Wind, Not Water, May Explain Red Planet's Hue

Mars is red now (left), but it may have looked charcoal (right) in the past
(Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble Team)

From New Scientist:

Mars's distinctive red hue may be the result of thousands of years of wind-borne sand particles colliding with one another – and not rust, a new study argues.

Scientists generally agree that Mars's red colour is caused when a dark form of iron called magnetite oxidises into a reddish-orange form called haematite.

Just how the transformation came about is a matter of debate. Many researchers say water caused the oxidation. But some argue that hydrogen peroxide and ozone, which might be created when ultraviolet light breaks down carbon dioxide and oxygen in the Martian atmosphere, could be to blame.

Read more ....

Disputed Solar Project In Calif. Desert Dropped

From CNET:

A proposed solar-energy project in the California desert that caused intense friction between environmentalists and the developers of renewable energy has been shelved.

BrightSource Energy had planned a 5,130-acre solar power farm in a remote part of the Mojave Desert, on land previously intended for conservation. The company, based in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday said it was instead seeking an alternative site for the project.

Read more ....

Whatever Happened to Acid Rain?

From Slate:

Why do we never hear about acid rain anymore? Did it just go away?

Back in the 1980s, when the Lantern herself was just a little penlight, acid rain was the environmental scourge of the day. Canada's environmental minister proclaimed it an "insidious malaria of the biosphere"; it menaced the Transformers; it turned Kimberly's hair bright green in an episode of Diff'rent Strokes. Toxic precipitation fell off the radar in 1990, when Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act calling for major reductions in the types of emissions that lead to acid rain. Emissions have dropped significantly since then, but the problem is far from gone.

Read more ....

When ‘Back To Basics’ Leads To Breakthroughs In Science

(James Kelleher/The Orange County Register)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Two examples of researchers finding amazing things by reconsidering the fundamentals.

Sometimes scientists need to take a fresh look at fundamentals to improve familiar materials. That means getting down to the basic molecular and atomic structures.

When a research group that calls itself “Liquid Stone” recently did that with cement, it found that what scientists thought they knew about the fundamental structure of that ubiquitous material just isn’t so. One team member likens the implications of their new understanding of that structure to the boost biologists got when they discovered the basic structure of the DNA molecule.

Read more ....

Secrets Of Insect Flight Revealed: Modeling The Aerodynamic Secrets Of One Of Nature's Most Efficient Flyers

Smoke visualization in Oxford University's wind tunnel showing the airflow over a flying locust's wings. (Credit: Animal Flight Group, Dept. of Zoology, Oxford University and Dr John Young, UNSW@ADFA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — Researchers are one step closer to creating a micro-aircraft that flies with the manoeuvrability and energy efficiency of an insect after decoding the aerodynamic secrets of insect flight.

Dr John Young, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, and a team of animal flight researchers from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, used high-speed digital video cameras to film locusts in action in a wind tunnel, capturing how the shape of a locust's wing changes in flight. They used that information to create a computer model which recreates the airflow and thrust generated by the complex flapping movement.

Read more ....

Online Labs Aim to Revolutionize High School Science

Julia Barnathan (standing), curriculum developer for Northwestern's Office of STEM Education Partnerships, assists a student with a lesson in radiation that uses iLabs to access a geiger counter at the University of Queensland, Australia. Credit: Amanda Morris, Office for Research, Northwestern University

From Live Science:

Fifty years ago, a typical high school science fair featured several exploding volcanoes. Today, one would expect a science fair to look far more advanced. The sad truth, however, is that standard high school science has changed very little.

"There is a growing gap between the practice of science the way researchers at Northwestern and other institutions are conducting it and what science looks like in high school," said Kemi Jona, research associate professor and director of the Office of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education Partnerships (OSEP) at Northwestern University. "And that gap keeps getting bigger and bigger."

Read more ....

Opera Browser Bids For America

From The BBC:

The founder of Opera has said despite its 100m worldwide users, they have a big job ahead conquering America.

In the US, the latest figures by Net Applications showed Opera is 5th in the market with a 2% share behind Microsoft, Apple, Google and Firefox.

But Opera claimed in other parts of the globe it is the most popular browser of choice with growth last year of 67%.

