Tweaking The Fracking Process To Prevent Environmental Damage

Men with Cabot Oil and Gas work on a natural gas valve at a hydraulic fracturing site in South Montrose, Penn. Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, stimulates gas production by injecting wells with high volumes of chemical-laced water in order to free up pockets of natural gas below.

It's Not Fracking's Fault, Study Says -- MSNBC

A university study asserts that the problems caused by the gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," arise because drilling operations aren't doing it right. The process itself isn't to blame, according to the study, released today by the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

The report is likely to add new fuel to a blazing controversy over fracking. Researchers reviewed the evidence contained in the reports of groundwater contamination from three prominent shale-rock formations where the process is employed: the Barnett Shale in North Texas, the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, New York and other areas of Appalachia; and the Haynesville Shale in western Louisiana and northeast Texas.

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The Future Of Energy In North America Is Tight Oil

A Cabot Oil and Gas natural gas drill is viewed at a hydraulic fracturing site on January 17, 2012 in Springville, Pennsylvania. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Tight Oil The Future Of Energy In North America -- Financial Post

Tight oil, the new oil source unlocked by new drilling technologies, is bearing such good results it could quickly compete with Canada’s oil sands as a top secure supply of North American oil.

With companies like Devon Energy Corp., Talisman Energy Inc., Encana Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. pushing big spending toward tight oil, analysts are ratcheting up their production forecasts for the supplies, which are largely based in the United States.

“Tight oil is changing the landscape in North America,” Steve Fekete, managing consultant at Purvin & Gertz, said at an oil sands industry conference in Calgary this week.

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Concentrated Solar Power: World Distribution Map

CSN Editor: Click here for an expanded view of the above image.

UN Plans Solar Energy For Africa

UN Plans Solar Energy For 33 Million People In Africa, Asia -- M&C

New York - Low-cost solar panels and solar batteries will be provided to poor communities in 14 countries in Africa and Asia in the next four years, the UN Development Programme said Thursday.

A total of 33 million people in the 14 countries will be able to make use of solar energy for commercial businesses and economic development, using the solar panels to be developed by a Mauritius-based company called ToughStuff, UNDP said.

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My Comment: Africa has the sun .... especially in the Sahara regions.

The Power Of Nanosecond Trading

Red line represents the frequency of sub-650 millisecond flash crashes, and blue the frequency of flash spikes, between January 2006 and February 2011. The black spike is the S&P 500 index. Image: Johnson et al./arXiv

Nanosecond Trading Could Make Markets Go Haywire -- Wired

The afternoon of May 6, 2010 was among the strangest in economic history. Starting at 2:42 p.m. EDT, the Dow Jones stock index fell 600 points in just 6 minutes. Its nadir represented the deepest single-day decline in that market’s 114-year history. By 3:07 p.m., the index had rebounded. The “flash crash,” as it came to be known, was big, unexpected and scary — and a new study says flash events actually happen routinely, at speeds so fast they don’t register on regular market records, with potentially troubling consequences for market stability.

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My Comment: So much for the small individual investor.

Could Hurricanes Wreck $700m Offshore Wind Farms In U.S.?

Threat: Academic experts in Pennsylvania say half of the turbines at four proposed offshore wind farms in the U.S. are likely to be destroyed by hurricanes in their 20-year life. A wind farm in Sweden is pictured

Could Hurricanes Wreck $700m Offshore Wind Farms In U.S.? Experts Predict HALF Of Proposed Turbines Will Be Ruined In 20 Years -- Daily Mail

* Pittsburgh researchers' study follows up on U.S. energy report in 2008
* Energy officials want wind farms to generate 20% of electricity by 2013
* Plans for farms in Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina & Texas
* Experts say current design can only withstand Category 3 hurricanes
U.S. energy officials have set a bullish target for wind farms to generate one fifth of the country’s electricity by 2030 - but Mother Nature certainly isn’t going to make it easy.

Academic experts at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, say half of the turbines at four proposed offshore wind farms are likely to be destroyed by hurricanes in their 20-year life.

The proposed wind farms at Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas could cost $175million each, but the researchers believe current designs of turbines mean many will not survive.

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My Comment: I could also make the case that sea water will corrode the windmills in a time period that could be even shorter than 20 years.

The 50 Best Websites of 2011

Illustrations by Alexander Ho for TIME

CSN Editor: The list is here.

Could The Next Generation Live To Be 150?

Photo: Maxwell Jones CBS 2

Seen At 11: Could The Next Generation Live To Be 150? -- CBS 2 New York

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — People in the Tri-State Area are living longer than ever, and if scientists have their way, life expectancies will continue to rise. Technologies today could allow the next generation to live up to 150, but how far should scientists go to allow people to live this long?

Baby Maxwell Jones’ life is just getting started, but if he’s lucky, the hours-old infant could live well into the next century.

