Four Storms And More to Come

Tropical Quartet: 4 Storms With More To Come -- Yahoo News/AP

WASHINGTON - The tropics seem to be going crazy what with the remnants of Gustav, the new threat from Hanna, a strengthening Ike and newcomer Josephine. Get used to it.

Hurricane experts say all the weather ingredients, which normally fluctuate, are set on boil for the formation of storms. And it's going to stay that way for a while, they said.

Four named storms at the same time is a bit odd, but not unprecedented, meteorologists said. In 1995 five named storms lived simultaneously. And in 1998 there were four hurricanes at the same. But wait and see what happens next.

"Give us time, this is only Tuesday," said meteorologist Dennis Feltgren, spokesman for an all-too-busy hurricane center in Miami.

The peak of hurricane season isn't until Sept. 10 and this season already has 10 named storms, which is the long-term average for an entire season.

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Do Animals Grieve Over Death Like We Do?

From The International Herald Tribune:

As anybody who has grieved inconsolably over the death of a loved one can attest, extended mourning is, in part, a perverse kind of optimism. Surely this bottomless, unwavering sorrow will amount to something, goes the tape loop. Surely if I keep it up long enough I'll accomplish my goal, and the person will stop being dead.

Last week the Internet and European news outlets were flooded with poignant photographs of Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla at the Münster Zoo in Germany, holding up the body of her dead baby, Claudio, and pursing her lips toward his lifeless fingers. Claudio died at the age of 3 months of an apparent heart defect, and for days Gana refused to surrender his corpse to zookeepers, a saga that provoked among her throngs of human onlookers admiration and compassion and murmurings that, you see? Gorillas, and probably a lot of other animals as well, have a grasp of their mortality and will grieve for the dead and are really just like us after all.

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Worldwide Internet Traffic Is Still Growing

Internet Traffic Grows 53 Percent From 2007 -- MSNBC

Some U.S. Internet providers say they are struggling with expansion

NEW YORK - International Internet traffic kept growing in the last year, but at a slower rate than before, and carriers more than kept pace by adding more capacity, a research firm said Wednesday.

The findings by TeleGeography Research are important because some U.S. Internet service providers say they are struggling with the expansion of online traffic, and are imposing monthly download limits on heavy users. The figures from TeleGeography don't exactly correlate to average Internet usage by U.S. households, but give an indication of wider trends.

TeleGeography said traffic grew 53 percent from mid-2007 to mid-2008, down from a growth rate of 61 percent in the previous 12 months.

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Fighting For Survival

San Francisco Earthquake Of 1906

From the BBC:

If it seems like disasters are getting more common, it is because they are. Over the past 50 years, human beings have moved into more places that were never meant to be inhabited by our species.

We have built large, vertical cities near water, stripping the earth of natural protection and leaving us more vulnerable to all kinds of trouble.

At the same time, we have learned to forecast storms days before they arrive, and we can (with enough money) build sophisticated tsunami warning systems in our seas. But as we have built ever more impressive gadgets, we have done less and less to build better survivors.

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Chinese Devise Anti-Invisibility Cloak

From The Telegraph:

Only days after American scientists announced they have developed light warping materials suitable for invisibility cloaks, Chinese scientists have devised a way to peer under this cloak.

However, the good news for Harry Potter fans is that the anti -cloaking materials would have to be underneath the invisibility cloak to work. And they could help Harry Potter to improve his vision, as a bonus.

The recipe to undo invisibility comes from a study in the journal Optics Express by Dr Huanyang Chen of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

He and his colleagues have proposed a theoretical "anti-cloak" that would partially cancel the effect of the invisibility cloak, which is another important problem as it turns out.

In recent years, several teams have shown that the mathematics of invisibility makes sense. In the past few weeks, a Californian team has also shown that it is possible to create the special synthetic "metamaterials" to make cloaking materials.

All materials scatter, bounce, absorb, reflect and otherwise alter light rays that strike them.

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Chrome vs. IE 8: A Side-By-Side Comparison

A screenshot from Google's Chrome Web browser shows a user's nine most visited sites, as well as a list of recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs. The tabs, showing open Web pages, are placed over the Web address bar, the opposite of how Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox displays them.

From MSNBC:

Google knows how to lure users with the seeming simplicity of its products, even though there’s a great deal of complexity going on behind the scenes. Microsoft often makes products that seem to create more work than they should for users.

That dichotomy is evident in the companies’ Web browsers — Google’s new Chrome and Microsoft’s Windows Internet Explorer 8, both out in beta, or test, versions. (Msnbc.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

Chrome shines in its simplicity, while IE 8 brings some better functionality to an existing product.

