Organic Wine-Makers Look to Greener Packaging

There are no bottles in these boxes of wine -- just wine and the plastic pouch that holds it. Boxing instead of bottling wine saves half the shipping weight (and associated carbon emissions) and keeps the product fresher longer. Bota Box

From Scientific American:

More and more wineries offer organic varieties to lower their eco-footprints. It's no surprise that they're looking at their product packaging's environmental impacts, as well.

With more and more wineries offering organic varieties to lower their eco-footprint, it’s no surprise that they’re looking at the environmental impacts of their packaging as well. The making of conventional glass bottles (and the corks that cap them) uses significant quantities of natural resources and generates considerable pollution. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the process of manufacturing glass not only contributes its share of greenhouse gas emissions but also generates nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and tiny particulates that can damage lung tissue when breathed in.

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DOE Announces $620 Million in Smart Grid Project Grants

From Popular Science:

While the Smart Grid we needed years ago is still years away, the Obama administration took a step forward today as Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $620 million in stimulus awards for 32 Smart Grid demonstration projects benefiting 21 states. A decidedly feel-good video that is nonetheless educational was released along with the announcement and explains (in broad terms at least) what the DOE aims to achieve with its Smart Grid investment. View it after the jump.

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Birthplace Of Cosmic Guitar Pinpointed

Space rock (Image: S. Chatterjee/J.M.Cordes/Palomar Observatory)

From New Scientist:

IT'S the biggest guitar in the galaxy. The Guitar pulsar is a stellar corpse that is tearing through interstellar gas and creating a guitar-shaped wake of hot hydrogen (pictured). Its birthplace may now have been found.

Little is known about the origins of such wayward stellar remnants. To hunt for the pulsar's birthplace, Nina Tetzlaff at the University of Jena in Germany and colleagues projected the paths of 140 nearby groups of stars backwards in time over 5 million years.

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Video: Saturn’s Spectacular Aurora in Action

From Wired Science:

How can you not love Cassini? The latest treat NASA’s spacecraft has provided us is the first ever movie of Saturn’s incredible aruroras.

The high-resolution video was assembled from 472 still images, spaced over 81 hours in October, that show the phenomenon in three dimensions. The lights can be seen as a rippling, vertical sheet up to 750 miles high above Saturn’s northern hemisphere.

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Lost: Darwin's Missing Notebook

Charles Darwin Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

An appeal has been launched to track down one of Charles Darwin's most important notebooks, which was probably stolen in the early 1980s.

English Heritage wants anyone who might know of the whereabouts of Darwin's 'Galapagos notebook' to come forward.

It is launching the appeal today to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

To mark the anniversary, English Heritage is also publishing online Darwin's 14 other notebooks from his time aboard HMS Beagle between 1831 and 1836.

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Harnessing The Power Of Sea Water, Norway Unveils World's First Salt Power Generator

(Click Image to Enlarge)

From The Daily Mail:

The world's first salt power generator was today unveiled in Norway.

The system which harnesses the energy produced when fresh water and sea water mix was devised by the energy company Statkraft.

It has been estimated that globally, salt power could produce 1,600-1,700 terawatt hours, equivalent to half of the European Union's total annual power production.

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HIV Infections And Deaths Fall As Drugs Have Impact

From The BBC:

Greater access to anti-retroviral drugs has helped cut the death toll from HIV by more than 10% over the past five years, latest figures show.

The World Health Organization and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) say an estimated 33.4 million people worldwide are infected with HIV.

That figure is up from 33 million in 2007 because fewer are dying with HIV.

The latest report also shows there has been a significant drop in the number of new HIV infections.

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How The Brain Filters Out Distracting Thoughts To Focus On A Single Bit Of Information

Laura Colgin is a postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory. (Credit: Image courtesy of The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU))

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 23, 2009) — The human brain is bombarded with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night's delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your morning meeting. But how do you "tune in" to just one thought or idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you, until it comes time to think of something else?

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Bigger Brains Not Always Smarter

From Live Science:

More brains doesn't necessarily equal more smarts, a new comparison of animal noggins reveals.

Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, researchers argue in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Current Biology.

The scientists found that past studies suggest larger animals may need bigger brains simply because there is more to control — for example they need to move bigger muscles and therefore need more and bigger nerves to move them, the authors say. But that may not equate to higher thought.

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One-Quarter of World's Population Lacks Electricity

PRIMITIVE ENERGY: With no electricity, many people in Third World countries cook their food over wood fires. ISTOCKPHOTO/DORINS

From Scientific American:

Replacing wood and coal with electricity could help reduce poverty and pollution.

Some 130 years since Thomas Edison's breakthrough with artificial light, nearly a quarter of humanity still lacks electricity, a fact officials here want delegates to the upcoming U.N. climate talks to consider.

Vast swaths of the world also have no access to modern fuels like natural gas, kerosene or propane, relying instead on wood or charcoal as principal sources of energy. Switching to energy sources that are more efficient and less detrimental to human health is a prerequisite for raising billions out of poverty as nations promised to do, U.N. officials point out.

