since my random news links thread is usually random BS, i decided to set one up for space/science news:
Quote:
Satellites Track Object With Magnetic Field 100 Trillion Xs Stronger Than Earth's
On Aug. 22, 2008, NASA's Swift satellite reported multiple blasts of radiation from a rare object known as a soft gamma repeater, or SGR, some 15,000 light years away. This ancient stellar remnant -one of the totally weird stars of this awesome ongoing hit movie we call the cosmos- is one the most magnetized objects in the universe. Only 15 are known to exist.
Astronomers think the eruptions of SGRs arise from the most highly magnetized objects in the universe -- magnetars, or neutron stars -- the crushed cores of exploded stars -- that, for reasons not yet known, possess ultra-strong magnetic fields. With fields 100 trillion times stronger than Earth’s, a magnetar placed half the moon’s distance would wipe the magnetic strips of every credit card on the planet.
And to the story. I wonder if it was the Enterprise E coming into high Earth orbit from the future...
William Shakespeare wrote:
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
username
Title: owner of a lonely heart
Joined: Jul 06 2007
Location: phoenix, az usa
Posts: 16135
Posted:
Aug 05 2009 12:29 am
Quote:
Inventor's Bike Folds Into Its Own Wheel
A student has designed a bike which can be folded completely into the space of the wheel's 26in circumference.
Dominic Hargreaves's bike, The Contortionist, has been shortlisted for this year's James Dyson Award for innovation.
It may bag the young inventor £10,000.
The 24-year-old, from Battersea, London, said he wanted to create a decent folding bike after the one he was using collapsed.
"I couldn't find a folding bicycle I liked," he added.
"I wanted something that could take a bit of punishment and that you could have fun with.
"So I made one myself."
Mr Hargreaves has been in contact with various manufacturers and hopes to get the bike into production soon.
Competition founder James Dyson said: "The clever bit is how the front wheel can be rotated and repositioned so that the whole of the bike's frame fits into its circumference."
this looks pretty cool. this would definitely hook me up since im a supporter of public transportation. and having to miss the bus because the bike rack is full sucks my cornhole. and i wouldnt have to worry about needing a bike rack if i ever need a ride from someone.
Klimbatize wrote:
I'll eat a turkey sandwich while blowing my load
Andrew Man
Title: Is a Funklord
Joined: Jan 30 2007
Location: Annandale, VA
Posts: 5603
Posted:
Aug 05 2009 06:57 am
Might as well have embedded the vid, because it's awesome.
I to am a supporter of public transportation, this is very clever.
The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain.
Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen.
Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.
Sadly, the newborn ibex kid died shortly after birth due to physical defects in its lungs. Other cloned animals, including sheep, have been born with similar lung defects.
But the breakthrough has raised hopes that it will be possible to save endangered and newly extinct species by resurrecting them from frozen tissue.
It has also increased the possibility that it will one day be possible to reproduce long-dead species such as woolly mammoths and even dinosaurs.
Earlier this month, a team of scientists at the University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) successfully tested a new biofuel based on a mixture of canola and soybean oils, and claim it may be the key to zero emission aviation.
The new super-biofuel, known as Jet Propellant-8 (JP- was used to launch a rocket above the Mojave Desert, where it approached the speed of sound and reached an altitude of 20,000 feet - a major leap forward in biofuel-powered flight.
Speaking about the launch Carsten Heide, associate director for the EERC said, "We demonstrated that this fuel is a flying fuel, and is 100% renewable and burns clean. It would open up the possibility to run 100% renewable, clean planes. You can see in the picture how clean it burns."
The rocket was built by Flometrics, Inc., a product engineering company specializing in fluid dynamics and thermodynamics based in San Diego, California.
Oh shit. Jurassic Park is gonna happen for real, isn't it? Because no one EVER thinks its going to be like the movie until the raptors get out and start eating people.
