BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 09 - 05:59 PM

Porn study fails to find smut virgins

A study hoping to compare men who watch porn with those who haven't encountered it has been derailed — because researchers couldn't find any men who hadn't indulged in X-rated material.

Scientists at the University of Montreal had to change the focus of their project after failing to find a single male aged in his 20s who hadn't been exposed to adult videos and images.

"We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography," the Telegraph reported Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse as saying.

"[But] we couldn't find any."

Surprised researchers decided to instead explore the men's porn watching habits, finding the average age of first exposure was about 10 years old.

And while being in a relationship may not to completely remove porn from a man's life, it does appear to cut their habit in half.

Single men watched adult content about three times a week for an average of 40 minutes, while those with partners watched it 1.7 times a week in about 20-minute blocks, the study said.

The abundance of pornography available on the internet has meant online content accounts for about 90 percent of porn viewed by men, while video stores about 10 percent.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Dec 09 - 10:00 PM

The Ubiquity of Exaptation is a fascinating exposition on the non-teleological evolution of nerve cells, nerve communication and nervous systems from blob to high-speed typist...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Dec 09 - 10:51 PM

…And whereas it has also come to the knowledge of the said Congregation that the Pythagorean doctrine — which is false and altogether opposed to the Holy Scripture — of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, which is also taught by Nicolaus Copernicus in De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, and by Diego de Zuiga on Job, is now being spread abroad and accepted by many… Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of Catholic truth, the Holy Congregation has decreed that the said Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus orbium, and Diego de Zuiga, On Job, be suspended until they are corrected.


[Decree of the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Index condemning "De Revolutionibus", March 5, 1616]

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Dec 09 - 04:53 PM

IN the month of September, 1899, the burghers of the Orange Free State were notified, under the Commando Law, to hold themselves in readiness to go on active service at the shortest possible notice.

Before proceeding any further I should like to explain that portion of the Commando Law which dealt with commandeering. It stipulated that every burgher between the ages of sixteen and sixty must be prepared to fight for his country at any moment; and that, if required for active service, he must provide himself with a riding-horse, saddle and bridle, with a rifle and thirty cartridges-or, if he were unable to obtain a rifle, he must bring with him thirty bullets, thirty caps, and half a pound of powder-in addition he must be provisioned for eight days. That there should have been an alternative to the rifle was due to the fact that the law was made at a time when only a few burghers possessed breech-loading rifles—achterlaaiers, as we call them.

With reference to the provisions the law did not specify their quality or quantity, but there was an unwritten but strictly observed rule amongst the burghers that they should consist of meat cut in strips, salted, peppered, and dried, or else of sausages and "Boer biscuits" (Small loaves manufactured of flour, with fermented raisins instead of yeast, and twice baked). With regard to quantity, each burgher had to make his own estimate of the amount he would require for eight days.

It was not long after they were notified to hold themselves ready that the burghers were called up for active service. On the 2nd of October, 1899, the order, came. On that day the Veldcornets, or their lieutenants, visited every farm and commandeered the men.

Amongst the commandeered was I ; and thus, as a private burgher, I entered on the campaign. With me were my three sons-Kootie, Isaac, and Christiaan.

The following day the men of the sub-district of Krom Ellenborg, in the district of Heilbron-to which I belonged mustered at Elandslaagte Farm. The Veldcornet of this sub-district was Mr. Marthinus Els, and the Commandant of the whole contingent Mr. Lucas Steenekamp. It soon became known that the War Commission had decided that our commando was to proceed as rapidly as possible to the Natal frontier, and that with us were to go the troops from Vrede and Harrismith, as well as some from Bethlehem, Winberg, and Kroonstad. Carrying out these orders, we all arrived at Harrismith six days later....

(Excerpted from Christiaan De Wet, Three Years War, 1st American Edition, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1902)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Dec 09 - 06:16 PM

While from the other side, the AUssies who chimed in on the British view:

"At two o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, the 6th of the month, the reveille sounded, and the Australians commenced their preparations for the march to join Methuen's army. By 4 a.m. the mounted rifles led the way out of camp, and the toilsome march over rough and rocky ground commenced. The country was terribly rough as we drove the transports up and over the Orange River, and rougher still in the low kopjes on the other side. The heat was simply blistering, but the Australians did not seem to mind it to any great extent; they were simply feverish to get on to the front, but they had to hang back and guard the transports.

At last the hilly country faded behind us. We counted upon pushing on rapidly, but the African mules were a sorry lot, and could make but little headway in the sandy tracks. Still, there was no rest for the men, because at intervals one of Remington's scouts would turn up at a flying gallop, springing apparently from nowhere, out of the womb of the wilderness, to inform us that flying squads of Boers were hanging round us. But so carefully watchful were the Remingtons that the Boers had no chance of surprising us. No sooner did the scouts inform us of their approach in any direction than our rifles swung forward ready to give them a hearty Australian reception. This made the march long and toilsome, though we never had a chance to fire a shot. At 5.30 we marched with all our transports into Witteput, the wretched little mules being the only distressed portion of the contingent.

