Alcohol Makes Men BETTER In The Bedroom, Scientists Claim

Drinking effects: A study has suggested that alcohol improves rather than damages
a man's performance in the bedroom

From The Daily Mail:

Men who worry about the effect drinking has on their sex life should raise a glass to the latest research.

Alcohol actually improves rather than damages male performance in the bedroom, it is claimed.

Until now it has been widely believed that alcohol consumption can cause erectile dysfunction, or 'brewer's droop'.

But a study of 1,580 Australian men found drinkers reporting up to 30 per cent fewer problems than teetotallers.

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My Comment: What happens if the ladies drink. A study should also be done there.

Study: Gamblers Who Lose Bet More

From Live Science:

People who carefully budget their bets before they hit the casinos — say setting a betting limit of $200 per day — routinely go against their plan when they lose.

University of California marketing professors Eduardo Andrade and Ganesh Lyer found that experiencing the pain of actual loss often results in people abandoning their plans and betting more money. "When gamblers haven't experience the actual pain of loss, they make cold and deliberate assessments of how much to bet in case of a future loss," Andrade said.

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Global Warming 'Irreversible' For Next 1000 Years: Study

The Department of Water and Power (DWP) San Fernando Valley Generating Station is seen in Sun Valley, California, 2008. Climate change is "largely irreversible" for the next 1,000 years even if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could be abruptly halted, according to a new study led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). (AFP/Getty Images/File/David Mcnew)

From Yahoo News/AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Climate change is "largely irreversible" for the next 1,000 years even if carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could be abruptly halted, according to a new study led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The study's authors said there was "no going back" after the report showed that changes in surface temperature, rainfall and sea level are "largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after CO2 emissions are completely stopped."

NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon said the study, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, showed that current human choices on carbon dioxide emissions are set to "irreversibly change the planet."

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Climate Change Could Choke Oceans For 100,000 Years

From Wired News:

According to a simulation of planetary warming trends, failure to drastically cut greenhouse gas pollution within the next half century could choke Earth's oceans for the next 100,000 years.

With warmer temperatures reducing its ability to absorb oxygen, much of the water would become barren and lifeless. Oceanic food chains could be profoundly disrupted.

"What mankind does for the next several decades will play a large role in climate on Earth over the next tens of thousands of years," said geochemist Gary Shaffer of the University of Copenhagen.

This is because, according to climate scientists, it will take at least that long for natural processes to remove fossil fuel emissions from the atmosphere, giving long-term consequences to humanity's short-term habits.

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Remembering Apollo 1

Apollo 1 astronauts "Gus" Grissom (left), Edward White, and Roger Chaffee pose in front of the Saturn 1 launch vehicle at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On the morning of January 27, 1967, the crew was sitting atop the launch pad for a pre-launch test when a fire broke out in their capsule, killing all three astronauts. The investigation into the fatal accident led to major design changes for future launch vehicles. Photograph courtesy NASA

Jan. 27, 1967: 3 Astronauts Die in Capsule Fire -- Wired News

1967: Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee are killed on the launch pad when a flash fire engulfs their command module during testing for the first Apollo/Saturn mission. They are the first U.S. astronauts to die in the line of duty.

The command module, built by North American Aviation, was the prototype for those that would eventually accompany the lunar landers to the moon. Designated CM-012 by NASA, the module was a lot larger than those flown during the Mercury and Gemini programs, and was the first designed for the Saturn 1B booster.

Even before tragedy struck, the command module was criticized for a number of potentially hazardous design flaws, including the use of a more combustible, 100 percent oxygen atmosphere in the cockpit, an escape hatch that opened inward instead of outward, faulty wiring and plumbing, and the presence of flammable material.

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Wikipedia entry for Apollo 1

Flexible Display Technology Is Advancing Rapidly

Flexible Display Screens: Bend Me, Shape Me, Anyway You Want Me -- The Economist

Electronic screens as thin as paper are coming soon

OVER the years, the screens on laptops, televisions, mobile phones and so on have got sharper, wider and thinner. They are about to get thinner still, but with a new twist. By using flexible components, these screens will also become bendy. Some could even be rolled up and slipped into your pocket like a piece of electronic paper. These thin sheets of plastic will be able to display words and images; a book, perhaps, or a newspaper or a magazine. And now it looks as if they might be mass produced in much the same way as the printed paper they are emulating.

