For All Map Geeks

The following is a great site for everything there is to know about maps. You will get suck into this website. The link is HERE.

Technology Works On Perfect Banana

From the Globe And Mail Science:

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — It isn't easy to keep a banana yellow.

To get it to market ripe but unblemished by brown sugar spots takes careful timing, a slight fiddling with nature's rhythms and a delivery system that is increasingly computer-driven and technical.

The perfect banana used to be a rare and precious find, but technology is changing that. From the tree in the sweltering tropics to the grocery rack in the frigid north, scientists are seeking new ways to strengthen the food chain and extend the shelf life of perishables so they reach distant consumers as if freshly picked.

Commercially, the goal is to satisfy a demand for quality food anywhere, any time, and at maximum profit.

But the implications go further: As the world's population expands 50 per cent – to nine billion – by mid-century, food security will become critical. The wild rise in food prices that peaked last July, with staples doubling or tripling in cost over three years, underscored the consequences of shortages, whether real or perceived.

As cities grow and wealth expands, more people eat meat, dairy and fresh products.

“That requires a totally different way of approaching agriculture. You have chains of total food systems,” said Rudy Rabbinge, chairman of the Science Council Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an alliance of agricultural bodies worldwide.

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Oldest Evidence For Complex Life In Doubt

The earliest life on Earth consisted of prokaryotes — small single-celled organisms without nuclei. These earliest organisms were anaerobic — they did not require oxygen to live.
(Image from Lunar And Planetary Institute)

From Astrobiology:

Oldest Evidence for Life in Doubt

Chemical biomarkers in ancient Australian rocks, once thought to be the oldest known evidence of complex life on Earth, may have infiltrated long after the sediments were laid down, new analyses suggest.

The evidence was based on biomarkers - distinctive chemical compounds produced today by modern-day relatives of cyanobacteria and other complex life forms. In 1999, a team of researchers contended that the biomarkers in the 2.7-billion–year-old rocks pushed back the origins of cyanobacteria by at least 550 million years and of eukaryotes by about a billion years.

Although some scientists interpret the new findings, published in the Oct. 23 Nature, as disproving the older dates, others contend that the results still allow for the presence of the organisms or their kin at that time.

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NASA Clears Shuttle For Space Station Visit

Crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour on Mission STS-126 arrive to prepare for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida November 11, 2008.
(Scott Audette/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA managers on Wednesday cleared the space shuttle Endeavour and seven astronauts for launch on Friday on a mission to make the International Space Station a bit more like home.

Endeavour's cargo includes two sleeping chambers, a second toilet and a water purification system that will let NASA double the station crew size to six and allow them to recycle urine and waste water for drinking. Launch is set for 7:55 p.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"This mission is all about home improvements, both inside and outside of the International Space Station," said Endeavour commander Chris Ferguson. "We've had some large modules delivered in the last year. It's time to fill them up."

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Google Chases Skype With New Gmail Video Chat

From Webmonkey:

Video chat service Skype has some new competition — Google has just added audio and video chat to Gmail. The new chat tools essentially offer most of the features of Skype, or Apple’s iChat, within the standard Gmail interface.

When the SMS features we told you about earlier finally arrive, Google’s e-mail client will be a one-stop shop for almost every form of communication you can think of — e-mail, chat, video chat, audio chat and SMS.

Once the plugin is installed, using the new features is very simple. Just hover over any name in your Gmail chat list and select “Start video chat” or “Start voice chat.” There’s a full-screen view and you can also choose to pop out the chat into a new window.

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In A Pandemic, Who Gets to Live?

Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kan., in this 1918 file photo. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed at least 20 million people worldwide, and officials say that if the next pandemic resemblers the birdlike 1918 Spanish flu, up to 1.9 million Americans could die. Collapse (National Museum of Health/AP Photo)

From ABC News/Science:

As if wars and economic crises and natural disasters weren't enough, here's a challenge for some future president that few people even want to think about: Some day, perhaps soon, a president will have to decide whose lives are the most important to save, and whose lives are "nonessential."

This isn't going to be a doomsday story, because most people will survive the next influenza pandemic, which some public health experts believe is past due. It's not a question of "if," it's a question of "when," and one study from Harvard University estimates that the pandemic will kill somewhere between 51 million and 81 million people, mostly in developing countries.

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What Happens If You Eat Dog Food?

From Live Science:

If you just eat a little bit of dog food, probably nothing will happen. But you don't really know that for sure because dog food is not subjected to the same health and safety regulations that human food is required to have.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for setting human food safety guidelines to prevent sickness due to contaminated or improperly handled products. In addition, the FDA is responsible for ensuring that food product labels are accurate in terms of ingredient listing and nutritional content.