At Witteput the news reached us that a large party of the enemy had managed to pass between General Methuen's men and ourselves, and had invested Belmont, out of which place the British troops had driven them a few weeks previously. We had no authentic news concerning this movement. Our contingent spread out on the hot sand at Witteput, panting for a drop of rain from the lowering clouds that hung heavily overhead. Yet hot, tired, and thirsty as we were, we yet found time to look with wonder at the sky above us. The men from the land of the Southern Cross are used to gorgeous sunsets, but never had we looked upon anything like this. Great masses of coal-black clouds frowned down upon us, flanked by fiery crimson cloud banks, that looked as if they would rain blood, whilst the atmosphere was dense enough to half-stifle one. Now and again the thunder rolled out majestically, and the lightning flashed from the black clouds into the red, like bayonets through smoke banks.

Yet we had not long to wait and watch, for within half an hour after our arrival the Colonel galloped down into our midst just as the evening ration was being given out. He held a telegram aloft, and the stillness that fell over the camp was so deep that each man could hear his neighbour's heart beat. Then the Colonel's voice cut the stillness like a bugle call. "Men, we are needed at Belmont; the Boers are there in force, and we have been sent for to relieve the place. I'll want you in less than two hours." It was then the men showed their mettle. Up to their feet they leapt like one man, and they gave the Colonel a cheer that made the sullen, halting mules kick in their harness. "We are ready now, Colonel, we'll eat as we march," and the "old man" smiled, and gave the order to fall in, and they fell in, and as darkness closed upon the land they marched out of Witteput to the music of the falling rain and the thunder of heaven's artillery.

All night long it was march, halt, and "Bear a hand, men," for those thrice accursed mules failed us at every pinch. In vain the niggers plied the whips of green hide, vain their shouts of encouragement, or painfully shrill anathemas; the mules had the whip hand of us, and they kept it. But, in spite of it all, in the chilly dawn of the African morning, our fellows, with their shoulders well back, and heads held high, marched into Belmont, with every man safe and sound, and every waggon complete.

Then the Gordons turned out and gave us a cheer, for they had passed us in the train as we crossed the line above Witteput, and they knew, those veterans from Indian wars, what our raw Volunteers had done; they had been on their feet from two o'clock on Wednesday morning until five o'clock of the following day, with the heat at 122 in the shade, and bitter was their wrath when they learnt that the Boer spies, who swarm all over the country, had heralded their coming, so that the enemy had only waited to plant a few shells into Belmont before disappearing into the hills beyond. That was the cruel part of it. They did not mind the fatigue, they did not worry about the thirst or the hunger, but to be robbed of a chance to show the world what they could do in the teeth of the enemy was gall and wormwood to them, and the curses they sent after the discreet Boer were weird, quaint, picturesque, and painfully prolific.

We are lying with the Gordons now, waiting for the Boers to come along and try to take Belmont, and our fellows and the "Scotties" are particularly good chums, and it is the cordial wish of both that they may some day give the enemy a taste of the bayonet together."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Dec 09 - 06:24 PM

And from on eof the Britishers in-country for the occasion:

"Do you know Colonials? In my eight months of mining life at Johannesburg
I got to know them well. England has not got the type. The Western
States of America have it. They are men brought up free of caste and
free of class. When you come among Colonials, forget your birth and
breeding, your ancestral acres and big income, and all those things
which carry such weight in England. No forelocks are pulled for them
here; they count for nothing. Are you wide-awake, sharp, and shrewd,
plucky; can you lead? Then go up higher. Are you less of these things?
Then go down lower. But always among these men it is a position simply
of what you are in yourself. Man to man they judge you there as you
stand in your boots; nor is it very difficult, officer or trooper, or
whatever you are, to read in their blunt manners what their judgment is.
It is lucky for our corps that it has in its leader a man after its own
heart; a man who, though an Imperial officer, cares very little for
discipline or etiquette for their own sakes; who does not automatically
assert the authority of his office, but talks face to face with his men,
and asserts rather the authority of his own will and force of character.
They are much more ready to knock under to the man than they would be to
the mere officer. In his case they feel that the leader by office and
the leader by nature are united, and that is just what they want.

There are Colonials out here, as one has already come to see, of two
tolerably distinct types. These you may roughly distinguish as the
money-making Colonials and the working Colonials. The money-making lot
flourish to some extent in Kimberley, but most of all in Johannesburg.
You are soon able to recognise his points and identify him at a
distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and his watch-chain is a
little too much of a certainty. His manner is excessively glib and
fluent, yet he has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks,
as if fearful of being overheard. For the same reason he speaks in low
tones. He must often be discussing indifferent topics, but he always
looks as if he were hatching a swindle. There is also a curious look of
waxworks about his over-washed hands.