Touchable Holograms Bring the Holodeck One Step Closer
Sure, the characters in the Enterprise's holodeck would occasionally try to kill you, but when they worked, the tactile holograms looked like incredible fun. Now researchers are getting closer, creating holograms that can be felt and respond to human touch.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo are working to create holographic displays that mimic the sensation of interacting with solid objects. Sadly, there are none of the holodeck's forcefields at work to turn light into a solid object. Instead, the researchers place a reflective marker on a person's hand and use Nintendo Wiimotes to track the position of the hand relative to the hologram. As the hand gets near the hologram, the display triggers a feedback mechanism, which feeds acoustic radiation pressure to the hand, creating the sensation that the person is touching an object. At the same time, the hologram reacts to the hand's position, and can be batted, grabbed, or floated based on the hand's position.
At the moment, it is all an extremely clever illusion, and one in need of greater development. But I hope that the researchers plan on sticking to holograms of balls and don't get around to creating a holographic Professor Moriarty any time soon.
In a celestial feat any magician would appreciate, Saturn will make its wide but thin ring system disappear from our view Aug. 11.
Saturn's rings, loaded with ice and mud, boulders and tiny moons, is 170,000 miles wide. But the shimmering setup is only about 30 feet thick. The rings harbor 35 trillion-trillion tons of ice, dust and rock, scientists estimate.
The rings shine because they reflect sunlight. But every 15 years, the rings turn edge-on to the sun and reflect almost no sunlight.
"The light reflecting off this extremely narrow band is so small that for all intents and purposes the rings simply vanish," explained Linda Spilker, deputy project scientist for the Cassini Saturn mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
pretty interesting. i wonder how much magazines will go up in price though
Klimbatize wrote:
I'll eat a turkey sandwich while blowing my load
SoldierHawk
Moderator
Title: Warrior-Poet
Joined: Jan 15 2009
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 6113
Posted:
Aug 20 2009 10:50 pm
The technology is interesting. I wish they were using it for good and not evil though. I get irritated as fuck as it is by video ads on websites...this is hundreds of times worse.
All I can say is, if these ads have some kind of audio too, I quit magazines.
William Shakespeare wrote:
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
Sexton Hardcastle
Title: The Supreme Element
Joined: Apr 01 2006
Location: Maine
Posts: 514
Posted:
Aug 20 2009 11:16 pm
At least if the video has audio in a magazine you can always rip out the page and throw it away and never ever have to hear it again!! But the plan won't work if there is actually something on the other side of the page....
username
Title: owner of a lonely heart
Joined: Jul 06 2007
Location: phoenix, az usa
Posts: 16135
Posted:
Aug 21 2009 10:49 am
Quote:
Scientific experiment suggests that sexual orientation is encoded in our genes
By altering a gene in the brain of a female worm, scientists were able to change its sexual orientation so that it was attracted to other females. Scientists activated the gene that makes male structures develop in the body, but only turned it on in the brain.
The result was worms that “look like girls, but act and think like boys,” according to Jamie White, a researcher on the study.
The study supports the idea that sexual orientation is the result of the brain’s wiring. Erik Jorgensen, scientific director of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah, said the study “suggests sexual behavior is encoded in our genes.”
Not everyone agrees with Jorgensen, and even he admits the study is not likely to fully explain human sexual orientation. Though worms and humans share much of the same dna, the complexity of the human brain means the study couldn’t possibly answer all the questions on our sexuality.
The origins of human sexual orientation have yet to be adequately explained. Scientists argue theories from hormones and genetics to environment.
so, in worms, being gay is genetic. will it be the same for humans?
Klimbatize wrote:
I'll eat a turkey sandwich while blowing my load
SoldierHawk
Moderator
Title: Warrior-Poet
Joined: Jan 15 2009
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 6113
Posted:
Aug 21 2009 04:09 pm
^ Not a surprise, at least not to me. I've always been fairly convinced that sexual orientation is something integral to us when we're born.
I wonder if it has anything to do with attempted population control. Seriously. I mean, we know that stuff the mother does way before birth (or even conception) can have big effects on how a baby turns out. I wonder if homosexuality is nature's way of trying to keep a given population from getting too big for its own good? (That's my super-genius, totally scientific opinion ftw.)
