64 Things Every Geek Should Know

From Lap Top Logic:

If you consider yourself a geek, or aspire to the honor of geekhood, here's an essential checklist of must-have geek skills.

The term 'geek', once used to label a circus freak, has morphed in meaning over the years. What was once an unusual profession transferred into a word indicating social awkwardness. As time has gone on, the word has yet again morphed to indicate a new type of individual: someone who is obsessive over one (or more) particular subjects, whether it be science, photography, electronics, computers, media, or any other field. A geek is one who isn't satisfied knowing only the surface facts, but instead has a visceral desire to learn everything possible about a particular subject.

A techie geek is usually one who knows a little about everything, and is thus the person family and friends turn to whenever they have a question. If you're that type of person and are looking for a few extra skills to pick up, or if you're a newbie aiming to get a handhold on the honor that is geekhood, read on to find out what skills you need to know.

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Ice At The North Pole In 1958 And 1959 - Not So Thick

Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959. Image from NAVSOURCE

From Watts Up With That?

What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like “NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER”? Or maybe “Global warming melts North Pole”? Perhaps we would. sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines.

Some additional captures from the newsreel below show that the ice was pretty thin then, thin enough to assign deckhands to chip it off after surfacing.The newsreel is interesting, here is the transcript.

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Who Will Be Tech's Next Winners And Losers?

From Pajamas Media/Edgelings:

Let’s take a moment and try to imagine the U.S. economy when this recession is over.

Needless to say, that’s a big “when”, especially when Washington seems to doing its best to extend this economic downturn as long as possible.

But let’s suppose that there is a sudden outbreak of sanity among our political leaders: they stop driving the nation’s CEOs in defensive postures, they abandon their attempts to destroy entrepreneurship and venture capital, and basically, they stop threatening onerous new taxes and regulations – basically, they just get out of the way – and let the economy finish healing itself.

What happens next? Who will be the big winners, especially in high tech, in the next boom? Here are my guesses:

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Epigenetics: A Revolutionary Look At How Humans Work

The epigenome is a molecular marking system that controls gene expression without altering the DNA sequence. In a sense, the epigenome is the genome's boss. Image credit: Dreamstime.

From Live Science:

Scientists are now pinpointing exactly how nurture affects nature. Life experiences — from toxin exposure to physical affection — can alter gene expression in dynamic and sometimes reversible ways.

These insights — the result of a burgeoning field called epigenetics — were aided by the sequencing of the human genome, completed in 2003. However, the genome itself turns out to have limited value for understanding disease and human characteristics.

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Single-Molecule Nano-Vehicles Synthesized: 'Fantastic Voyage' Not So Far-Fetched

James Tour and coworkers at Rice University synthesized a molecular car with four carbon-based wheels that roll on axles made from linked carbon atoms. The nano-car's molecular wheels are 5,000 times smaller than a human cell. A powerful technique that allows viewing objects at the atomic level called scanning tunneling microscopy reveals the wheels roll perpendicular to the axles, rather than sliding about like a car on ice as the car moves back and forth on a surface. (Credit: Y. Shirai/Rice University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2009) — Imagine producing vehicles so small they would be about the size of a molecule and powered by engines that run on sugar. To top it off, a penny would buy a million of them.

A new article published in the May 2009 issue of Scientific American asks readers to do just that.

The concept is nearly unthinkable, but it's exactly the kind of thing occupying National Science Foundation supported researchers at Penn State and Rice universities.

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Spectacular Cosmic Bubble '60 Light Years Wide And 70,000 Years Old'

Dr Don Goldman took this picture from his base in California Photo: NATIONAL

From The Telegraph:

This spectacular cosmic bubble was caused by a gas expulsion from a dying star and is 60 light years across and 70,000 years old.

At its centre is a star, known as a Wolf-Rayet star which is 20 times the mass of the sun.

When it dies it throws out gas, creating winds which form the bubble.

It will eventually explode into a supernova.

Photographer Dr Don Goldman took this picture remotely from his base in California via an observatory in South Australia.

Dr Goldman said: "The object, known as S308 is a 'cosmic bubble' that represents a last-minute expulsion of gas from a dying star that forms a super wind in the form of a bubble.

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G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs On A Disc

Brian Lawrence leads G.E.’s holographic storage program.
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.

The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices.

But optical storage experts and industry analysts who were told of the development said it held the promise of being a big step forward in digital storage with a wide range of potential uses in commercial, scientific and consumer markets.

