Saturday, September 4, 2010
Scientists Figure Out Magical 'Banana' Free Kick
From The CBC:
Thirteen years after Roberto Carlos stunned onlookers with his amazing "banana" free kick that seemed to defy the law of physics, scientists have finally worked out how he did it.
In what many people regard as the best free kick ever, the Brazil defender struck the ball with the outside of his left foot 35 yards out, bending it around the outside of France's three-man wall during a friendly tournament in Lyon in 1997.
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Friday, September 3, 2010
Water in Earth's Mantle Key To Survival Of Oldest Continents
This is an image of a sample of cratonic mantle root from Kimberley, South Africa. The rock consists of dark green olivine, whitish-green enstatite, emerald green diopside and purple garnet. (Credit: David R. Bell / ASU)From Science Daily:
ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Earth today is one of the most active planets in the Solar System, and was probably even more so during the early stages of its life. Thanks to the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet's surface, remnants of crust from Earth's formative years are rare, but not impossible to find. A paper published in Nature Sept. 2 examines how some ancient rocks have resisted being recycled into Earth's convecting interior.
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High-Tech Effort Underway to Protect Magna Carta
One of four existing copies of the 1297 Magna Carta. Credit: National Archives & Records AdministrationFrom Live Science:
The Magna Carta helped form the foundation for modern English and U.S. law. Now one of two copies known to exist outside England is headed for a special new case to preserve it.
The very first Magna Carta dates to 1215, when English barons forced King John to write down the traditional rights and liberties of the country's free persons. A copy of the Magna Carta signed by King Edward I in 1297 currently resides within a helium-filled casement at the National Archives Building in Washington. But the medieval document is scheduled for a temporary removal in 2011 so it can be re-measured for a new case filled with argon.
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NASA Flies First Drone Over Hurricane
From Wired Science:
Hurricane Earl is waning as it moves northward up the east coast of the United States. Some of the first researchers to notice the weakening had front row seats, watching the eye of the hurricane via drone flights.
In addition to the usual cadre of satellites, NASA is using a small fleet of unmanned aircraft into, over and around the hurricane as it tracks north from the Caribbean. While flying into a hurricane is nothing new, Earl is the first hurricane that NASA has observed using their unmanned Global Hawk observation aircraft (pictured above).
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Canadian To Command Space Station In 2013
From Space Daily:Astronaut Chris Hadfield in 2013 will become the first Canadian to command the International Space Station (ISS), the Canadian Space Agency announced Thursday.
Hadfield, 51, will rocket on his third trip into space aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in December 2012 and assume command of the station during the second part of a six-month mission.
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Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers?
Jodi Cobb / National Geographic Creative / Getty ImageFrom Time Magazine:
One of the most contentious issues in the vast literature about alcohol consumption has been the consistent finding that those who don't drink tend to die sooner than those who do. The standard Alcoholics Anonymous explanation for this finding is that many of those who show up as abstainers in such research are actually former hard-core drunks who had already incurred health problems associated with drinking.
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My Comment: I am convinced .... and yes .... I need a drink.
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 todayFrom 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 TimesFrom 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/xxxnakeFrom 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.
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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. NavyFrom 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 BamforthUC 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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