Offshore Wind Power Could Alter Ocean Currents

Roiling Ocean Waters
A small service vessel steers between offshore windmills in the North Sea offshore from the village of Blavandshuk near Esbjerg, Denmark. Large offshore wind farms can stir up ocean nutrients which, in turn, could lead to an uptick in fish populations, new research suggests. AP Photo/Heribert Proepper

From Discovery:

Nov. 12, 2008 -- Generating wind power at sea may disturb ocean currents and marine ecosystems, according to a new study.

Offshore wind farms are common in Europe; Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom all have several active installations. Wind power in the United States is currently confined to dry land, but three installations are planned off the coast of New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Delaware, totaling about 1,500 megawatts of generating capacity.

Extracting energy from wind changes regional air currents, which can in turn affect how the nearby ocean circulates, according to Goran Brostrom of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo.

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Two-Fifths Of Earth's Population at Risk

From Science Blog:

Vibrio cholerae. Cholera. One of the most aggressive water-borne infections, cholera can kill within 24 hours, and has caused seven pandemics in history. It occurs in over 60 countries worldwide. Currently, the World Health Organization(WHO) has warned that cholera is a serious risk in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there have already been 1,000 cases since October. Of course, most Americans are unfamiliar with cholera since the last outbreak in the U.S. was in 1911. And I don't think any of us were around for that.

Cholera is a bacterial infection of the intestine that comes from consuming infected food or water. Symptoms begin with sever diarrhea and vomiting, which then lead to dehydration. Blood pressure falls, cramps develop in the legs and abdomen, and then body temperature drops as organ failure occurs. Not a pretty picture. There is hope however.

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How Floating 'Energy Islands' Could Power the Future

Three Energy Islands are shown connected in this artist rendering. Credit: Energy Island

From Live Science:

Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies — the power of the future.

The ocean harbors abundant energy in the form of wind, waves and sun. All of these could be sampled on something called an Energy Island: a floating rig that drills for renewables instead of petroleum.

The concept is the brainchild of inventor Dominic Michaelis. He was originally unsatisfied with the slow progress in developing ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), a process in which cold water is pumped up from the deep ocean to generate electricity.

"Nothing new was happening with OTEC, so I thought why not bring other marine energy technologies on board?" Michaelis said.

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A History Of Microsoft Windows

From Wired News:

Windows 1.0

The world's most ubiquitous operating system was not always so. The evolution of Windows was often uncertain and precarious. Its success was symbiotic with advancements in processor speed and memory capacity, and Microsoft relied heavily on third-party software to bridge the gap between concept and consumer. Tour the 23-year history of the Windows OS through these screenshots.

Left: Microsoft's first graphical user interface -- Windows 1.0 -- wasn't released until November 1985, nearly two years after Apple introduced the Mac. Due to legal issues with Apple, Gates couldn't include key features like overlapping windows and a trash can. Looking at it now, it's not surprising it was a flop. Windows 1.0 was more an extension of MS-DOS than its own operating system, but it did allow limited multitasking and mouse support.

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Study Shows How Spammers Cash In

From BBC News:

Spammers are turning a profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5m e-mails they send, finds a study.

By hijacking a working spam network, US researchers have uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer.

The analysis suggests that such a tiny response rate means a big spam operation can turn over millions of pounds in profit every year.

It also suggests that spammers may be susceptible to attacks that make it more costly to send junk mail.

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Google Earth Does Ancient Rome

Taiwan Makes Fastest 60GHz Wireless System On A Chip, 100 Times Wifi Speed For Less Than $1

From The Next Big Future:

National Taiwan University announced their latest invention System on a Chip (SOC) yesterday, the smallest such product at the lowest cost and consuming the least electricity. The NTU research team claims that the transmission speed of the chip is 100 times as fast as WiFi and 350 times as fast as a 3.5G cell phone. Lee indicated that the chip size has been reduced to 0.5 millimeter, one-tenth of that of existing chips, and the cost is less than one-tenth of the traditional communication module and could be further lowered to only US$1. The SOC successfully combines RF Front-End Circuits and an antenna array to reach the highest transmission speed.

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IBM To Help Build Broadband Network In Power Lines

From Yahoo News Finance/AP:

Broadband over power lines gets a needed endorsement from a big player in computing

NEW YORK (AP) -- IBM Corp. is throwing its considerable weight behind an idea that seemed to have faded: broadband Internet access delivered over ordinary power lines.

The technology has been around for decades, but most efforts to implement the idea on a broad scale have failed to live up to expectations.

