Earthquake Predictions Remain Faulty at Best

1906 San Francisco Earthquake

From Live Science:

When it was revealed this week that Italian scientist Gioacchino Giuliani had predicted the earthquake in Italy but that he'd been ridiculed and muzzled, the hooey hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

I've been hearing stories about people who can predict earthquakes, using various methods from serious seismology to precursor headaches to watching their dog act strange, for years. And the bottom line remains the same:

It is not yet possible. In fact, it won't be for a long, long time.

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Boosting Energy Production From 'Ice That Burns'

Photo: Gas hydrate is an ice-like solid that results from the trapping of methane molecules -- the main component of natural gas -- within a lattice-like cage of water molecules. Dubbed the "ice that burns," this substance releases gaseous methane when it melts. (Credit: Image courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2009) — In a step toward using gas hydrates as a future energy source, researchers in New York are reporting the first identification of an optimal temperature and pressure range for maximizing production of natural gas from the icy hydrate material.

Marco Castaldi, Yue Zhou, and Tuncel Yegualp note that gas hydrates, also known as "ice that burns," are a frozen form of natural gas (methane). This material exists in vast deposits beneath the ocean floor and Arctic permafrost in the United States and other areas. Scientists believe that fuel from these frozen chunks, formed at cold temperatures and high pressures, may help fuel cars, heat homes, and power factories in the future. Although scientists have identified several different methods for extracting the fuel, including depressurization, researchers have not found an practical approach for producing the gas on an industrial scale.

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G.M. And Segway Build An EV Only Woz Could Love

From Autopia/Wired:

General Motors and the people who make the world's coolest scooter have developed a two-wheeled, two-seat electric car that's essentially a big honkin' Segway, which makes us wonder how long it'll be before Woz is playing polo with one.

GM and Segway pulled the sheet off the unusual, albeit innovative, EV on Tuesday morning at the New York Auto Show, proclaiming the car of the future may have two wheels, not four. The beleaguered automaker says the concept vehicle, dubbed Project PUMA - for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility - is just the thing for navigating congested cities with ease.

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Listening To The Earth's Deepest Secrets

(Click the Above Image to Enlarge)

From New Scientist:

GARY ANDERSON was not around to see a backhoe tear up the buffalo grass at his ranch near Akron, Colorado. But he was watching a few weeks later when the technicians came to dump instruments and insulation into their 2-metre-deep hole.

What they left behind didn't look like much: an anonymous mound of dirt and, a few paces away, a spindly metal framework supporting a solar panel. All Anderson knew was that he was helping to host some kind of science experiment. It wouldn't be any trouble, he'd been told, and it wouldn't disturb the cattle. After a couple of years the people who installed it would come and take it away again.

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Field Equations: The Physics of Baseball

From Scientific American:

A Q&A with physicist Alan Nathan.

At long last, Opening Day is nearly here. As with each new season, this one arrives with a slew of major-league questions: Can the Phillies repeat? Can the spendthrift Yankees break their World Series drought? Is this the year the Athletics reclaim their freewheeling magic? But the answers to all those big questions will ultimately arise from countless small interactions, both human (a pitcher facing down a batter, a base runner challenging a catcher's arm, a manager's clever double switch) and physical (a ball meeting the bat's sweet spot, a sharp slider slicing through the air, a pop fly tracing a parabolic arc through the sky).

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Light and Cheap, Netbooks Are Poised to Reshape PC Industry

Dell sells a 2.28-pound netbook, the Inspiron Mini 9, left, which is smaller and less expensive than a traditional laptop. Tami Chappell for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

SAN FRANCISCO — Get ready for the next stage in the personal computer revolution: ultrathin and dirt cheap.

AT&T announced on Tuesday that customers in Atlanta could get a type of compact PC called a netbook for just $50 if they signed up for an Internet service plan — an offer the phone company may introduce elsewhere after a test period. This year, at least one wireless phone company in the United States will probably offer netbooks free with paid data plans, copying similar programs in Japan, according to industry experts.

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Access Any Hard Drive From The Internet

PogoPlug: courtesy Cloud Engine

From Popular Science:

Using a tiny server crammed into a wall wart, the $100 PogoPlug turns any hard drive into a network-attached storage device

PogoPlug, available in North America as of today, is a cheap, straightforward, single-purpose device that aims to transform network-attached storage into an appliance. It combines any old USB hard drive with your existing Internet connection, and then, voila: everything delicious and convenient about network-attached storage is now within reach.