This is the type that you would probably notice most. The Stock Exchange
of Johannesburg is their hatching-place and hot-bed; but from there they
overflow freely among the seaside towns, and are usually to be found in
the big hotels and the places you would be most likely to go to. Cape
Town at the present moment is flooded with them. But these are only the
mere froth of the South African Colonial breed. The real mass and body
of them consists (besides tradesmen, &c., of towns) of the miners of the
Rand, and, more intrinsically still, of the working men and the farmers
of English breed all over the Colony. It is from these that the fighting
men in this quarrel are drawn. It is from these that our corps, for
instance, has been by the Major individually and carefully recruited;
and I don't think you could wish for better material, or that a body of
keener, more loyal, and more efficient men could easily be brought
together.

Many of them are veterans, and have taken part in some of the numerous
African campaigns--Zulu, Basuto, Kaffir, Boer, or Matabele. They are
darkly sunburnt; lean and wiry in figure; tall often, but never fat (you
never see a fat Colonial), and they have the loose, careless seat on
horseback, as if they were perfectly at home there. As scouts they have
this advantage, that they not only know the country and the Dutch and
Kaffir languages, but that they are accustomed, in the rough and varied
colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for themselves,
and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this
self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and
the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their
hips, the way they hold their heads and speak and look straight at you.

Your first march with such a band is an episode that impresses itself.
We were called up a few days ago at dead of night from De Aar to relieve
an outlying picket reported hard pressed. In great haste we saddled by
moonlight, and in a long line went winding away past the artillery lines
and the white, ghostly tents of the Yorkshires. The hills in the still,
sparkling moonlight looked as if chiselled out of iron, and the veldt
lay spread out all white and misty; but what one thought most of was the
presence of these dark-faced, slouch-hatted irregulars, sitting free and
easy in their saddles, with the light gleaming dully on revolver and
carbine barrel. A fine thing is your first ride with a troop of fighting
men.

Though called guides we are more properly scouts. Our strength is about
a hundred and fifty. A ledger is kept, in which, opposite each man's
name, is posted the part of the country familiar to him and through
which he is competent to act as guide. These men are often detached, and
most regiments seem to have one or two of ours with them. Sometimes a
party is detached altogether and acts with another column, and there
are always two or three with the staff. Besides acting as guides they
are interpreters, and handy men generally. All these little subtractions
reduce our main body to about a hundred, or a little less; and this main
body, under Rimington himself, acts as scouts and ordinary fighting men.
In fact, a true description of us would be "a corps of scouts supplying
guides to the army."

One word about the country and I have done. What strikes one about all
South African scenery, north and south, is the simplicity of it; so very
few forms are employed, and they are employed over and over again. The
constant recurrence of these few grave and simple features gives to the
country a singularly childish look. Egyptian art, with its mechanical
repetitions, unchanged and unvaried, has just the same character. Both
are intensely pre-Raphaelite.


From L. March Phipps With Rimington

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Dec 09 - 12:48 AM

1 in 3 restaurants in Ireland will close within the next 6 months

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Dec 09 - 12:53 AM

260,000 TONS of sludge waste in petroleum drilling pipes and pits in the USA contain Uranium with a half life of 1,200 years until it becomes radium. The amount of radiation from the waste of oil company drilling and pumping is a catastrophe that has been succesfully hidden from average Americans. A time bomb that is a deep dark secret.

reported on Deutche Valley radio today.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Dec 09 - 10:00 AM

Energy beamed down from space is one step closer to reality, now that California has given the green light to a deal involving its sale. But some major challenges will have to be overcome if the technology is to be used widely.

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission gave its blessing to an agreement that would see the Pacific Gas and Electric Company buy 200 megawatts of power beamed down from solar-power satellites beginning in 2016.

A start-up company called Solaren is designing the satellites, which it says will use radio waves to beam energy down to a receiving station on Earth.

The attraction of collecting solar power in space is the virtually uninterrupted sunshine available in geosynchronous orbit. Earth-based solar cells, by contrast, can only collect sunlight during daytime and when skies are clear.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Dec 09 - 04:37 PM

A flood of biblical proportions filled the present-day Mediterranean Sea in a matter of months. At its peak the mega-flood caused the sea's level to rise by over 10 metres per day.

Around 5.6 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea almost completely evaporated when it became disconnected from the Atlantic Ocean. This was due to uplift of the Strait of Gibraltar by tectonic activity, combined with a drop in sea level. Further tectonic activity 5.3 million years ago lowered the Strait and reconnected the dry Mediterranean basin with the Atlantic.

Previously it was assumed that it took at least a decade to refill the Mediterranean, via a waterfall over the Strait. Now a new analysis shows that the bulk of the water arrived in less than two years, pouring down a long, shallow ramp.

