Wipe Out Humankind

From Popular Mechanics:

The Universe looks like a pretty tranquil place to live, doesn't it? During the day the sun shines steadily, and at night the heavens are reassuring and unchanging.

Dream on. The Universe is filled to the brim with dangerous, nasty things, all jostling for position to be the one to wipe us off the face of the planet. Happily for us, they're all pretty unlikely—how many people do you know who have died by proton disintegration?—but if you wait long enough, one of them is bound to get us.

But which one?

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Highest-Paid Athlete Hailed From Ancient Rome

From Discovery News:

Ultra millionaire sponsorship deals such as those signed by sprinter Usain Bolt, motorcycle racer Valentino Rossi and tennis player Maria Sharapova, are just peanuts compared to the personal fortune amassed by a second century A.D. Roman racer, according to an estimate published in the historical magazine Lapham's Quarterly.

According to Peter Struck, associate professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, an illiterate charioteer named Gaius Appuleius Diocles earned “the staggering sum" of 35,863,120 sesterces (ancient Roman coins) in prize money.

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My Comment: I am just curious to know what happened to all of that money.

Web-Crawling Computers Will Soon Be Calling The Shots In Science

Computers may by programmed to generate hypotheses with little human intervention required. Photograph: Corbis

From The Guardian:

Within a decade, computers will be able to plough through scientific data looking for patterns and connections – then tell scientists what they should do next.

Move over scientists – computers will be asking the questions from now on. They will trawl the millions of scientific papers on the web and suggest new hypotheses for humans to test, according to an article in tomorrow's issue of Science.

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Richest Planetary System Discovered

A close-up of the sky around the star HD 10180. Credit: ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

From Cosmos:

PARIS: A distant star orbited by at least five planets has been found, according to European astronomers, in the biggest discovery of so-called exoplanets since the first was logged 15 years ago.

The star is similar to our Sun and its planetary lineup has an intriguing parallel with own Solar System, although no clue has so far been found to suggest it could be a home from home, they said.

The star they studied, HD 10180, is located 127 light years away in the southern constellation of Hydrus, the male water snake, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said.

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Discovery Of Ancient Cave Paintings In Petra Stuns Art Scholars

Detail of a winged child playing the flute, before and after cleaning. Photograph: Courtesy of the Courtauld Institute

From The Guardian:

Exquisite artworks hidden under 2,000 years of soot and grime in a Jordanian cave have been restored by experts from the Courtauld Institute in London.

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti.

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Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental Impact, Study Finds

A new study found that organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse. (Credit: iStockphoto/Margarita Borodina)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2010) — Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.

"Our findings have global implications and advance what we know about the sustainability benefits of organic farming systems," said John Reganold, Washington State University Regents professor of soil science and lead author of a paper published in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLoS ONE. "We also show you can have high quality, healthy produce without resorting to an arsenal of pesticides."

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My Comment: This scientific study only reveals what every farmer knows .... stay away from pesticides and fertilizers and you will produce a better product.

Hurricane Alley Heats Up With Stormy Threesome

As Hurricane Earl nears the East Coast Thursday, two tropical systems linger behind: Tropical Storm Fiona, located north-northeast of San Juan, and Tropical Storm Gaston, located east of the Lesser Antilles. Credit: NOAA.

From Live Science:

Three swirling storms are roaring across the Atlantic with nervous East Coast residents keeping a close eye on the conveyor belt of tropical activity as hurricane season enters its busiest time.

Hurricane Earl is bearing down on the Carolinas and has strengthened into a Category 4 storm, with maximum winds of 145 mph (235 kph), according to the latest update from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Category 3 storms or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane strength are classified as major hurricanes. [In Images: Hurricane Hunters Flying into Earl.]

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Throat Cancer Rates Soar In Men

From The Telegraph:

Throat cancer cases have soared by 50 per cent in men in the last 25 years due to obesity and bad diet, researchers have found.

Back in the eighties around 2,600 men were diagnosed with oesophageal cancer every year but now the figure is more than 5,100.

The most dramatic rise was among men in their 50s, as rates increased by 67 per cent over the same period.

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When Drones Go Wild

When Drones Go Rogue In Friendly Skies, How Do We Bring Them Home? -- Popular Science

An advanced fly-by-wire system capable of landing grossly damaged unmanned aircraft—demonstrated on video saving a plane missing 80 percent of one wing—is key to solving one of unmanned flight’s biggest problems.

Word spread last week that a rogue MQ-8B Fire Scout copter drone entered restricted airspace just 40 miles shy of Washington D.C. after losing contact with its operators. The revelation occurred smack in the middle of AVUSI 2010, the world’s largest UAV tradeshow. And it served as a poignant reminder that all the game-changing technology on display here at the Denver Convention Center still has some innovating to do, especially when flight crews lose control of their unmanned craft.

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My Comment: The video is impressive .... watch it.