Now, with somewhat scaled-back goals, improved technology, and a dose of low-interest federal loans, IBM is partnering with a small newcomer called International Broadband Electric Communications Inc. to try to make the idea work in rural communities that don't have other broadband options.

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27.7 Billion Gallons Of Ethanol To Be Produced By 2012

(Photo from Device Daily)

From Device Daily:

Nowadays, the Earth is getting more and more polluted because of fossil fuels. We already know that, but still our planet suffers even more. Although it’s not the best solution, ethanol could provide a better option as an alternate fuel as anything is better than gasoline or oil. The world ethanol market is expected to reach 27.7 billion gallons by 2012 as the interest in fuel-ethanol is rising thanks to the ban on MTBE in several countries.

Ethanol is also receiving help from many governments which have strict rules and they have begun to demand the presence of ethanol in fuels. Unsurprisingly, the world leader in the production of ethanol will be the USA which has mandated a use of 8 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. The US is aiming to cut down greenhouse gas emissions, and to reduce their dependence on oil therefore ethanol will be an important part when renewable fuels will take over.

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GHG Photos: Images Of A Climate Changed World

A picture is worth a thousand words. GHG Photos presents a wonderful selection of before and now pictures of our changing environment.

The intro on their site states their mission statement clearly:

GHG is the scientific shorthand for Greenhouse Gases, the gases whose build up in the upper atmosphere is the cause of anthropogenic climate change. GHG Photos is a coalition of science, environmental, nature, and documentary photographers who have spent the last several years focused on the emissions and effects of those Greenhouse Gas emissions, as well as attempts to mitigate their release and adapt to the changing climate.

The link to their website is HERE.

For All Map Geeks

The following is a great site for everything there is to know about maps. You will get suck into this website. The link is HERE.

Technology Works On Perfect Banana

From the Globe And Mail Science:

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — It isn't easy to keep a banana yellow.

To get it to market ripe but unblemished by brown sugar spots takes careful timing, a slight fiddling with nature's rhythms and a delivery system that is increasingly computer-driven and technical.

The perfect banana used to be a rare and precious find, but technology is changing that. From the tree in the sweltering tropics to the grocery rack in the frigid north, scientists are seeking new ways to strengthen the food chain and extend the shelf life of perishables so they reach distant consumers as if freshly picked.

Commercially, the goal is to satisfy a demand for quality food anywhere, any time, and at maximum profit.

But the implications go further: As the world's population expands 50 per cent – to nine billion – by mid-century, food security will become critical. The wild rise in food prices that peaked last July, with staples doubling or tripling in cost over three years, underscored the consequences of shortages, whether real or perceived.

As cities grow and wealth expands, more people eat meat, dairy and fresh products.

“That requires a totally different way of approaching agriculture. You have chains of total food systems,” said Rudy Rabbinge, chairman of the Science Council Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, an alliance of agricultural bodies worldwide.

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Oldest Evidence For Complex Life In Doubt

The earliest life on Earth consisted of prokaryotes — small single-celled organisms without nuclei. These earliest organisms were anaerobic — they did not require oxygen to live.
(Image from Lunar And Planetary Institute)

From Astrobiology:

Oldest Evidence for Life in Doubt

Chemical biomarkers in ancient Australian rocks, once thought to be the oldest known evidence of complex life on Earth, may have infiltrated long after the sediments were laid down, new analyses suggest.

The evidence was based on biomarkers - distinctive chemical compounds produced today by modern-day relatives of cyanobacteria and other complex life forms. In 1999, a team of researchers contended that the biomarkers in the 2.7-billion–year-old rocks pushed back the origins of cyanobacteria by at least 550 million years and of eukaryotes by about a billion years.

Although some scientists interpret the new findings, published in the Oct. 23 Nature, as disproving the older dates, others contend that the results still allow for the presence of the organisms or their kin at that time.

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NASA Clears Shuttle For Space Station Visit

Crew members of the space shuttle Endeavour on Mission STS-126 arrive to prepare for launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida November 11, 2008.
(Scott Audette/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA managers on Wednesday cleared the space shuttle Endeavour and seven astronauts for launch on Friday on a mission to make the International Space Station a bit more like home.

Endeavour's cargo includes two sleeping chambers, a second toilet and a water purification system that will let NASA double the station crew size to six and allow them to recycle urine and waste water for drinking. Launch is set for 7:55 p.m. EST from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"This mission is all about home improvements, both inside and outside of the International Space Station," said Endeavour commander Chris Ferguson. "We've had some large modules delivered in the last year. It's time to fill them up."