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Swine Flu News Updates -- April 27, 2009

Alistair Dixon, 24, from Grimsby, is met at Heathrow by his father Stanley Photo: David Dyson

Mexican Swine Flu Spreads To Europe, Markets Edgy -- Reuters

* First European case confirmed in Spain

* Mexican death toll at 103

* Governments step up health checks at airports

* Stock markets fall, dollar and yen rise

MEXICO CITY, April 27 (Reuters) - Governments around the world acted to stem a possible flu pandemic on Monday, as a virus that has killed 103 people in Mexico and spread to North America was confirmed to have reached Europe.

While the virus has so far killed no one outside Mexico, the fact that it has proved able to spread quickly between humans has raised fears that the world may finally be facing the flu pandemic that scientists say is long overdue.

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More News On The Swine Flu Outbreak

U.S. Slow to Learn of Mexico Flu -- Washington Post
Warnings as swine virus spreads -- BBC
Swine flu case confirmed in Spain -- BBC
Europe Urges Citizens to Avoid U.S. and Mexico Travel -- New York Times
Swine flu: Every passenger arriving in Britain from Mexico screened -- The Telegraph
CDC: US begins border monitoring for swine flu -- AP
Top health official warns US may see flu deaths -- AFP
Asia, Pacific Take Measures to Prevent Spread of Swine Flu -- Voice Of America
Countries adopt plans to counter swine flu -- UPI
Swine flu fears prompt quarantine plans, pork bans -- Yahoo news/AP
At epidemic's epicenter, Mexico works to remain calm -- McClatchy newspapers
MICHAEL HANLON: How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare -- Daily Mail
Swine Flu Could Become More Dangerous -- SKY News
Inside the Home of a Swine Flu Victim -- ABC News
How well prepared is the world for flu? -- BBC
Swine Flu Unlikely To Have Impact on the Economy -- Time Magazine
How to Protect Yourself From Swine Flu -- KTLA
Flu Special Report: The Basics -- Live Science
Has globalisation made us more catastrophe-prone? -- The Independent

Looking At Stress—And God—In The Human Brain

Duncan (top) looks at an MRI view of his brain as neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley interprets

From Discover Magazine:

James Brewer takes a seat beside me in a café at the San Diego Convention Center, where we are both attending the largest neuroscience meeting in the world: thirty thousand brains researching brains. With his balding head, bright eyes, and baby cheeks, Brewer, a neurologist at the University of California at San Diego, looks like a large and curious toddler. An unlikely messenger, perhaps, in what for me is now a moment of truth. I had undergone a series of diagnostic procedures in his laboratory, and now, inside the laptop he has placed on the table, are the results of my brain tests.

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Ancient Corals May Provide Record of Rapid Sea Level Rise

Photo: ANCIENT REEF: The creation of this water park exposed reefs that grew roughly 121,000 years ago, allowing scientists to study sea level rise during that warm period. COURTESY OF PAUL BLANCHON

From Scientific American:

Ancient reefs recently exposed in Mexico show that sea levels can rise by as much as 10 feet in half a century

With Greenland's glaciers melting and on the move while vast ice sheets in Antarctica continue to shatter, the proportion of water in the seas continues to grow. And with the climate at the poles expected to continue to warm rapidly in coming decades, many researchers are trying to determine how much and how quickly sea levels might rise. Now newly excavated reefs in Mexico may have provided an answer: high and fast.

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Greenhouse Gases Continue To Climb Despite Economic Slump

Anthropogenic atmospheric carbon dioxide, fossil fuel emissions, world gross domestic product (GDP), and world population for the past century. Carbon dioxide data from Antarctic ice cores (green points), Mauna Loa Observatory (red curve), and the global network (blue dots). (Credit: NOAA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2009) — Two of the most important climate change gases increased last year, according to a preliminary analysis for NOAA’s annual greenhouse gas index, which tracks data from 60 sites around the world.

Researchers measured an additional 16.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) — a byproduct of fossil fuel burning — and 12.2 million tons of methane in the atmosphere at the end of December 2008. This increase is despite the global economic downturn, with its decrease in a wide range of activities that depend on fossil fuel use.

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Basis For Male Promiscuity Questioned

From Live Science:

Males are promiscuous and females are selective when choosing a mate, biologists have said for decades. But a new study finds it might not be that simple.

The study, published in this month's issue of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, evaluated data on 18 populations – from Pitcairn Islanders to the Dogon of Mali – and found that on average, the variance in the number of children is greater for men than for women. This is about what you'd expect on the basis of long-time theory.

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Internet Users 'Could Suffer Brownouts Due To YouTube And iPlayer'

Increased use of video-on-demand websites could hinder the internet's reliability Photo: Bloomberg

From The Telegraph:

Internet users will endure slower and less reliable connections from next year as websites such as YouTube and the BBC's iPlayer cause online traffic to double, experts warn.