Daniel Garcia-Castellanos of the Jaume Almera Institute of Earth Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues studied borehole and seismic data from the Strait of Gibraltar to estimate the size and extent of the channel carved out by the flood. This revealed a gorge 200 kilometres long and 250 metres deep, cutting through the Strait. Unlike previous models, they reconstructed the rock layers that the water would have had to cut through, and how the channel would have evolved as a result.

They found the flood most likely started with a trickle of water over a hard rock barrier, taking thousands of years. This gradually deepened the channel until the barrier failed and water surged through, filling the Mediterranean Sea in less than two years (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08555). The team estimates the peak flow to have been around 1000 times higher than the present Amazon river at its highest rate.

Flora and fauna had to adapt to the new environment rapidly and for some species, including the first hominins, the deep channel may have acted as a barrier. "If the land connection had remained it certainly could have facilitated an earlier arrival of early humans in western Europe," says Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Natural History Museum in London. Instead early humans took a circuitous route to western Europe and didn't arrive until 1.5 million years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Dec 09 - 07:15 PM

Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway
By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE and WILL STEWART
Last updated at 5:00 PM on 09th December 2009
Comments (220)
Add to My Stories
A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled.
Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave - although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet.
The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate.

Strange spiral: Residents in northern Norway were left stunned after the lightshow, which almost looked computer-generated, appeared in the skies above them

Curious: A blue-green beam of light was reported to have come shooting out the centre of the spiral
Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely.
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm - which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world.
The mystery deepened tonight as Russia denied it had been conducting missile tests in the area.
Fred Hansen, from Bø in Vesterålen, described the sight as 'like a big fireball that went around, with a great light around it again.'

Confusion: The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with calls after the light storm
'It spun and exploded in the sky,' Totto Eriksen from Tromsø told VG Nett.
He spotted the lights as he walked his daughter Amalie to school.
He said: 'We saw it from the Inner Harbor in Tromsø. It was absolutely fantastic.
'It almost looked like a rocket that spun around and around and then went diagonally down the heavens.
'It looked like the moon was coming over the mountain, but then came something completely different.'


Read more: Pictures and home video shots here

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Dec 09 - 07:53 PM

Neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic campus in Jacksonville, Fla., have demonstrated how brain waves can be used to type alphanumerical characters on a computer screen. By merely focusing on the "q" in a matrix of letters, for example, that "q" appears on the monitor.

Researchers say these findings, presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, represent concrete progress toward a mind-machine interface that may, one day, help people with a variety of disorders control devices, such as prosthetic arms and legs. These disorders include Lou Gehrig's disease and spinal cord injuries, among many others.

"Over 2 million people in the United States may benefit from assistive devices controlled by a brain-computer interface," says the study's lead investigator, neurologist Jerry Shih, M.D. "This study constitutes a baby step on the road toward that future, but it represents tangible progress in using brain waves to do certain tasks."

Dr. Shih and other Mayo Clinic researchers worked with Dean Krusienski, Ph.D., from the University of North Florida on this study, which was conducted in two patients with epilepsy. These patients were already being monitored for seizure activity using electrocorticography (ECoG), in which electrodes are placed directly on the surface of the brain to record electrical activity produced by the firing of nerve cells. This kind of procedure requires a craniotomy, a surgical incision into the skull.

Dr. Shih wanted to study a mind-machine interface in these patients because he hypothesized that feedback from electrodes placed directly on the brain would be much more specific than data collected from electroencephalography (EEG), in which electrodes are placed on the scalp. Most studies of mind-machine interaction have occurred with EEG, Dr. Shih says.

"There is a big difference in the quality of information you get from ECoG compared to EEG. The scalp and bony skull diffuses and distorts the signal, rather like how the Earth's atmosphere blurs the light from stars," he says. "That's why progress to date on developing these kind of mind interfaces has been slow."
Because these patients already had ECoG electrodes implanted in their brains to find the area where seizures originated, the researchers could test their fledgling brain-computer interface.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Dec 09 - 11:04 AM

remarkable Norway lights.

If it was a missile in self destruct mode, who knew it could be so beautiful?

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Dec 09 - 11:28 AM

he Norway spiral?

Not convinced that President Obama has done enough to win the Nobel Peace Prize? You're not alone. A CNN poll released yesterday shows that less than one in five Americans believe that Obama has done enough to win the honor.

How to explain it? Maybe space aliens have infiltrated the Noble Peace Prize committee and are big fans of the president.

Outlandish? Perhaps, but don't tell that to the Norwegians. News of Obama winning the award isn't the only thing on their minds today. They're talking about UFOs. Or one giant UFO. And the world is paying attention to it too.

It all happened yesterday morning at about 7:50 local time. Reports are that a "giant, luminous spiral appeared in the northern sky."

It wasn't a quick flash either. The light stuck around. And grew. It's gets even better…

"It stopped mid-air, then began to move in circles. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky," reports the UK's Daily Mail. "Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to 12 minutes before disappearing completely."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Dec 09 - 03:09 PM

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia's new nuclear-capable missile suffered another failed test launch, the defence ministry said Thursday, solving the mystery of a spectacular plume of white light that appeared over Norway.

