Friday, September 3, 2010

One Reason Dieting Does Not Work


That’s The Way The Cookie Crumbles -- The Economist

One reason dieting does not work.

IF, BY chance, you are served an unusually large slice of pizza, compared with what others appear to be getting, would that experience incline you, some minutes later, to eat more cookies or fewer when platefuls came your way? That depends, it turns out, on whether you are on a diet. Those who are not eat fewer cookies, whereas those who are see the excessive pizza as a licence to pig out. It is a demonstration of what Janet Polivy, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, refers to as the “what the hell” effect—a phenomenon familiar from real life to which Dr Polivy has given scientific respectability, most recently in a paper published in the latest edition of Appetite.

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Why Food Is Costing Us The Earth

Coffee prices have risen sharply Photo: SIMON RAWLES

From The Telegraph:


The fight is on over how to solve our food crisis, but if we choose the wrong food policy at this juncture there could be no going back, says Rose Prince.

Hardly a morning passes without food making the headlines. This week has brought us the burger that thinks it's a pizza and news that eating asparagus makes you stay slim (fingers crossed it's the type covered in melted butter). And we heard that, if you eat pickled squid guts and single cream together, it tastes like strawberry shortcake.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab: Firm Joins Forces With Google By Launching Tablet to Take On Apple's iPad

iPad killer? People compare the performance of Apple's iPad (L) and Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablet devices at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin today

From The Daily Mail:

Apple faces a killer blow to its iPad after Samsung unveiled its own device amid rumours it could could be just half the price.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab with its seven inch touchscreen is smaller than the iPad, however it matches the Apple device in virtually all other functions.

Initial details suggest some aspects of the Tablet are even more sophisticated than the Apple creation.

At the same time, Apple faces competition from other technology giants which are racing to get their own touchscreen tablets into the shops before Christmas.

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My Comment:
I prefer the size of the iPad, but others prefer something smaller. At last there is choice now, and that is a good thing.

Doctors Seek Way To Treat Muscle Loss

Participants in a University of Florida study use ankle weights to increase strength and balance. Researchers say muscle deterioration is a major reason some of the elderly lose mobility and cannot live independently. Steve Johnson for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

Bears emerge from months of hibernation with their muscles largely intact. Not so for people, who, if bedridden that long, would lose so much muscle they would have trouble standing.

Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists, drug and food companies, let alone aging baby boomers who, despite having spent years sweating in the gym, are confronting the body’s natural loss of muscle tone over time.

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Stephen Hawking Says There's No Theory Of Everything


From New Scientist:

Craig Callender, contributor

Three decades ago, Stephen Hawking famously declared that a "theory of everything" was on the horizon, with a 50 per cent chance of its completion by 2000. Now it is 2010, and Hawking has given up. But it is not his fault, he says: there may not be a final theory to discover after all. No matter; he can explain the riddles of existence without it.

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The Secret To The Immortality Of McDonald's Food

Salon/iStockphoto/xxxnake

From Salon:

The chain's burgers can resist rot for years. Scientists explain why they have the shelf life of the undead.

Ever since Morgan Spurlock held up that jar of mysteriously well-preserved fries in "Super Size Me," the list of exhibits in the McDonald’s museum of food-that-refuses-go-bad has grown exponentially. The latest entrant is the Happy Meal Project, a burger and a packet of fries that have soldiered on undecayed for 143 days.

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My Comment: I have a confession .... I am addicted to sausage egg McMuffins. Don't know why .... just need a fix once in a while.

Hubble Observations of Supernova Reveal Composition Of 'Star Guts' Pouring Out

A team of astronomers led by the University of Colorado at Boulder is charting the interactions between Supernova 1987A and a glowing gas ring encircling the supernova remnant known as the "String of Pearls." (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Observations made with NASA's newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope of a nearby supernova are allowing astronomers to measure the velocity and composition of "star guts" being ejected into space following the explosion, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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Mass Extinction Threat: Earth On Verge of Huge Reset Button?

From Live Science:

Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems.

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China's Militarization of Space Continues


Chinese Satellite Test -- Inside The Ring, Washington Times

China recently conducted a space test involving two satellites that rendezvoused several hundred miles above Earth in a maneuver analysts say will likely boost Beijing's anti-satellite weapons program.

Read more ....

More News On China's Space Program

Two Chinese Satellites Have Close Encounter in Orbit -- Discovery News
Close Encounters of the Worrisome Kind? Chinese Satellites Meet in Space -- Discover Magazine
China’s Secret Satellite Rendezvous ‘Suggestive of a Military Program’ -- The Danger Room
Satellite pulls new manoeuvre in space -- Toronto Sun
Two Chinese Satellites Rendezvous in Orbit -- Universe Today
Chinese On-orbit Rendezvous Analyzed [The Space Review] -- Space News
Two Chinese satellites rendezvous in orbit -- New Scientist

Hurricane's Path Unfamiliar to U.S. Northeast



From CBS News:

Earl Heads Uncomfortably Close to Area Relatively Few Hurricanes Tend to Go.

(AP) Pushed by an ill-timed trough of low pressure, Hurricane Earl is heading uncomfortably close to an area relatively few hurricanes tend to go: the northeastern United States coastline.

Earl's path may in fact be foreshadowing more northerly big storms to come with global warming, two hurricane experts said Thursday.