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In Search Of Lithium: The Battle For The 3rd Element

The US Geological Survey claims at least 4.5 million tones of lithium could be extracted in Salar De Uyuni, while another report puts it as high as nine million tons

From The Daily Mail:

The good news: A wonder metal that fires your phone, iPod and shiny new electric car is so clean it may save the planet. The bad news: More than half of the world's lithium is beneath this Bolivian desert...and getting it is so dirty it inspired the latest Bond plot

Darkness falls across the Andes, turning the distant snow caps from blinding white to nothingness in the blink of an eye. From the east, the night races across the bleak Altiplano towards us, as the temperature plummets to below zero, leaving the windswept emptiness of the planet's largest salt plain in a vast cold shadow.

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Mt. Redoubt Eruptions – What Effect If Any On The Summer? Winter?

Mt. Redoubt March 26, 2009

From Watts Up With That:

Starting on March 22, a series of major eruptions have taken place from Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. The biggest exceeded 65,000 feet in height. More than a dozen eruptions as high as 60,000 have followed the first week alone. Activity may continue for weeks or months based on the volcano’s history.

Climatologists may disagree on how much the recent global warming is natural or manmade but there is general agreement that volcanism constitutes a wildcard in climate, producing significant global scale cooling for at least a few years following a major eruption. However, there are some interesting seasonal and regional variations of the effects.

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The iPhone Gold Rush

START-UP From left, Vassilis Samolis, Kostas Eleftheriou
and Bill Rappos formed GreatApps. Petros Vittas

From The New York Times:

IS there a good way to nail down a steady income? In this economy?

Try writing a successful program for the iPhone.

Last August, Ethan Nicholas and his wife, Nicole, were having trouble making their mortgage payments. Medical bills from the birth of their younger son were piling up. After learning that his employer, Sun Microsystems, was suspending employee bonuses for the year, Mr. Nicholas considered looking for a new job and putting their house in Wake Forest, N.C., on the market.

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More News On the iPhone Gold Rush

Will the iPhone 3.0 Fuel a Second Gold Rush? -- New York Times
Inside the iPhone App Gold Rush -- Adweek
Apple's iPhone 3.0 SDK Renews Developer Gold Rush -- Information Week
NY Times op-ed on the hate that dare not text its name: iPhone rejection -- Tuaw

Saturn's Moon Titan May Have Subsurface Ocean Of Hydrocarbons

A radar image of some of the lakes of hydrocarbons spread across one of the poles of Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. Colors have been altered to accentuate the topographic features. (Credit: Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL and the Cassini Project Office)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2009) — Saturn's largest moon, Titan, may have a subterranean ocean of hydrocarbons and some topsy-turvy topography in which the summits of its mountains lie lower than its average surface elevation, according to new research.

Titan is also more squashed in its overall shape—like a rubber ball pressed down by a foot—than researchers had expected, said Howard Zebker, a Stanford geophysicist and electrical engineer involved in the work. The new findings may help explain the presence of large lakes of hydrocarbons at both of Titan's poles, which have been puzzling researchers since being discovered in 2007.

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Poker Skills Could Sway Gaming Laws

Looking more skilful by the day (Image: Nick Koudis/ Digital Vision/Getty)

From New Scientist:

IS POKER a game of skill or luck? For regular players that's a no-brainer, but showing that skill wins out has proven surprisingly difficult for mathematicians. Now two studies that tapped the vast amounts of data available from online casinos have provided some of the best evidence yet that poker is skill-based. Many hope that the results will help to roll back laws and court decisions that consider poker gambling, and therefore illegal in certain contexts.

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'I Predicted Killer Quake, But Officials Accused Me Of Scaremongering': Says Italian Seismologist

Seismologist Giacchino Giuliani predicted the earthquake which killed up to 100 people in L'Aquila just weeks before it struck

From The Daily Mail:

The Italian scientist who predicted a major earthquake which killed 90 people just weeks before disaster struck said authorities refused to take his claim seriously.

Seismologist Giacchino Giuliani said he was reported to authorities for spreading panic after the government claimed his research had no scientific foundation.

The 6.3-magnitude quake struck at around 2.30am UK time near L'Aquila.

The first tremors in the region were felt in mid-January and continued at regular intervals, creating mounting alarm in the medieval city, 60 miles east of Rome.