Dog food does not have these same strict rules that human food has. Although most dog food contains the same basic components that are in people food — protein, carbohydrates and fats — the proportions of these ingredients are different than in human food and can be harmful if ingested in significant quantities or for prolonged periods of time. The same is true if you feed a dog the wrong proportion of these nutrients by giving it an unbalanced human diet.

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Nanotechnology Sparks Fears For The Future

From Times Online:

Nanomaterials are likely to kill people in the future just as asbestos did unless extensive safety checks are put in place, a Royal Commission report has said.

The team of experts assessing the likely impacts of the emerging technology are worried that when nanomaterials escape into the environment they will damage people and wildlife but that it will be years before the effects are seen.

Past generations have brought into general usage materials such as asbestos, leaded petrol, CFCs and cigarettes without adequately considering the potential damage and the commission fears nanomaterials will prove similarly dangerous.

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Lebanon Finds 2,900 Year Old Phoenician Remains

Archaeologists work on earthenware potteries found at an excavation site in the port city of Tyre, southern Lebanon November 12, 2008. (Haidar Hawila/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese and Spanish archaeologists have discovered 2,900-year-old earthenware pottery that ancient Phoenicians used to store the bones of their dead after burning the corpses.

They said more than 100 jars were discovered at a Phoenician site in the southern coastal city of Tire. Phoenicians are known to have thrived from 1500 B.C. to 300 B.C and they were also headquartered in the coastal area of present-day Syria.

"The big jars are like individual tombs. The smaller jars are left empty, but symbolically represent that a soul is stored in them," Ali Badawi, the archaeologist in charge in Tire, told Reuters Wednesday.

Badawi and a Spanish team from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona have been excavating at the Phoenician site for years. The site was first discovered in 1997 but archaeologists have only been able to dig up 50 square meters per year.

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Sunlight Has More Powerful Influence On Ocean Circulation And Climate Than North American Ice Sheets

From Watts Up With That?

From Physorg.com: A study reported in today’s issue of Nature disputes a longstanding picture of how ice sheets influence ocean circulation during glacial periods.

The distribution of sunlight, rather than the size of North American ice sheets, is the key variable in changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles, according to the article. The new study goes back 425,000 years, according to Lorraine Lisiecki, first author and assistant professor in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Lisiecki and her co-authors studied 24 separate locations in the Atlantic by analyzing information from ocean sediment cores. By observing the properties of the shells of tiny marine organisms, called foraminifera, found in these cores, they were able to deduce information about the North Atlantic deep water formation. Scientists can discern historical ocean temperature and circulation patterns through the analysis of the chemical composition of these marine animals.

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Telescope Views Glowing Stellar Nurseries

Colour composite image of RCW120. It reveals how an expanding bubble of ionised gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps where new stars are then formed. (Credit: ESO/APEX/DSS2/SuperCosmos)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2008) — Illustrating the power of submillimetre-wavelength astronomy, an APEX telescope image reveals how an expanding bubble of ionised gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps that are the birthplaces of new stars. Submillimetre light is the key to revealing some of the coldest material in the universe, such as these cold, dense clouds.

The region, called RCW120, is about 4200 light years from Earth, towards the constellation of Scorpius. A hot, massive star in its centre is emitting huge amounts of ultraviolet radiation, which ionises the surrounding gas, stripping the electrons from hydrogen atoms and producing the characteristic red glow of so-called H-alpha emission.

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Origin Of Bad Hair Discovered

Those wiry extensions scattered about our bodies and concentrated on the head evolved from our reptilian and avian ancestors. Credit: dreamstime.

From Live Science:

Having a bad hair day? You're excused. After all, hair has its origins in stuff that used to make just claws. Research now suggests that hair of all kinds extends much further back into evolutionary time, with birds and reptiles having genes for hair proteins.

Scientists previously had thought hair was just a mammalian thing, with its evolution cropping up after the mammalian lineage split from the reptilian lineage. The first mammals arose on Earth about 210 million years ago. Humans, birds and reptiles have a common ancestor that goes back some 300 million years, said researcher Leopold Eckhart of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria.

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Southern Ocean Close To Acid Tipping Point

Researchers are concerned that the Southern Ocean could become
too acidic by 2030 (Source: iStockphoto)

From ABC News (Australia):

Australian researchers have discovered that the tipping point for ocean acidification caused by human-induced CO2 emissions is much closer than first thought.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and CSIRO looked at seasonal changes in pH and the concentration of an important chemical compound, carbonate, in the Southern Ocean.

The results, published in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, show that these seasonal changes will actually amplify the effects of human carbon dioxide emissions on ocean acidity, speeding up the process of ocean acidification by 30 years.

Dr Ben McNeil, senior research fellow at the UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre, says the ocean is an enormous sink for CO2, but unfortunately this comes at a cost.