“A hundred years, seems a stretch but it’s obviously possible,” his mother told CBS 2′s Kristine Johnson.

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Darpa's Budget Spared From Drastic Cuts

Darpa Dodges Obama Budget Death Ray, Keeps Its $2.8 Billion -- The Danger Room

For most of the U.S. military’s far-flung community of scientists and engineers, Monday was a day to pop a Xanax. Not only did the Defense Department announce a cut of more than $2 billion from is research and development budget for next year, but the Pentagon also said it would slow down production of new ships, spy drones, stealth jets, and combat vehicles — leaving a military that’s a bit creakier and older than before, and threatening the funding of thousands in the slide-rule set. Gulp.

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More News On Darpa's Budget

DARPA's budget haircut only a light trim -- Defense Systems
Darpa dodges Obama’s budget cuts -- Smart Planet
DARPA's budget and projects for Fiscal year 2013 -- Next Big Future

My Comment: No budget cuts for now .... but if sequestration comes into play, expect a slash and burn situation when it comes to all budgets .... Darpa's included.

Hollywood's 'Avatar' Robot Created By Japanese Scientists

Telesar V transfers marbles from a cup to another cup for a demonstration at Tachi's laboratory in Yokohama Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Japanese Scientists Create Hollywood's 'Avatar' Robot -- The Telegraph

The sci-fi world of the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar has been brought one step closer to reality with the creation of a robot that mimics the movements of its human controller.

Japanese scientists have developed a robot that allows humans to direct its actions while also enabling them to see, hear and feel the same things as their android counterpart.

The TELESAR V robot can be seen as perhaps the first step towards a real-life echo of the Hollywood film Avatar, in which US soldiers were able to remotely control the genetically engineered bodies of an extra-terrestrial race they wished to subdue.

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NASA Mars Funding Slashed

Photo: Nasa chief Charles Bolden admitted that tough choices had to be made.

Nasa Budget Slashes Mars Funding -- BBC

President Barack Obama's 2013 budget request for Nasa would slash spending on Mars exploration and shift funds to human spaceflight and space technology.

As reported by BBC News last week, this means the US will pull the plug on its joint missions to Mars with Europe.

If approved by Congress, the budget request would reduce funds available for planetary science by about 21%.

But spending on human exploration and space technology would rise by 6% and 22% respectively.

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My Comment: Nasa still has a budget?

Are Airships Coming Back?

Airship that can travel over 90mph could by used by Royal Navy

21st Century Airships May Join Navy Fleet -- The Telegraph

A new generation of British-built airships may be bought by the Royal Navy to resupply ships, follwoing their use by the US Army on the front line in Afghanistan.

Modern-day Zeppelins will take to the sky for the first time since the First World War when the US Army begins using airships in Afghanistan.

But Navy chiefs are now giving serious consideration to purchasing an airship from the Bedfordshire-based Hybrid Air Vehicles to provide surveillance and re-supply runs to aircraft carriers, The Daily Telegraph can discose.

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My Comment: The Americans have their own 'air ship/kite' program. It can be read here.

Webb Telescope Survives Spending Cuts

A September 2009 artist conception of James Webb Space Telescope. NASA

It's Alive! The Greatest Space Telescope Ever Built Survives -- Time

When last we heard about the James Webb Space Telescope, the souped-up, long-planned successor to the Hubble, the news was not good. Hard on the heels of a report blasting the Webb project for being badly behind schedule and over budget, a House committee voted to axe the partially completed telescope entirely.

Even a space nut could appreciate where they were coming from: originally envisioned in the 1990s as a monster scope 26 ft. (8 m) across, with more than 17 times the light-gathering power of the Hubble, the Webb was going to cost no more than $500 million and launch by 2007 — cross NASA's heart and hope to die! No one really bought that, but no one really expected the budget to swell to $2.6 billion and then to $6.2 billion, or the launch date to slip to 2015 and then 2018 either. When all that did happen, D.C. bean counters concluded that nothing would become the Webb project quite as much as the end of it.

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My Comment: $6.2 billion for a telescope .... sheesshhh ....

Hackers From Anonymous Crash The CIA Website

Anonymous hacked the CIA

Anonymous Claims Credit For Crashing CIA Site -- Washington Post

Hackers claiming an affiliation with Anonymous took credit for crashing the Central Intelligence Agency’s Web site Friday, in what appears to be another distributed denial-of-service attack.

The CIA’s Web site was inaccessible around 3:30 on Friday afternoon.

Preston Golson, a spokesman for the CIA, told The Post in an e-mailed statement, “We are looking into these reports.”

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More News On Anonymous Crashing The CIA Website

Anonymous targets the CIA -- CNN
Anonymous announces CIA website hacked -- BBC
Anonymous Says It Knocked C.I.A. Site Offline -- New York Times
Anonymous 'takes down' CIA website -- Al Jazeera
Anonymous took down cia.gov -- RT
Anonymous Takes Down CIA Web Site -- PC Mag
Anonymous knocks CIA website offline -- AFP
CIA Tango Down: Anonymous strikes again -- Examiner
'Tango Down': Anonymous claims attacks on CIA, Alabama state sites -- MSNBC

Family Portraits That Age You... In A Split-Second

The Family Portraits That Age You... In A Split-Second -- Daily Mail

* Photographer's 20-year project puts together series of amazing pictures of his relatives without using Photoshop
* Some are spliced with younger selves - while others combine parents with their children

A photo shows how a glamorous 16 year old will look as an old lady by using two images taken 46 years apart.

Half of the pretty blonde's wrinkle-free face is juxtaposed with a similar portrait of her as a white-haired old woman to show the passing of time.

The incredible series of pictures called AgeMap is a 20-year project by Bobby Neel Adams, who also merges portraits of family members into one image in his Family Tree series.

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Moonrise Over Saturn

The 'smoky' effect at the bottom of the crescent moon Enceladus are geyser-like jets that create a halo of ice, dust and gas around Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring

Moonrise Over Saturn: Nasa Orbiter Captures Geysers Of Frost Shrouding South Pole Of Icy Moon Enceladus -- Daily Mail

Nasa's Cassini spacecraft has captured a spectacular view of the crescent moon Enceladus in front off the planet.

The orbiter captured the famous jets of water ice spraying from Saturn's moon Enceladus in a recent visible-light image - visible as a very faint smoky halo of ice shrouding the moon's south pole.

The spacecraft has orbited the planet Saturn since 2004, studying the planet, its mysterious moons, and its rings of tiny particles of ice.

The geyser-like jets on Enceladus appear as a small white blur below the dark south pole, down and to the right of the illuminated part of the moon's surface in the image.

The jets are made of water ice - and hint that Enceladus could have oceans below its surface.

The geyser-like jets create a halo of ice, dust and gas around Enceladus that helps feed Saturn's E ring.

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Funniest YouTube Video Ever?

Is This The Funniest YouTube Video Ever? Google Invents Algorithm To Find The Most Amusing Clip... And 'No No No No Cat' Is The Winner -- Daily Mail

You’d think the reasons for something being funny were beyond the reach of science – but Google’s brain-box researchers have managed to come up with a formula for working out which YouTube video clips are the funniest.

Their algorithm has declared that a video of a cat appearing to say ‘no’ over and over again – called No No No No Cat - is currently the funniest.

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My Comment: I disagree .... but then again .... I am not a cat person.

USS Revenge Found After 200 Years

Mystery Of 200-Year-Old Shipwreck Found Off US Coast -- The Telegraph

For two centuries it rested a mile from shore, shrouded by a treacherous reef from the pleasure boaters and beachgoers who haunt New England's southern coast.

Now, researchers from the US Navy are hoping to confirm what the men who discovered the wreck believe: that the sunken ship off the coast of Rhode Island is the USS Revenge, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry and lost on a stormy January day in 1811.

"The Revenge was forgotten, it became a footnote," said Charlie Buffum, a brewery owner from Connecticut who found the shipwreck while diving with friend Craig Harger. "We are very confident this is it."

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My Comment: Gotta love the name .... USS Revenge.

A New Approach To Fight Cancer

Out of control: biologists still cannot explain why cancerous cells will proliferate and spread to other organs if unchecked

The Final Frontier In The War On Cancer -- The Telegraph

Frustrated by glacial progress, the US has turned to physicists to fight the disease, reveals Paul Davies.

When President Nixon declared war on cancer 40 years ago, he also sanctioned one of the biggest research programmes in history. The budget of America’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) is now $5 billion a year, more than Nasa spends on space exploration. Cancer accounts for a large slice of research funds in most other developed countries, too: Cancer Research UK, for example, has a budget of £500 million a year.

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What Oil Shortage?

Rising Oil Production in Alberta: More Evidence Disproving Hubbert’s Peak -- New American

The latest report from the Calgary (Alberta, Canada) Herald was nothing but good news: The steadily declining production of light oil from 2002 to late 2010 has reversed itself completely and is now not only proving the power and principles of a free market but “will change the way we think about oil, with many weighty consequences…” says blogger Peter Tertzakian. The graph he provided here shows Alberta’s production declining by about 16,000 barrels per day (B/d) every year since 2002, dropping to just over 300,000 B/d in late 2010. Now, thanks to new capital, new technology, and new enthusiasm, production is close to 400,000 B/d. It also “could heighten the blood pressure of a few peak oil theorists,” said Tertzakian.

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