Video Gamers Surprisingly Fit And Older

Players team up to fight a monster in the online role-playing game EverQuest II.
Credit: Sony Online Entertainment

From Live Science:

Drop those stereotypes about people who play online role-playing games — chances are they're more physically fit than the average American.

That's just one of several new survey findings that explode the popular image of video gamers as socially awkward, overweight teenage males. Or at least, researchers have now found this among players of EverQuest II, an online fantasy game centered on group quests and other social activities.

"Games have pretty much been on the defensive for the past 20 years by being attacked as unhealthy and culturally destructive," said Dmitri Williams, a communications researcher at the University of Southern California. "That's been changing in the past few years, but it's still the prevailing wisdom."

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My Comment: I am in my late forties .... and .... I am guilty as charged.

Sunspot-Hurricane Link Proposed

From Nature News:

Controversial research hints that solar cycle affects cyclone intensity.

A new study suggests that more sunspots mean less intense hurricanes on Earth. But many hurricane experts are cool on the idea.

James Elsner, a climatologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee, has analyzed hurricane data going back more than a century. He says he has identified a 10- to 12-year cycle in hurricane records that corresponds to the solar cycle, in which the Sun's magnetic activity rises and falls.

The idea is that increased solar activity - associated with sunspots - means more ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's upper atmosphere. That warms the airs aloft and decreases the temperature differential between high and low elevations that otherwise would fuel hurricanes.

"Our results indicate that there is an effect in the intensity of storms due to the higher temperatures aloft," says Elsner, who published the results on 19 September in Geophysical Research Letters1.

He says the statistical analysis suggests a 10% decrease in hurricane intensity for every 100 sunspots. At the peak of its cycle, the Sun might exhibit around 250 sunspots.

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SpaceX Did It -- Falcon 1 Made It To Space

From Discover Magazine:

SpaceX has made history. Its privately developed rocket has made it into space.

After three failed launches, the company founded by Elon Musk worked all of the bugs out of their Falcon 1 launch vehicles.

The entire spectacle was broadcast live from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific. Cameras mounted on the spacecraft showed our planet shrinking in the distance and the empty first stage engine falling back to Earth.

As the rocket ascended, cheers rang out during every crucial step of the launch sequence, and at the final stage their headquarters in Hawthorne, California erupted in excitement. (Wired.com viewed the launch over the Internet on SpaceX's live webcast.)

The tensest moment came just before stage separation. At that critical juncture, the third launch attempt had failed. This time, it worked out perfectly.

Eight minutes after leaving the ground, Falcon 1 reached a speed of 5200 meters per second and passed above the International Space Station.

"I don't know what to say... because my mind is just blown," said Musk, during a brief address to his staff after the successful launch. "This is just the first step of many."

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Skywalking Heroes: Best Spacewalks of All Time

From Wired Science:

The spacewalk is the ultimate space experience. And among skywalkers, a few have risen above the rest and set the bar high for extravehicular activity. Here are my picks for the five greatest spacewalks of all time.

1st Untethered Spacewalk — Astronaut Bruce McCandless: (above) In March 1984 NASA tested out their Manned Maneuvering Unit. Although the units were only used on three Shuttle flights, this iconic image is one of the most famous from the Space Shuttle era.

1st Spacewalk — Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov: A true hero of mine, Leonov performed the original spacewalk in 1965 with an inflatable airlock. At the end of the extravehicular activity, or EVA, tense minutes went by as he struggled to get back into the spacecraft eventually bleeding air out of his suit to pass through. An avid artist, Leonov fastened colored pencils and a notepad to his suit leg to sketch from inside the capsule. He went on to command the Soviet side of the Apollo-Soyuz mission.

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Tesla's Impact On Everyday Life

Host Bre Pettis and his Tesla coil on the set of his show "History Hacker."

History Reveals: Tesla Totally Awesome! -- MSNBC

Circuit-bending YouTube star Bre Pettis doesn’t want you to know that before making his History Channel pilot, he hadn’t seen “The Prestige.”

It’s not that he purposely failed to catch Chris Nolan’s 2006 adaptation of the steam punk novel about rival magicians starring Batman (Christian Bale) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).

It seems Pettis never got around to it. And by the time he started putting together “History Hacker,” premiering tonight at 8 p.m. and midnight, it was too late.

Not too late to ever see “ The Prestige,” mind you. But “History Hacker’s” premise is to focus each episode on the life and innovations of one inventor, and the pilot is about Nikola Tesla.

Pettis didn’t want to infect his flow by watching David Bowie’s critically-acclaimed portrayal of “The Father of Physics,” a pivotal — albeit fictionalized — character in the film.

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Why Old Athletes Come Back

In this July 23, 2005 file photo, overall leader Lance Armstrong, of Austin, Texas, crosses the finish line to win the 20th stage of the Tour de France cycling race, a 55.5-kilometer (34.5-mile) individual time trial looping around north of Saint-Etienne, central France. Now Armstrong is getting back on his bike, determined to win an eighth Tour de France. The Tour "is the intention," Armstrong's spokesman Mark Higgins told The Associated Press, "but we've got some homework to do over there." AP Photo/Alessandro Trovati

From Live Science:

Maybe its the fear of turning 40. Maybe its the feeling of unfinished business. Maybe its the fire in the belly that has not quite extinguished. For retired elite athletes, the itch is always there to make a return after experiencing "life after sport". For some, it becomes too strong to ignore.

