Easter Island’s Controversial Collapse: More To The Story Than Deforestation?

The famous stone sculptures on Easter Island where Dr. Stevenson and Rapanui scientist Sonia Haoa have worked with Earthwatch volunteers for the last 20 years to uncover new twists in the story of Easter Island. (Credit: Charles H. Whitfield)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2009) — Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has gained recognition in recent years due in part to a book that used it as a model for societal collapse from bad environmental practices—ringing alarm bells for those concerned about the health of the planet today. But that’s not the whole story, says Dr. Chris Stevenson, an archaeologist who has studied the island—famous for its massive stone statues—with a Rapa Nui scientist, Sonia Haoa, and Earthwatch volunteers for nearly 20 years.

The ancient Rapanui people did abuse their environment, but they were also developing sustainable practices—innovating, experimenting, trying to adapt to a risky environment—and they would still be here in traditional form if it weren’t for the diseases introduced by European settlers in the 1800s.

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Inside FIRST Robotics 2009: Robots Are Now Ready To Rumble

From Popular Mechanics:

On Tuesday, high school robotics teams from around the country concluded the six-week build period ahead of next month’s regional FIRST Robotics Competitions. Popular Mechanics dropped in on the Pirates of George Westinghouse High, in Brooklyn, as they made their final pre-shipment adjustments.

The tension brimmed outside Room 254, the home base of George Westinghouse High School’s FIRST robotics team, the Pirates. Six weeks of late-night work sessions, capped by a sleepless holiday weekend of final tweaks and modifications, had put the Brooklyn students at wits’ end. It was less than 24 hours before the construction deadline, when Fed-Ex would arrive to ship the robot to the scene of New York City’s regional competition—and an overweight robot threatened to send them over the edge.

“Welcome to 2009,” Nadav Zeimer, the team’s coach, declared as two Pirates argued over how best to position the robot on the scale. “Yet another year of too much weight.”

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Britain’s Lessons From The Winter of 2008-2009

Stonehenge saw it’s heaviest snow in many years (Photo from Watts Up With That)

From Watts Up With That:

The UK has been experiencing the coldest winter in several decades, and hopefully policymakers have learned a few basic lessons from this. Here is my wish list, which seem painfully obvious.

1. Britain can’t rely on global warming to stay warm in the winter.
2. Britain can’t rely on solar power to stay warm in the winter. There just isn’t enough sun (which is why it is cold in the winter.)
3. Britain can’t rely on wind power to stay warm in the winter. During the coldest weather the winds were calm (which is one reason why the air temperatures were so low.)
4. Britain can’t rely on Russian natural gas to stay warm. The gas supply was cut off for weeks due to politics.

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Was Einstein Wrong?: A Quantum Threat To Special Relativity

From Scientific American:

Entanglement, like many quantum effects, violates some of our deepest intuitions about the world. It may also undermine Einstein's special theory of relativity

Key Concepts

* In the universe as we experience it, we can directly affect only objects we can touch; thus, the world seems local.
* Quantum mechanics, however, embraces action at a distance with a property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal.
* This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein's special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.

Our intuition, going back forever, is that to move, say, a rock, one has to touch that rock, or touch a stick that touches the rock, or give an order that travels via vibrations through the air to the ear of a man with a stick that can then push the rock—or some such sequence. This intuition, more generally, is that things can only directly affect other things that are right next to them. If A affects B without being right next to it, then the effect in question must be indirect—the effect in question must be something that gets transmitted by means of a chain of events in which each event brings about the next one directly, in a manner that smoothly spans the distance from A to B. Every time we think we can come up with an exception to this intuition—say, flipping a switch that turns on city street lights (but then we realize that this happens through wires) or listening to a BBC radio broadcast (but then we realize that radio waves propagate through the air)—it turns out that we have not, in fact, thought of an exception. Not, that is, in our everyday experience of the world.

We term this intuition "locality."

Quantum mechanics has upended many an intuition, but none deeper than this one. And this particular upending carries with it a threat, as yet unresolved, to special relativity—a foundation stone of our 21st-century physics.

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Earth-Like Planet Could Be Discovered Within Three Years

Artist's impression of a newly discovered planet orbiting a red star.
Photo: Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald

From The Guardian:

Galaxy has billions of planets that support life forms, says leading astronomer.

A planet similar to Earth could be discovered in a distant solar system within three years, according to a leading astronomer.

Planets that support life forms could be common in the universe, and about 100bn of them may exist in our own galaxy, said Dr Alan Boss, a researcher at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington.

He told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago yesterday that, according to his calculations, there is roughly one Earth-like planet for every star that is similar to our own sun.

The US space agency, Nasa, is due to launch a space telescope, called Kepler, dedicated to searching for planets that are similar to, or smaller than Earth. It will join the European Space Agency's Corot telescope, which spotted a large "super Earth" earlier this month.

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AAAS: 'One Hundred Billion Trillion' Planets Where Alien Life Could Flourish

Dr Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, said there could be as many Earths as there are stars in the universe Photo: REUTERS

From The Telegraph:

There could be one hundred billion trillion Earth-like planets in space, making it "inevitable" that extraterrestrial life exists, according to a leading astronomer.