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Counting Down To Commercial Space Launches

Image: Space pioneer: This image shows an artist’s rendering of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Credit: SpaceX

From Technology Review:

The next few years will see at least two new commercial spacecraft put into orbit.

A small fleet of privately developed spacecraft will head into orbit in the next few years--assuming that current levels of public and private funding can be sustained. If it happens, this will mark a new chapter in space exploration and research, as NASA comes to rely more on private companies for the technology to put manned and unmanned vehicles in space.

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Global Energy Use In The 21st Century

World energy consumption by type in 2006 - Image: Wikimedia

From Watts Up With That?:

Guest Post by Thomas Fuller

This is a great time to talk about energy use worldwide. Not because it’s topical, or politically important, or anything like that. It’s a great time because the math is easier now than ever before, and easier than it ever will be again.

It’s similar to a time a few years ago when there were almost exactly 100 million households in the United States. It made a lot of calculations really easy to do. And this year, the United States Department of Energy calculates that the world used 500 quads of energy. Ah, the symmetry.

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DARPA's Cyber Insider Threat Program Is The Agency's Great Hope For Ending Leaks

Protecting Military Networks Thinking about WikiLeaking? Think again. U.S. Navy

From Popular Science:

The recent WikiLeaks exposure was a huge black eye for the U.S. Department of Defense, supposedly one of the more secure state organizations we have working for us. Its impact clearly wasn’t lost on the Pentagon, whose blue sky research arm has launched a new project designed to ferret out malicious behavior on DoD networks. Named CINDER – Cyber INsiDER Threat – the project is designed not to sniff out people, but adversarial actions as they happen.

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My Comment: I am skeptical that such a program will be successful .... but hey .... Darpa has surprised us on many occasions and should not be underestimated.

Charlie Bamforth Tells All About The Beer Industry

Charlie Bamforth
UC Davis, College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences

From Popular Mechanics:


In the forthcoming book, Beer Is Proof God Loves Us (to be published October 2010 by FT press), beer expert and master brewer Charlie Bamforth talks about the fast-changing world of beer. From the loss of the pub to the growth of homebrewing, corporate takeovers, and the rise of craft culture, Bamforth outlines the recent history of beer and helps beer-lovers, home brewers and aspiring brewmasters navigate the modern-day beerscape. We got Bamforth on the phone to talk about his views on Big Beer, home brewing and how to become a brewmaster.

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A Traffic Cop For Satellites

As more and more spacecraft are put into orbit, the chance of a collision increases.
Click to enlarge this image. ESA


From Discovery News:

Satellite crashes may be rare, but when they happen, the impact can be long-lasting.

Collisions in space don't happen very often, but when they do the impact is long-lasting. A coalition of satellite traffic cops, however, aims to prevent these episodes from occurring at all.

In orbit, chunks and fragments from a crash won't settle down. They'll keep moving -- extremely rapidly -- upping the odds of additional crashes.

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Black Holes Formed Soon After Big Bang

Supermassive black holes are found at the centre of galaxies - including our galaxy, the Milky Way. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos/AFP:

PARIS: The first supermassive black holes formed just a billion years after the Big Bang, showing that big structures build up quickly in the universe, scientists said.

Ordinary black holes are entities of mass whose gravitational pull is so huge that not even light can escape them. But they are dwarfs compared to so-called supermassive black holes, which are many orders of magnitude bigger.

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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Recipe For Water: Just Add Starlight

Giant star IRC+10216. (Credit: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/MESS Consortia)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapour.

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Why Older People Repeat Stories

From Live Science:

There may be a reason grandparents repeat the same stories over and over again. According to a new study, older people are more likely than younger people to forget with whom they've shared information.

The study investigated two types of memory: source memory, or your recollection of who told you a piece of information; and destination memory, which is your recollection of which people you've informed. Not only were older people bad at remembering to whom they'd told information, they were very confident in their mistaken memories. [10 Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp]

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My Comment: I am repeating stories .... and I am 50. Oh .... oh ....

NASA Planning Mission To Visit The Sun

Artist Representation of Solar Probe Plus
(Credit: NASA)

From The CBS:

We know it's hot up there but NASA wants to know a bit more about the Sun and its environs. And so sometime before 2018, the agency intends to send a spacecraft into the solar atmosphere.

This will mark the first time that a spacecraft from earth will actually visit a star.

The decision to chart a mission to the Sun also realizes a dream that astronomers almost realized a half century ago, when the National Academy of Science's "Simpson Committee" in 1958 recommended a probe to investigate. Several studies were subsequently carried out testing the feasibility of the project. But nothing came of them.

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Robotic Storm Tracker Gets A Big Test With Earl

Bearing down: NASA'S Global Hawk flies over the eye of Hurricane Earl. Thus far it has made numerous passes over the eye and will continue to monitor the storm until Thursday evening. Credit: NASA/NOAA

From Technology Review:

The largest-ever storm monitoring mission is now gathering scientific data that was previously impossible to get.

As Hurricane Earl barrels toward the eastern seaboard of the United States, coastal residents don't know if they should evacuate in case the storm makes landfall. They rely on forecasters analyzing computer models, but those predictions differ. A new hurricane-monitoring mission that's now underway hopes to reduce this uncertainty by gathering atmospheric and environmental storm data never before obtained.

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My Comment: They must have spent a fortune on this system, but considering the damage that hurricanes can cause, any leg up on what they are about to do makes it all worth while.