The Bulava missile was test-fired from the submarine Dmitry Donskoi in the White Sea early Wednesday but failed at the third stage, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The pre-dawn morning launch coincided with the appearance of an extraordinary light over northern Norway that captivated observers.

Images of the light that appeared in the sky above the Norwegian city of Tromso and elsewhere prompted explanations ranging from a meteor, northern lights, a failed missile or even a UFO.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Dec 09 - 03:17 PM

A previously incurable blood disorder – sickle-cell disease – has been successfully treated in 9 of 10 adults who received stem cells transplanted from tissue-matched siblings.

The inherited disease causes the bone marrow to churn out blood cells that are shaped like crescents, or sickles, rather than the round shape of healthy cells. This causes painful blockages in blood vessels, depletion of blood and severe anaemia.

Transplants have worked well in around 200 children but don't succeed in adults because the technique requires that cells in the recipient's own bone marrow are destroyed first – children can usually tolerate this, but adults can't.

Even when adults have got past this obstacle, they have gone on to develop the fatal condition graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), in which the donated cells attack and destroy other tissue.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Dec 09 - 06:40 PM

PhysOrg.com) -- In a study that elevates the role of entropy in creating order, research led by the University of Michigan shows that certain pyramid shapes can spontaneously organize into complex quasicrystals.
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A quasicrystal is a solid whose components exhibit long-range order, but without a single pattern or a unit cell that repeats.
A paper on the findings appears in the Dec. 10 issue of Nature. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and Kent State University collaborated on the study.
Entropy is a measure of the number of ways the components of a system can be arranged. While often linked to disorder, entropy can also cause objects to order. The pyramid shape central to this research is the tetrahedron---a three-dimensional, four-faced, triangular polyhedron that turns up in nanotechnology and biology.
"Tetrahedrons are the simplest regular solids, while quasicrystals are among the most complex and beautiful structures in nature. It's astonishing and totally unexpected that entropy alone can produce this level of complexity," said Sharon Glotzer, a professor in the University of Michigan departments of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and principal investigator on the project.
The finding may lead to the development of a variety of new materials that derive properties from their structure, said Rolfe Petschek, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve who helped with the mathematical characterization of the structure. "A quasicrystal will have different properties than a crystal or ordinary solid," Petschek said.
The scientists used computer simulation to find the arrangement of tetrahedrons that would yield the densest packing---that would fit the most tetrahedrons in a box.
The tetrahedron was for decades conjectured to be the only solid that packs less densely than spheres, until just last year when U-M mathematics graduate student Elizabeth Chen found an arrangement that proved that speculation wrong. This latest study bests Chen's organization and discovered what is believed to be the densest achievable packing of tetrahedrons.
But Glotzer says the more significant finding is that the tetrahedrons can unexpectedly organize into intricate quasicrystals at a point in the computer simulation when they take up roughly half the space in the theoretical box.
In this computer experiment, many thousands of tetrahedrons organized into dodecagonal, or 12-fold, quasicrystals made of parallel stacks of rings around pentagonal dipyramids. A pentagonal dipyramid contains five tetrahedrons arranged into a disk. The researchers discovered that this motif plays a key role in the overall packing.
This is the first result showing such a complicated self-arrangement of hard particles without help from attractive interactions such as chemical bonds, Glotzer said.
"Our results go to the very heart of phase transitions and to the question of how complex order arises in nature and in the materials we make," Glotzer said. "We knew that entropy on its own could produce order, but we didn't expect it to produce such intricate order. What else might be possible just due to entropy?"
...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 09 - 02:34 PM

Science Daily reports:

Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.

Their study, recently published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was accomplished when the scientists applied the mathematical techniques used in physics to describe the complex interplay of genes and proteins that colonies of bacteria rely upon to initiate different survival strategies during times of environmental stress. Using the mathematical tools of theoretical physics and chemistry to describe complex biological systems is becoming more commonplace in the emerging field of theoretical biological physics.

The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, the nation's center for this activity funded by the National Science Foundation, and Tel Aviv University in Israel. They say that how genes are turned on and off in bacteria living under conditions of stress not only shed light on how complex biological systems interact, but provide insights for economists and political scientists applying mathematical models to describe complex human decision making.

"Everyone knows the need to try to postpone important decisions until the last moment but apparently there are simple creatures that do it well and therefore can really teach us -- the bacteria," said Eshel Ben Jacob, a physics professor at Tel Aviv University and a fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. He co-authored the study with three other scientists at the center: José Onuchic, a professor of physics at UCSD and a co-director of the center, Peter Wolynes, a professor of physics and chemistry at UCSD and Daniel Schultz, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSD.