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Google Chases Skype With New Gmail Video Chat

From Webmonkey:

Video chat service Skype has some new competition — Google has just added audio and video chat to Gmail. The new chat tools essentially offer most of the features of Skype, or Apple’s iChat, within the standard Gmail interface.

When the SMS features we told you about earlier finally arrive, Google’s e-mail client will be a one-stop shop for almost every form of communication you can think of — e-mail, chat, video chat, audio chat and SMS.

Once the plugin is installed, using the new features is very simple. Just hover over any name in your Gmail chat list and select “Start video chat” or “Start voice chat.” There’s a full-screen view and you can also choose to pop out the chat into a new window.

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In A Pandemic, Who Gets to Live?

Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kan., in this 1918 file photo. The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed at least 20 million people worldwide, and officials say that if the next pandemic resemblers the birdlike 1918 Spanish flu, up to 1.9 million Americans could die. Collapse (National Museum of Health/AP Photo)

From ABC News/Science:

As if wars and economic crises and natural disasters weren't enough, here's a challenge for some future president that few people even want to think about: Some day, perhaps soon, a president will have to decide whose lives are the most important to save, and whose lives are "nonessential."

This isn't going to be a doomsday story, because most people will survive the next influenza pandemic, which some public health experts believe is past due. It's not a question of "if," it's a question of "when," and one study from Harvard University estimates that the pandemic will kill somewhere between 51 million and 81 million people, mostly in developing countries.

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What Happens If You Eat Dog Food?

From Live Science:

If you just eat a little bit of dog food, probably nothing will happen. But you don't really know that for sure because dog food is not subjected to the same health and safety regulations that human food is required to have.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for setting human food safety guidelines to prevent sickness due to contaminated or improperly handled products. In addition, the FDA is responsible for ensuring that food product labels are accurate in terms of ingredient listing and nutritional content.

Dog food does not have these same strict rules that human food has. Although most dog food contains the same basic components that are in people food — protein, carbohydrates and fats — the proportions of these ingredients are different than in human food and can be harmful if ingested in significant quantities or for prolonged periods of time. The same is true if you feed a dog the wrong proportion of these nutrients by giving it an unbalanced human diet.

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Nanotechnology Sparks Fears For The Future

From Times Online:

Nanomaterials are likely to kill people in the future just as asbestos did unless extensive safety checks are put in place, a Royal Commission report has said.

The team of experts assessing the likely impacts of the emerging technology are worried that when nanomaterials escape into the environment they will damage people and wildlife but that it will be years before the effects are seen.

Past generations have brought into general usage materials such as asbestos, leaded petrol, CFCs and cigarettes without adequately considering the potential damage and the commission fears nanomaterials will prove similarly dangerous.

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Lebanon Finds 2,900 Year Old Phoenician Remains

Archaeologists work on earthenware potteries found at an excavation site in the port city of Tyre, southern Lebanon November 12, 2008. (Haidar Hawila/Reuters)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese and Spanish archaeologists have discovered 2,900-year-old earthenware pottery that ancient Phoenicians used to store the bones of their dead after burning the corpses.

They said more than 100 jars were discovered at a Phoenician site in the southern coastal city of Tire. Phoenicians are known to have thrived from 1500 B.C. to 300 B.C and they were also headquartered in the coastal area of present-day Syria.

"The big jars are like individual tombs. The smaller jars are left empty, but symbolically represent that a soul is stored in them," Ali Badawi, the archaeologist in charge in Tire, told Reuters Wednesday.

Badawi and a Spanish team from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona have been excavating at the Phoenician site for years. The site was first discovered in 1997 but archaeologists have only been able to dig up 50 square meters per year.

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Sunlight Has More Powerful Influence On Ocean Circulation And Climate Than North American Ice Sheets

From Watts Up With That?

From Physorg.com: A study reported in today’s issue of Nature disputes a longstanding picture of how ice sheets influence ocean circulation during glacial periods.

The distribution of sunlight, rather than the size of North American ice sheets, is the key variable in changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles, according to the article. The new study goes back 425,000 years, according to Lorraine Lisiecki, first author and assistant professor in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Lisiecki and her co-authors studied 24 separate locations in the Atlantic by analyzing information from ocean sediment cores. By observing the properties of the shells of tiny marine organisms, called foraminifera, found in these cores, they were able to deduce information about the North Atlantic deep water formation. Scientists can discern historical ocean temperature and circulation patterns through the analysis of the chemical composition of these marine animals.

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