Daylight Saving Time: Why Did We Do It?

From Live Science:

At 2:00 a.m. local on Sunday, most of the United States except Hawaii and Arizona will leave daylight saving time behind and fall back an hour to standard time.

The annoyance of resetting clocks (or forgetting to, and showing up an hour early for appointments on Sunday) may raise the question of why we bother with this rigmarole in the first place.

Daylight saving time is most often associated with the oh-so-sweet extra hour of sleep in fall and the not-so-nice loss of an hour in spring, but some of the original reasons for resetting our clocks twice a year including saving energy and having more daylight hours for retailers, sporting events and other activities that benefit from a longer day.

As far back as the 1700s, people recognized the potential to save energy by jumping clocks ahead one hour in the summer — Benjamin Franklin even wrote about it — although the idea was not put into practice until the 20th century.

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Hubble Up And Running, With A Picture To Prove It

This image from the Hubble telescope demonstrates that its wide field planetary camera 2 is working properly. NASA/ESA/M. Livio, STScI

From The New York Times:

After an electrical malfunction caused it to go dormant a month ago, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. But the space shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble has been pushed back again, NASA officials said Thursday.

To show this week that the orbiting eye still has the same chops as ever, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore used Hubble’s wide-field planetary camera 2 to record this image of a pair of smoke-rings galaxies known as Arp 147.

The galaxies, about 450 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, apparently collided in the recent cosmic past. According to Mario Livio, of the space telescope institute, one of the galaxies passed through the other, causing a circular wave, like a pebble tossed into a pond, that has now coalesced into a ring of new blue stars. The center of the impacted galaxy can be seen as a reddish blur along the bottom of a blue ring.

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Phoenix Enters Safe Mode

(Image from NASA)

From Mars Daily:

NASA'S Phoenix Mars Lander entered safe mode late yesterday in response to a low-power fault brought on by deteriorating weather conditions. While engineers anticipated that a fault could occur due to the diminishing power supply, the lander also unexpectedly switched to the "B" side of its redundant electronics and shut down one of its two batteries.

During safe mode, the lander stops non-critical activities and awaits further instructions from the mission team. Within hours of receiving information of the safing event, mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and at Lockheed Martin in Denver, were able to send commands to restart battery charging. It is not likely that any energy was lost.

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New NASA Capsule Orion Resembles Apollo

Engineers and technician run a structural mass properties test on a test module of the Orion crew exploration vehicle at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base. Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

New NASA Capsule Orion Resembles Apollo
-- L.A. Times

The agency unveils the test module for structural testing at Edwards Air Force Base. The capsule, designed to carry humans to the moon, looks a lot like the one that first did so four decades ago.

Reporting from Edwards Air Force Base -- NASA rolled out its next-generation space capsule here Wednesday, revealing a bulbous module that is scheduled to carry humans back to the moon in 2020 and eventually onward to Mars.

Unlike the space-plane shape of the shuttles, the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle looks strikingly similar to the old Apollo space capsule that carried Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back in 1969, with Armstrong and Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the lunar surface.

There is one key difference, however. The test module, unveiled at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, is substantially bigger -- 16.5 feet in diameter compared with Apollo 11's 12.8 feet.

The craft's extra girth will allow it to carry six astronauts instead of Apollo's three.

"This is the same shape as Apollo," said Gary Martin, the project manager for the test program at Dryden. "But the extra space translates into twice as much volume as Apollo."

Still, cramming six astronauts inside will make it "pretty cozy," he said.

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Ten Immune System-Boosting Foods

Some foods can help protect against viruses and bacteria when you are sick.
(AP Photos/Getty Images)

From ABC News:

Many people, when they are feeling miserable from a cold or the flu, get the urge to gorge on food. But picking the right foods can benefit and even speed healing.

"This is more or less a new area," said Kerry Neville, a Seattle dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "There has been some good research, and we'll be seeing more. But it remains to be seen how much of this can actually be helpful."

Teasing out how and where food can benefit is difficult because our immune systems -- a coordinated system of signals sent and received, feedback loops and multiple redundancies to ensure that foreign molecules are identified and destroyed if they are harmful -- are so complex. A breakdown in any part of the system leaves the whole body susceptible to infection and illness.