This year has seen the return of at least three champions, Dara Torres, Lance Armstrong and Brett Favre. As they explain their individual reasons for coming back, some similarities emerge that have more to do with psychological needs than practical needs. In a recent Miami Herald article, Torres explained her comeback to competitive swimming at age 41, "For me, it's not like I sat around and watched swimming on TV and thought, 'Oh, I wish I was still competing'. It was more gradual. But all of a sudden, something goes off inside you and you start seriously thinking about a comeback. You'd think the competitive fire would die down with maturity, but I've actually gotten worse. I wasn't satisfied with silver medals. I hate to lose now more than I did in my 20s. I'm still trying to figure out why.''

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Even Viruses Catch Viruses

From Live Science:

Among pathogens, viruses are unique in their collective ability to infect all types of organisms. There are plant viruses, insect viruses, fungal viruses, and even viruses that infect only amoeba and bacteria. Now a group of researchers at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France has made the startling discovery that even some viruses can have viruses.

In a paper in Nature last month, the group described how they identified a giant mimivirus in a cooling tower in France. Mimiviruses are the largest viruses known to exist — so big they are visible under a normal optical microscope (usually much higher resolution electron microscopes are needed to view them). The new virus, large even by mimivirus standards, was appropriately named "mamavirus."

In the same cooling tower, the French group also discovered a second, tiny virus that infects the giant mamavirus. This they named "Sputnik."

Sputnik is unusual because it is the first virus ever discovered that is a parasite of another virus. When it reproduces in a cell infected by the larger virus, its action impairs the reproduction of mamavirus particles. The group sequenced Sputnik's genetic code and discovered that a number of its gene sequences are similar to those found in a massive survey of genetic material taken from oceans all over the globe. This suggests that a whole class of viruses might exist that infect other viruses.

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What Goes Into Naming A New Species? A Lot

An American scientist named Charles Paul Alexander is said to have named 10,000 species of crane flies, like the one above.

From NPR:

September 23, 2008 · There wasn't a whole lot to do in the Garden of Eden, as the Bible tells it. Adam, the original resident, just bided his time, snacked when he felt like it, avoided one particular tree, and hung out. Except once — just once — he was given an assignment: to name a vast array of "beasts of the field," plus "fowl of the air," after which, presumably, he rested. And people have been naming creatures ever since.

In the 1700s, the Swedish scholar Carl Linnaeus created a new way to classify creatures that is still in use today, genus plus species. He classified thousands of organisms.

But the all-time record may go to an American insect scientist by the name of Charles Paul Alexander, who specialized in crane flies. I'm not exactly sure what a crane fly is, but apparently they come in many, many flavors; Alexander is said to have named more than 10,000 species.

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A Trip Inside The "Big Bang Machine"

Steve Kroft descends into the Large Hadron Collider some call it the "big bang machine" - that took billions of dollars and 9,000 physicists to build in the hope it will provide valuable insights.

From CBS 60 Minutes:

(CBS) As a rule, physics rarely makes news, but it did this past week after equipment malfunctions delayed for several months the start up of one of the biggest science experiments in history. We are talking about the Large Hadron Collider, a massive, multibillion dollar project designed to unlock the secrets of the universe.

For several years now, thousands of the world's most accomplished scientists have been gathering in Europe, not to explore the heavens but the frontiers of inner space. They are hoping to discover subatomic particles so tiny that they have never been detected. They think these particles will help explain why the universe has organized itself into so many different things - planets and stars, tables and chairs, flesh and blood.

To do it, they have constructed one of largest, most sophisticated machines ever built to replicate what the universe was like a few nanoseconds after it was created. And as Steve Kroft reports, it is all going to happen 300 feet underground on the border between Switzerland and France.

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Are Some Solar Projects No Longer ‘Green’?

Workers install solar panels on the roof of an Austin, Texas, homeowner. (Ann Hermes / The Christian Science Monitor / FILES)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Conservationists worry that a plan for the Mojave desert will upset species’ habitats.

Solar companies proposing large power plants in the Mojave Desert are facing opposition from conservationists. They say a rush to build solar here threatens to tear up large tracts of desert habitat and open space.

The squabble is likely to intensify now that Congress this week moved forward on a long-term extension of the solar tax credit. Two other proposed bills would fast-track solar power projects looking to build on federal lands. State mandates on utilities to provide more renewable energy has created an enormous market for solar, an energy that requires two things the Mojave has in spades – acreage and sunshine. But the desert’s defenders argue that solar panels should be located on city rooftops rather than pristine lands.

“If there were just one [proposed plant], we could deal with that. But we are looking at essentially every valley that is not protected as a national monument or park as being a potential site for solar,” says John Hiatt, a Las Vegas-based environmental activist. “It will be the industrialization of the Mojave Desert.”

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Einstein's long-lost telescope goes on display after being restored

In this undated photo made available by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on Monday, Sept. 22, 2008, an unidentified man adjusts a telescope that once belonged to Albert Einstein, at the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Hebrew University in Jerusalem, HO

From CNews/Science:

JERUSALEM - Albert Einstein's long-lost telescope, forgotten for decades in a Jerusalem storage shed, goes on display this week after three years and $10,000 spent restoring the relic.

The old reflecting telescope is cumbersome by modern standards, but a demonstration for The Associated Press showed it still works well enough to see five of Jupiter's moons and stripes on the surface of the huge planet.

The legendary physicist who famously theorized relations among energy, speed and mass received the telescope in 1954, the year before he died.