Also: worms have sexual orientation? Really? I thought they were all hermaphrodites. *headscratch* Well, learn something new every day.
William Shakespeare wrote:
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
Andrew Man
Title: Is a Funklord
Joined: Jan 30 2007
Location: Annandale, VA
Posts: 5603
Posted:
Aug 22 2009 01:13 pm
While I agree with this for the most part, I do feel that the environment the child is exposed to while developing psychologically can also affect this to a degree.
^ I'm unsure about that when it comes to sexual orientation, honestly. What I will bet is that environment has a huge effect on whether someone *accepts* themselves as homosexual, or keeps their feelings to themselves and tries to fake a 'normal' life.
William Shakespeare wrote:
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
username
Title: owner of a lonely heart
Joined: Jul 06 2007
Location: phoenix, az usa
Posts: 16135
Posted:
Aug 23 2009 03:02 am
well, if being gay is genetic, and not a choice, then this book (alfie's home) is bullshit and unnecessary
wow, amazon & ebay have that book selling upwards of $95.
Klimbatize wrote:
I'll eat a turkey sandwich while blowing my load
username
Title: owner of a lonely heart
Joined: Jul 06 2007
Location: phoenix, az usa
Posts: 16135
Posted:
Aug 31 2009 03:37 pm
Quote:
South Korea announces plans for sustainable super city
South Korea recently announced plans to construct a sustainable super-city that stands to eclipse the size of Masdar in the UAE. Designed by Foster + Partners together with PHA and Mobility in Chain, the Incheon mixed-use development will be a model of self-sufficent sustainability and will serve as an epicenter for the development of green technologies just north of Seoul.
Upon completion the Incheon eco-city will comprise a community of 320,000 residents centered around a spine of transportation and green industry. The hope for Incheon is that the area will become a high-tech research and development center for sustainable industries that manufacture photovoltaic panels and wind turbines. True to this ideal, the masterplan incorporates cutting-edge green technologies such as biomass energy generation, hydrogen fuel cells, and hydroponic roofs.
Slated for construction over the next 10-15 years, Foster + Partner’s design for the eco-city will include both high and low-density developments that shoot off from a central transportation spine connecting three main sites. A Light Rapid Transit system will connect a center for Korean economic cooperation in the north of KangHwa with the southern half, combining green technology industry with community, cultural and residential buildings.
Japan is getting prepped to spend $21 billion on a solar power station in space, one that will beam enough energy back to Earth to power 294,000 homes. With no cables.
The whole deal is being put together by Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and industrial design company IGI Corp. The plan involves a gigantic solar panel floating around in space, soaking up a gigawatt of energy and beaming it to Earth without the use of cables. They hope to bring the plant online in four years.
Implanted tooth helps blind US woman recover sight
A 60-year-old US grandmother, blind for nearly a decade, has recovered her sight after surgeons implanted a tooth in her eye as a base to hold a tiny plastic lens, her doctors said Wednesday.
Sharron "Kay" Thornton, from the southern US state of Mississippi, lost her sight in 2000 when she came down with a case of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare disease that scarred her cornea, according to the University of Miami's Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.
For patients whose bodies reject a transplanted or artificial cornea, this procedure "implants the patient's tooth in the eye to anchor a prosthetic lens and restore vision," said Thornton's surgeon Victor Perez.
In the procedure -- which was pioneered in Italy but was a first in the United States -- the medical team extracted Thornton's canine or "eyetooth" and surrounding bone, shaved and sculpted it, and drilled a hole into it to insert an optical cylinder lens.
The tooth and the lens are implanted under the patient's skin in the cheek or shoulder for two months so they can bond, then they are carefully implanted in the center of the eye after a series of procedures to prepare the socket.
"A hole is made in the mucosa for the prosthetic lens, which protrudes slightly from the eye and enables light to re-enter the eye allowing the patient to see once again," read an Eye Institute statement.