Computers will freeze and drop offline with increasing regularity as the web's outdated infrastructure struggles to cope with the surging popularity of bandwidth-hungry video sites, it is claimed.

Analysts are warning that the internet will cease to function as an effective tool of communication – becoming merely an "unreliable toy" for casual users – unless networks are upgraded.

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Swine Flu Outbreak -- News Updates For April 26, 2009

Health nightmare...passengers on the Mexico City metro wear masks in an attempt to protect themselves after dozens of people died of swine flu. Photo from The Age

US Declares Public Health Emergency For Swine Flu -- Yahoo News/AP

WASHINGTON – The U.S. is declaring a public health emergency to deal with the emerging new swine flu.

The precautionary step doesn't signal a greater threat to Americans. But it allows the federal and state governments easier access to flu tests and medications.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napilotano says roughly 12 million doses of the drug Tamiflu are being released from a federal stockpile so that states can get it if needed.

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More News On The Swine flu Outbreak

Swine Flu: 'Public Health Emergency' -- ABC News
Public Health Emergency Declared for Swine Flu, Napolitano Says -- Bloomberg
U.S. declares public health emergency as swine flu spreads -- CNN
White House to detail govt response to swine flu -- AP
U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency in Wake of Swine Flu -- FOX News
U.S. declares swine flu public health emergency -- MSNBC
More Swine Flu Cases Confirmed In U.S. -- CBS News
Twenty swine flu cases confirmed in U.S. - officials -- Reuters
As Nations Try to Contain Flu, N.Y. Cases Are Confirmed -- New York Times
Americans told to wear masks as swine flu spreads round globe -- Times Online
World 'well-prepared' for virus -- BBC
Global alarm as killer swine flu spreads -- Yahoo News/AFP
5 new flu deaths in Mexico, 2 confirmed swine flu -- Yahoo news/AP
Swine flu empties Mexico City's churches, streets -- Yahoo News/AP
Global vigilance grows amid Mexico's swine flu outbreak -- CBC
Swine flu fears prompt quarantine plans, pork bans -- Washington Post
Killer pig flu threat to UK: Two people admitted to British hospital as virus which has killed 86 spreads worldwide -- The Daily Mail
Mexican swine flu deaths spark worldwide action -- The Guardian
UK on alert over swine flu threat -- The Independent
Swine flu: two admitted to hospital in Scotland as world braces for more cases -- The Telegraph
Swine flu fears prompt quarantine plans, pork bans -- Yahoo News/AP
Drug and vaccine makers on standby over swine flu -- Reuters
WHO's "war room" in high gear after flu outbreaks -- Reuters
Swine flu: WHO treads between alertness – and a scare -- Christian Science Monitor
Swine flu could mutate to 'more dangerous' strain: WHO -- Breitbart/AFP
Swine flu: what you need to know -- New Scientist
What is swine flu and how can humans catch it? -- CTV
FACTBOX - How countries are defending against swine flu -- Reuters

Wind Power’s Dirty Little Secret

From The Infrastructurist:

There’s a wonderful article in the current issue of Insight, the energy journal published by Platts, called “The Unbearable Lightness of Wind.”

The author, Ross McCracken, tackles the question that nobody has posed yet – what are the economic consequences going to be of putting up all these wind turbines with government subsidies, mandates and “feed-in tariffs” that tell the utilities, “Buy it whatever it costs”?

“The conundrum,” McCracken writes, “lies in the fact that wind does not directly displace fossil fuel generating capacity, but will make this capacity less profitable to maintain.”

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Illness Raises Alarm Among U.S. Officials

World health officials worry the swine flu outbreak in Mexico could unleash a global flu epidemic. (Guillermo Gutierrez/Associated Press)

Swine Flu Found In Mexican Outbreak -- The Washington Post

An unusual strain of swine flu has been detected among victims of a large outbreak of a severe respiratory illness in Mexico, prompting global health officials, fearful of a potential flu pandemic, to scramble yesterday to try to contain the virus.

At least 1,004 people have been sickened and at least 68 have died, primarily in the sprawling capital of Mexico City, triggering officials to close all schools and universities, museums and libraries and to begin screening air travelers for symptoms before they leave the country.

Officials warned millions of residents to stay home, avoid public places and take other protective measures, such as resisting greeting people with handshakes or kisses. Drugstores reported being inundated with customers seeking face masks, and some subway riders were spotted wearing rubber gloves.

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The Geomagnetic Apocalypse — And How to Stop It

From Wired Science:

For scary speculation about the end of civilization in 2012, people usually turn to followers of cryptic Mayan prophecy, not scientists. But that's exactly what a group of NASA-assembled researchers described in a chilling report issued earlier this year on the destructive potential of solar storms.