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When Wind Power Goes Wrong

Wind Power -- Watts Up With That

I was in a conversation today at lunch with a fellow who told me that “wind power is better than anything we’ve ever done for generating electricity”. That made me wonder, how reliable (beyond the constancy of wind issues) is it?

Whenever I drive through Techachapi or Altamont passes here in California I note that there always seems to be a fair number of these three blade windmills that are out of commission. Perhaps failure is more common than one would expect. I found a couple of examples:

New Era Dawns At Home Of The Internet

A network of supercomputers called the Grid will allow information to be downloaded quicker than ever. Tasks that took hours will now take seconds

From Times Online:

The dawn of a new internet age has begun. A network of supercomputers, known as the Grid, is to revolutionise the speed at which information is downloaded to personal computers.

The power of the Grid is such that downloading films should take only seconds, not hours, and processing music albums just a single second. Video-phone calls should also cost no more than a local call. More importantly, it should help to narrow the search for cures for diseases.

The Grid, a network of 100,000 computers, is to be connected to the world’s largest machine, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is designed for projects, such as large research and engineering jobs, which need to crunch huge quantities of data, but scientists believe it will eventually be used on home computers.

The Grid allows scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to get access to the unemployed processing power of thousands of computers in 33 countries to deal with the data created by the LHC.

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CERN Rivals See Melting Magnets As Par For Course

A Sept. 10, 2008 file photo shows European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists working at computers in the Cern's control center during the switch on operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest atom-smasher in a mission to answer some of the most perplexing questions in the cosmos controol, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008, in Geneva, Switzerland. The daring success of the world's largest atom smasher on its opening day was more surprising to scientists than the troubles it subsequently developed. The meltdown of a connection between superconducting magnets nine days later at CERN was more expected. (AP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini, Pool, File)

From Yahoo News/AP:

GENEVA - The daring success of the world's largest atom smasher on its opening day was more surprising to many scientists than the troubles it subsequently developed.

A problem with a magnet connection will delay the start of experiments for half a year, partly because the $3.8 billion accelerator is so complicated to repair. Physicists — some of whom waited two decades to use the new equipment — will now have to wait three more weeks for the damaged section to be warmed up to room temperature.

They can then get inside to see what went wrong.

Yet such glitches are not uncommon. Michael Harrison, who worked on Fermilab's Tevatron collider and designed and built the United States' other superconducting collider at Brookhaven on Long Island, said both machines had similar startup problems.

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Why The Large Hadron Collider Is Already On The Fritz

From Time Magazine - Science:

Anyone who has struggled to change a fuse in their home should pity the scientists at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. Last Friday, just nine days after celebrating the successful test run of the largest particle accelerator ever constructed, a tiny electrical connection between two magnets overheated and caused a minor meltdown.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) broke.

Although a final evaluation is yet to be completed, scientists believe the fault caused the machine to lose the near absolute-zero temperature it must maintain to operate. For now, however, repair work can't begin because the machine is still too cold; it will take about a month to warm up the area to a temperature at which replacement parts can be inserted. It will take another month to cool it back down, and given that CERN has pledged not to run its giant machine — which requires as much power as the entire city of Geneva — during winter months when Europe's energy needs are highest, Friday's breakdown could delay the actual smashing of atoms until early next year.

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PHOTOS: Best Science Images of 2008 Announced

First Place, Photography: "The Glass Forest"

From The National Geographic:

September 25, 2008--Tiny green diatoms create the illusion of a fernlike forest as they attach to their marine-invertebrate hosts.

Mario De Stefano of the Second University of Naples, Italy, captured this miniscule "jungle" from the Mediterranean Sea with a scanning electron microscope.

The image earned first place in the photography category of the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

The awards are given annually by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science for images that employ modern technology to visualize complex scientific topics. (See some of last year's winners.)

The winners will be announced in tomorrow's issue of Science.

--Brian Handwerk
—Image courtesy Mario De Stefano/The Second University of Naples/Science

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Top 10 Scrapped Spaceship Designs

Space: the final frontier, and a veritable graveyard of wacky, premature or impossible concepts for getting people there. From radioactive Mars ships to Russian space shuttle knock-offs, check out our top 10 spaceship drop-outs.

From Discovery Magazine:

10. Von Braun Ferry Rocket

Wernher Von Braun, designer of the German V-2 rocket, also dreamed up plenty of spaceships in his day -- including the Saturn V launch system that made it possible for Americans to step onto the moon.

But one that never left the drawing board was this three-stage "ferry rocket." Collier's Magazine ran the drawing on the cover of a 1952 issue touting "Man Will Conquer Space Soon".

So far, the difficulty of space travel is the only thing conquering anyone.

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Chinese Astronauts Return To Earth

China's Shenzhou-7 spacecraft's re-entry module landed safely in Siziwang Banner in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Wang Jianmin)

From CBS News/Science:

(AP) Chinese astronauts returned to earth and emerged triumphant from their capsule Sunday after successfully completing the country's first-ever spacewalk mission.

State broadcaster CCTV showed their Shenzhou 7 spaceship landing under clear skies in the grasslands of China's northern Inner Mongolia region at 5:37 p.m. local time. Premier Wen Jiabao applauded at mission control in Beijing.

"The astronauts feel very good," mission commander Zhai Zhigang said as the vessel floated down to earth on a red-and-white-striped giant parachute.

