Global Warming And “The Early Spring”

From Watts Up With That?

Following up on the cold spring story from Friday, one of the favorite mantras of the global warming community has been that global warming brings earlier spring seasons. If a bird shows up earlier than someone in Yorkshire expected, a news story often appears at The Guardian or BBC explaining that it is due to “man made global warming.” A Google search of “global warming early spring” produces more than 300,000 hits.

So what happens when nature refuses to cooperate? Below are some claims from the top ten, interspersed with recent observations from the cold spring season of 2009.

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Nuclear Industry's New Burst Of Energy

The Salem nuclear plant's cooling tower forms a backdrop as a tanker cruises south on the Delaware River near Port Penn, Del. JOHN COSTELLO / Staff Photographer

From Philadelphia Inquirer:

Thirty years ago, the nuclear energy industry in the United States seemed all but headed for the scrapyard. Now it's poised for a rebirth.

The impetus is climate change. Nuclear power is touted as the one major electricity source that's emission-free and reliable, able to generate massive amounts of power night and day, in wind and calm.

But hovering over nuclear's new dawn is an incident that began at 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979.

Deep within Reactor 2 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant along the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, main water pumps failed.

At the end of a cascade of disasters, the reactor core melted down, though the containment walls were not breached.

The accident and other factors set the industry reeling. Costs rose. Plants were canceled.

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Mysterious Dark Matter Possibly Detected

The Resurs DK-1 spacecraft, which houses the PAMELA experiment, during a test before its June 2006 launch. Credit: Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics

From Live Science:

When dark matter is destroyed, it leaves behind a burst of exotic particles, according to theory. Now scientists have found a possible signature of these remains. The discovery could help prove the existence of dark matter and reveal what it's made of.

No one knows what dark matter is, but scientists think it exists because there is not enough gravity from visible matter to explain how galaxies rotate.

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Hydrogen Cars Closer To Reality With New Storage System

Issam Mudawar, from left, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, discusses a hydrogen-storage system for cars with graduate student Milan Visaria and Timothée Pourpoint, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and manager of the Hydrogen Systems Laboratory. Researchers have created the system's heat exchanger, which is critical because it allows the system to be filled quickly. The research is funded by General Motors Corp. (Credit: Purdue News Service photo/Andrew Hancock)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2009) — Researchers have developed a critical part of a hydrogen storage system for cars that makes it possible to fill up a vehicle's fuel tank within five minutes with enough hydrogen to drive 300 miles.

The system uses a fine powder called metal hydride to absorb hydrogen gas. The researchers have created the system's heat exchanger, which circulates coolant through tubes and uses fins to remove heat generated as the hydrogen is absorbed by the powder.

The heat exchanger is critical because the system stops absorbing hydrogen effectively if it overheats, said Issam Mudawar, a professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research.

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How Baseball Players Catch Fly Balls

From Live Science:

With the crack of the bat, you see the ball jump into the air. You take a few quick steps forward. Then, as you watch the ball continue to rise faster, you feel your stomach sink knowing that this one is going over your head. What went wrong?

How our eyes, brains, arms and legs combine to track and catch a fly ball has stumped scientists for more than 40 years.

A new study supports the original theory of it all while offering some practical tips.

By watching fielders shag pop flies, researchers have noticed a few interesting quirks. First, great ballplayers will not sprint to the exact spot on the field where they think the ball will land and then wait for it. Rather, they usually adjust their speed to arrive at the landing spot just as the ball arrives.

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World's Largest Telescope Will Search Heavens For Habitable Planets Like Earth

Mission Incredible: The Extremely Large Telescope will be even more powerful than the Very Large Telescope, pictured here.

From The Telegraph:

A giant telescope powerful enough to identify habitable planets like Earth in distant solar systems is to be built by scientists.

The European Extremely Large Telescope will be the first optical telescope capable of picking out the weak pinpricks of light that are reflected from planets as they orbit stars.

Astronomers claim the huge instrument, which will house a mirror the width of five double decker buses placed end to end, will be able to spot rocky Earth-like planets up to 100 million million miles away.

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Is Voicemail Obsolete?

CHANGING TIMES “Once upon a time, voice mail was useful,” said Yen Cheong. Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care? -- The New York Times

WHEN Steve Hamrick left his last job as manager at a software corporation, he had at least 25 unheard messages in his office voice mailbox. And that’s not counting the unreturned calls on his cellphone or landline at home.