Entitled "Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts," it describes the consequences of solar flares unleashing waves of energy that could disrupt Earth's magnetic field, overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents and short-circuiting energy grids. Such a catastrophe would cost the United States "$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year," concluded the panel, and "full recovery could take four to 10 years." That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages.

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CDC SWINE FLU INFECTION-CONTROL GUIDELINES.

Interim Guidance on Antiviral Recommendations for Patients with Confirmed or Suspected Swine Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infection and Close Contacts

Objective: To provide interim guidance on the use of antiviral agents for treatment and chemoprophylaxis of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection. This includes patients with confirmed or suspected swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection and their close contacts.

Case definitions
A confirmed case of swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection is defined as a person with an acute respiratory illness with laboratory confirmed swine influenza A (H1N1) virus infection at CDC by one or more of the following tests:

1. real-time RT-PCR
2. viral culture

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Antarctica’s Bipolar Disorder

From Watts Up With That?

Two days ago I questioned how Antarctic ice could be both “melting faster than expected” and “expanding” at the same time. Yet (as WUWT has noted before) the answer is obvious - according to NASA, most of Antarctica is both cooling rapidly and heating rapidly at the same time.

Since nearly the entire continent is both cooling and heating simultaneously, it makes perfect sense (using AGW logic) that the ice would be rapidly expanding and rapidly retreating simultaneously. In 2004, NASA thought that Antarctica was cooling by as much as 15 degrees C per century. But after three more years of cooling, they changed the map to show a warming trend in 2007.

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The Story Of X: Evolution Of A Sex Chromosome

The neo-X (top) and neo-Y chromosomes of the fruit fly Drosophila miranda, showing how the Y has shrunken slightly through loss of genes. The X has remained about the same size as the fly's other chromosomes, though its genes are in the process of adapting to the Y's degeneration. (Credit: Doris Bachtrog/UC Berkeley)

From Science Daily:

In the first evolutionary study of the chromosome associated with being female, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Doris Bachtrog and her colleagues show that the history of the X chromosome is every bit as interesting as the much-studied, male-determining Y chromosome, and offers important clues to the origins and benefits of sexual reproduction.

"Contrary to the traditional view of being a passive player, the X chromosome has a very active role in the evolutionary process of sex chromosome differentiation," said Bachtrog, an assistant professor of integrative biology and a member of UC Berkeley's Center for Theoretical Evolutionary Genomics.

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Nicotine Takes Edge Off Anger

From Live Science:

Smoking to relieve stress is nothing new, but now a brain imaging study shows just how nicotine can blunt our anger response.

People who received half a nicotine patch dose proved less likely to rise to provocation, compared to when they took a placebo. This may support the idea that angry or stressed-out individuals can more easily become addicted to cigarettes, researchers say.

"The findings suggest that people in anger provoking situations may be more susceptible to the effects of nicotine," said Jean Gehricke, a psychiatry researcher at the University of California in Irvine.

This also represents the first study to identify a brain system that is most reactive to nicotine and has the strongest connection with anger response, Gehricke told LiveScience.

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My Comment: I need a cigarette.

Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

From Scientific American:

The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse

One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.

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2009 Space Oddity: 'Blob' 12.9Billion Light Years Away Baffles Astronomers

Unknown entity: The size and substance of the Lyman-alpha
blob 'Himiko' are a mystery to astronomers.

From The Daily Mail:

You'd think that astronomers would have a more scientific term for such a discovery, but the 'blob' in this image is so far away that its contents remain a mystery.

One of the most distant objects in our universe, the blob is 12.9billion light years away, and 55,000 light years wide, making it nearly ten times the mass of galaxies of a similar age.

The Lyman-alpha blob, named 'Himiko', after an ancient Japanese queen, is believed to have been formed when the universe was relatively young.

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World First For Strange Molecule

From The BBC:

A molecule that until now existed only in theory has finally been made.

Known as a Rydberg molecule, it is formed through an elusive and extremely weak chemical bond between two atoms.

The new type of bonding, reported in Nature, occurs because one of the two atoms in the molecule has an electron very far from its nucleus or centre.

It reinforces fundamental quantum theories, developed by Nobel prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, about how electrons behave and interact.

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Who Discovered The North Pole?

Frederick Cook and Robert Peary both claimed they discovered the North Pole. AGIP / Rue des Archives / The Granger Collection, New York

From The Smithsonian:

A century ago, explorer Robert Peary earned fame for discovering the North Pole, but did Frederick Cook get there first?