After landing, the three astronauts were seen sipping bottled water as they were given medical examinations inside the module. They stayed inside for about 45 minutes to adapt to the Earth's gravity before slowly crawling out of the narrow circular entrance of the capsule.

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Bees Can Count

From Live Science:

Honeybees are clever little creatures. They can form abstract concepts, such as symmetry versus asymmetry, and they use symbolic language — the celebrated waggle dance — to direct their hivemates to flower patches. New reports suggest that they can also communicate across species, and can count — up to a point.

With colleagues, Songkun Su of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and Shaowu Zhang of the Australian National University in Canberra managed to overcome the apian impulse to kill intruders and cultivated the first mixed-species colonies, made up of European honeybees, Apis mellifera, and Asiatic honeybees, A. cerana. The researchers confirmed that the two species have their own dialects: foraging in identical environments, the bees signaled the distance to a food source with dances of different durations.

Remarkably, despite the communication barrier, A. cerana decoded A. mellifera's dance and found the food.

Also at the Australian National University, Marie Dacke and Mandyam V. Srinivasan trained European honeybees to pass a particular number of colored stripes in a tunnel to get a food reward, which was placed by a stripe. When they removed the food, the bees still returned to the same stripe.

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Earth's Magnetic Field Reversals Illuminated By Lava Flows Study

Polarity reversals have occurred hundreds of times at irregular intervals throughout the planet's history – most recently about 780,000 years ago – but scientists are still trying to understand how and why. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tobias Machhaus)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2008) — Earth's north magnetic pole is shifting and weakening. Ancient lava flows are guiding a better understanding of what generates and controls the Earth's magnetic field – and what may drive it to occasionally reverse direction.

The main magnetic field, generated by turbulent currents within the deep mass of molten iron of the Earth's outer core, periodically flips its direction, such that a compass needle would point south rather than north. Such polarity reversals have occurred hundreds of times at irregular intervals throughout the planet's history – most recently about 780,000 years ago – but scientists are still trying to understand how and why.

A new study of ancient volcanic rocks, reported in the Sept. 26 issue of the journal Science, shows that a second magnetic field source may help determine how and whether the main field reverses direction. This second field, which may originate in the shallow core just below the rocky mantle layer of the Earth, becomes important when the main north-south field weakens, as it does prior to reversing, says Brad Singer, a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Memory Surprisingly Unreliable, Study Shows

From Cosmos:

LIVERPOOL, UK: Our memories of major past events can be surprisingly unreliable, says a new study of the July 2005 London bombings, which found that people can easily convince themselves they've seen things that never happened.

"Some people think that our memories are like video recorders and that if you press play the memories come flooding back. It doesn't work like that at all and should not form the basis of legal decision making" said James Ost, a psychologist from the University of Portsmouth, England.

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Does Hot Water Freeze Faster Than Cold Water?

From Live Science:

Determining whether or not hot water can freeze faster than cold water may seem like a no-brainer. After all, water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius. And wouldn’t water hot enough to kill E. coli bacteria (about 120 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius) take a longer path than cooler water at a fall New England beach (about 60 degrees Fahrenheit or 15 degrees Celsius) towards a frigid future as ice? While a logical assumption, it turns out that hot water can freeze before cooler water under certain conditions.

This apparent quirk of nature is the "Mpemba effect," named after the Tanzanian high school student, Erasto Mpemba, who first observed it in 1963. The Mpemba effect occurs when two bodies of water with different temperatures are exposed to the same subzero surroundings and the hotter water freezes first. Mpemba’s observations confirmed the hunches of some of history’s most revered thinkers, such as Aristotle, Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon, who also thought that hot water froze faster than cold water.

Evaporation is the strongest candidate to explain the Mpemba effect. As hot water placed in an open container begins to cool, the overall mass decreases as some of the water evaporates. With less water to freeze, the process can take less time. But this doesn’t always work, especially when using closed containers that prevent evaporated water from escaping.

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Rocket Man Is Sucessful Crossing The English Channel -- News Updates And Links

Yves Rossy flies across the channel using his jet wing. The former Swiss Air pilot traced the route first flown by French aviator Loius Bleriot (Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Images)

Rocket Man Completes First One-Man Jetpack
Flight Across Channel -- Daily Mail

He came. He soared. He conquered.

Birdman Yves Rossy powered into the record books yesterday with a remarkable cross-Channel flight - and a grin almost as big as his wingspan.

The Swiss adventurer stood on the White Cliffs of Dover after flying from France with a jet-propelled wing on his back and declared: 'It's like a dream come true.'

He parachuted into an English field 22 miles from Calais 13 minutes after takeoff. The 49-year-old aviator flew at up to 125mph after jumping from a plane 8,200ft above France.

Four jet engines on the single, 8ft wing allowed him to prove what he has always believed - that with a little help from technology, there's no reason why man shouldn't fly like a bird.

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More News on The Rocket Man

"Fusion Man" makes historic Channel flight -- Reuters
Exclusive: I followed jetman Yves Rossy during the historic Channel crossing -- Times Online
To infinity... or just Dover?: Jetman crosses the English Channel -- The Independent
Jet Man Crosses English Channel -- New York Times
Swiss pilot flies across English Channel by jetpack -- National Post
Swiss 'rocketman' crosses the English Channel in 10 minutes (Pictures) -- L.A. Times

What's Driving China's Space Efforts?

