Astronauts Want A Next-Gen Ride 10 Times Safer Than The Shuttle

A Safer Space Ride NASA's next-gen Ares I-X test rocket launches
within sight of the aging space shuttle. NASA

From Popular Science:

Astronauts say the next crew launch vehicle should have disaster odds of just 1 in 1,000.

Spaceflight continues to represent one of the more extreme and hazardous undertakings for humans, even if it's just about getting off the ground. But the men and women of NASA's astronaut corps say that the U.S. space agency can improve on the odds that faced the doomed shuttle crews of Challenger and Columbia. Florida Today has obtained the documents that show just where NASA's astronauts stand regarding their next-gen vehicle's safety.

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Drowned Cities: Myths And Secrets Of The Deep

From New Scientist:

The idea that great cities, rich in forgotten knowledge and treasure, lie hidden beneath the sea holds immense appeal. Scarcely a year goes by without someone claiming to have found Atlantis. But what's really out there under the waves?

Jo Marchant looks at some of the sunken towns and cities discovered worldwide, and separates the facts from the myths.

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Solar Panel Costs 'Set To Fall'

The fall in cost is due to the increased lifetime, the institute says

From the BBC:

The cost of installing and owning solar panels will fall even faster than expected according to new research.

Tests show that 90% of existing solar panels last for 30 years, instead of the predicted 20 years.

According to the independent EU Energy Institute, this brings down the lifetime cost.

The institute says the panels are such a good long-term investment that banks should offer mortgages on them like they do on homes.

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Pictured: Amazing Images Of Polar Bear Called 'Coldilocks' Taking A Dip

How do you do? Coldilocks waves at the camera during a rare swim
at her enclosure at the Philadelphia Zoo

From The Daily Mail:

Waving at the camera and kicking off a poolside in Olympic swimmer fashion - these captivating pictures give a revealing insight into the playful nature of majestic polar bears.

The award-winning images were taken by photographer Michael S. Confer after months of trying to get the perfect shot of Coldilocks the bear.

Intent on getting photographs of the 29-year-old beast underwater, patient Michael regularly visited the Philadelphia Zoo near his Armore home. But he returned home disappointed every time after months of visits.

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Big Freeze Plunged Europe Into Ice Age in Months

New research shows that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini 'ice age' in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would take tens of years. (Credit: iStockphoto/Trevor Hunt)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Nov. 30, 2009) — In the film The Day After Tomorrow, the world enters the icy grip of a new glacial period within the space of just a few weeks. Now new research shows that this scenario may not be so far from the truth after all.

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The Real Science And History Of Vampires

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart star in "New Moon," the latest production to take advantage of the eternal fascination with vampires. Credit: Summit Entertainment

From Live Science:

Vampires are everywhere these days. Last weekend, the new vampire film "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" broke box office records, taking in over $70 million and may end up being one of the largest openings in history. The film is based on the best-selling "Twilight" series, which of course joins a long list of other vampire-themed best-sellers dating back decades.

The public's thirst for vampires seems as endless as vampires' thirst for blood.

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Tiny Magnetic Discs Could Kill Cancer Cells

Tiny discs attach to the membranes of cancer cells and are then spun with an alternating magnetic field to disrupt the membrane. Credit: Nature

From Cosmos/AFP:

PARIS: Tiny magnetic discs just a millionth of a metre in diameter could be used to used to kill cancer cells, according to a study published on Sunday.

The method uses a magnetic field a tenth as strong as used in previous efforts, and should have few side effects, the authors said.

Laboratory tests found the so-called ‘nanodiscs’, around 60 billionths of a metre thick, could be used to disrupt the membranes of cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct.

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Do Hot, Dry Conditions Cause More African Civil Wars?

From Discover Magazine:

We’ve covered industries and species that climate change will affect, but is more war the next side effect of a warming world? A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ties warmer temperatures to higher incidence of civil wars in Africa. The scientists warn that the continent could see 54 percent more armed conflict—and almost 400,000 more war deaths—by 2030 if climate projections prove true.

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The U.S. Air Force's Space Shuttle

The Air Force hopes its unmanned X-37 (in taxi tests in 2007)
will take on some of the functions of the shuttle. (USAF)

Space Shuttle Jr. -- The Air & Space Smithsonian

After 2010, the only spaceplane in the U.S. inventory will be the Air Force's mysterious X-37.

It's been a long wait—in some ways, more than 50 years—but in April 2010, the U.S. Air Force is scheduled to launch an Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the newest U.S. spacecraft, the unmanned X-37, to orbit. The X-37 embodies the Air Force's desire for an operational spaceplane, a wish that dates to the 1950s, the era of the rocket-powered X-15 and X-20. In other ways, though, the X-37 will be picking up where another U.S. spaceplane, NASA's space shuttle, leaves off.

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Danish Island Becomes One Of The First Energy-Self-Sufficient Places On Earth

A Self-Sufficient Energy Mix Wind turbines deployed in conjunction with solar energy and a series of furnaces burning straw and wood chips manage to heat and power the entire island of Samso with energy to spare. Harvey McDaniel

From Popular Science:

For centuries now, civilization has been working toward an unsustainable future, burning fossil fuels for heat and electricity and creating a way of life that is a model of inefficiency. The tiny Danish island of Samso is leading the way back to sustainability, becoming the one of the first industrialized places in the world to qualify as completely energy self-sufficient.