On September 7, 1909, readers of the New York Times awakened to a stunning front-page headline: "Peary Discovers the North Pole After Eight Trials in 23 Years." The North Pole was one of the last remaining laurels of earthly exploration, a prize for which countless explorers from many nations had suffered and died for 300 years. And here was the American explorer Robert E. Peary sending word from Indian Harbour, Labrador, that he had reached the pole in April 1909, one hundred years ago this month. The Times story alone would have been astounding. But it wasn't alone.

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Why You May Lose That Loving Feeling After Tying The Knot

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2009) — Dating couples whose dreams include marriage would do well to step back and reflect upon the type of support they'll need from their partners when they cross the threshold, a new Northwestern University study suggests.

Will the partner who supports your hopes and aspirations while you are dating also help you fulfill important responsibilities and obligations that come with marriage? The answer to that question could make a difference in how satisfied you are after tying the knot.

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Getting Real On Wind And Solar

A General Electric wind turbine in Ohio.
(Asssociated Press/general Electric Via Cleveland Plain Dealer)

From The Washington Post:

Why are we ignoring things we know? We know that the sun doesn't always shine and that the wind doesn't always blow. That means that solar cells and wind energy systems don't always provide electric power. Nevertheless, solar and wind energy seem to have captured the public's support as potentially being the primary or total answer to our electric power needs.

Solar cells and wind turbines are appealing because they are "renewables" with promising implications and because they emit no carbon dioxide during operation, which is certainly a plus. But because both are intermittent electric power generators, they cannot produce electricity "on demand," something that the public requires. We expect the lights to go on when we flip a switch, and we do not expect our computers to shut down as nature dictates.

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BREAKING!!!!! Mexico City Closes Schools And Public Events Amid Swine Flu Outbreak: 61 Known Dead, Many Sick -- No Plans To Close U.S./Mexico Border

People wear surgical masks as a precaution against infection inside a subway in Mexico City, Friday, April 24, 2009. Mexican authorities said 60 people may have died from a swine flu virus in Mexico, and world health officials worry it could unleash a global flu epidemic. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

From Reuters:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A strain of flu never seen before has killed as many as 61 people in Mexico and has spread into the United States, where eight people have been infected but recovered, health officials said on Friday.

Mexico's government said at least 16 people have died of the disease in central Mexico and that it may also have been responsible for 45 other deaths.

The World Health Organization said tests showed the virus in 12 of the Mexican patients had the same genetic structure as a new strain of swine flu, designated H1N1, seen in eight people in California and Texas.

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More News On This Epidemic

Mexico City Closes Schools Amid Swine Flu Outbreak -- Wall Street Journal
Swine flu could infect U.S. trade and travel -- Reuters
CDC says too late to contain U.S. flu outbreak -- Alertnet
New, deadly swine flu hits Mexico, U.S. -- Reuters
Swine Flu, Mexico Lung Illness Heighten Pandemic Risk -- Bloomberg
Will Swine Flu Panic Spread Beyond Mexico? -- Time Magazine
Experts Debate Pandemic Potential of Swine Flu -- ABC News
Most Mexico fatal flu victims aged between 25-45 -- Reuters
FACTBOX-Some facts about pandemic flu from the WHO -- Reuters
Q+A - Mexico hit by deadly new flu virus -- Reuters
Questions, answers about swine flu -- AP

My Comment: When I heard this story today .... two things went through my mind. (1) Is terrorism involved? For Mexico this is a very unique event, they have not suffered serious flu epidemics before .... and rumors have always circulated that Al Qaeda was interested in developing biological weapons for terrorism attacks. Was Mexico targeted because of its proximity to the U.S.?

(2) This epidemic is occurring at the end of the flu season. Like the Great Pandemic of 1918, that influenza outbreak started late spring, quieted down during the summer months, and then hit with a ferocity that killed millions in the Fall and Winter seasons of 1918. Are we in for a repeat?

April 24, 1990: Hubble Becomes Big Eye Above Sky

The Hubble Telescope's wide-field planetary camera took this image in 2007 of the "last hurrah" of a star like our sun. The white dwarf is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which form a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Blue corresponds to helium, blue-green to oxygen, and red to nitrogen and hydrogen. Ultraviolet light makes the material glow. Image: NASA, ESA, and K. Noll (STScI)

From Wired Science:

1990: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched, beginning a new era of deep space observation that opens up the universe to prying eyes as never before.

NASA's telescope, named for American astronomer Edwin Hubble, was placed into Earth orbit by the space shuttle Discovery. Despite some early teething problems and more recent, well-publicized maintenance issues, Hubble remains a crown jewel in NASA's tiara.