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Brain's 'Hate Circuit' Identified

New research has found that people who view pictures of someone they hate display activity in distinct areas of the brain that, together, may be thought of as a 'hate circuit.' (Credit: iStockphoto/Valentin Casarsa)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2008) — People who view pictures of someone they hate display activity in distinct areas of the brain that, together, may be thought of as a 'hate circuit', according to new research by scientists at UCL (University College London).

The study, by Professor Semir Zeki and John Romaya of the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at UCL, examined the brain areas that correlate with the sentiment of hate and shows that the 'hate circuit' is distinct from those related to emotions such as fear, threat and danger – although it shares a part of the brain associated with aggression. The circuit is also quite distinct from that associated with romantic love, though it shares at least two common structures with it.

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Hubble Re-Opens An Eye

The Hubble telescope has helped scientists view various new galaxies and stars from space.
(AP Photo )

From ABC News:

The Hubble Space Telescope has reawakened and is taking its first pictures of the sky after a series of glitches left it idle for a full month.

Engineers successfully booted up the probe's main camera, the Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2, on Saturday. The instrument, which is set to be swapped out in 2009 during the telescope's last servicing mission, is now taking its last scheduled images of the sky.

"It is a relief that everything is working well," says Rodger Doxsey, head of the Hubble mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. "We did a few calibration observations, which worked fine, and then restarted science observing with it over the weekend."

Hubble has been mostly dormant since late September, when a device needed to collect and process data from the telescope's science instruments failed.

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New Minerals Point To Wetter Mars

(Photo from NASA Astrobiology Institute)

From The BBC:

A Nasa space probe has discovered a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars.

The find suggests liquid water remained on Mars' surface a billion years later than scientists had previously thought.

The US Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft found evidence of hydrated silica, better known as opal.

The discovery adds to the growing body of evidence that water played a crucial role in shaping the Martian landscape and - possibly - in sustaining life.

Hydrated, or water-containing, minerals are telltale signs of when and where water was present on ancient Mars.

Researchers made the discovery using the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer (CRISM) instrument on MRO.

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Pictured: The Cave Of Crystals Discovered 1,000ft Below A Mexican Desert

(Click To Enlarge)
Crystal forest: People clambering through the Cave of Crystals in Mexico wearing suits and backpacks of ice-cool air to cope with the 112F temperature (Image from The Daily Mail)

From The Daily Mail:

Until you notice the orange-suited men clambering around, it's hard to grasp the extraordinary scale of this underground crystal forest.

Nearly 1,000ft below the Chihuahua Desert in Mexico, this cave was discovered by two brothers drilling in the Naica lead and silver mine. It is an eerie sight.

Up to 170 giant, luminous obelisks - the biggest is 37.4ft long and the equivalent height of six men - jut across the grotto like tangled pillars of light; and the damp rock of their walls is covered with yet more flawless clusters of blade-sharp crystal.

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Doorknobs And TV Remotes Are Germ Hotbeds

Germs, germs everywhere. Now that cold and flu season has arrived, germs are lurking in more places than you might think. Read on to find out where pesky bugs love to hang out. Rob Cross/The Ottawa Citizen

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – Someone in your house have the sniffles? Watch out for the refrigerator door handle. The TV remote, too. A new study finds that cold sufferers often leave their germs there, where they can live for two days or longer. Scientists at the University of Virginia, long known for its virology research, tested surfaces in the homes of people with colds and reported the results Tuesday at the nation's premier conference on infectious diseases.

Doctors don't know how often people catch colds from touching germy surfaces as opposed to, say, shaking a sick person's hand, said Dr. Birgit Winther, an ear, nose and throat specialist who helped conduct the study.

Two years ago, she and other doctors showed that germs survived in hotel rooms a day after guests left, waiting to be picked up by the next person checking in.

For the new study, researchers started with 30 adults showing early symptoms of colds. Sixteen tested positive for rhinovirus, which causes about half of all colds. They were asked to name 10 places in their homes they had touched in the preceding 18 hours, and researchers used DNA tests to hunt for rhinovirus.

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Love, Sex And The Changing Landscape Of Infidelity

From The New York Times:

If you cheated on your spouse, would you admit it to a researcher?

That question is one of the biggest challenges in the scientific study of marriage, and it helps explain why different studies produce different estimates of infidelity rates in the United States.

Surveys conducted in person are likely to underestimate the real rate of adultery, because people are reluctant to admit such behavior not just to their spouses but to anyone.

In a study published last summer in The Journal of Family Psychology, for example, researchers from the University of Colorado and Texas A&M surveyed 4,884 married women, using face-to-face interviews and anonymous computer questionnaires. In the interviews, only 1 percent of women said they had been unfaithful to their husbands in the past year; on the computer questionnaire, more than 6 percent did.

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The Spread Of Polio

Polio Spreads to New Countries and Increases
Where It’s Endemic -- New York Times

Polio infections are increasing and spreading to new countries, according to case counts recently released by the World Health Organization.

Since April, outbreaks have been found in 10 countries beyond the 4 in which polio is considered endemic — Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. And in those four countries, the number of cases is more than double the number found by this time in 2007.

In Africa, cases have been found as far south as Angola and as far west as Ethiopia. Each detected case implies another 200 cases with few or no symptoms, experts say.

There have been outbreaks of both type 1 and type 3 polio, which frustrate W.H.O. plans, begun in 2005, to concentrate on a monovalent vaccine against type 1. Recent studies show that vaccine to be far more effective against type 1 than the old trivalent vaccine was. But it does not protect against type 3, and a new monovalent vaccine against that is being introduced. (Type 2 was eliminated in 1999.)

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Is NASA's Ares Doomed?

Saturn 5, Space Shuttle, Ares 1, Ares 5
(Image from Internet Encyclopedia Of Science)

From Orlando Sentinel:

CAPE CANAVERAL - Bit by bit, the new rocket ship that is supposed to blast America into the second Space Age and return astronauts to the moon appears to be coming undone.

First was the discovery that it lacked sufficient power to lift astronauts in a state-of-the-art capsule into orbit. Then engineers found out that it might vibrate like a giant tuning fork, shaking its crew to death.

Now, in the latest setback to the Ares I, computer models show the ship could crash into its launch tower during liftoff.

The issue is known as "liftoff drift." Ignition of the rocket's solid-fuel motor makes it "jump" sideways on the pad, and a southeast breeze stronger than 12.7 mph would be enough to push the 309-foot-tall ship into its launch tower.

Worst case, the impact would destroy the rocket. But even if that doesn't happen, flames from the rocket would scorch the tower, leading to huge repair costs.

"We were told by a person directly involved [in looking at the problem] that as they incorporate more variables into the liftoff-drift-curve model, the worse the curve becomes," said one NASA contractor, who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to discuss Ares.

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The Internet Is 5,000 Days Old -- What Will The Next 5,000 Days Bring

The Global Machine -- Ubiwar

Sue Thomas sent me this talk by Kevin Kelly, who probably needs little introduction to most Ubiwar readers. In this December 2007 presentation Kelly takes a look at the next 5000 days of the web (the web being approximately 5000 days old when he gave this talk).

He suggests that the web will be the global machine (”The One”) and this will entail different ways of interacting with information, and it with us. This is fascinating stuff, particularly for me, who seems to spend an awful lot of time these days considering ‘convergence’ and its effects on security and violence.

This is 20 minutes of anyone’s time well spent, and he’s a good speaker too, so it’s painless…

Science Says We Really Are What We Drink

From Time Magazine:

And now for some helpful scientific advice: When that IRS agent comes to your office to conduct an audit, offer him a cup of coffee. And when you're sitting down to do your holiday shopping online, make sure you're cradling a large glass of iced tea. The physical sensation of warmth encourages emotional warmth, while a chilly drink in hand serves as a brake on rash decisions — those are the practical lesson being drawn from recent research by two Yale-educated psychologists, published last week in Science magazine.

Encountering warmth or cold lights up the insula — a walnut-sized section of the brain — says John A. Bargh, a professor of psychology at Yale, who co-authored the paper with Lawrence E. Williams of the University of Colorado who received his Ph.D. from Yale earlier this year. And the insula is the same part of the brain engaged when we evaluate who we can trust in economic transactions, Bargh says.