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A Look Inside Virgin Galactic's Flight Training

From Popsci:

Would-be astronauts train for the world’s first suborbital space tourism flight

As early as next year, if you are one of a lucky few, you may find yourself strapped in a six-passenger rocket some 50,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, bracing yourself as it disengages from the specially designed jet plane mothership, and shoots cannon-like 60 miles up into suborbital space at three times the speed of sound. If all goes well, you'll then get to unbuckle and float in zero gravity for a full fifteen minutes, spying on the earth’s curvature, all of North America and the Pacific Ocean.

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Chinese Menus, Medicine Threatening Wildlife

Pictured is one of three lion cubs born in captivity at the zoo in Cali. November 6, 2008.
Reuters Jaime Saldarriaga (Colombia)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

BEIJING (Reuters) – Wild animals are climbing back onto Chinese plates after the deadly SARS virus made some diners wary, and booming demand for traditional medicine is also threatening some plants, environmentalists said on Wednesday.

Nearly half of urbanites had consumed wildlife in the past 12 months, either as food or medicine, with rich and well educated Chinese most likely to tuck into a wild snake or turtle, a survey of urbanites in six cities found.

They enjoyed eating wildlife because they saw it as "unpolluted," "special" and with extra nourishing and health powers, according to a study commissioned by Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

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NASA Begins Countdown For Space Shuttle Launch

Crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour on Mission STS-126 arrive to prepare for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida November 11, 2008.
(Scott Audette/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) -- Countdown clocks at the Kennedy Space Center began ticking down on Tuesday toward Friday's launch of space shuttle Endeavour on a mission to outfit the International Space Station for an expanded live-aboard crew.

Liftoff is targeted for 7:55 p.m. EST (0055 Saturday GMT). At a news conference on Tuesday, managers said the shuttle was in good shape for launch.

"We haven't had a launch for a while so we're really excited to be back in the saddle," said NASA's Jeff Spaulding, a manager overseeing preparations for shuttle Endeavour's flight.

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Search Engine With Roots In Genomics Unlocks Deep Web

From Wired/Epicenter:

A research-focused search engine founded by Human Genome Project scientists is claiming to go where even Google doesn't tread: the deep web.

DeepDyve is designed to search the 99 percent (they say, citing a study from UC Berkeley) of hits not picked up by other search engines, which return pages based largely on interpretations of popularity and work only if a page is findable. Content hidden behind paywalls or that is not linked to enough sites to gain page rank remains obscure, but often contains the source material required for serious research.

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Quarter Of Atlantic Sharks And Rays Face Extinction

The spiny dogfish is highly prized for its meat. Photograph: Getty

From The Guardian:

New figures show 26% of all sharks, rays and related species in the north-east Atlantic are threatened with extinction

More than a quarter of sharks and rays in the north-east Atlantic face extinction from overfishing, conservationists warned today.

A "red list" report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that 26% of all sharks, rays and related species in the regional waters are threatened with extinction. Seven per cent are classed as critically endangered, while a fifth are regarded as "near-threatened".

The total number of at-risk species may well be higher because scientists lack of sufficient information to assess the populations of more than a quarter (27%) of them, the report adds. Many are slow-breeding fish that are especially vulnerable to fisheries.

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Darwin's Beagle To Sail Again

Vessel of knowledge: The original HMS Beagle on which Charles Darwin sailed. A replica is being built to research the effects of plankton on the world's oceans

From The Daily Mail:

It was the ship that carried Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands nearly 180 years ago, enabling him to make his breakthrough on the theory of evolution.

Now another HMS Beagle will depart on a new voyage of scientific discovery - this time with the help of sat-nav, engines and guidance from space.

The Beagle Trust plans to build a £5 million replica of the 19th-century vessel and use it to research the effects of plankton on the world's oceans.

It will be guided to algae blooms across the globe with the help of Nasa astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

The charity has finalised its plans and is currently raising funds for its project, scheduled to begin construction within months.

'We are making a lot of progress, and I'm confident we will begin building next year, then set sail in 2010,' said project director Peter McGrath.

The original HMS Beagle took scientist and naturalist Darwin around the world between 1831 and 1836.

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Why Veins Could Replace Fingerprints And Retinas As Most Secure Form Of ID

Hitachi's finger vein authentication system represents a decade's worth of development and improvement and the technology has already been included in computers, ATMs and used for cardless payment authorization. Every finger has a vein configuration that is unique to it, much in the same way that every fingerprint is unique, and those veins are able to be read by near-Infrared light coupled with image sensors.

From Times Online:

Forget fingerprinting. Companies in Europe have begun to roll out an advanced biometric system from Japan that identifies people from the unique patterns of veins inside their fingers.

Finger vein authentication, introduced widely by Japanese banks in the last two years, is claimed to be the fastest and most secure biometric method. Developed by Hitachi, it verifies a person's identity based on the lattice work of minute blood vessels under the skin.

Easydentic Group, a European leader in the biometric industry based in France, has announced that it will be using Hitachi's finger vein security in a range of door access systems for the UK and European markets.

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