Can Nuclear Power Compete?

From Science America:

Newly approved reactor designs could reduce global warming and fossil-fuel dependence, but utilities are grappling with whether better nukes make market sense

On an August afternoon in Washington, D.C., typically miserable for its heat, humidity and stillness, reporters gathered at a downtown hotel not known for its air-conditioning. Stuffed inside a windowless conference room that was being heated still further by the television people’s lights, we waited for Michael J. Wallace, who had been trying, in fits and starts, to unveil nuclear power’s second act.

On arrival, Wallace, a meticulous manager not known for ad-libbing, looked out over the sweating reporters and smiled. “It’s days like today that highlight the real need for new, emissions-free, baseload power,” he said. Unless we get started soon, he added, rolling blackouts could become the norm.

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'Death Map' Shows Heat A Big Hazard To Americans

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - Heat is more likely to kill an American than an earthquake, and thunderstorms kill more people than hurricanes do, according to a U.S. "death map" published on Tuesday.

Researchers who compiled the county-by-county look at what natural disasters kill Americans said they hope their study will help emergency preparedness officials plan better.

Heat and drought caused 19.6 percent of total deaths from natural hazards, with summer thunderstorms causing 18.8 percent and winter weather causing 18.1 percent, the team at the University of South Carolina found.

Earthquakes, wildfires and hurricanes combined were responsible for fewer than 5 percent of all hazard deaths.

Writing in BioMed Central's International Journal of Health Geographics, they said they hoped to dispel some myths about what the biggest threats to life and limb are.

"According to our results, the answer is heat," Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden of the University of South Carolina wrote in their report, which gathered data from 1970 to 2004.

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'Peak Oil Theory' Demands Energy Alternatives

Oil workers operate a rig in Midland County, Texas, in June 2008. AFP/Getty Images

From NPR:

Plummeting gasoline and diesel prices have given consumers relief at the pump. But oil pessimists believe the current slump in demand will pass. And when it does, the world will be in the same fix it was before the global recession. The era of easy oil is behind us. According to those who believe in what's called "peak oil theory," world oil production has already peaked, or flattened, and in the foreseeable future, the declining resource will inevitably change the way we live.

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Wisdom: We Still Don't Get It

"The Thinker" is a sculpture by Rodin. Credit: Dreamstime

From Live Science:

There is more information than ever at our fingertips, yet we’re none the wiser it seems.

And many old people are wise, as most of them will tell you, but sometimes they can’t remember your name, so how smart is that?

It’s paradoxes like these that lie at the heart of a new $2 million research project called Defining Wisdom. Based at the University of Chicago, the four-year initiative, supported by the Templeton Foundation, has enlisted 23 scholars ranging from historians to economists to psychologists to computer scientists to examine the idea of wisdom, with the aim of cultivating it and better understanding its nature.

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Google Says It Still Stands By Net Neutrality

From Yahoo Finance/AP:

Google denies Wall Street Journal claim that it's giving up on `Net neutrality'

NEW YORK (AP) -- Google Inc. denied that it had reversed its stance on the issue of "Net neutrality" and dismissed a story in Monday's edition of The Wall Street Journal on the subject as "confused."

Citing undisclosed sources, the newspaper reported that Google had been in talks with major cable and phone companies about getting preferential treatment for traffic to and from its sites.

That would conflict with the principle of Net neutrality, under which carriers traditionally give the same treatment to traffic from different sites. The Federal Communications Commission has voiced support for the principle, and sanctioned Comcast Corp. this year for slowing some types of file-sharing traffic. Google has been a vocal supporter of Net neutrality.

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Google Wants Its Own Fast Track On The Web

From The Wall Street Journal:

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders.

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same -- nobody is supposed to jump the line.

But phone and cable companies argue that Internet content providers should share in their network costs, particularly with Internet traffic growing by more than 50% annually, according to estimates. Carriers say that to keep up with surging traffic, driven mainly by the proliferation of online video, they need to boost revenue to upgrade their networks. Charging companies for fast lanes is one option.

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Doctor's Advice: Leave the Toilet Seat Up

From Live Science:

One of the longest-running spousal debates may now be settled in favor of men and for the sake of little boys.

Leave the toilet seat up, some British doctors now say. The reason: a rising trend for heavy wooden and ornamental toilet seats to fall down onto the penises of unsuspecting (and just potty-trained) toddlers.

Dr. Joe Philip and his colleagues of Leighton Hospital, Crewe, in England detail such penis-crush injuries in the December issue of the journal BJU International. The team reports on four boys between the ages of 2 and 4 who were admitted to hospitals with injuries serious enough to require an overnight stay.