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Tapping The Earth For Home Heating And Cooling

The pump room at an apartment building in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
(Credit: MassInnovation)

From CNET:

Sue Butler decided it was time to cut the cord on fossil fuels. So when her aging gas furnace needed replacing, she turned to the Earth for a solution.

She installed a geothermal system--also called a ground-source heat pump, a water-source heat pump, or geo-exchange system--which recently started heating and cooling her Cambridge, Mass. home. Butler said she was motivated by environmental reasons and concerns over carbon monoxide from burning natural gas.

"It's not that much more expensive and I could manage it. And it means no more combustion and it gets the building off of carbon, which is urgent," she said.

Ground-source heat pumps have been around for decades but every year seem to attract more homeowners and organizations who are looking for alternatives to traditional space heating and cooling. They can hook into existing forced hot air and hot water systems but not steam heat.

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Wikipedia Reconsiders Editing Process

From CBS/CNET Tech News:

The User-Generated Resource Looks At Allowing Only Trusted Users To Immediately Publish Content Changes

(CNET) Just as Encyclopedia Britannica is moving in the direction of user-based entries, Wikipedia might soon be clamping down on theirs.

Wikipedia is apparently considering instituting a new editorial process that would put better safeguards in place and require all updates to be approved by a "reliable" user. The so-called Flagged Revisions process would allow registered, trusted editors to publish changes to the site immediately. All other edits would be sent to a queue and would not be published until they get approved by one of Wikipedia's trusted team of editors.

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How Real Science Works -- A Commentary

At Cern, the Large Hadron Collider could recreate conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old. Above is one of the collider's massive particle detectors, called the Compact Muon Solenoid. Valerio Mezzanotti for The New York Times

From The American Thinker:

The Large Hadron Collider is the largest collaborative scientific effort in history. It involves more than 2000 scientists from 34 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories. It has taken 14 years to build at a cost of $8 billion and is scheduled to begin serious research work later this year.

And that work is mindboggling. The Collider seeks to accomplish nothing less than giving us a view of what the universe was like about one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang when the 4 fundamental forces in the universe – electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravitation – first split apart. By sending particle beams in opposite directions along a 17 mile underground circular track and accelerating them to near light speed while directing the particles with superconducting magnets to points where they are likely to collide, scientists hope to unravel some of the basic mysteries of the universe. Dark matter, extra dimensions, the nature of gravity, perhaps the fate of the universe itself could be revealed by these collisions and the subatomic particles they leave behind.

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How Long Will The World's Uranium Supplies Last?

YELLOWCAKE: There should be enough uranium to fuel the world's current fleet for more than 200 years. Courtesy of Cameco Corporation

From Scientific American:

How long will global uranium deposits fuel the world's nuclear reactors at present consumption rates?

Steve Fetter, dean of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, supplies an answer:
If the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet's economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption.

Most of the 2.8 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity generated worldwide from nuclear power every year is produced in light-water reactors (LWRs) using low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. About 10 metric tons of natural uranium go into producing a metric ton of LEU, which can then be used to generate about 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, so present-day reactors require about 70,000 metric tons of natural uranium a year.

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Finer Wine

Vintage Vino: Particle accelerators and electronic tongues ensure that
your rare wine is the real thing Grant V. Faint/Getty Images

From Popsci.com:

Spotting fake wine with an atom smasher, and growing perfect grapes

Robot Sommelier

Is your $30,000 bottle of Chateau Petrus Bordeaux truly a rare vintage, or is it just $30 merlot? Counterfeits plague rare-wine auctions, but researchers in Spain have built a handheld "electronic tongue" that detects them instantly. It measures the signature chemicals, acidity and sugar content in a drop of wine (typically one bottle from a case) and runs those against a database of certified vintage wines to catch fakes that might fool human tasters.

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Microsoft Steps Up Browser Battle

From The BBC News:

Microsoft has stepped up the battle to win back users with the latest release of its Internet Explorer browser.

The US software giant says IE 8 is faster, easier to use and more secure than its competitors.

"We have made IE 8 the best browser for the way people really do use the web," said Microsoft's Amy Barzdukas.

"Microsoft needs to say these things because it continues to lose market share to Firefox, Chrome and Safari," said Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald.

Recent figures have shown that Microsoft's dominance in this space has been chipped away by competitors.

At the end of last year, data from Net Applications showed the software giant's market share dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years to 68%.

Meanwhile Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history with 21% of users using its browser Firefox.