This undated photo released on Tuesday September 23, 2008, by China's official Xinhua news agency shows technicians help the Shenzhou-7 manned spaceship to dock with the Long-March II-F rocket at an assembly plant. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Qin Xian'an)

From The BBC:

The launch of Shenzhou-VII by China is another reminder of the country's growing confidence and capability in space.

It delivers a message to the traditional space powers: after a slow start, China is rising fast.

This mission is a critical step in a "three-step" human spaceflight programme aimed at docking spacecraft together to form a small orbiting laboratory and, ultimately, building a large space station.

It has sent a robotic spacecraft, Chang'e, to the Moon and there are plans to land a robotic rover on the lunar surface in 2010.

Last year, China faced international criticism when it used a medium-range ballistic missile to destroy an ageing weather satellite in a weapons test.

But what are the forces driving Beijing's space endeavours?

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In A Storm Surge, Elevation Is The Key To Survive

Ike Obliterated Most Homes, But Spared One On Church Street -- Houston Chronicle

There's a new landmark in Gilchrist, one of the towns on Bolivar Peninsula that Hurricane Ike ravaged and left for dead.

The fire station is gone. The post office is gone. Every structure on the gulf side of this tight-knit community is gone.

Except for one house.

Standing tall, as if in defiance of Ike's windy, watery wrath, is the home of Pam and Warren Adams, who built the place in 2005 after Hurricane Rita destroyed their older home on the same lot.

On Friday, the first day many residents were allowed back on the peninsula, the couple returned to Church Street, ready to help neighbors whose homes no longer stood with theirs.

"I think I'm going through survivor's guilt," said Pam Adams, even though her home is uninhabitable, its main floor covered with mud brought in by the storm surge. "But the fact that the house is standing, that it survived, is awesome. Gilchrist is still here. It's faith and hopefulness."

The Adams had already been back to see their house, so they knew what to expect. But for the people who live west of Rollover Pass — the residents and homeowners returning to the peninsula for the first time since the hurricane — it was surreal.

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UN Urged To Coordinate Killer Asteroid Defences

From The New Scientist:

The technology to detect and deflect dangerous space rocks already exists – all that's missing is someone to coordinate its use.

That is the finding of a two-year investigation by the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), an international group of astronauts, cosmonauts, and members of space community. The group unveiled the results of its research at the offices of the Google Foundation in San Francisco yesterday.

The report asks the UN to assume responsibility for responding to potentially catastrophic asteroid threats. "For 4.5 billion years, we've been bashed continuously by asteroids. It's time for that to stop," former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart told the assembly.

The ASE's vision is first for a global information network, coordinated by the UN, that uses data from ground- and space-based telescopes to find, track and rate the risk of near-Earth objects (NEOs).

Currently, NASA is watching 209 NEOs, none of which is considered to be dangerous. But a threat is likely to be detected within the next 15 years, according to the ASE. "New telescopes coming online will increase these discoveries by a factor of 100," said Ed Lu, astronaut on space shuttle Atlantis.

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Extracting Energy From The Tides

Water Powered: Two prototype balloons for CETO’s wave farm. Photo by Jason Thomas

Burning the Tide -- Popsci

Alan Burns made a fortune in the oil business. But as oil wanes, he’s convinced that clean energy will be—must be—the next big thing. And so this inventor has poured his fortune into a challenge far greater than finding new oil deposits: extracting energy from the ocean

Alan Burns breaks the surface with a huge grin on his face, his baggy black wetsuit hanging off his body like walrus skin. It’s a scorching February afternoon, and we’re floating in the clear blue water of the Indian Ocean. To our left is the Australian resort island of Rottnest. To our right—just beyond Burns’s dazzling white yacht—is several thousand miles of open sea. And beneath us, the kelp forest where we had been diving moments before is swaying to the rhythm of the waves. “Can you feel the power down there?” Burns asks as we bob in the water, his sunburned cheeks puckered up behind a dripping diving mask. “This is what made me think of it, really.”

Burns is a prodigious inventor and a staunch supporter of clean energy, but he’s no sentimental environmentalist. He’s an oilman. He made his first fortune in the mid-1970s with oil and gas discoveries off Australia’s northwestern coast. In 1987 he founded the exploration company Hardman Resources, which, after an extremely profitable series of finds off the coast of Africa, was sold in 2006 to another oil company for more than $1 billion. Today the 67-year-old entrepreneur is among the wealthiest men in Perth, the tropical, seaside capital of Western Australia. And although he still runs a mineral-exploration company, he spends 90 percent of his time nurturing the wave-power-generation system he first sketched out some 30 years ago.

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Van Gogh Painting Uncovered By New Xray Machine

Rolling back the centuries: Dr Karen Rickers, above, fires the accelerator

From The Telegraph:

A new technique promises to reveal hundreds of masterpieces hidden beneath later works. Harry de Quetteville reports

It amounts to the biggest single art find: a host of unseen works by masters old and new, from Rembrandt to Van Gogh and Picasso. But these works can't be seen on the walls of any gallery or museum. And they are hidden not in a safe or bank vault, but on canvases which the artists themselves painted over.

Now, however, scientists are employing a revolutionary technique to reveal these spectacular images. Using circular particle accelerators, hundreds of metres across, they fire Xrays 10,000 times more powerful than any hospital scan at the priceless paintings.

It is not the first time that art historians have employed science to peer beyond the façade of masterworks. Leonardo, Brueghel and Courbet are some of the many artists whose canvases are emerging as ultra-valuable palimpsests, where the original image has been muffled by over-eager restoration or concealed by over-painting.