In nature, bacteria live in large colonies whose numbers may reach up to 100 times the number of people on earth. Many bacteria respond to extreme stress -- such as starvation, poisoning and irradiation -- by creating spores, dormant states that are highly resistant to the outside environment and that can germinate into fully functioning bacteria once the environment improves. The response involves more than 500 genes and takes about 10 hours in Bacillus subtilis, the bacterium used by the scientists in their study.

Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to model decision making by humans, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others."...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 12:39 PM

From Der Spiegel:

Technology from the Soviet space program adapted by Israeli and German scientists may offer a safe way to deliver the volatile gas to power laptops and cars.

Israeli entrepreneur Moshe Stern admits he didn't know much about alternative energy when Russian scientist Evgeny Velikhov first approached him in 2005 about a novel technology for safely storing hydrogen gas. But four years later, the 62-year-old Stern has become an expert-and a believer. He is convinced that the Russian invention could play a major role in helping scientific institutions and industrial giants harness the commercial potential of hydrogen as a green energy source.

Now, Stern's conviction has just gotten a big outside boost. The hydrogen storage technology, being developed by Stern's Swiss-based startup, C.En, has been endorsed for its safety by a top German institute-an important vote of confidence, given that hydrogen is highly explosive and that safety has long been a major stumbling block to its commercialization.

On Nov. 25, Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research & Testing, released results of nearly two years of tests on C.En's technology, which involves the storage of compressed hydrogen inside bundles of thin, strong tubes of glass, known as capillary arrays. "The lightweight storage and safety factors give the technology a huge commercial potential for a whole range of industries," says Kai Holtappels, who heads up the working group at BAM that has been testing the technology since February 2008.

The timing couldn't me more fitting, as hundreds of delegates, scientists, and world leaders gather in Copenhagen for the UN Conference on Climate Change to discuss how to reduce carbon emissions and support eco-friendly technology.

Batteries for Electronics

A team of scientists first invented the capillary array technology at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute for use in the Soviet space program. Stern thinks his system can be adopted by the electronics industry to replace conventional batteries in portable devices such as laptops and mobile phones. He and C.En's chief scientist, Dan Eliezer, already have begun meeting with potential corporate customers. "We're planning to license out the technology on a company-by-company basis, with the first agreement during 2010," says Stern.

The automotive and aerospace industries could offer even bigger opportunities. Hydrogen-powered vehicles have long been explored as a means to reduce pollution and curb Western dependence on imported oil. Germany's BMW and Japan's Honda Motors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years into developing hydrogen-fueled cars.

The challenges of using hydrogen, though, have always been the size of containers needed to store the volatile gas and the risk of explosion. C.En claims to have overcome those problems with its leakproof capillary arrays. "Glass has proven to have three times the storage capacity at only a third of the weight of steel containers that are now commonly used for hydrogen storage, and it's far cheaper," says Eliezer.

Outside experts are impressed at the potential, but are taking a wait-and-see attitude. "If C.En's capillaries can withstand the external pressure, the technology could be practical in vehicles and electrical devices," says Yoel Sasson, a professor of applied chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who notes that another critical factor will be the cost of producing the capillary arrays.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 11:24 PM

When the remains of the last member of an extinct species were hard to find, Willerslev and a team of international research scientists decided to carry out an expedition to Central Alaska to solve the riddle of "The last surviving mammoths" using ancient-DNA tests from permafrost soil.

Surprisingly, the scientists found that the later samples with mammoth DNA could be dated back to between 10,500 and 7,500 years ago, and are therefore between 2,600 and 5,600 years after

the supposed extinction of the mammoths from mainland Alaska. Thus, the scientists found proof that mammoths had walked the earth several thousand years longer than previously believed; presumably by lesser herds of these animals threatened with extinction, surviving in small, isolated enclaves, where living conditions were intact.
The findings breathe new life into the debate about why prehistoric animals, such as sabre-toothed tigers, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and mammoths apparently suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.

"Our findings show that the mammoth and the horse existed side by side with the first human immigrants in America for certainly 3,500 years and were therefore not wiped out by human beings or natural disasters within a few hundred years, as common theories otherwise argue. The technique behind ancient-DNA analysis has the potential to greatly contribute to the debate about the extermination of prehistoric species, but can also be used to gather knowledge of contemporary animal species which are so shy that they are hard to detect. Not to mention the forensic possibilities opened up by the technique," Eske Willerslev points out.

(From Phys.Org)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Dec 09 - 11:29 PM

PhysOrg.com) -- Department store competition is fierce in Japan during the winter holidays, with every store trying to come up with the most attention-catching promotional campaign. This year, the department store Sogo & Seibu may top them all with its offer of robots that are custom-made to look just like their owners.

The robotic doppelgangers will be life-size humanoids that can even speak with a real person's (recorded) voice. Made of silicone, the robots will be able to move their upper bodies, although there are not many other details on their design or what they can or cannot do.