Life on Earth used to be thought of as a freak accident that only happened once.

But scientists are now coming to the conclusion that the universe is teeming with living organisms.

The change in thinking has come about because of the new belief there are an abundant number of habitable planets like Earth.

Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC, said there could be as many Earths as there are stars in the universe - one hundred billion trillion.

Because of this, he believes it is "inevitable" that life must have flourished elsewhere over the billions of years the universe has existed.

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Black Hole Confirmed In Milky Way

From BBC:

There is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a 16-year study by German astronomers has confirmed.

They tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using two telescopes in Chile.

The black hole, said to be 27,000 light years from Earth, is four million times bigger than the Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including light - can escape them.

According to Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), the results suggest that galaxies form around giant black holes in the way that a pearl forms around grit.

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Oh, Hubble, Can This Really Be the End?

Hubble Space Telescope

From Wired Science:

The spectacular collision between two satellites on Feb. 10 could make the shuttle mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope too risky to attempt.

Before the collision, space junk problems had already upped the Hubble mission's risk of a "catastrophic impact" beyond NASA's usual limits, Nature's Geoff Brumfiel reported today, and now the problem will be worse.

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'Eco-house' Based On Medieval Architecture Could Be Home Of The Future

Eco-house: The unusual dome-like design is based on a Medieval technique, originating in Spain, known as 'timbrel vaulting' Photo: MASONS NEWS SERVICE

From The Telegraph:

Energy bills will be a thing of the past in the 'eco-house' of the future thanks to a combination of the latest renewable energy technology and building techniques from hundreds of years ago.

The zero carbon building, developed by University of Cambridge architects as a prototype for future living, is based on a 600-year-old Medieval design that retains heat from the sun while cooling naturally in the summer.

Any extra energy needs are provided by solar panels on the roof and a woodchip boiler.

The unusual dome-like design is based on a Medieval technique, originating in Spain, known as "timbrel vaulting".

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Fearing A 'Cyber Katrina

Fearing 'Cyber Katrina,' Obama Candidate for Cyber Czar Urges a ''FEMA for the Internet' -- Business Week

For all the fears of sophisticated digital intrusions preoccupying many computer security professionals, President Obama’s leading candidates for “cyber czar” also are focusing on an all-too-human vulnerability: The nation’s inability to respond to a full-fledged Internet-borne crisis for lack of a central cyber commander.

Former White House cybersecurity official Paul B. Kurtz, in his first public remarks since becoming an advisor to President Obama’s transition team following the election, describes his biggest worry: A “cyber Katrina” in which fragmented bureaucracies and companies fail to share critical information and coordinate responses to cyber intruders attempting to disrupt power grids, financial markets, or any number of now-plausible scenarios involving a Web shutdown. One recent fear is the cascading effects of even a partial Internet blackout that could add to economic anxieties. There’s such electronic insecurity afoot, some are even beginning to suggest building an entirely new global computer infrastructure.
“The bottom line is, is there a FEMA for the Internet? I don’t think there is,” Kurtz told an audience of security professionals at a Feb. 18 Black Hat security conference in Virginia.

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How Big Can Rats Get?

Photo: Giant rat with one-inch-long teeth has been caught in the southern Chinese province of Fujian. Photo: HTTP://NEWS.163.COM

Giant Rat Caught In China -- The Telegraph

A giant rat with one-inch-long teeth has been caught in the southern Chinese province of Fujian.

The rat, which weighed six pounds and had a 12-inch tail, was caught at the weekend in a residential area of Fuzhou, a city of six million people on China's south coast.

The ratcatcher, who was only named as Mr Xian, said he swooped for the rodent after seeing a big crowd of people surrounding it on the street.

He told local Chinese newspapers that he thought the rat might be a valuable specimen, or a rare species, and had to muster up his courage before grabbing its tail and picking it up by the scruff of its neck.

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My Comment: A few years ago I saw a rat the size of a cat (in Montreal). I had to look at it a few times for it to register in my brain that what I was looking at was in fact a rat.

I am still scarred after all of these years.

The Browser Wars -- A Graphical Depiction

(Click The Above Image To Enlarge)

From Cool Infographics:

Great timeline infographic depicting the rise and fall of different browsers portrayed as knights marching across a field. The data set used is available here.

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Anti-Freeze Chemicals 'Could Indicate Life On Mars'

Mars: Perchlorates are rare on earth but they make up one per cent of Mars's soil Photo: GETTY

From The Telegraph:

Life could exist on Mars thanks to chemicals found on the red planet which can prevent water turning into ice, experts have claimed.

The low temperatures on the red planet mean any water would usually be frozen rather than running.

But salts called perchlorates are abundant in the soil of the planet, where temperatures often fall below zero, and can act as a natural anti-freeze.

This suggests there could be liquid water below the surface - increasing the chances of life being able to exist there.

Perchlorates are rare on earth but they make up one per cent of Mars's soil.

They were discovered last year by the robotic arm of NASA's Phoenix lander.