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New Life Found in Old Tombs

From Live Science:

Talk about secrets of the crypt: Two newly discovered species of bacteria have been found on the walls of ancient Roman tombs.

Bacteria often grow on the walls of underground tombs, causing decay and damaging these archaeological sites. Scientists in Italy found the two new microbes while studying decayed surfaces in the Catacombs of Saint Callistus in Rome.

The Catacombs of Saint Callistus are part of a massive underground graveyard that covers 37 acres. The tombs, named after Pope Saint Callistus I, were built at the end of the second century. More than 30 popes and martyrs are buried in the catacombs.

The new bacteria, part of the Kribbella genus first discovered in 1999, were isolated from whitish-gray patinas, or coatings, on surfaces in the catacombs. They have been named Kribbella catacumbae and Kribbella sancticallisti.

The discovery is detailed in the September issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Mircobiology.

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Why Earth's Magnetic Field Flip-Flops

Earth's magnetic field may actually be two fields from separate sources. Credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

Every so often, Earth's magnetic field flips on its head, turning the magnetic North Pole into the South Pole and vice versa.

It last happened 780,000 years ago, and is predicted to occur again in about 1,500 years ... maybe. The overall frequency is hard to predict — there was one period in Earth's history when the field didn't reverse for 30 million years.

Why these flip-flops happen at all is a great riddle, but a new hypothesis on the origins of the magnetic field could shed light on the reason.

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The Finest Science Images of 2008: Your Pick

From Wired Science:

The year's finest science images and visualizations have been announced -- and now it's your turn to pick a winner.

The entries come from the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science.

Below are not only the winners of the photography, illustration and visualization categories, but the runners-up. The images are so uniformly amazing that you might prefer one of the contenders.

One week from now, we'll close the voting and announce your category winners -- and, of course, the über-winner.

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Scientists Report Advance in Stem Cell Alternative

Human embryonic stem cell (gold) growing on a layer of supporting cells (fibroblasts).

From the Washington Post:

Scientists reported yesterday that they have overcome a major obstacle to using a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, bolstering prospects for bypassing the political and ethical tempest that has embroiled hopes for a new generation of medical treatments.

The researchers said they found a safe way to coax adult cells to regress into an embryonic state, alleviating what had been the most worrisome uncertainty about developing the cells into potential cures.

"We have removed a major roadblock for translating this into a clinical setting," said Konrad Hochedlinger, a Harvard University stem cell researcher whose research was published online yesterday by the journal Science. "I think it's an important advance."

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Russia, Georgia and the Space Station

An Editorial From The New York Times:

Unless the Senate acts soon, the United States could lose its access to the International Space Station. The country is in a bind because NASA plans to retire the aging space shuttle fleet two years from now. Without a Congressional waiver, the agency will be barred from buying seats on Russia’s space vehicles.

Many members of Congress are understandably furious over Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Unless they approve a waiver, the United States will have to remove its crew from the space station in 2011 — leaving a very expensive investment essentially to the Russians.

The shuttles’ successor vehicle, the Orion, won’t be ready before 2015. That leaves a five-year gap where the only way to reach the station is via Russia’s Soyuz vehicles. The capsules carry Russian cosmonauts and ferried American astronauts after the Columbia accident.

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Space Exploration Key To Mankind's Survival: NASA Chief

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin

From Breitbart/AFP:

Mankind's very survival depends on the future exploration of space, said NASA chiMichael Griffin in an interview with AFP marking the 50th anniversary of the US space agency.

This journey, said the veteran physicist and aerospace engineer, is full of unknowns and has only just begun.

"Does the survival of human kind depend upon it? I think so," he said.

Griffin compared the first walk on the Moon with Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas.

"He travelled for months and spent a few weeks in the Americas and returned home. He could hardly have said to have explored the New World.

"So we have just begun to touch other worlds," said Griffin.

"I think we must return to the Moon because it's the next step. It's a few days from home," he said, adding Mars was also "only a few months" from Earth.

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More News On China's Experimental Space Drive

Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive
-- Wired Magazine

Chinese researchers claim they've confirmed the theory behind an "impossible" space drive, and are proceeding to build a demonstration version. If they're right, this might transform the economics of satellites, open up new possibilities for space exploration –- and give the Chinese a decisive military advantage in space.

To say that the "Emdrive" (short for "electromagnetic drive") concept is controversial would be an understatement. According to Roger Shawyer, the British scientist who developed the concept, the drive converts electrical energy into thrust via microwaves, without violating any laws of physics. Many researchers believe otherwise. An article about the Emdrive in New Scientist magazine drew a massive volley of criticism. Scientists not only argued that Shawyer's work was blatantly impossible, and that his reasoning was flawed. They also said the article should never have been published.

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Ageing Mars Rover To Embark On Epic Two-Year Journey To Giant Crater... Despite Wobbly Wheel

Great Endeavour: An artist's impression of the Mars rover Opportunity, which will make a seven-mile journey from one crater to another over the next two years

From The Daily Mail:

The ageing but intrepid Mars rover Opportunity is set to embark on a two-year mission it may never complete - a seven-mile journey to a crater far bigger than one it has called home for two years, NASA have revealed.

The golf-cart-sized robot with a wobbly front wheel climbed out of Victoria crater earlier this month and scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are steering the probe toward a crater more than 20 times larger, dubbed Endeavor.

But with the rover able to travel only 110 yards per day, the mission control team at JPL said it could take two years for Opportunity to reach its destination. There is no guarantee the vehicle will survive the trip.