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NASA Robotic Rocket Plane To Survey Martian Surface

NASA's Martian Rocket Plane courtesy of NASA

From Popular Science:

Since budget cuts and the inability to overcome problems like boredom and high radiation doses have ruled out any manned mission to Mars in the foreseeable future, NASA has shifted gears back towards a program of robotic exploration. To that end, NASA now wants a rocket-powered UAV to fly around the Red Planet, photographing the surface.

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Orion's Dark Secret: Violence Shaped The Night Sky

Dark forces at work (Image: Andy Martin)

From New Scientist:

WHERE will astronomers stop in their love affair with the enigmatic substance called dark matter? First we were told it was essential to allow a galaxy to spin without falling apart. Then it was the glue that held clusters of galaxies together. Later it was said to have catalysed the formation of the galaxies in the first place. Now, surely, they have gone too far. If the latest theories pan out, dark matter has also given us some of the world's most enduring astrological myths.

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Apple 27-Inch iMac

Michael Calore/Wired.com

Apple's 27-Inch iMac Is Big, Bright and Beautifully Fast -- Wired

Put one of Apple's new 27-inch Core i7 iMacs on your desk, and you run the risk of alienating yourself from your friends, co-workers and loved ones.

Sure, the sheer speed of the thing is amazing — the new Core i7 processor is outrageously fast — but it's the massive screen that will turn your brain into a gob of HD-saturated jelly. Seriously. The iMac's screen is so freaking huge, so bright and so crisp, it will render you dumb with child-like glee. You'll just want to sit there and watch movies all day and night.

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My Comment: I sampled one yesterday .... and I was impressed. It had 4 GB of RAM .... not 8 GB ....but it was still super fast. I give it a big thumbs up.

Mars Was Covered By Huge Ocean, Say Experts

The new map showing that Martian valley networks are more than twice as extensive
as had previously been thought Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

A single large ocean once covered much of the northern half of Mars, supplied with water from a belt of rain-fed rivers, new research suggests.

Scientists have produced a new map showing that Martian valley networks are more than twice as extensive as had previously been thought, indicating that they were carved by rivers.

They are concentrated in a belt circling the planet's equator and mid-southern latitudes.

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'Big Bang' Machine Makes History By Achieving First Particle Collisions

From The Daily Mail:

Proton beams have been smashed together for the first time in the 'Big Bang Machine', a development which scientists hope will help unravel the origins of the universe.

The beams were circulated in opposite directions at the same time causing the first particle collisions in the £6billion experiment after 14 months of repairs.

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Green Lines What Does It Take To Save A Species? Sometimes, High-Voltage Power Wires

(Mick Wiggins for The Boston Globe)

From Boston.com:

FOR DECADES, NOBODY in the US had seen the bee.

The silver-haired black Epeoloides pilosula was once widespread in New England, often found where native yellow loosestrife plants grew. But as the region’s pastoral landscapes gave way to forests, the bee lost its sunny open home. In 1927 it was spotted in a Needham meadow and then, despite years of searching, not again. By the start of this century, dejected bee lovers were forced to conclude that the insect was likely extinct in the US.

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Heart Attack Risk 'Raised By Suppressing Anger'

From The BBC:

Men who do not openly express their anger if they are unfairly treated at work double their risk of a heart attack, Swedish research suggests.

The researchers looked at 2,755 male employees in Stockholm who had not had a heart attack when the study began.

They were asked about how they coped with conflict at work, either with superiors or colleagues.

The researchers say their study shows a strong relationship between pent-up anger and heart disease.

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Climategate Reveals The Corruption Of Science And Global Warming

ClimateGate: The Fix is In -- Real Clear Politics

In early October, I covered a breaking story about evidence of corruption in the basic temperature records maintained by key scientific advocates of the theory of man-made global warming. Global warming "skeptics" had unearthed evidence that scientists at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia had cherry-picked data to manufacture a "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic-but illusory-runaway warming trend in the late 20th century.

But now newer and much broader evidence has emerged that looks like it will break that scandal wide open. Pundits have already named it "Climategate."

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Update: Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? -- The Telegraph

My Comment: For the past few days I have been reading the emails from the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia. Anyone who calls himself a scientist would not only find these emails disturbing, but also frightened to see how science can be used to push a political agenda.

Is global warming hoax? .... it is clear from the internal communication among those who say that global warming is publicly .... that privately they believe that it is not the case.

Scientists who knowingly supported this hoax should be named and publicized. Monies that have been taken should be returned. Criminal charges should be considered.

Watts Up With That? is a science blog that is covering this growing scandal, I would bookmark their site for future reference and information.

Supervolcano Eruption In Sumatra Deforested India 73,000 Years Ago

Landsat satellite photo of Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia.
(Credit: Image courtesy of NASA / via Wikimedia Commons)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 24, 2009) — A new study provides "incontrovertible evidence" that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter, researchers report.

The volcano ejected an estimated 800 cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere, leaving a crater (now the world's largest volcanic lake) that is 100 kilometers long and 35 kilometers wide. Ash from the event has been found in India, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.

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Boomerangers: Young Adults Moving Back Home

From Live Science:

Some young adults are taking refuge from the dim economy by heading back to their nest, a new report suggests.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center, announced today, found 13 percent of parents with grown children say an adult son or daughter has moved back home over the past year for various reasons, including the recession.

The so-called boomerangers are mostly individuals ages 18 to 34, the survey found.

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