"The reality is that in the U.S. we have some work to do," Opera boss Jon von Tetzchner told BBC News.

Read more ....

Silicon Valley 'Seeing Revival'

From The BBC:

Silicon Valley is stirring back to life, following a bruising economic downturn, according to industry insiders and start-up entrepreneurs.

The view seems to underscore Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's belief that the US recession has ended.

He told a Washington think-tank that "from a technical perspective the recession is very likely over".

Read more ....

Jammie Thomas Lawyers File Suit Against Scribd

From CNET:

A legal complaint seeking class action status filed in Houston on Friday accuses social-publishing site Scribd of egregious copyright infringement.

Scribd managers have "built a technology that's broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale and in the process have also built one of the largest readerships in the world," the attorneys representing the class wrote in the complaint. "The company shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors."

Read more ....

Big Differences Between European Countries In Heart Risks

From Future Pundit:

The big smoker countries in Europe have much higher rates of heat disease death under age 65.

While heart disease remains the leading cause of death in Europe, mortality rates are falling in most (but not all) countries, according to new findings released by the EuroHeart mapping project.(1) However, this detailed research, part of a three-year programme to analyse cardiovascular health and prevention policies in 16 European countries, also reveals huge inequalities among countries both in the rate of cardiovascular mortality and in national prevention programmes.

• Highest rates of mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD) in men under 65 were found in Hungary (105 per 100,000 population), Estonia (104), Slovakia (74), Greece (50), Finland (48) and UK (44).
• Highest rates for women under 65 were found in Hungary (28), Estonia (20), Slovakia (19), UK (11), Greece (10) and Belgium (9).
• Lowest rates for men under 65 were found in France (17), Netherlands (22), Italy (25) and Norway (27).
• Lowest rates for women under 65 were found in Iceland (3), France (3), Slovenia (5) and Italy (5).

This pattern was also reflected (though not exactly mirrored) in risk factor prevalence, where, for example, Greece (46%), Estonia (42%), Slovakia (41%), Germany (37%) and Hungary (37%) had the highest rates of cigarette smoking.

Read more ....

America’s Food Revolution

Photo: Cutting-edge molecular gastronomy at Chicago’s Alinea: a sphere of grape foam injected with walnut milk and covered in frozen and powdered Maytag blue cheese. Lara Kastner/SIPA

From City Journal:

Urban revival, globalization, and some world-class chefs have created one of the world’s great culinary scenes.

In a 1769 letter to the naturalist John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin observed that while lots of people like accounts of old buildings and monuments, “I confess that if I could find in any Italian travels a receipt for making Parmesan cheese, it would give me more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone whatsoever.”

Read more ....

Five Ways To Teach Your Old Phone New Tricks

From The Christian Science Monitor:

This summer was a big season for smart-phone lovers. Apple unveiled a new iPhone with built-in video camera, compass, and online movie rental store. Palm released a worthy rival, the Pre, which lets busy multitaskers flip between e-mail, spreadsheets, and, of course, phone calls. And several touch-screen and next-gen smart phones are on the way.

That’s great news for gadget geeks ready to spend $90 a month (or more) on their cellphones. But what about the rest of us? Even simple mobile phones are capable of a lot these days, thanks to text messaging and a slew of services designed for the average phone. Here are a few tricks to get your plain ol’ cellphone acting like a smart phone.

Read more ....

Tyrannosaurs Flying F-14s!

The cover of this issue of Galaxy features an unusual space launch concept, but an article inside had more realistic and interesting insights.

From The Space Review:

The comic strip Calvin & Hobbes once ran a classic on a Sunday in 1995. Calvin and his tiger buddy are playing with toy dinosaurs and F-14 Tomcat fighter planes when Calvin concludes that the only thing cooler than tyrannosaurs and F-14s… is tyrannosaurs flying F-14s.

This is a scene that has been repeated throughout the history of human spaceflight, when somebody has come up with some concept for a rocket, spacecraft, whatever, that they decide can be made infinitely cooler by combining it with another concept for a rocket, spacecraft, whatever. Want to explore the icy moons of Jupiter? Let’s combine the most powerful ion engines ever built and the largest space nuclear reactor ever built and the largest rocket ever built. That would be cool. (It will also cost twenty-three billion dollars and never be built.)