It’s not that he doesn’t like to talk. But with the cascade of messages he receives by e-mail, texting and on Facebook, Mr. Hamrick, 29, a self-described “voice mail phobic” from Cupertino, Calif., said he’d found better ways to keep in touch.

“I had to give up something and that, for me, was voice mail,” he said. “It’s cutting out some forms of communication to make room for the others.”

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How Microbes Can Power America’s Future

From Christian Science Monitor:

Scientists use tiny organisms to create fuel, viruses to make batteries.

For millenniums, microbes have been a staunch technological ally. They have leavened our bread and cured our cheeses. Now, engineers are asking them to convert carbon dioxide into fuel and to build a new generation of batteries. Some of the smallest life forms with which we share the planet are helping us cope with the energy challenges of the 21st century.

Forget about the so-called hydrogen economy for a moment. The much-discussed plan to use hydrogen as a major power source has serious problems, such as how to deliver the fuel to consumers.

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Muslim Students Weigh In On Evolution

Photo: The data could help teachers and students from diverse backgrounds work together better. Punchstock

From Nature News:

In Indonesia and Pakistan, questions about how science and faith can be reconciled.

In the first large study of its kind, a survey of 3,800 high-school students in Indonesia and Pakistan has found that teachers are delivering conflicting messages about evolution.

The Can$250,000 Islam and Evolution research project is the first large study of students, teachers and scientists in countries with significant Muslim populations to examine their understanding and acceptance of evolution. Some results from the three-year project were presented at a symposium at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, this week.

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Gamma-Ray Burst Caused Mass Extinction?

Gamma-ray bursts are thought to be streams of high-energy radiation produced when the core of a very massive star collapses, as seen in the above artist's rendering. An April 2009 paper suggests that a gamma-ray burst aimed at Earth may have caused a mass extinction event 440 million years ago, and that a similar celestial catastrophe could happen again. Illustration courtesy NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

From National Geographic:

A brilliant burst of gamma rays may have caused a mass extinction event on Earth 440 million years ago—and a similar celestial catastrophe could happen again, according to a new study.

Most gamma-ray bursts are thought to be streams of high-energy radiation produced when the core of a very massive star collapses.

The new computer model shows that a gamma-ray burst aimed at Earth could deplete the ozone layer, cause acid rain, and initiate a round of global cooling from as far as 6,500 light-years away.

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'Eureka Machine' Puts Scientists In The Shade By Working Out Laws Of Nature

From The Gaurdian:

The machine, which took only a few hours to come up with Newton's laws of motion, marks a turning point in the way science is done

Scientists have created a "Eureka machine" that can work out the laws of nature by observing the world around it – a development that could dramatically speed up the discovery of new scientific truths.

The machine took only hours to come up with the basic laws of motion, a task that occupied Sir Isaac Newton for years after he was inspired by an apple falling from a tree.

Scientists at Cornell University in New York have already pointed the machine at baffling problems in biology and plan to use it to tackle questions in cosmology and social behaviour.

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Wind Turbines Could More Than Meet U.S. Electricity Needs, Report Says

From The L.A. Times:

The Interior Department report, which looks at the potential of wind turbines off the U.S. coast, is part of the government's process to chart a course for offshore energy development.

Reporting from Arlington, Va. -- Wind turbines off U.S. coastlines could potentially supply more than enough electricity to meet the nation's current demand, the Interior Department reported Thursday.

Simply harnessing the wind in relatively shallow waters -- the most accessible and technically feasible sites for offshore turbines -- could produce at least 20% of the power demand for most coastal states, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, unveiling a report by the Minerals Management Service that details the potential for oil, gas and renewable development on the outer continental shelf.

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How Herpes Re-Rears Its Ugly Head

Activity of the VP16 gene (light blue) and the presence of other viral proteins (light purple) in these mouse nerve cells are signs of the herpes virus waking from its latent form. The cells appear dark purple where both markers overlap. Credit: N. Sawtell

From Science News:

Researchers identify key protein that reactivates virus under stress.

A single viral protein enables dormant herpes virus to wake up, suggests a study appearing online March 26 in PLoS Pathogens. The protein, called VP16, acts as the gatekeeper for the damaging, infective activity of the virus, new results in mice show.

Figuring out what causes an inactive, latent state to become a highly infectious state is “very, very important for understanding this virus,” says study coauthor Nancy Sawtell of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio. The results may lead to a better way to control herpes simplex virus type 1, a virus carried by more than 70 percent of the human population, Sawtell says.

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Sleep May Help Clear Brain For New Learning

Washington University scientists used genetically modified fruit flies to track the creation of new brain synapses, junctures where two brain cells communicate. They found that two scenarios that give the fruit fly's brain a workout caused new synapses to arise. To their surprise, all of the new synapses originated from a group of 16 cells in the fly brain's internal timekeeping mechanism. The cells are highlighted in the encircled area above. (Credit: Image courtesy of Washington University School of Medicine)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) — A new theory about sleep's benefits for the brain gets a boost from fruit flies in the journal Science. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found evidence that sleep, already recognized as a promoter of long-term memories, also helps clear room in the brain for new learning.

The critical question: How many synapses, or junctures where nerve cells communicate with each other, are modified by sleep? Neurologists believe creation of new synapses is one key way the brain encodes memories and learning, but this cannot continue unabated and may be where sleep comes in.

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Chocolate Helps With ... Math?

Photo from The San Francisco Sentinel

From Live Science:

Chocolate, which we write about a lot here, is no cure-all. But in small amounts, dark chocolate has many benefits: It can help keep the heart healthy and even provide some anti-cancer benefits. It can also, in moderation, work like aspirin.

Now scientists say it helps with math. Sort of.

In the new study reported in the British media, participants given large amounts of flavanols, which are compounds found in chocolate, did better when asked to count backwards in groups of three from a random number between 800 and 999. Flavanols increase blood flow to the brain, scientists say.

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Murdoch Calls Google, Yahoo Copyright Thieves — Is He Right?

From Wired News:

Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp. and The Wall Street Journal, says Google and Yahoo are giant copyright scofflaws that steal the news.

"The question is, should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyright ... not steal, but take," Murdoch says. "Not just them, but Yahoo."

But whether search-engine news aggregation is theft or a protected fair use under copyright law is unclear, even as Google and Yahoo profit tremendously from linking to news. So maybe Murdoch is right.

Murdoch made his comments late Thursday during an address at the Cable Show, an industry event held in Washington. He seemingly was blaming the web, and search engines, for the news media's ills.

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How Long Would it Take Piranhas To Eat A Person?

Feeding Frenzy: A school of piranhas could strip your flesh in five minutes.
Adek Berry/Getty Images

From PopSci.com:

Is the fish's deadly rep justified?

After a trip to the Amazon jungle, President Teddy Roosevelt famously reported seeing a pack of piranhas devour a cow in a few minutes. It must have been a very large school of fish—-or a very small cow. According to Ray Owczarzak, assistant curator of fishes at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, it would probably take 300 to 500 piranhas five minutes to strip the flesh off a 180-pound human. But would this attack even happen?

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New Cosmic Map Reveals Colossal Structures

The new survey mapped the positions of more than 100,000 galaxies. The black strips are areas the survey did not cover because matter in our own galaxy blocked the view (Illustration: Chris Fluke/Swinburne University of Technology)

From The New Scientist:

Enormous cosmic voids and giant concentrations of matter have been observed in a new galaxy survey, one of the biggest completed so far. One of the voids is so large that it is difficult to explain where it came from.

Called the Six Degree Field Galaxy Survey (6dFGS), the project scanned 41% of the sky, measuring positions and distances for 110,000 galaxies within 2 billion light years of Earth.

No previous survey has covered as much of the sky at such a distance. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which is based in the northern hemisphere, has probed about twice as far but covers only 23% of the sky.

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Virus-Built Battery Could Power Cars, Electronic Devices

Angela Belcher holds a display of the virus-built battery she helped engineer. The battery -- the silver-colored disc -- is being used to power an LED. (Credit: Photo by Donna Coveney)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2009) — For the first time, MIT researchers have shown they can genetically engineer viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a lithium-ion battery.

The new virus-produced batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries being considered to power plug-in hybrid cars, and they could also be used to power a range of personal electronic devices, said Angela Belcher, the MIT materials scientist who led the research team.

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Beverage Consumption A Bigger Factor In Weight, Study Shows

When it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be more important
than what you eat. (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 2, 2009) — When it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be more important than what you eat, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers examined the relationship between beverage consumption among adults and weight change and found that weight loss was positively associated with a reduction in liquid calorie consumption and liquid calorie intake had a stronger impact on weight than solid calorie intake.

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