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NASA Chief Grumbles About Obama

From Foreign Policy Blog:

Overall, Bush administration officials deserve credit for making this transition as painless and drama-free as possible. One notable exception is NASA Administrator Mike Griffin:

Tensions were on public display last week at the NASA library, as overheard by guests at a book party. According to people who were present, Logsdon, a space historian, told a group of about 50 people he had just learned that President John F. Kennedy’s transition team had completely ignored NASA.

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Google Admits That Its Staff Picks And Chooses What Appears In Its Search Results

From The Register:

Manufacturing isn't dead - it just went to Mountain View

Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It's a historic statement - and nobody has yet grasped its significance.

Not so very long ago, Google disclaimed responsibility for its search results by explaining that these were chosen by a computer algorithm. The disclaimer lives on at Google News, where we are assured that:

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Supermassive Black Hole Dissected With Natural Magnifying Glasses: 1,000 Times Clearer Than Best Telescopes Can Do

Close-up of the Einstein Cross, as observed with the SINFONI instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. SINFONI makes use of the adaptive optics technique and so, allows astronomers to overcome the blurring effect of the atmosphere, thereby providing very sharp images. The central blob is the nucleus of the lensing galaxy, surrounded by the four mirage images of the distant quasar. (Credit: ESO/F. Courbin et al)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2008) — Combining a double natural "magnifying glass" with the power of ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have scrutinised the inner parts of the disc around a supermassive black hole 10 billion light-years away. They were able to study the disc with a level of detail a thousand times better than that of the best telescopes in the world, providing the first observational confirmation of the prevalent theoretical models of such discs.

The team of astronomers from Europe and the US studied the "Einstein Cross", a famous cosmic mirage. This cross-shaped configuration consists of four images of a single very distant source. The multiple images are a result of gravitational lensing by a foreground galaxy, an effect that was predicted by Albert Einstein as a consequence of his theory of general relativity. The light source in the Einstein Cross is a quasar approximately ten billion light-years away, whereas the foreground lensing galaxy is ten times closer. The light from the quasar is bent in its path and magnified by the gravitational field of the lensing galaxy.

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Dreams Imaged, Scientists Claim

From Live Science:

Japanese researchers say they've imaged thoughts and dreams and displayed them on a computer screen.

At the web site of the journal Neuron, where the findings are to be published, the researchers summarize their work: "The results suggest that our approach provides an effective means to read out complex perceptual states from brain activity."

Brain imaging is nothing new. And the images are reportedly very simple, but the researchers claim the technique could lead to the ability to unlock the secrets of dreams.

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Hubble's Replacement Now Taking Shape

Technicians gingerly handle the honeycombed beryllium mirror segment that will eventually join 17 others to form the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope. Axsys

From SKY Telescope:

Against a backdrop of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, no one quite knows what will happen to NASA's future plans once Barack Obama becomes president. Will Michael Griffin remain the agency's chief? Will plans to return astronauts to the Moon be scrapped? Will space exploration in general — viewed by some as frivolous waste and by others as a ray of accomplishment amid all the bleakness — be slashed to a bare minimum?

We'll know soon enough. In the meantime, NASA continues to work toward assembling and launching the eventual replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, currently the crown jewel of its astronomy program.

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Year's Biggest Full Moon Friday Night

From Space.com

The full moon Friday night will be the biggest one of the year as Earth's natural satellite reaches its closest point to our planet.

Earth, the moon and the sun are all bound together by gravity, which keeps us going around the sun and keeps the moon going around us as it goes through phases. The moon makes a trip around Earth every 29.5 days. But the orbit is not a perfect circle.

The moon's average distance from us is about 238,855 miles (384,400 km). Friday night it will be just 221,560 miles (356,567 km) away. It will be 14 percent bigger in our sky and 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during the year, according to NASA.

Tides will be higher Friday night, too. Earth's oceans are pulled by the gravity of the moon and the sun. So when the moon is closer, tides are pulled higher. Scientists call these perigean tides, because the moon's closest point to Earth is called perigee. The farthest point on the lunar orbit is called apogee.

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Satellites Spy On Washington From On High [Slide Show]

OBAMA'S NEW ADDRESS: From its orbit 423 miles (681 kilometers) above Earth, the GeoEye 1 looks down on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The satellite, launched September 6, can capture natural and man-made features to within nine feet (three meters) of their actual location on Earth's surface.