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Rap About World's Largest Science Experiment Becomes YouTube Hit

What DID the Romans ever do for us? They gave us AIDS

From The Daily Mail:

What, as the old Monty Python question goes, have the Romans ever done for us?

Well, apart from the usual answers of roads, sanitation and a fondness for wine, it appears they have also made us more vulnerable to HIV.

According to genetic research published on Wednesday, when Julius Caesar made his first exploratory visit to our shores in 55BC he triggered a chain of events which may have lowered our resistance to the virus which leads to Aids.

The theory is that as the Roman Empire spread so did an unknown illness that killed those carrying a gene that would one day give their descendants resistance to the virus.

As a result, today's inhabitants of nations once conquered by the Romans tend to lack the gene and so are more susceptible to HIV.

For instance, only 4 per cent of Greeks carry the gene, compared with more than 15 per cent of people in parts of northern Europe untouched by the Romans.

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The Science Of Tracking Gustav

Hurricane Gustav

From CNN:

(CNN) -- Hurricanes can be some of the deadliest forces of nature, but they also follow a set of patterns and rules when they form.

Some parts of the storms can be more treacherous than others.

Geography also can play a huge role in how big and strong they will grow before they strike the United States.

CNN meteorologist Reynolds Wolf talked with CNN.com about Hurricane Gustav's path and potential for damage.

Q: There's been a lot of talk about the storm hitting to the west of New Orleans being worse for the city. Why is that?

The most dangerous part of the storm, when it comes to a hurricane, is always going to be the eastern side. One of the reasons why is simply because a lot of these tropical storm systems, they carry the greatest amount of wind, the greatest amount of storm surge, the heaviest rainfall ... on the right side of the storm simply because of the counterclockwise rotation.

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New Climate Study Indicates Hottest Decade in 1,300 Years

The new study uses a variety of evidence including ice cores, the result of painstaking data collection by NOAA and other research organizations. These data points provide a far more accurate picture than previous efforts derived from tree ring data. (Source: NOAA)

From DailyTech:

More research supporting a warming climate continues to pile on

Despite record lows in solar magnetic activity, thought to influence the climate, trends continue to point to a clear rise in temperatures worldwide. This is reflected by increased melting and other significant changes.

Now one of the more cohesive studies to date, published by Penn State's Earth System Science Center, has offered up a factual analysis of exactly how much warming is occurring. Rather than focus on creative modeling often considered a refuge of global warming skeptics and alarmists alike, Penn state instead analyzed historic and contemporary data.

It found that the last 10 years for the Northern Hemisphere were the hottest in 1,300 years. They also asserted that if more controversial tree ring data were used, this range could be extended to 1,700 years, but the tree ring data is for the first time unnecessary, eliminating much controversy.

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Massive Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Away

From Reuters:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.

They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.

"The changes ... were massive and disturbing," said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked to global warming.

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More News On This Ice Shelf Breakaway

PHOTO IN THE NEWS: Arctic Ice Shelves Crumbling Rapidly -- National Geographic
Large Arctic ice shelf breaks away, now adrift in Arctic Ocean -- Globe And Mail
Major ice-shelf loss for Canada -- BBC News
Arctic ice shelf splits; ice loss 10x expected this summer -- Arstechnica
Huge sheet of Canadian ice shelf breaks off, scientists say -- Earthtimes
Ellesmere Island loses huge ice shelf -- Canada.com

Closest Look Yet at Milky Way's Black Hole

Illustration shows accretion disk of matter (orange cloud) and jets of speeding particles (white swirls) that scientists think surround a black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Inset shows a computer simulation of matter swirling around the black hole, with red indicating brighter emission and bluer coloring representing dimmer light. Orange circle denotes comparative size of Sagittarius A* measured by new observations, which is smaller than previous measurements. Credit: MIT/NASA/CXC/Johns Hopkins/U. Illinois

From Space.com

If it looks like a black hole, and acts like a black hole, it's probably a black hole.

For a while now scientists have thought a dense, massive object lurking at the center of our galaxy is likely a giant black hole, but they haven't been able to prove it. New observations offering the closest view yet of the heart of the Milky Way present strong evidence for the black hole theory, and even hope of finally settling the question soon.

By linking a series of radio telescopes around the world, astronomers created a virtual telescope with the resolving power of a single dish the size of the distance between the various sites (about 2,800 miles, or 4,500 kilometers). This instrument grabbed an intimate image that probed nearly to the Milky Way's black hole's event horizon — the point beyond which nothing, including light, could ever escape.

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Will European Physicists Destroy The World?