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Complex Geology Behind The Italian Earthquake

This map shows the epicenter of the quake that struck central Italy at 3:32 a.m. local time on Monday, April 6, 2009. Credit: USGS

From Live Science:

The 6.3 magnitude earthquake that struck central Italy in the wee hours of Monday morning has a complicated geological story behind it.

The epicenter of the quake, which struck at 3:32 a.m. local time (9:30 p.m., April 5 EDT), was near the medieval city of L'Aquila, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of Rome.

The temblor has killed more than 90 people so far, according to news reports, and left 1,500 injured and thousands homeless. It marks the country's deadliest earthquake in three decades.

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All Thumbs: Man Says He Has USB Drive In Prosthetic Finger

Computer expert Jerry Javala has been given a helping hand by plastic surgeons who installed a USB stick in a false finger after a motorbike crash. (Central European News)

From ABC News:

Programmer Lost Finger in Motorcycle Accident; Says He Took Advantage of It.

There is, we'd better warn, something of a gross-out factor to many people about this story, although there are others who seem to think it's pretty cool.

It is the story of Jerry Jalava, 29, a self-described software developer from Finland who lost part of his left ring finger in May in a motorcycle accident.

Now, he says, he wears a prosthetic finger made of silicone, which looks fairly natural -- except that he can peel back the tip to uncover a USB drive tucked inside.

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Trees Are Growing Faster And Could Buy Time To Halt Global Warming

Tropical rainforest Photo: MARTIN POPE

From The Telegraph:

Plants and trees are growing faster because of rising carbon dioxide levels, potentially buying Earth more time to address global warming, according to scientists.

The phenomenon has been discovered in a variety of flora, ranging from tropical rainforests to British sugar beet crops.

It means they are soaking up at least some of the billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere by humans that would otherwise be accelerating the rate of climate change.

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Older Couples Race Against Their Biological Clocks To Start Families

Katherine Anne Harper was born on Jan. 18 when her mom, Kim, was 41.
SUSAN TUSA/Detroit Free Press

From The Detroit Free Press:

Kim Harper started a career before starting a family.

After graduating from Michigan State University in 1990, she traveled, earned a law degree and began working as an attorney. When Harper married in 2006, she and her husband, Jeff, hoped a baby would soon follow.

"We didn't marry until I was 38," Harper says, "and we always knew we didn't have a lot of time to waste."

A year passed; no baby.

Like many women who marry later in life, Harper didn't think much about her fertility until she'd reached the age at which many doctors warn that healthy pregnancies don't come easily.

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Can Someone Live To Be A Supercentenarian?

From Scientific American:

A woman in central Asia claims to have just celebrated her 130th birthday, a new record for keeping the grim reaper at bay

And you thought you felt old: Last week, in the village of Prishakhtinsk in central Kazakhstan, Sakhan Dosova celebrated what she, her family and Kazakh officials all agree was her 130th birthday. If true, her advanced age would shatter the old-timer record set by Jeanne Calment, who died in Arles, France, in 1997 at the age of 122.

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Nicotine May Have More Profound Impact Than Previously Thought

Researchers have found that the alpha-7 receptor, a site known to bind with nicotine, interacts with 55 different proteins. Nicotine may affect bodily processes -- and perhaps the actions of other commonly used drugs -- more broadly than was previously thought. (Credit: Hawrot Lab/Brown University)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2009) — Nicotine isn't just addictive. It may also interfere with dozens of cellular interactions in the body, new Brown University research suggests.

Conversely, the data could also help scientists develop better treatments for various diseases. Pharmaceutical companies rely on basic research to identify new cellular interactions that can, in turn, serve as targets for potential new drugs.

"It opens several new lines of investigation," said lead author Edward Hawrot, professor of molecular science, molecular pharmacology, physiology and biotechnology at Brown University.

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Scientists 'Discover' Source Of Wisdom In The Human Brain

Photo: Breakthrough: Scientists have pinpointed the part of the human brain related to wisdom.

From The Daily Mail:

Scientists have discovered the source of wisdom in the human brain, it was revealed today.

Experts have pinpointed the part of the brain that guides people when they are battling with difficult moral dilemmas, according to a study.

Highly-sophisticated brain scans show that the response is linked to certain areas usually associated with primitive emotions of sex, fear and anger.

The findings, revealed by the Observer, are to be published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

They are a significant departure into an area of expertise that has long been regarded as one of religion and philosophy.

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