Opportunity, like its twin rover Spirit, semi-idle for the moment on the opposite side of Mars, is well past its original three-month life expectancy.

The seven-mile stretch between Victoria and Endeavor craters matches the total distance the rover already has covered in the four-and-a-half years since landing on the planet.

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Simple Device Which Uses Electrical Field Could Boost Gas Efficiency

From E!Science News:

With the high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel impacting costs for automobiles, trucks, buses and the overall economy, a Temple University physics professor has developed a simple device which could dramatically improve fuel efficiency as much as 20 percent. According to Rongjia Tao, Chair of Temple's Physics Department, the small device consists of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector. With the use of a power supply from the vehicle's battery, the device creates an electric field that thins fuel, or reduces its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion than a standard fuel injector, he says.

Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost, and a 12-15 percent gain in city driving.

The results of the laboratory and road tests verifying that this simple device can boost gas mileage was published in Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal published by the American Chemical Society.

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Rocks May Be Oldest on Earth, Scientists Say

Researchers report that this rock is 4.28 billion years old and
formed when the Earth was less than 300 million years old.

From The New York Times:

A swath of bedrock in northern Quebec may be the oldest known piece of the Earth’s crust.

In an article appearing in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, scientists report that portions of that bedrock are 4.28 billion years old, formed when the Earth was less than 300 million years old.

“These rocks paint this picture of an early Earth that looked pretty much like the modern Earth,” said Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and one of the authors of the paper.

Other scientists are intrigued, but not yet entirely convinced that the rocks are quite that old.

“There is a certain amount of healthy skepticism that needs to play a role here,” said Stephen J. Mojzsis, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado. Dr. Mojzsis said the new research was well done, but that he thought these were younger sedimentary rocks, pressed together out of the remnants of earlier rocks that were indeed 4.28 billion years old.

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A New Era For Wave Energy

From CNN:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The renewable energy sector has received a boost with the inauguration of the world's first commercial wave power project off the Portuguese coast.

Developed by a Scottish engineering company, Pelamis Wave Power Limited, the Pelamis Wave Energy Converters (PWEC) have been towed into position three miles off the coast of Agucadoura in north Portugal.

The first phase of the project is using three PWEC to generate 2.25 megawatts of power at a cost of nine million euros.

If successful, a second phase will see energy generation rise to 21 megawatts from a further 25 machines providing electricity for 15,000 Portuguese homes.

The project is a joint venture between Pelamis Wave Power Limited, Babcock and Brown Ltd -- a global specialist asset manager, Energias de Portugal (EDP) and Portuguese energy group EFACEC.

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Colorful Study Probes Climate Change, Fall Foliage

From ABC News:

Where tourists swarm to see fall colors, study examines climate change's effects

Could climate change dull the blazing palette of New England's fall foliage? The answer could have serious implications for one of the region's signature attractions, which draws thousands of "leaf peepers" every autumn.

Biologists at the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center will do some leaf peeping of their own to find out — studying how temperature affects the development of autumn colors and whether the warming climate could mute them, prolong the foliage viewing season or delay it.

Using a three-year, $45,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, they're planning to measure the color pigments in leaves exposed to varying temperatures in hopes of finding a pattern. The study starts next month, although some experiments are already under way.

"It is getting warmer, and people want to know how that's going to affect this big process that's so important to us," said research associate Abby van den Berg.

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NAS Reports: 50 Million Year Cooling Trend

Graph above added by Anthony - not part of original article

From Watts Up With That?:

With all the focus on human-triggered global warming, it may be hard to imagine that the world is riding a 50-million-year-long cooling trend.

But it is, and blame the trend on a continental-scale collision, say geophysicists Dennis Kent of Rutgers University and Giovanni Muttoni of the University of Milan in Italy.

Researchers say there is strong evidence that increases in atmospheric CO2 contributed to a warm spell 50 million years ago dubbed the Early Eocene climate optimum - the warmest period in 65 million years. But over the following 15 million years, deep sea temperatures fell by about 10.8 degrees F., reflecting a significant cooling at the surface. This cooling ultimately allowed the cycle of ice ages to emerge.

Drs. Kent and Muttoni have mined paleomagnetic and other data and suggest that atmospheric CO2 dropped because India collided with Eurasia, shutting down a productive, natural CO2 factory.

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China launches riskiest space mission yet

From Space Daily:

China on Thursday launched its riskiest space flight yet, sending three men into orbit on a mission that will include the nation's first ever space walk, state media said.

The Shenzhou VII spacecraft lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China at 9:10 pm (1310 GMT) in the presence of President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders, state television reported live.

"The successful launch marked the first victory of the Shenzhou VII mission," a triumphant Hu said.

As the spacecraft entered its pre-set orbit, the three astronauts kept in contact with ground control, occasionally waving to a camera as notebooks floated around in the weightlessness of their shuttle cabin.

Hu earlier saw off the three, led by 41-year-old Zhai Zhigang, as they prepared for their 68-hour journey to space and back.

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Formula Discovered For Longer Plant Life

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 24, 2008) — Molecular biologists from Tuebingen, Germany, have discovered how the growth of leaves and the aging process of plants are coordinated.

Plants that grow more slowly stay fresh longer. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen, Germany, have shown that certain small sections of genes, so-called microRNAs, coordinate growth and aging processes in plants.