Read more ....

Oddball Stars Explained: New Observations Solve Longstanding Mystery Of Tipped Stars

This artist's conception of the double-star system DI Herculis illustrates the key findings from the new research. Spectroscopic observations showed that the two stars are both tipped over almost horizontally, relative to the plane of their orbits around each other. Because they are rotating rapidly which creates equatorial bulges, the tidal interactions between the two slows down a regular variation in the plane of the orbits, called precession -- a slowing that had been a mystery for three decades. (Credit: Courtesy of Simon Albrecht)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2009) — A pair of unusual stars known as DI Herculis has confounded astronomers for three decades, but new observations by MIT researchers and their colleagues have provided data that they say solve the mystery once and for all.

It has long been clear that there was something odd going on in this double-star system, but it wasn't clear just what that was. The precession of the orbits of the two stars around each other — that is, the way the plane of those orbits change their tilt over time, like the wobbling of a top as it winds down — seems to take place four times more slowly than established theory says it should. The anomaly is so unexpected that at one point it was seen as possible evidence against Einstein's long-accepted theory of relativity.

Read more ....

7 Solid Health Tips That No Longer Apply

From Live Science:

Are you taking a daily aspirin or multivitamin to stay healthy? Avoiding eggs and choosing no-cholesterol margarine over butter? Convinced that jogging will ultimately kill your knees? Advice that was once considered gospel truth among the medical community is now being questioned.

Read more ....

Plugged-In Age Feeds a Hunger for Electricity

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From The New York Times:

With two laptop-loving children and a Jack Russell terrier hemmed in by an electric fence, Peter Troast figured his household used a lot of power. Just how much power did not really hit him until the night the family turned off the overhead lights at their home in Maine and began hunting gadgets that glowed in the dark.

“It was amazing to see all these lights blinking,” Mr. Troast said.

As goes the Troast household, so goes the planet.

Electricity use from power-hungry gadgets is rising fast all over the world. The fancy new flat-panel televisions everyone has been buying in recent years have turned out to be bigger power hogs than some refrigerators.

Read more ....

How Broadband Is Changing Africa

From The BBC:

Fast broadband will transform Africa, and the rest of the world will change too, says Bill Thompson.

Norman Borlaug, whose work in Mexico and India led to the 'green revolution' in agricultural production, died last week and was widely commemorated for his important work.

While the introduction of new crops and the use of irrigation, fertilisers and pesticides certainly enabled us to feed millions of people, the crops were delivered at a price, and we should not forget that Borlaug's green revolution, like every revolution, had a negative as well as a positive side.

Read more ....

Warming Arctic 'Halts Migration'

From The BBC:

Milder winters in the Arctic region have led to fewer Pacific brants, a species of sea goose, migrating southwards, say researchers.

A study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) found that as many as 30% of the birds were overwintering in Alaska rather than migrating to Mexico.

Until recently, more than 90% of the species were estimated to head south.

Writing in the journal Arctic, the team said the shift coincides with warming in the North Pacific and Bering Sea.

Read more ....

VW Redefines ‘Car’ With A 170-MPG Diesel Hybrid

From Autopia:

Volkswagen is redefining the automobile with the L1, a bullet-shaped diesel hybrid that weighs less than 900 pounds, gets an amazing 170 mpg and might see production within four years.

The L1 concept car unveiled at the Frankfurt auto show pushes the boundaries of vehicle design and draws more inspiration from gliders than conventional automobiles. The only question the company’s engineers asked when designing the L1 was, “How would a car have to look and be built to consume as little energy as possible.” Their answer was small, light and extremely aerodynamic. Those guidelines led to a car that requires just 1.38 liters of diesel fuel to go 100 kilometers.

Read more ....

Chinese Climate Wisdom

(Click image to Enlarge)

From Watts Up With That?:

The Chinese civilization has existed survived intact far longer than any other in human history, and they have records of that civilization that span 2-3 thousand years BC. They’ve seen more climate change than any other civilization.

The Guardian recently interviewed Xiao Ziniu, the director general of the Beijing Climate Center.

Excerpts:

A 2C rise in global temperatures will not necessarily result in the calamity predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), China’s most senior climatologist has told the Guardian.

Read more ....