Shape-Shifting Robot Compensates For Damaged Limb

From New Scientist:

Think that shape-shifting robots, or ones that march on no matter how many limbs they lose, are just for Terminator films? Think again. A team of European roboticists have developed software that allows a modular robot to adapt when one part stops working.

David Johan Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, working with Alexander Spröwitz and Auke Ijspeert at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, simulated a quadruped robot constructed from a dozen Roombots – identical rounded robots that have been developed in Lausanne and which can combine to form a variety of modular shapes (see picture).

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Astronaut’s Eye View: Time-Lapse Videos of Earth

From Wired Science:

A NASA astronaut on the Space Shuttle Endeavor brought space back down to Earth. Astronaut Don Pettit took over 85 time-lapsed videos of Earth from his stint on the International Space Station to highlight features of the changing planet.

"There is phenomenology that happens on a timescale that you can't see in real time," he said. "It occurred to me that making time-lapse movies on the space station would bring out things that you normally don't observe."

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Death Of The Couch Potato:

More users are watching TV on their laptops than ever before, according to a new study (picture posed by model)

Death Of The Couch Potato: Study Finds More Than A Third Of Viewers Now Watch Their Favourite TV Shows Online -- Daily Mail

An increasing number of viewers are watching their favourite TV shows online rather than on television, a new survey as found.

More than a third of users (34 per cent) now watch their favourite programmes online compared to only 29 per cent who watch them mostly on television.

The figures - from a joint survey by SeeSaw.com and Radio Times - show how the way we consume television is changing rapidly.

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My Comment: Count me as one of those who watches 90% of his shows and movies online.

Double Space Strike 'Caused Dinosaur Extinction'

From The BBC:

The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago by at least two space impacts, rather than a single strike, a new study suggests.

Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.

Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.

This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of space rocks.

Read more ....

My Comment: Regardless if there was one or more asteroid strikes .... it was a bad day for the dinosaurs when the first one happened.

Oxford English Dictionary 'Will Not Be Printed Again'

The second OED was published in 1989 Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the world’s most definitive work on the language, will never be printed because of the impact of the internet on book sales.

Sales of the third edition of the vast tome have fallen due to the increasing popularity of online alternatives, according to its publisher.

A team of 80 lexicographers has been working on the third edition of the OED – known as OED3 – for the past 21 years.

Read more ....

Researchers Create Ultra-Sensitive Robotic Nose Using Frog Eggs As An Olfactory Sensor

Detecting Molecules with Frog Eggs

From Popular Science:

Researchers at the University of Tokyo are using frog eggs to enhance what might seem like an unlikely element of robotics: olfactory sensing. By injecting the eggs with the DNA from various insects known for expressing keen senses of smell, the team was able to create a robotic nose that can detect molecules at levels as low as a few parts per billion.

Read more ....

Roots of Gamblers' Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 31, 2010) — Gamblers who think they have a "hot hand," only to end up walking away with a loss, may nonetheless be making "rational" decisions, according to new research from University of Minnesota psychologists. The study finds that because humans are making decisions based on how we think the world works, if erroneous beliefs are held, it can result in behavior that looks distinctly irrational.

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My Comment: I guess saying 'the Devil made me do it' is not going to fly.

Massive Mega-Star Challenges Black Hole Theories

This artist's impression shows the magnetar in the very rich and young star cluster Westerlund 1. This remarkable cluster contains hundreds of very massive stars, some shining with a brilliance of almost one million suns. Credit: ESO / L. Calçada.

From Live Science:

Astronomers have discovered a massive star that once dwarfed our sun and is now challenging theories of how stars evolve, die and form black holes.

The star is a peculiar cosmic object known as a magnetar. Magnetars are extremely dense, super-magnetic stars that can form from supernova explosions. [Photo of the massive star. ]

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My Comment: That is one hell of a big (and heavy) star.

Loud Video: NASA Test Fires Largest-Ever Solid Rocket Motor

From Popular Science:

In Utah today, NASA completed a successful test of the world's largest, most powerful solid rocket motor, the DM-2. For two minutes, the motor, designed to provide up to 3.6 million pounds of thrust, roaringly fired a column of flame, while some 760 instruments monitored its every aspect. Best to turn down your speakers before the countdown in this video hits zero.

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Arctic Oil And Gas Drilling Ready To Take Off

Click on Image to Enlarge

From New Scientist:

DRILLING for oil kicked off in Greenland's Arctic waters last week - just weeks after the Deepwater Horizon leak was finally plugged - angering environmental groups. Cairn Energy, based in Edinburgh, UK, is the first company to explore Greenland's waters for oil. It won't be the last.

Interest in the Arctic - which holds 13 per cent of the world's remaining oil and 30 per cent of its gas - is booming, driven by the rising price of oil and a shortage of other places for multinational companies to drill.