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Artificial Intelligence Cracks 4,000-Year-Old Mystery

From Wired News:

An ancient script that's defied generations of archaeologists has yielded some of its secrets to artificially intelligent computers.

Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.

"The underlying grammatical structure seems similar to what's found in many languages," said University of Washington computer scientist Rajesh Rao.

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'Dark Gulping' Could Explain Black Holes

From Space.com:

No, it's not the next soft-drink campaign. "Dark gulping" is a new hypothesis about how giant black holes might have formed from collapsing dark matter.

Supermassive black holes are a mystery. These behemoths can pack the mass of billions of suns, and often lurk in the centers of big galaxies like the Milky Way. But scientists don't know how they got started nor how they grew so massive.

A new computer model suggests dark gulping is one possible route to forming these monsters. The idea involves invisible dark matter, which is stuff of unknown nature that astronomers know exists because they see its gravitational effects on galaxies.

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Mystery Of Horse Domestication Solved?

Wild horses running in the desert mountains of Kazakhstan.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Maxim Petrichuk)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 24, 2009) — Wild horses were domesticated in the Ponto-Caspian steppe region (today Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Romania) in the 3rd millennium B.C. Despite the pivotal role horses have played in the history of human societies, the process of their domestication is not well understood.

In a new study published in the scientific journal Science, an analysis by German researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, the German Archaeological Institute, the Humboldt University Berlin, the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, in cooperation with American and Spanish scientists, has unravelled the mystery about the domestication of the horse.

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The Lost Forests of America

White fir trees died in in a 2002 drought in the Santa Rosa Mountains, while neighboring Jeffrey pines survived at this elevation. Climate changes is raising temperatures and lengthening dry spells in the region. Credit: University of California, Irvine

From Live Science:

You could plant any old tree to celebrate Arbor Day April 24. But consider instead a sugar maple, or another of the native trees that once abounded in this country.

The forests that once dominated this nation were full of trees such as chestnuts, hemlocks and white pines on the East Coast and conifers such as redwoods and Douglas firs on the West Coast.

Around the arrival of Columbus, "it's said that squirrels could travel from tree to tree from the Northeast to the Mississippi without ever having to touch the ground," said Chris Roddick, chief arborist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York. "In the old growth forests in the Northeast, you had hemlock that were six or seven feet in diameter, chestnut trees 200 feet tall."

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Another Step Closer To The Medical Tricorder.

William D. Richard (left) takes an ultrasound probe of colleague David Zar's carotid artery with a low-power imaging device he designed. David Kilper/WUSTL Photo

Cell Phones Display Ultrasound Images -- Future Pundit

Another step closer to the medical tricorder.

Computer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are bringing the minimalist approach to medical care and computing by coupling USB-based ultrasound probe technology with a smartphone, enabling a compact, mobile computational platform and a medical imaging device that fits in the palm of a hand.

I see this as part of a trend that amounts to a sort of democratization of medical testing. While this instrument at its current stage of development still requires an expert to wield it that won't always be the case. Small stuff costs less. It just has to become more powerful and more able to analyze images to discern what they mean without human expertise.

One way ultrasound for the masses could work is for the images to be sent via 4G and other faster wireless networks to a server. Then the server could do the computational heavy lifting to explain the medical significance of the stream of images.

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Thoughts On Extending Life

Understanding The Biological Basis Of Senescence May Allow Us To Delay Or Prevent The Degenerative Declines Long Accepted As An Inevitable Part Of Getting Older. -- Seed Magazine

The chief causes of natural death among the elderly form a concise set: Heart disease and cancer are the big killers, with strokes, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, or opportunistic infections claiming most of the rest. Until recently, we’ve focused on attacking each of these diseases separately, but we’ve made little progress; despite developed countries’ collectively spending untold billions of dollars pursuing this elusive goal, eventually something from the same old rogue’s gallery seems to arrive for everyone.

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Why Is Moon Dust Sticky? Physicist Says He Has Answer

Photo: Astronaut Edwin Aldrin recorded his footprint in 1969. NASA

From the L.A. Times:

By analyzing 40-year-old Apollo program tapes, he has concluded that stickiness is influenced by the angle of the sun's rays. The finding could help protect future colonists from a health hazard.

One of the biggest problems facing America's space agency as it prepares to return to the moon is how to manage lunar dust. It gets into everything. Worse, it's sticky, adhering to spacesuits and posing a potentially serious health hazard to future colonists.

Now, a scientist who has been studying the problem off and on over four decades thinks he may have untangled the mystery of why that dust is so sticky. Brian O'Brien, an Australian physicist who worked on the Apollo program in the 1960s, said the sun's ultraviolet and X-ray radiation gives a positive charge to the dust, making it stick to surfaces such as spacesuits.