Following a series of operations, medical personnel removed the bandages from Thornton's eyes two weeks ago.
She was able to recognize objects and faces a few hours later, and 15 days later she was able to read newspapers, the Eye Institute said.
"I'm looking forward to seeing my seven youngest grandchildren for the first time," said Thornton.
"We take sight for granted, not realizing that it can be lost at any moment," the grateful patient said. "This truly is a miracle."
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German mathematician who died 450 years ago has been sent a letter demanding that he pay long-overdue television license fees, residents at his former address said on Wednesday.
Germany's GEZ broadcast fee collection office sent the bill to the last home address of Adam Ries, an algebra expert who bought the house in 1525. A club in his honor was set up at the property four centuries later.
"We received a letter saying 'To Mr Adam Ries' on it, with the request to pay his television and radio fees," said Annegret Muench, who now heads the club.
Muench returned the letter to the GEZ with a note explaining the request had come too late because Ries had died in 1559, centuries before the invention of television and radio. She nonetheless received a reminder a few weeks later.
This was not the first time the GEZ had sent a bill to those in the afterlife. Last year, a school named after poet Friedrich Schiller received a reminder asking him to declare all radios and televisions in his home and pay the corresponding fees.
"Life is a waste of time. Time is a waste of life. Get wasted all the time, and you'll have the time of your life!"
Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.
The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi." (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus.)
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas (interactive: Ardi's key features). As such, the skeleton offers a window on what the last common ancestor of humans and living apes might have been like.
The dusty hoop lies some 13 million km (eight million miles) from the planet, about 50 times more distant than the other rings and in a different plane.
Scientists tell the journal Nature that the tenuous ring is probably made up of debris kicked off Saturn's moon Phoebe by small impacts.
They think this dust then migrates towards the planet where it is picked up by another Saturnian moon, Iapetus.
The discovery would appear to resolve a longstanding mystery in planetary science: why the walnut-shaped Iapetus has a two-tone complexion, with one side of the moon significantly darker than the other.
"It has essentially a head-on collision. The particles smack Iapetus like bugs on a windshield," said Anne Verbiscer from the University of Virginia, US.
Physicists Calculate Exact Number of Alternate Universes
There are 10^10^16 of them (but #1,000,443,163,313,125,343,132 is the evil one)
For some time, physicists have theorized about the existence of alternate universes. In fact, some models of physics require multiple universes, to explain some rarely observed phenomena. But, other than obvious ones like The Man In The High Castle Universe where the Nazis won WWII, the Earth-295 Age of Apocalypse Universe, and the Terran Empire "Mirror Mirror" Universe, just how many alternate universes are there? Well, some Stanford University physicists have answered that question, and the magic number is: 10^10^16 other realities.
The physicists, Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin, calculated the number by first going all the way back to the Big Bang. Linde and Vanchurin posit that the stellar organization and physics of our universe resulted from small perturbations in the otherwise uniform mass of matter and energy that existed milliseconds after the Big Bang. So, the number of possible variations of those perturbations represents the upper limit of possible alternate universes, or about 10^10^10^7 possible alternate universes.
However, because of the physical limits of the human brain, no individual could perceive more than 10^10^16 realities different from our own. And since the perspective of the viewer factors into the calculations (like time dilation in relativity), that's the number of possible alternate universes.
Of course, that's the total number of POSSIBLE alternate universes. The number of ACTUAL alternative universes actually depends on depends on how many boxes the Professor made.
A bump to let everyone know that the biggest meteor shower of the year is tonight! It reaches its peak at 1 a.m. (regardless of time zone) and should be great viewing until just after dawn. I, for one, plan to set my alarm.
Or just not sleep. That works too. Anyway, a little extra info here:
to the story. I wonder if it was the Enterprise E coming into high Earth orbit from the future...
was used to launch a rocket above the Mojave Desert, where it approached the speed of sound and reached an altitude of 20,000 feet - a major leap forward in biofuel-powered flight.
Anyway, a little extra info here: