The Carbon Footprint of Wine

From Live Science:

NEW YORK — While sipping a glass of wine one evening, wine enthusiast Tyler Colman began to think about the impact that particular wine, which happened to come from South America in a particularly heavy glass bottle, had on the environment.

That thought prompted him to begin examining wine production, from vineyard to wine glass, and "how the path that wine takes to get to us contributes to the carbon footprint of wine," he said at a lecture on wine and climate change here recently at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Wine enthusiasts such as Colman and winemakers are increasingly becoming aware of the impact their favorite beverage has on the environment, from the pesticides and fertilizers used to grow wine grapes, to the greenhouse gases released while transporting the wine from the vineyard to often far-reaching locales.

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Temps In Most Areas Of Country Below Average In '08

A Look At The 5 Men, 2 Women Who Will Fly Endeavour To The Space Station

From L.A. Times:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) _ Space shuttle Endeavour's seven astronauts will spend Thanksgiving circling Earth, and one of them — Sandra Magnus — will stick around for Christmas and New Year's as well.

Commander Christopher Ferguson said at least seven turkey dinners have been stowed aboard Endeavour for the trip to the international space station. Liftoff for the two-week mission is set for Friday night.

"They've given us the full seven-course Thanksgiving meal, and all we need to have now is the time to eat it," Ferguson said.

The made-to-order holiday menu includes irradiated smoked turkey, thermostabilized candied yams, rehydratable green beans and mushrooms, fresh corn bread dressing and cranberry-apple dessert.

A look at the five men and two women who will fly on Endeavour:

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Could Life Have Started In A Lump Of Ice?

From Physorg.com:

The universe is full of water, mostly in the form of very cold ice films deposited on interstellar dust particles, but until recently little was known about the detailed small scale structure. Now the latest quick freezing techniques coupled with sophisticated scanning electron microscopy techniques, are allowing physicists to create ice films in cold conditions similar to outer space and observe the detailed molecular organisation, yielding clues to fundamental questions including possibly the origin of life. Researchers have been surprised by some of the results, not least by the sheer beauty of some of the images created, according to Julyan Cartwright, a specialist in ice structures at the Andalusian Institute for Earth Sciences (IACT) of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Granada in Spain.

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Sad About The Economy? Dream About The Future

At a Web 2.0 Summit start-up mock-pitch event called Launchpad, organizer John Battelle says the companies onstage would not be fly-by-night start-ups, but rather emerging companies with solid business models and the potential to have a big social impact. (Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET Networks)

From CNET News:

SAN FRANCISCO--The wild days of Web 2.0 may have thrown their last sheep. Here's how you can tell that things have gotten serious: at O'Reilly Media and Techweb's Web 2.0 Summit this week, people actually showed up for breakfast.

That's because they probably weren't out as late. The party scene at tech conferences tends to be a bacchanalia--take South by Southwest Interactive, with enough events to make any little black book burst at the seams, or TechCrunch50 a few months ago, where rumor has it that a high-profile dot-commer got so drunk at an afterparty that conference organizers politely asked him to delete some intoxicated Twitter posts.

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Physicists Create BlackMax To Search For Extra Dimensions In The Universe

Black holes are theorized to be regions in space where the gravitational field is so strong that nothing can escape its pull after crossing what is called the event horizon. BlackMax simulates these regions. (Credit: iStockphoto/Christophe Rolland)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2008) — A team of theoretical and experimental physicists, with participants from Case Western Reserve University, have designed a new black hole simulator called BlackMax to search for evidence that extra dimensions might exist in the universe.

Black holes are theorized to be regions in space where the gravitational field is so strong that nothing can escape its pull after crossing what is called the event horizon. BlackMax simulates these regions.

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Fusion Energy: Europe's New Holy Grail? (Part 2)

In the fusion process Deuterium and Tritium (isotopes of Hydrogen) are compressed to create Helium and an energetic particle or neutron. This neutron can be captured to produce energy by heating water to drive a steam turbine. But producing more energy than is used in the process remains the key to a real breakthrough.

From TCS Daily:

Not all senior physicists believe an early breakthrough in fusion energy is either possible or, given the prevailing global economic conditions, even viable. And when Professor Dunne, director of the European HIPER project gives us an analogy for "perspective," it is not hard to see why. Dunne puts it this way:

"The laser is 10,000 times the power of the entire UK National Grid. And then you're going to focus that down onto a spot that's 10 to 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The pressure is equivalent to 10 Nimitz class aircraft carriers sitting on your thumb. Some pretty crazy things are going to happen."

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Fusion Energy: Europe's New Holy Grail? (Part 1)

From TCS Daily:

A long-standing joke among physicists is that a breakthrough in pursuit of the holy grail of fusion energy is 'always just around the corner'. In October scientists in Europe formally launched the latest fusion energy project the High Power Laser Energy facility (HIPER). Due to be built and operational by 2020, HIPER represents phase 2 of Europe's twin-track approach; a phase that will involve constructing the world's largest laser, a laser the size of a football stadium.

But while HIPER's lead scientist believes a fusion energy breakthrough is just years away, some senior physicists are not only sceptical but question the whole need for fusion energy at all.

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Volcanism On The Far Side Of The Moon

Counting craters: A close-up of the terraced structure within a crater taken by the Japanese SELENE probe. Credit: SELENE/JAXA

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: New images of the far side of the Moon show that volcanoes continued to erupt there for much longer than previously thought.

The Moon is covered by large 'seas' of basalt, called mares. Most mares stopped forming three billion years ago, one billion years after the Moon formed from a collision between the Earth and another nascent planetoid.

Episodic volcanism

However, several mare deposits on the lunar farside (the side that always faces away from Earth) show a much younger age of around 2.5 billion years old, according to research published today in the U.S. journal Science.

These young ages indicate that mare volcanism on the Moon lasted longer than experts realised and may have occurred episodically, the authors write.

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Volcanoes: Nature's Way of Letting Off Steam

From Scientific American:

Whether it's natural gas drilling unleashing a mud volcano that has engulfed 12 Indonesian villages or the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 blanketing the world in enough particles to block out the sunshine and lower temperatures by more than a 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), volcanoes are among Earth's most destructive natural phenomena.

These openings, or vents, in Earth's crust allow hot ash, steam or even magma to erupt. Lava flows can then build new land in the ocean—as in the case of Hawaii—or entomb whole cities, as in the case of Pompeii in A.D. 79.

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Mystery Of The Screaming Mummy

Unexpected: Alongside the remains of great Egyptian pharoahs lay the body of a young man, his face locked in an eternal blood-curdling scream, in a plain, undecorated coffin

From the Daily Mail:

It was a blood-curdling discovery. The mummy of a young man with his hands and feed bound, his face contorted in an eternal scream of pain. But who was he and how did he die?

On a scorching hot day at the end of June 1886, Gaston Maspero, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, was unwrapping the mummies of the 40 kings and queens found a few years earlier in an astonishing hidden cache near the Valley of the Kings.

The 1881 discovery of the tombs, in the Deir El Bahri valley, 300 miles south of Cairo, had been astonishing and plentiful. Hidden from the world for centuries were some of the great Egyptian pharaohs - Rameses the Great, Seti I and Tuthmosis III. Yet this body, buried alongside them, was different, entombed inside a plain, undecorated coffin that offered no clues to the deceased's identity.

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The Great Fear Of The Unknown

Part of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is seen in its tunnel at the CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland. By Martial Trezzini, AP

From USA Today:

So much for the end of the world.

Fears that the atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider would create black holes — gravitational sinkholes from which not even light can escape — and end life as we know it have joined UFOs and Bigfoot on the roster of pseudoscientific scares.

Before it was launched on Oct. 10, bloggers, late-night comedians, worried parents around the world and at least two lawsuits greeted the mere start-up of the collider with dismay. But Earth clearly survived the collider's first nine days of operations before a technical glitch shut it down.

Experts at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN — an acronym kept from an earlier name), which created the $6 billion grand experiment in particle physics, are resigned to the scares kicking up again when the collider starts back up next year and begins smashing protons.

"It's only natural. We are curious about the unknown, and that's why we explore mysteries like the conditions of the early universe," says CERN spokesman James Gillies. "At the same time, we fear the unknown, and particle physics can be one of those things that is hard for people to understand."

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Vitamin B Supplements Could Prevent Alzheimer's Memory Loss

From The Telegraph:

Patients with Alzheimer's disease have been given fresh hope as scientists discover that off the shelf vitamin B supplement halts memory loss.

Researchers have discovered that high doses of Vitamin B3, which costs as little as £4 over the counter, could have a dramatic effect on the onslaught of the progressive disease.

The breakthrough by US scientists could mean a cheap and easily obtainable treatment for the 417,000 or so sufferers in the UK.

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How To Recover Your Google Account

From Wired:

Recently some high-profile people have found themselves suddenly locked out of their Google Accounts. The lockouts have started some rumbling in the blogosphere that maybe, just maybe, we’re all a little too reliant on Gmail and the rest of Google’s very handy, but potentially unreliable, services.

It’s about time we started waking up. Take a cue from Free Software advocate Richard Stallman who suggests handing all your data over to the cloud is "worse than stupidity."

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Astronauts Head For Extreme Home Makeover In Space

Hubble Space Telescope is seen in this picture taken from Space Shuttle in March 2002.
(NASA/Handout/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/AP:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The international space station is about to get all the comforts of a modern, high-end, "green" home: a fancy recycling water filter, a new fridge, extra bedrooms, workout equipment and the essential half-bath.

Later this week, space shuttle Endeavour's seven astronauts will carry up all the frills for more luxurious space station living — and a larger household. Liftoff is set for Friday night.

It will be a home makeover in the extreme. The space station will go from a three-bedroom, one-bath house with kitchenette to a five-bedroom, two-bath house with two kitchenettes and the latest gizmos NASA has to offer.

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Are Alternative Fuels Reliving The 1980s?

Workers install solar panels on the roof of an Austin, Texas, home.
(Ann Hermes/CSM/File)

From Christian Science Monitor:

Today’s slumping oil prices may undermine viability of alt-fuel programs – again.

Tumbling gas-pump prices make motorists smile, but not Peter Vanderzee. They remind him how falling oil costs sank his effort to unshackle the United States from Middle East oil two decades ago.

As project manager for two large alternative-energy projects under President Carter’s US Synthetic Fuels program launched in 1980, Mr. Vanderzee was pushing his team to make methanol from coal for auto fuel.

But in 1985, just as his technology was starting to produce results, oil plummeted. In today’s inflation-adjusted dollars, oil went from $53 a barrel to $28, with pump prices falling from $2.20 a gallon to $1.60. The next year, President Reagan pulled the plug on the US Synfuels program.

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'Anti-Aging' Pill Makes Mice Mighty

Mighty and Mini
After 15 weeks a high-calorie diet, mice taking at least 500 mg of a new drug gained no weight. Meanwhile, their cholesterol levels improved and their running ability got a measurable boost. But don't run to the pharmacy: for now, this prescription is for rodents only.

From Discovery:

Nov. 7, 2008 -- Eat more than you should. Stay skinny. Run twice as far. Those are the big claims coming from a new drug study from Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in Cambridge, Mass. This latest study clears the way for human clinical trials of SRT1720, often touted as an "anti-aging pill."

SRT1720 activates the same receptor as the much-discussed resveratrol, the chemical in red wine that may slow some effects of aging. Both resveratrol and SRT1720 are being tested as a way to treat type-two diabetes first, and possibly other age-related diseases, later.

"We are very excited by these results," said Michelle Dipp of Sirtris. "These compounds are mimicking calorie restriction and exercise while lowering levels of glucose and insulin in mice. It's a game changer."

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Wonders Of Ocean Life Counted In Massive Census

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A city of brittle stars off the coast of New Zealand, an Antarctic expressway where octopuses ride along in a flow of extra salty water and a carpet of tiny crustaceans on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor are among the wonders discovered by researchers compiling a massive census of marine life.

"We are still making discoveries," but researchers also are busy assembling data already collected into the big picture of life in the oceans, senior scientist Ron O'Dor said.

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Plucky Mars rovers on the move again

The Opportunity rover climbed out of Victoria Crater (right) in late August
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

New Scientist Space:

The arrival of spring in southern Mars is reviving NASA's two venerable Mars rovers as deepening autumn in the arctic north slowly freezes the Phoenix lander.

After hibernating for the winter on the northern edge of a plateau called Home Plate, the Spirit rover moved uphill in October to collect more sunlight.

On the other side of the planet, the Opportunity rover, which climbed out of a large crater called Victoria at the end of August, has completed the first month of a 12-kilometre trek towards an even bigger crater called Endeavour. That journey is expected to take more than two years.

Designed to last only 90 days, the two rovers have survived for nearly five years on the Red Planet. Both are showing their age, but Jake Matijevic, chief of rover engineering at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says they still are doing fine.

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Prefabulous: 9 Amazingly Modern Factory Built Homes

From Style Crave:

Factory-built homes have a “trailer park” stigma no more. These amazing modern homes are built in a factory then shipped to site. Not only is the process more efficient and less expensive, it is the green way to build a quality, sustainable home. Process aside, these homes are beautiful, and much cheaper than any comparable site-built home on the market. Here are 9 of the USA’s greatest modern prefab homes…

For those who are new to the world of prefab architecture, the process is basic. An architect develops a plan for a home, but instead of contracting the development to a builder, they build the home in sections in a climate-controlled warehouse. These sections are then shipped to the final worksite where they are joined and finalized into a finished home. This process is more cost-effective as it takes advantage of bulk material purchasing and construction, it avoids weather-induced delays, it maintains a regular staff familiar to the blueprints and allows for a greater level of control over quality. Now that you’re up to speed, here are 9 reasons why your next home might just be a prefab.

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