With a price of $225,000 per robot, Sogo & Seibu isn't sure how many buyers they'll actually have. Currently, the company plans to offer just two robots, and if there are more than two interested buyers, Sogo & Seibu will have a lottery to choose two winners.
The robots will be manufactured by the Japanese robotic company Kokoro, which is known for its realistic robotic androids. One of Kokoro's "actroid" robots appeared in a Japanese TV commercial last year (pictured above).

PhysOrg also

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Dec 09 - 10:55 AM

Nevada: Horse Roundup Approved
(AP)
Published: December 14, 2009

The Bureau of Land Management approved the removal of 2,500 wild horses from the range near Reno as opposition grows to what would be one of the largest mustang roundups in Nevada in recent years. A federal judge in Washington is to hear arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed to block the roundup planned for later this month. The roundup is part of the bureau's overall strategy to remove thousands of mustangs from public lands around the West. Advocates for the horses say the roundup violates the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act, which Congress passed in 1971

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Dec 09 - 05:06 PM

A paralysed man has "spoken" three different vowel sounds using a voice synthesiser controlled by an implant deep in his brain.

If more sounds can be added to the repertoire of brain signals the implant can translate, such systems could revolutionise communication for people who are completely paralysed.

"We're very optimistic that the next patient will be able to say words," says Frank Guenther, a neuroscientist at Boston University who led the study along with Philip Kennedy at Neural Signals, a firm based in Duluth, Georgia, that produces neural implants.
Conventional speech

Eric Ramsey is 26 and has locked-in syndrome, in which people are unable to move a muscle but are fully conscious.

A brain implant, which requires invasive surgery, may sound drastic. But lifting signals directly from neurons may be the only way that locked-in people like Ramsey, or those with advanced forms of ALS, a neurodegenerative disease, will ever be able to communicate quickly and naturally, says Guenther.

Devices that rely on interpreting residual muscle activity, such as eye blinks, are no good for people who are completely paralysed, while those that use brain signals captured by scalp electrodes are slow, allowing typing on a keyboard at a rate of one to two words per minute.

"Our approach has the potential for providing something along the lines of conventional speech as opposed to very slow typing," he says.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 09:51 AM

Under sea city in the Carribean photographed by satiliite.

http://www.heralddeparis.com/previously-undiscovered-ancient-city-found-on-caribbean-sea-floor/65855

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 12:33 PM

Mark Morford, a hilarious sardonic columnist for the SF CHronicle, offers 101 reasons why men cheat, and also women.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 09 - 08:26 PM

In an attempt to better understand spacetime, mathematical physicist Achim Kempf of the University of Waterloo has proposed a new possible structure of spacetime on the Planck scale. He suggests that spacetime could be both discrete and continuous at the same time, conceivably satisfying general relativity and quantum field theories simultaneously. Kempf's proposal is inspired by information theory, since information can also be simultaneously discrete and continuous. His study is published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

"There are fiercely competing schools of thought, each with good arguments, about whether spacetime is fundamentally discrete (as, for example, in spin foam models) or continuous (as, for example, in string theory)," Kempf told PhysOrg.com. "The new information-theoretic approach could enable one to build conceptual as well as mathematical bridges between these two schools of thought."

As Kempf explains, the underlying mathematical structure of information theory in this framework is sampling theory - that is, samples taken at a generic discrete set of points can be used to reconstruct the shape of the information (or spacetime) everywhere down to a specific cutoff point. In the case of spacetime, that cutoff would be the natural ultraviolet lower bound, if it exists. This lower bound can also be thought of as a minimum length uncertainty principle, beyond which structural properties cannot be precisely known.

In his study, Kempf develops a sampling theory that can be generalized to apply to spacetime. He shows that a finite density of sample points obtained throughout spacetime's structure can provide scientists with the shape of spacetime from large length scales all the way down to the natural ultraviolet cutoff. Further, he shows that this expression establishes an equivalence between discrete and continuous representations of spacetimes. As such, the new framework for the sampling and reconstruction of spacetime could be used in various approaches to quantum gravity by giving discrete structures a continuous representation.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 09 - 07:03 PM

PhysOrg.com) -- In 1996, when scientists examined a meteorite from Mars previously uncovered in Antarctica, they were intrigued by what looked like microscopic fossils of ancient Martian life forms. Now, using new technology that wasn't available 13 years ago, NASA scientists have found further evidence that the materials and structures in the meteorite are likely signs of ancient life, rather than the results of inorganic processes.


ALH84001 History

Scientists estimate that the meteorite, called Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001), formed on Mars about 4.5 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest known objects in the solar system. Because the meteorite contains microscopic carbonate disks that are about 4 billion years old, scientists have previously hypothesized that the meteorite interacted with water that may have existed on Mars at this time.

Much later, about 15 million years ago, a larger meteorite likely struck Mars and ejected ALH84001 into space. After spending most of that time traveling throughout the solar system, the meteorite landed on Earth about 13,000 years ago. Then, in 1984, a team of US scientists discovered it in Antarctica. The meteorite finally made news headlines in 1996, when NASA scientist David McKay and others peered at the rock under a scanning electron microscope and saw what appeared to be nanoscale fossils of bacteria-like life forms.