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Viruses Could Kill Superbugs That Antibiotics Can't

Bacteriophages like the one shown in this computer-generated image could be a new weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (Image: Corneyl Jay / SPL)

From New Scientist:

A VIRUS that gobbles up the bacteria that cause debilitating ear infections could become the next weapon against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, after the first clinical trial of a bacteriophage treatment proved successful.

The trouble with bacteria is that they can evolve to outsmart antibiotics, secreting enzymes that break them down, or developing extra pumps to force drugs out of their cells. Because antibiotic resistance hampers treatment for common diseases including pneumonia, salmonella and tuberculosis, it is a growing public health problem.

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Bacon: The Other White Heat

Grease Fire: Pure oxygen flows from a metal pipe through a core of baked prosciutto, generating a grease fire hot enough to ignite steel and burn a hole clear through this pan. A wrapping of less-flammable uncooked prosciutto focuses the flame into an intense bacon-plasma torch Mike Walker

From PopSci:

You know bacon is delicious, but did you know it contains enough energy to melt metal?

I recently committed myself to the goal, before the weekend was out, of creating a device entirely from bacon and using it to cut a steel pan in half. My initial attempts were failures, but I knew success was within reach when I was able to ignite and melt the pan using seven beef sticks and a cucumber.

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My Comment: A waste of bacon if you ask me.

Nasa Celebrates Earth Day With Awe- Inspiring Images Of Our Planet From Space

Astronaut Jeff Williams captured the moment the Cleveland Volcano in Alaska erupted with a plume of ash from the International Space Station in 2006

From Daily Mail:

These extraordinary images show some of the most awe-inspiring images of Earth from space taken over the past five decades.

Released by Nasa today in celebration of Earth day, the photographs date as far back as 1968, charting the history of space exploration.

As well as some of the earliest images of Earth from space, the more recent photographs highlight the devastating effects of global warming.

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Study: Energy Drinks Boost the Brain, Not Brawn

From Time Magazine:

The promise of energy drinks is pretty irresistible — push your body, work hard, sweat buckets, and if you need an extra boost, down a bottle or two of liquid fuel to drive you through the rest of your workout.

Makes sense, since the drinks provide your body with carbohydrates in the form of sugars — the fuel that cells and tissues like muscle need to keep working. But exercise experts say that despite what you may think, energy drinks have no effect at all on your tired muscles. Instead, when your energy is petering out, a swig of an energy drink works on the brain to keep you inspired and motivated to push on.

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Internet Has Only Just Begun, Say Founders

Tim Berners-Lee

From Breitbart/AFP:

While the Internet has dramatically changed lives around the world, its full impact will only be realised when far more people and information go on-line, its founders said Wednesday.

"The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past," said Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the World Wide Web, at a seminar on its future.

Just 23 percent of the globe's population currently uses the Internet, according to the United Nation's International Telecommunications Union, with use much higher in developed nations.

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As World Warms, Water Levels Dropping In Major Rivers

The Colorado River is among rivers worldwide that have been affected by a warming Earth. (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2009) — Rivers in some of the world's most populous regions are losing water, according to a comprehensive study of global stream flows.

The research, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., suggests that the reduced flows in many cases are associated with climate change, and could potentially threaten future supplies of food and water.

The results will be published May 15 in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's sponsor.

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T. Rex Relative Fills Evolutionary Gap

Reconstructed body silhouettes of three tyrannosaurs, showing where Xiongguanlong falls in the spectrum of body sizes in this lineage. Dilong on the left is 125 million years old and the smallest known tyrannosaur. Xiongguanlong, shown in grey, is much larger, but is still dwarfed by T. rex, shown on the right. Credit: M. Donnelly/The Field Museum

From Live Science:

A Tyrannosaurus rex ancestor and an ostrich-mimic have emerged as two new dinosaur species found among a treasure trove of skeletons in China's Gobi Desert.

The T. rex relative had a mouthful of 70 teeth, and stood 5 feet tall at the hip while weighing almost a third of a ton. Scientists say that its discovery helps fill in a "missing link" in the giant carnivore's evolution.

However, the earlier dinosaur "was still a fly weight predator compared to its heavy-weight relatives," said Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at the Field Museum in Chicago. The Field Museum houses the largest known T. rex specimen, named Sue, which stood at nearly 14 feet tall at the hips and weighed between 6 and 7 tons.

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Are UFOs Real? Famous People Who Believed

A number of public figures have publicly stated that UFOs
are of extraterrestrial origin Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

The former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed that aliens exist and their visits are being covered up by the United States government. Mitchell is in good company in his beliefs. Here we highlight 12 other public figures who believe that extraterrestrials may have been visiting our planet over the last 100 years.