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World Can Halt Fossil Fuel Use By 2090

From The New Scientist:

The world could eliminate fossil fuel use by 2090, saving $18 trillion in future fuel costs and creating a $360 billion industry that provides half of the world's electricity, the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) and environmental group Greenpeace said on Monday.

The 210-page study [pdf] is one of few reports – even by lobby groups – to look in detail at how energy use would have to be overhauled to meet the toughest scenarios for curbing greenhouse gases outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Renewable energy could provide all global energy needs by 2090," according to the study, entitled "Energy (R)evolution." EREC represents renewable energy industries and trade and research associations in Europe.

A more radical scenario could eliminate coal use by 2050 if new power generation plants shifted quickly to renewables.

Solar power, biomass such as biofuels or wood, geothermal energy and wind could be the leading energies by 2090 in a shift from fossil fuels blamed by the IPCC for stoking global warming.

The total energy investments until 2030, the main period studied, would come to $14.7 trillion, according to the study. By contrast, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises rich nations, foresees energy investments of just $11.3 trillion to 2030, with a bigger stress on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with ex-US Vice President Al Gore, called Monday's study "comprehensive and rigorous."

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Are You Evil? Profiling That Which Is Truly Wicked

INTRODUCING "E": a computer character first created in 2005 to embody Bringsjord's working definition of evil. Courtesy of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

From Scientific American:

A cognitive scientist employs malevolent logic to define the dark side of the human psyche

TROY, N.Y.—The hallowed halls of academia are not the place you would expect to find someone obsessed with evil (although some students might disagree). But it is indeed evil—or rather trying to get to the roots of evil—that fascinates Selmer Bringsjord, a logician, philosopher and chairman of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Department of Cognitive Science here. He's so intrigued, in fact, that he has developed a sort of checklist for determining whether someone is demonic, and is working with a team of graduate students to create a computerized representation of a purely sinister person.

"I've been working on what is evil and how to formally define it," says Bringsjord, who is also director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Lab (RAIR). "It's creepy, I know it is."

To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of "causing considerable harm to others," Bringsjord says. Finally, "and most importantly," he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing.

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Humans Made Fire 790,000 Years Ago: Study

From News Daily:

JERUSALEM, Oct. 26, 2008 (Reuters) — A new study shows that humans had the ability to make fire nearly 790,000 years ago, a skill that helped them migrate from Africa to Europe.

A previous study of the site published in 2004 showed that man had been able to control fire -- for example transferring it by means of burning branches -- in that early time period. But researchers now say that ancient man could actually start fire, rather than relying on natural phenomena such as lightning.

That independence helped promoted migration northward, they say.

The new study, published in a recent edition of Quaternary Science Reviews, mapped 12 archaeological layers at Gesher Benot Yaaqov in northern Israel.

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Why Some People Have A Better Head For Languages

(Image from Baltic Media)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2008) — Learning a second language is usually difficult and often when we speak it we cannot disguise our origin or accent. However, there are important differences between individuals with regard to the degree to which a second language is mastered, even for people who have lived in a bilingual environment since childhood.

Members of the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group (GRNC) linked to the Barcelona Science Park, have studied these differences. By comparing people who are able to perceive a second language as if they were native speakers of that language with people who find it very difficult to do so, they have observed that the former group is also better at distinguishing the sounds of their own native language. However, there is no difference between the two groups when they hear sounds that do not form part of the language.

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Space Tourist Enthusiastic About His Voyage

'Flawless' landing: Ground crew help U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott after the Soyuz capsule touches down (Photo from The Daily Mail)

'What A Ride!' Space Tourist And Russian Cosmonauts Return To Earth In 'Flawless' Landing -- Daily Mail

British-born space tourist Richard Garriott and his two Russian colleagues made a ‘flawless’ landing in Kazakhstan today, on their return from the International Space Station.

They avoided a string of mishaps that have plagued the Soyuz spacecraft on previous landings.

Cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, as well as American space tourist Richard Garriott, said they were ‘feeling well’. They were extracted from the capsule by a Russian recovery team.

Mr Garriott, the U.S. video game guru, who paid £17 million for his 10-day jaunt looked elated after his trip.

'What a great ride that was,' said Garriott.

Sitting in an armchair and wrapped in a blue blanket against the near-freezing temperature on the steppe, he smiled broadly.

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