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My Comment: Forget about Greenland, it is what Canada, the U.S., and Russia will be doing in the arctic that has the greatest potential on impacting the environment.

Can The Pentagon Be Made WikiLeak-Proof?

Darpa’s Star Hacker Looks to WikiLeak-Proof Pentagon -- The Danger Room

Tomorrow’s WikiLeakers may have to be sneakier than just dumping military docs onto a Lady Gaga disc. The futurists at Darpa are working on a project that would make it harder for troops to funnel classified material to WikiLeaks — or to foreign governments. And that means if you work for the military, get ready to have your web, email and other network usage monitored even more than it is now.

Read more ....

My Comment: Call me skeptical, but unless the Pentagon decides to develop and construct their own independent internet .... hackers and groups like Wikileaks will always be a problem.

Early Man And Cannibalism

A model of a homo antecessor female scooping out the brains of human head

Early Man 'Butchered And Ate The Brains Of Children As Part Of Everyday Diet' -- The Daily Mail

Early cavemen in Europe ate human meat as part of their everyday diet, new research suggests.

A new study of fossil bones in Spain shows that cannibalism was a normal part of daily life around 800,000 years ago among Europe’s first humans.

Bones from the cave, called Gran Dolina, show signs of cuts and other marks which will have been made by early stone tools.

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My Comment: Hmmmm ... brains ....

Scheme To 'Pull Electricity From The Air' Sparks Debate

The claim of electricity from the air as a renewable resource is controversial

From The BBC:

Tiny charges gathered directly from humid air could be harnessed to generate electricity, researchers say.

Dr Fernando Galembeck told the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston that the technique exploited a little-known atmospheric effect.

Tests had shown that metals could be used to gather the charges, he said, opening up a potential energy source in humid climates.

However, experts disagree about the mechanism and the scale of the effect.

Read more ....

My Comment: In a time of impending energy shortages (and high cost) .... I would not hesitate to look for alternatives.

Does Langage Influence Culture?

Lost In Translation -- Wall Street Journal

New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish.

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?

Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..." Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say "sat" rather than "sit." In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can't) change the verb to mark tense.

Read more ....

Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age

From Tech Crunch:

An interesting paradox in the technology world is that there is both a shortage and a surplus of engineers in the United States. Talk to those working at any Silicon Valley company, and they will tell you how hard it is to find qualified talent. But listen to the heart-wrenching stories of unemployed engineers, and you will realize that there are tens of thousands who can’t get jobs. What gives?

The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers.

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My Comment: Sadly this is true. At 50 .... I know that I am over the hill. But at least I saved for this day when .... sad to say .... I become obsolete.

Use Microsoft Surface to Control a Swarm of Robots With Your Fingertips

Robot Swarm Control Mark Micire/UMass Lowell Robotics Lab

From Popular Science:

A sharp-looking tabletop touchscreen can be used to command robots and combine data from various sources, potentially improving military planning, disaster response and search-and-rescue operations.

Read more ....

Ye Cannae Change The Laws Of Physics. Or Can You?

From The Economist:

RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.

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First Clear Evidence Of Organized Feasting By Early Humans

This is a view of excavation area at Hilazon Tachtit Cave, Israel. (Credit: Naftali Hilger)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2010) — Community feasting is one of the most universal and important social behaviors found among humans. Now, scientists have found the earliest clear evidence of organized feasting, from a burial site dated about 12,000 years ago. These remains represent the first archaeological verification that human feasting began before the advent of agriculture.

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My Comment: I guess this tells us that the 'family get together' has been with us since the beginning of time.

Why Do Hurricanes Often Curve Out To Sea?

From Live Science:

The forecast path of Hurricane Earl, expected to run parallel to the U.S. East Coast before heading offshore, is a typical one for Atlantic storms to follow.

The reason: They are steered away from land by prevailing wind patterns and surrounding environmental flow.

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Books Are Better Without Pages

A man browses through books at the Cecil H. Green Library on the Stanford University Campus, Dec. 17, 2004 in Stanford, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

From Global Post:

The paper book is dead. Long live the narrative.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Kindle owners buy twice as many books as non-Kindle owners. Just one of the many signs that while the paper book is dead, the narrative will live on.

If you are saying to yourself, “That sounds horrible. I hope books do not go away,” I ask you to consider the world’s poorest and most remote kids.

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My Comment: Alas .... this is true. Hardcover books will only be a novelty item in the next few decades.

Why Music Is Good For You

From Scientific American:

A survey of the cognitive benefits of music makes a valid case for its educational importance. But that's not the best reason to teach all children music, says Philip Ball.

Remember the Mozart effect? Thanks to a suggestion in 1993 that listening to Mozart makes you cleverer, there has been a flood of compilation CDs filled with classical tunes that will allegedly boost your baby's brain power.

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My Comment: For me .... when there is a melody that I like .... it gives me a sense of relaxation and peace of mind.