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The World's Fastest Computers

5: Tianhe-1. 563 teraflops
A new entrant into the Top500 list, China's fastest computer proved capable of more than 500 trillion operations per second. Put another way, a simple calculator's power is typically about 10 flops. Tianhe, which means "river in the sky", is housed at the National Super Computer Center, Tianjin, and is more than four times faster than the previous top computer in the country. The computer combines 6144 Intel processors with 5120 graphics processing units made by AMD, normally found in computer graphics cards. (Image: Xinhua News Agency/eyevine)

From New Scientist:

Twice a year the operators of the world's fastest computers eagerly await their latest ranking compiled by the Top500 project. The chart is based on the maximum rate at which a computer can crunch numbers using what are called floating point operations. November's list has just been released: enjoy our gallery of the five fastest calculators on the planet.

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Large Hadron Collider Sets World Energy Record

From BBC News:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment on the French-Swiss border has set a new world record for energy.

The LHC pushed the energy of its particle beams beyond one trillion electron volts, making it the world's highest-energy particle accelerator.

The previous record was held by the Tevatron particle accelerator in Chicago.

Officials say it is another milestone in the LHC's drive towards its main scientific tests set for 2010.

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Leaked Emails Won't Harm UN Climate Body, Says Chairman

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Photograph: Jay Directo/AFP/Getty Images

From The Guardian:

Rajendra Pachauri says there is 'virtually no possibility' of a few scientists biasing IPCC's advice, after UAE hacking breach.

There is "virtually no possibility" of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN's top global warming body, its chair said today.

Rajendra Pachauri defended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the wake of apparent suggestions in emails between climate scientists at the University of East Anglia that they had prevented work they did not agree with from being included in the panel's fourth assessment report, which was published in 2007.

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My Comment: Putting one's head into the sand .... and humming loud enough to not hear the word "Climategate".

How A Prehistoric 'Super River' Turned Britain Into An Island Nation

From The Daily Mail:

A prehistoric 'super-river' is the reason why Britain became an island and was cut off from Europe.

An Anglo-French study has revealed that long before the English Channel there was a giant river which ran south from an area of the North Sea.

Previous research found that 500,000 years ago a range of low hills connected Britain to Europe between the Weald in South-East England and Artois in northern France.

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Climate Change Data Dumped

From Times Online:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

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My Comment: And these people call themselves scientists ?!?!?!

Peat Fires Drive Temperatures Up: Burning Rainforests Release Huge Amounts of Greenhouse Gases

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2009) — Peatlands, especially those in tropical regions, sequester gigantic amounts of organic carbon. Human activities are now having a considerable impact on these wetlands. For example, drainage projects, in combination with the effects of periodic droughts, can lead to large-scale fires, which release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, and thus contribute to global warming. Using laser-based measurements, Professor Florian Siegert and his research group at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich have now estimated the volume of peat burned in such fires with unprecedented accuracy.

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Islands Make Waves ... In The Sky

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color (photo-like) image on November 23, 2009. Saunders, Montagu, and Bristol Islands, part of the South Sandwich chain, all trigger V-shaped waves. Credit: NASA, Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

From Live Science:

Islands don't move much, but they can still make waves. In fact they sometimes make dramatic waves ... in the clouds.

In a new satellite image, the South Sandwich island chain triggers a series of airborne waves. The V-shaped waves fan out to the east, visible as white clouds over the dark ocean water.

The islands disturb the smooth flow of air, creating waves that ripple through the atmosphere downwind of the obstacles, NASA explained in a statement.

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Is This Your Brain On God?

From NPR:

More than half of adult Americans report they have had a spiritual experience that changed their lives. Now, scientists from universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins are using new technologies to analyze the brains of people who claim they have touched the spiritual — from Christians who speak in tongues to Buddhist monks to people who claim to have had near-death experiences. Hear what they have discovered in this controversial field, as the science of spirituality continues to evolve.

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What's The Environmental Impact Of Going Into Space?

Dirty Rockets -- Slate

We hear so much about the environmental impacts of transportation. What about space travel? How do rockets affect the atmosphere?

There's a simple reason why we hear a lot more about cars, ships, and planes than we do about rocket ships: There are lot more of them. Each flight into space does have a small impact on the planet it leaves behind, but—for the moment, at least—these launchings are very rare. Only a couple of rockets blast off every week around the world. As a result, space travel doesn't register on most environmentalists' radars.

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International Space Station Under Threat of Space Junk Collision

The International Space Station is visible against the Earth's horizon and the blackness of space in this image photographed by an STS-129 crew member on Atlantis Nov. 25, 2009, in this photo released by NASA. Flight controllers in mission control at the Johnson Space Center are crunching numbers, calculating the odds of the International Space Station getting hit by a piece of space junk. (NASA/Reuters)

From ABC News:

Scientists Scramble to Defend International Space Station From Space Junk.

While many Americans are figuring out how much they can spend on Black Friday, flight controllers in mission control at the Johnson Space Center are crunching numbers of their own, calculating the odds of the International Space Station's getting hit by a piece of space junk.

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