A 1-in-1,000 Chance of Götterdämmerung -- Reason Online

Will the world come to an end on September 10? That fear is motivating two lawsuits—one American, another European—that aim to stop the physicists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) from switching on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on that day. The LHC is a $10 billion 17-mile long particle accelerator lying in a circular tunnel beneath the border of France and Switzerland. Its massive superconducting magnets cooled with liquid helium accelerate two beams of protons and lead nuclei to nearly the speed of light. These particle beams will eventually be crashed into each other to produce temperatures and particles not seen since microseconds after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

One of the chief goals of the LHC experiments is to find the elusive Higgs boson, the only fundamental particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics that has not been directly observed. The Higgs boson plays a key role in explaining the origins of mass in other elementary particles. Exciting, if esoteric research, to be sure, but why oppose it?

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New Study Shows Solar System Is Unique

From The Future Of Things:

Research conducted by a team of North American scientist shows our solar system is special, contrary to the accepted theory that it is an average planetary system. Using computer simulations to follow the development of planets, it was shown that very specific conditions are needed for a proto-stellar disk to evolve into a solar system-like planetary system. The simulations show that in most cases either no planets are created, or planets are formed and then migrate towards the disk center and acquire highly elliptical orbits.

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Another Article On Sunspots, But This One Provides A Good Roundup

Solar Cycle 24 Is Still Late, Perhaps Signalling
Cool Weather Ahead -- Fabius Maximus

Summary: Sunspot counts and other indicators of solar activity continue at low levels. The last month with zero sunspots was June 1913. August had zero spots, or one (there is some debate about this). How solar cycle 24 develops deserves to be on the list of things to watch for anyone interested in geopolitics. A “small” solar cycle — a period in which the global climate cools — would have substantial effects. Esp. with global grain inventories at such low levels. As always, links to more information are at the end of this post.

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Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research

Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research -- Wired Magazine

After six Nobel Prizes, the invention of the transistor, laser and countless contributions to computer science and technology, it is the end of the road for Bell Labs' fundamental physics research lab.

Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.

The idea is to align the research work in the Lab closer to areas that the parent company is focusing on, says Peter Benedict, spokesperson for Bell Labs and Alcatel-Lucent Ventures.

"In the new innovation model, research needs to keep addressing the need of the mother company," he says.

That view is shortsighted and may drastically curtail the Labs' ability to come up with truly innovative discoveries, respond critics.

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More Mysteries Answered From King Tut's Tomb

Foetuses Found In King Tutankhamun's Tomb 'Were His Twin Daughters', Says Expert -- Daily Mail

Two foetuses found in the tomb of Tutankhamun are very likely to have been twins and the children of the teenage Pharaoh, according to an expert.

Professor Robert Connolly is an anatomist working with the Egyptian authorities to analyse the mummified remains of Tutankhamun and the two stillborn children.

He will discuss his new findings at the Pharmacy and Medicine in Ancient Egypt Conference at the University of Manchester today.

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Now I Know Why I Am Always Stressed On Vacation

Psychologists have dubbed the high stress levels caused by internet dependency as 'discomgoogolation'.

Feel Stressed If You Can't Get Online? You Could Have 'Discomgoogolation' -- Daily Mail

Soaring numbers of internet addicts are suffering from extreme stress when they are unable to get their online 'hit', a new study has found.

Clinical monitoring of heavy web users revealed their brain activity and blood pressure increased markedly when they were cut off.

The stress of being disconnected was equivalent to that of running half an hour late for a key meeting, being about to sit an important exam or, in the worst cases, being sacked.

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Why I Love YouTube

Jimi Hendrix at the Marquee Club, London in 1967. Photograph: Herbert P Oczeret/Rex Features

CSN Editor: This is more of a culture/entertainment/arts post than a science post. But we all deserve a break sometimes.

The 50 Greatest Arts Videos On YouTube -- The Guardian

YouTube is best known for its offbeat videos that become viral sensations. But among its millions of clips is a treasure trove of rare and fascinating arts footage, lovingly posted by fans. Ajesh Patalay selects 50 of the best - Joy Division's TV debut, readings by Jack Kerouac, a Marlene Dietrich screen test, Madonna's first performance... and much more

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Are Hurricanes Getting More Violent?

(Click To Enlarge)

A Savage Force Of Nature – And Mounting Evidence They Are Becoming More Violent -- The Independent

Hurricanes are one of the most destructively powerful forces of nature and their existence depends on the surface temperature of the ocean reaching at least 26C. One obvious question is whether Gustav is the result of rising sea temperatures associated with global warming.

The simple answer is that it is virtually impossible to link any one weather event with climate change, yet there is mounting evidence that global warming could be causing hurricanes to increase in both frequency and intensity.

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