From Scientific American:

A satellite imaging company provides clear new pix of features on Earth's surface as India mulls the role played by such imagery in the deadly Mumbai attacks

Washington, D.C., home of the CIA, National Security Administration (NSA) and FBI, is a well-known haven for spies and surveillance. But new satellite pictures of the White House, Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial show these government agencies aren't the only ones watching and being watched.

These latest images from Dulles, Va., satellite-imaging company, GeoEye, are among the first to be collected by the GeoEye 1, a satellite launched into polar orbit on September 6 that can "see" objects on Earth as small as 16 inches (0.41 meter) in size in black-and-white mode or 64.6 inches (1.64 meters) in color. Images from the GeoEye 1, which stands 20 feet (6.1 meters) high and weighs more than 4,300 pounds (1,950 kilograms), so impressed Google that the Internet search giant plans to add the satellite's high-resolution, digital color photos to Google Earth next month.

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The Shopping Mall: A 2,000-Year-Old Tradition

An archaeological team found the very first traces of an Illyrian trading post that is more than 2,000 years old, including more than 30 boats. Credit: University of Mostar

From Live Science:

At this time of the year, the pressure to shop, buy and wrap is overwhelming. And so we drag ourselves to the mall, a hopefully one-stop shopping place where any number of stores can accommodate any holiday shopping list. Checking that twice, we schlep up and down until our bags are full and our minds are empty.

And every year, it seems like the list grows longer, the schlep more tedious, and the time deciding on gifts endless. Eventually we sit down, have a holiday drink and thank our lucky stars for the mall, because without this modern market place, we'd be also be driving all over town and screaming.

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Does Obama Want to Ground NASA's Next Moon Mission?

Barack Obama and NASA administrator Michael Griffin,
Charles Dharapak / AP; NASA; Matt Stroshane / Getty

From Time Magazine:

Getting into a shouting match with the HR rep is not exactly the best way to land a job. But according to the Orlando Sentinel, that's just what happened last week between NASA administrator Mike Griffin and Lori Garver, a member of Barack Obama's transition team who will help decide if Griffin keeps his post once the President-elect takes office. If the contretemps did occur, it could help doom not only the NASA chief's chances, but the space agency's ambitious plans to get Americans back to the moon.

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Look Up Tonight For A Spectacular Treat In The Sky

From Times Online:

Biggest full moon for years enhanced by shooting stars

If the full moon tonight looks unusually large, it is not your imagination – it is the biggest and brightest full moon to be seen for 15 years.

Each month the Moon makes a full orbit around the Earth in a slightly oval-shaped path, and tonight it will swing by the Earth at its closest distance, or perigee. It will pass by 356,613km (221,595 miles) away, which is about 28,000km closer than average.

The unusual feature of tonight is that the perigee also coincides with a full moon, which will make it appear 14 per cent bigger and some 30 per cent brighter than most full moons this year – so long as the clouds hold off from blocking the view.

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Ancient Indian Ocean Coral Points To Another Disastrous Tsunami

From Times Online:

The eastern Indian Ocean could be due for another earthquake rivalling the one that caused the deadly tsunami in December 2004, according to research on ancient corals in the area.

It has long been said that earthquakes occur in cycles, yet until now evidence has been hard to come by. Now a pioneering study of the corals off the west coast of Sumatra has revealed that the region's earthquakes during the past 700 years occurred in series of shocks that spanned decades.

Corals lay down growth rings every year, just like trees, and these record environmental changes including upheavals of the seabed. They show that the region's earthquakes usually come in a sequence.

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Hubble Finds Carbon Dioxide On An Extrasolar Planet

This is an artist's impression of the Jupiter-size extrasolar planet, HD 189733b, being eclipsed by its parent star. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have measured carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the planet's atmosphere. The planet is a "hot Jupiter," which is so close to its star that it completes an orbit in only 2.2 days. Credit: ESA, NASA, M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble), and STScI

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This is an important step along the trail of finding the chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life as we know it.

The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, is too hot for life. But the Hubble observations are a proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting other stars. Organic compounds can also be a by-product of life processes, and their detection on an Earth-like planet may someday provide the first evidence of life beyond Earth.

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Previous observations of HD 189733b by Hubble and the Spitzer Space Telescope found water vapor. Earlier this year, Hubble astronomers reported that they found methane in the planet's atmosphere.

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Wind, Water And Sun Beat Biofuels, Nuclear And Coal For Clean Energy

Wind power is the most promising alternative source of energy, according
to Mark Jacobson. (Credit: LM Glasfiber)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2008) — The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.

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