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Alaska Is a Frontier for Green Power

The turbine manufacturer Northern Power Systems has units in eight Alaska villages, including Toksook Bay, above, and is pursing projects in 45 others. Stefan Milkowski for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — Beyond the fishing boats, the snug homes and the tanks of diesel fuel marking this Eskimo village on the Bering Sea, three huge wind turbines tower over the tundra. Their blades spin slowly in a breeze cold enough to freeze skin.

One of the nation’s harshest landscapes, it turns out, is becoming fertile ground for green power.

As interest in cleaning up power generation grows around the country, Alaska is fast becoming a testing ground for new technologies and an unlikely experiment in oil-state support for renewable energy. Alaskans once cast a wary eye on anything smacking of environmentalism, but today they are investing heavily in green power, not so much to reduce emissions as to save cash.

In remote villages like this one, where diesel to power generators is shipped by barge and can cost more than $5 a gallon in bulk, electricity from renewable sources like wind is already competitive with power made from fossil fuels. In urban areas along the state’s limited road system, large wind and hydroelectric projects are also becoming attractive.

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Engineers Create Intelligent Molecules That Seek And Destroy Diseased Cells

White Blood Cells (Photo from Franklin Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2009) — Current treatments for diseases like cancer typically destroy nasty malignant cells, while also hammering the healthy ones. Using new advances in synthetic biology, researchers are designing molecules intelligent enough to recognize diseased cells, leaving the healthy cells alone.

"We basically design molecules that actually go into the cell and do an analysis of the cellular state before delivering the therapeutic punch," said Christina Smolke, assistant professor of bioengineering who joined Stanford University in January.

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Idea Of Infinity Stretched Back To Third Century B.C.

From Live Science:

CHICAGO - The first mathematical use of the concept of actual infinity has been pushed back some 2,000 years via a new analysis of a tattered page of parchment on which a medieval monk in Constantinople copied the third century B.C. work of the Greek mathematician Archimedes.

Infinity is one of the most fundamental questions in mathematics and still remains an unsolved riddle. For instance, if you add or subtract a number from infinity, the remaining value is still infinity, some Indian philosophers said. Mathematicians today refer to actual infinity as an uncountable set of numbers such as the number of points existing on a line at the same time, while a potential infinity is an endless sequence that unfolds consecutively over time.

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AIDS Top Killer Disease In China Last Year: Govt

From Reuters:

BEIJING (Reuters) - The AIDS virus became the top deadly infectious disease in China last year for the first time, killing 6,897 people in the first nine months of 2008, the official news agency Xinhua said on Tuesday.

The number of people infected with the HIV/AIDS virus doubled during that period, Xinhua said, citing a report posted on the Ministry of Health website.

Xinhua said there were a total of 264,302 HIV/AIDS cases by the end of September last year and 34,864 people have died of the disease so far.

United Nations figures estimate that 700,000 people in China were HIV positive by the end of 2007.

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Dolphin Stays For Three Days With Mate Wounded In Shark Attack - Before Escorting It To Humans For Help

Chunks of Nari's neck were literally bitten off as his flesh was torn right down to the muscle by the shark in these horrific injuries

From The Daily Mail:

A dolphin badly injured in a shark attack has been escorted by a mate into the care of human hands.

Nari sustained a hideous wound across his head and back, and when he went missing, wildlife experts feared he had died.

The 12-year-old dolphin failed to turn up for his ritual feeding off the coast of Queensland - but so did his older companion Echo.

But after three days the pair turned up with the rest of the group.

Mr Trevor Long, a dolphin expert from Sea World on the Gold Coast, said: 'We didn't see Nari again until the third day, when he turned up with Echo at his side.

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Strange Green Comet Passing by Earth Next Week

Feb. 1: Comet Lulin as photographed by amateur astronomer Jack Newton in Arizona.
Jack Newton/NASA

From FOX News:

WASHINGTON — An odd, greenish backward-flying comet is zipping by Earth this month, as it takes its only trip toward the sun from the farthest edges of the solar system.

The comet is called Lulin, and there's a chance it can be seen with the naked eye — far from city lights, astronomers say. But you'll most likely need a telescope, or at least binoculars, to spot it.

The best opportunity is just before dawn one-third of the way up the southern sky. It should be near Saturn and two bright stars, Spica and Regula.

On Monday at 10:43 p.m. EST, it will be 38 million miles from Earth, the closest it will ever get, according to Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object program.

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Deadly Bacteria Defy Drugs, Alarming Doctors

A new category of bugs becomes more resistant to treatment, and their toll -- which already includes a Brazilian beauty queen -- is expected to rise.

From the L.A. Times:

When Ruth Burns had surgery to relieve a pinched nerve in her back, the operation was supposed to be an "in-and-out thing," recalled her daughter, Kacia Warren.

But Burns developed pneumonia and was put on a ventilator. Five days later, she was discharged -- only to be rushed by her daughter to the hospital hours later, disoriented and in alarming pain.

Seventeen days after the surgery, the 67-year-old nurse was dead.

Burns had developed meningitis -- an infection of the fluid that surrounds the spinal cord and brain. The culprit wasAcinetobacter baumannii, a bug that preys on the weak in hospitals. Worse, it was a multi-drug-resistant strain.

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