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Google's 'Online' GDrive Will Make The PC Redundant

The Google Drive would mean users would no longer have to worry about their hard drives crashing as their data could be accessed from any machine

From The Daily Mail:

The proposed new Google GDrive could kill off the personal computer, experts have warned.

The Google Drive service, which will reportedly launch later this year, allows users to store information online on Google's own servers rather than on the hard drive.

The process has been dubbed 'cloud computing' and is being seen as 'the most anticipated Google product so far'.

The GDrive would mean users would no longer have to worry about their hard drives crashing as their data could be accessed from any internet connection, a move that could effectively make PCs redundant.

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Internet Users Top 1 Billion, Most of Them Asian

From PC Magazine:

Internet metrics company comScore on Friday reported that the number of worldwide Internet users in December topped 1 billion users, the first time that barrier has been breached.

The key metric in the number of users is that most of them are from Asia, predominantly so: 41 percent, compared to 28 percent in North America and 18 percent in Europe. Although a sizeable percentage of Europe speaks English in some capacity (as does Asia), the numbers indicate that most of the world's Internet traffic will most likely be communicated using some non-English language. China, for example, had 179 million users, topping the list of wired countries; the U.S. was second, at 163 million. Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom rounded out the top five.

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World's Fastest Car Goes Electric

Photo from Automotoportal

From Wired:

The guys at Shelby SuperCars, having taken down the mighty Bugatti Veyron to claim the title of fastest car on the planet, are challenging Tesla Motors for electro-supremacy with an EV it promises will put down 1,000 horsepower.

The boutique automaker caught our attention when it first mentioned the Ultimate Aero EV last summer, and now it's come through with some specs. They're pretty outlandish — zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds? 10-minute recharge time? — but we'll suspend our skepticism long enough to clear some space in the Autopia Fantasy Garage.

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Philadelphia’s Climate In The Early Days

From Watts Up With That?

January, 1790 was a remarkable year in the northeastern US for several reasons. It was less than one year into George Washington’s first term, and it was one of the warmest winter months on record. Fortunately for science, a diligent Philadelphia resident named Charles Pierce kept a detailed record of the monthly weather from 1790 through 1847, and his record is archived by Google Books. Below is his monthly report from that book.

JANUARY 1790 The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees This is the mildest month of January on record. Fogs prevailed very much in the morning but a hot sun soon dispersed them and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade at mid day. Boys were often seen swimming in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. There were frequent showers as in April some of which were accompanied by thunder and lightning The uncommon mildness of the weather continued until the 7th of February.

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Secrets Of Stradivarius' Unique Violin Sound Revealed, Professor Says

What makes a Stradivarius' violin sound different from other violins?
(Credit: iStockphoto/José Carlos Pires Pereira)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2009) — For centuries, violin makers have tried and failed to reproduce the pristine sound of Stradivarius and Guarneri violins, but after 33 years of work put into the project, a Texas A&M University professor is confident the veil of mystery has now been lifted.

Joseph Nagyvary, a professor emeritus of biochemistry, first theorized in 1976 that chemicals used on the instruments – not merely the wood and the construction – are responsible for the distinctive sound of these violins. His controversial theory has now received definitive experimental support through collaboration with Renald Guillemette, director of the electron microprobe laboratory in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Clifford Spiegelman, professor of statistics, both Texas A&M faculty members. Their work has been published in the current issue of the scientific journal Public Library of Science (PloSONE).

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Obesity Caught Like Common Cold

From Live Science:

Yet another claim that a common and contagious virus is linked to some cases of obesity is in the news today.

Studies on humans show that 33 per cent of obese adults had contracted an adenovirus called AD-36 at some point in their lives, according to an article in the UK's Daily Express, whereas only 11 per cent of lean men and women have had the virus.

The research, to be presented in a BBC television special, is not big news to scientists, however. Further, some worry that the portrayal of obesity as something you simply catch could obscure the fact that overeating remains the biggest driver of obesity.

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Google Plans To Make PCs History

From The Guardian:

Industry critics warn of danger in giving internet leader more power

Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals' personal data.

The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.

The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as "the most anticipated Google product so far". It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favour of "cloud computing", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.

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The MAC Is 25 Years Old Today

The Mac is twenty-five years old today. It’s arrival on the scene was announced by the above Ridley Scott commercial at the half time in Super Bowl XVIII.

More News On The Mac's 25th Birthday

Bites from the Apple: For the Rest of Us... -- End User