Jimmy Carter, US President from 1976 to 1980, promised while on the campaign trail that he would make public all documents on UFOs if elected. He said: "I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs. I've seen one myself."

General Douglas MacArthur, the Korean and Second World War soldier, said in 1955 that "the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets. The politics of the future will be cosmic, or interplanetary".

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'Quiet Sun' Baffling Astronomers

Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year (r)

From The BBC:

The Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.

There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time.

The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting.

The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period.

Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

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Cosmic Close-Up: Sensational Images Of Saturn Show The Ringed Planet In Incredible Detail

This image was taken by Cassini as it moved above the dark side of the planet. As very little light makes its way through the rings, they appear somewhat dark compared with the reflective surface of Saturn. This view combines 45 images taken over the course of about two hours

From The Daily Mail:

These stunning images of Saturn taken by Nasa's Cassini spacecraft show the ringed planet, its moons and rings in the most incredible detail yet.

Extraordinary glimpses of the planet's atmosphere and surfaces add to our expanding understanding of the sixth planet in the solar system, as the Equinox mission approaches its second year.

The images show the incredible differences within the Saturn system. In one image, serene-looking rings are elegantly stacked up around its equator, making a striking contrast to the cratered appearance of its plethora of moons.

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Dr Panayiotis Zavos will be online from 10am BST to answer questions about his controversial work

Dr Panayiotis Zavos will be online from 10am BST to
answer questions about his controversial work.

From The Independent:

Controversial doctor filmed creating embryos before injecting them into wombs of women wanting cloned babies

A controversial fertility doctor claimed yesterday to have cloned 14 human embryos and transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women who had been prepared to give birth to cloned babies.

The cloning was recorded by an independent documentary film-maker who has testified to The Independent that the cloning had taken place and that the women were genuinely hoping to become pregnant with the first cloned embryos specifically created for the purposes of human reproduction.

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Italian Scientist, Turning 100, Still Works

Italian neurologist and senator for life Rita Levi Montalcini, Nobel Prize winner for Medicine in 1986, delivers her address at a press conference for her one hundredth birthday in Rome, Saturday April 18, 2009. Montalcini will be 100 years old on April 22. The Italian scientist received the Nobel prize for medicine with Stanley Cohen of the United States, in 1986, for discoveries of mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs. Riccardo De Luca /AP Photo

From The State:

ROME -- Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said Saturday that even though she is about to turn 100, her mind is sharper than it was she when she was 20.

Levi Montalcini, who also serves as a senator for life in Italy, celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, and she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute.

She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.

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New Engine Design Sparks Interest

Photo: Scuderi Group unveiled a prototype of its fuel-saving engine Monday in Detroit. Car makers including Honda and Daimler have shown interest. Scuderi Engine

From The Wall Street Journal:

WEST SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- On Easter Sunday in 2001, Carmelo Scuderi called his family together in his home here and announced, essentially, that he had outsmarted the world's auto makers and their billion-dollar research departments.

The retired engineer and inventor told his children and grandchildren he had developed a dramatically more fuel-efficient design for the internal combustion engine, something car companies have been chasing for decades.

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What Makes Us Human?

Photo: The 1 percent difference: Humans are distinct from chimpanzees in a number of important respects, despite sharing nearly 99 percent of their DNA. New analyses are revealing which parts of the genome set our species apart. James Balog Getty Images

From Scientific American Magazine:

Six years ago I jumped at an opportunity to join the international team that was identifying the sequence of DNA bases, or “letters,” in the genome of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). As a biostatistician with a long-standing interest in human origins, I was eager to line up the human DNA sequence next to that of our closest living relative and take stock. A humbling truth emerged: our DNA blueprints are nearly 99 percent identical to theirs. That is, of the three billion letters that make up the human genome, only 15 million of them—less than 1 percent—have changed in the six million years or so since the human and chimp lineages diverged.

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How Pocket-Size Computers Will Finally Overcome Small Screens And Tiny Keyboards

From Popular Mechanics:

Today, a 4-inch-long smartphone holds as much processing power as a desktop PC from five years ago—or a warehouse-bound computer from just a few decades prior. But Moore's law moves far faster than evolution, and no matter how small processors and memory chips shrink, human hands remain the same size. Even if pocket-size computers are technologically capable of serving as our primary go-anywhere PC, their tiny keyboards and small screens present ergonomic problems. Thumbing out a short e-mail on a Blackberry or iPhone may be easy, but try writing a dissertation or creating a CAD model.

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