These microRNAs inhibit certain regulators, known as TCP transcription factors. These transcription factors in turn influence the production of jasmonic acid, a plant hormone. The higher the number of microRNAs present, the lower the number of transcription factors that are active, and the smaller the amount of jasmonic acid, which is produced by the plant.

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World’s Largest Tsunami Debris Discovered

Tongatapu boulder. (Credit: Courtesy of M. Hornbach)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2008) — A line of massive boulders on the western shore of Tonga may be evidence of the most powerful volcano-triggered tsunami found to date. Up to 9 meters (30 feet) high and weighing up to 1.6 million kilograms (3.5 million pounds), the seven coral boulders are located 100 to 400 meters (300 to 1,300 feet) from the coast.

The house-sized boulders were likely flung ashore by a wave rivaling the 1883 Krakatau tsunami, which is estimated to have towered 35 meters (115 feet) high.

“These could be the largest boulders displaced by a tsunami, worldwide,” says Matthew Hornbach of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. “Krakatau’s tsunami was probably not a one-off event.” Hornbach and his colleagues will discuss these findings at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies (GCAGS), in Houston, Texas, USA.*

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China Near's Completion Of Its Own Emdrive

Wired reports that China will build the Controversial Emdrive.

This site has covered the Emdrive several times before, including the controversy, and the upside. A successful superconducting system would be most efficient at nulling out gravity (3 tons of lift per kilowatt).

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Father Of The Internet: 'Web Is Running Out Of Addresses'

From Times Online:

The world is about to run out of the internet addresses that allow computers to identify each other and communicate, the man who invented the system has told The Times.

Vint Cerf, the “father of the internet” and one of the world’s leading computer scientists, said that businesses and consumers needed to act now to switch to the next generation of net addresses. Unless preparations were made now, he said, some computers might not be able to go online and the connectivity of the internet might be damaged.

Mr Cerf said that internet service providers in particular needed to prepare and that time was running out for a smooth transition.

Every computer and online device is assigned a unique IP address, but the pool of unallocated numbers is about to dry up.

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Melamine 'Widespread' In China's Food Chain

From New Scientist:

Melamine, the chemical that has tainted milk formula in China and made thousands of children ill, may have been part of the food chain in China for a long time, say food experts. But the health effects of long-term exposure in adults are unclear.

So far, 53,000 infants have fallen ill after drinking formula milk deliberately adulterated with melamine. Four babies have died, 13,000 have been hospitalised and 104 are in a critical condition with kidney stones caused by the adulterant. A girl in Hong Kong has become the first case of poisoning outside China.

The makers of baby formula require their milk to have a high protein content, which they determine by measuring its nitrogen content. But farmers who produce milk that doesn't meet this standard can beat the test by mixing it with melamine powder.

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Planets Caught In "Catastrophic Collision"

Planetary collision: An artist's rendering depicts planets colliding in a Sun-like binary star system about 300 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries.

From Cosmos Magazine:

LOS ANGELES: Two planets about 300 light-years from Earth slammed into each other recently, marking the first time evidence of such a catastrophic collision has been seen by scientists.

Astronomers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) said the crash involved two planets orbiting a star in the Aries constellation.

Massive and catastrophic

The collision was uncovered while astronomers were attempting to measure the star's age, and found an unusually large amount of dust orbiting the star.

"It's as if Earth and Venus collided with each other," said Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. "Astronomers have never seen anything like this before. Apparently, major catastrophic collisions can take place in a fully mature planetary system."

The astronomers' research will be published in December in the Astrophysical Journal. The collision was an "ultimate extinction event" that would have wiped out any life on either planet in minutes, the report says.

The prospect of Earth suffering an apocalyptic collision with another planet or asteroid has been fodder for science-fiction writers and film-makers ever since Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer's 1933 novel When Worlds Collide.

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Weaker Solar Wind Won't Slow Global Warming, May Threaten Astronauts

From Popular Mechanics:

If a spacecraft keeps chugging along for long enough, eventually it may find something startling.

Ulysses, a satellite operated by NASA and the European Space Agency, has been observing solar wind—charged particles ejected by the sun's upper atmosphere—since its launch in 1990. It's been around long enough to see two solar minimums, when the sun's radiation reaches the lowest point in an 11-year cycle, and a solar maximum, when the sun spouts sunspots and spews its highest level of radiation. But what Ulysses found during the most recent solar minimum has surprised astrophysicists: The solar wind was 20 to 25 percent weaker than during the last minimum, NASA and ESA announced at a press conference on Tuesday, and the weakest since they began measuring it at the dawn of the space age a half-century ago.

It's an exciting find for scientists studying the stars—a new weather condition adds a new variable in terms of research. But what does a weak solar wind really mean?

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Pictured: The Dark Matter Galaxy That Could Be Orbiting Our Milky Way

The recently discovered galaxy 'Segue 1' orbits the Milky Way, and is believed to
be composed of mainly dark matter

The Daily Mail:

A satellite galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter could be orbiting the Milky Way, a new image has revealed.

It is one of 24 neighbouring galaxies spotted by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has recorded the night sky in greater detail than ever before.

The results have doubled the number of known dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.

The latest finding is particularly significant as it appears to have a very low light-to-mass ratio - a billion times less bright than the Milky Way itself.

Yale Professor of Astronomy Marla Geha, who led the team that made the discovery, believes that the galaxy, named 'Segue 1' is mainly composed of dark matter.

The scientists studying the galaxy believe this is due to the fact that despite having a mass of a million suns, it is not nearly as bright as it should be.

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