Bacterial or Thermal Origin?

Now, McKay, along with Kathie Thomas-Keprta, Everett Gibson, Simon Clemett, and Susan Wentworth, all of NASA's Johnson Space Center, have revisited the original hypothesis with new observations of the meteorite. The study is published in a recent issue of the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
In the new study, the scientists used advanced microscopy techniques to investigate the carbonate disks and, more importantly, the magnetite nanocrystals within the disks. These embedded magnetites are the apparent fossils that exhibit features similar to contemporary magnetotactic bacteria.

During the past 13 years, different groups of scientists have proposed competing hypotheses to explain the origins of these magnetites. Some of the leading hypotheses are non-biological, suggesting that the magnetites were formed via thermal decomposition of the carbonates in which ALH84001 was struck by other meteorites. Such impacts may have increased the temperature of ALH84001 and caused the carbonates to decompose into magnetites via bond redistribution. In some models, ALH84001 may have experienced this shock by a random meteorite impact while still on Mars, while in other models, thermal decomposition may have occurred due to the impact event that ejected ALH84001 from its home planet.

But whatever event might have triggered a thermal decomposition process, the scientists argue in the current study that very few - if any - of the magnetites embedded in ALH84001 carbonates are a product of thermal decomposition. By analyzing details such as the percentage of magnetite volume in the carbonate disks, the trace amounts of impurities observed in some of the magnetites, and the lack of siderite which some previous models suggested may have decomposed to form magnetite, the scientists concluded that these new observations were inconsistent with the previous inorganic-based thermal decomposition hypotheses.

By showing that it's very unlikely that the magnetite originated from the decomposition of ALH84001's carbonate, the scientists argue that possible biological origins of the magnetite need to be considered more seriously than before.
"For the past 10 years, the leading (and only) viable non-biologic hypothesis for the origin of the nanophase magnetites concentrated in ALH84001 has been thermal or shock decomposition of iron-bearing carbonates, a process known to produce small magnetite crystals," Thomas-Keprta told PhysOrg.com. "Our paper has falsified this non-biologic hypothesis by showing, based on thermodynamics and minor element chemistry, that this non-biologic hypothesis simply cannot produce the ultrapure magnetites actually present in ALH84001 as a significant population of all magnetites. By falsifying this non-biologic hypothesis, we are left with only the biologic hypothesis to explain the detailed properties of the magnetites in this martian meteorite."
Magnetite Biosignature

Although they have not yet developed a model for the origin of the magnetite in ALH84001, the researchers' new observations are consistent with the possibility that the magnetite has an "allochthonous origin," in which it was exposed to aqueous solutions such as water.

As Thomas-Keprta explained, the magnetite in ALH84001 could have been one of several ferromagnetic minerals produced by magnetotactic bacteria that live in aquatic environments. When these bacteria die and their shells degrade, a chain of magnetite is released into the environment. Without its confining shell, the magnetite chain configuration cannot be maintained, so individual magnetite crystals begin to mix with inorganic particles in the water.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 09 - 07:28 PM

Alexey Belyanin focuses his research on terahertz, otherwise known as THz or T-rays, which he says is the most under-developed and under-used part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It lies between microwave radiation and infrared (heat) radiation.
Belyanin, associate professor in the Texas A&M Physics Department, has collaborated with colleagues at Rice University and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to publish findings about their T-ray research in the renowned journal Nature Physics.
"THz radiation can penetrate through opaque dry materials. It is harmless and can be used to scan humans," Belyanin says. "Unfortunately, until recently the progress in THz technology has been hampered by a lack of suitable sources and detectors."
Belyanin and his team have offered hope: The researchers are able to control the T-rays by varying external parameters like temperature or magnetic field, making it possible to build THz sensors, cameras and other devices.
Traditionally, powerful photons from visible or near-infrared laser pulses are used to probe semiconductors, knocking electrons out of the atoms. Belyanin and collaborators use the less powerful T-rays instead, which only excite the waves in the electron gas because T-rays do not have enough energy to knock out electrons.
"This is as if instead of throwing a stone into a tank of water, which would create a lot of splashes, we gently vibrate one wall of the tank, sending a sound wave through the body of water and ripples over its surface," he explains.
By varying temperature and the magnetic field, scientists can tune the pulses and observe the behavior of the waves.
"This provides extremely valuable and unique information about the properties of the material, just like seismic waves tell you what is in the Earth's interior," the Texas A&M physicist points out.
"The highlight of our results is observations of interference of magnetoplasmons. By tiny changes in the applied magnetic field or temperature, we can make plasma waves amplify or cancel each other. This makes the whole sample either completely opaque or transparent to the incident THz radiation."
Belyanin believes the technology has important practical implications, such as in security work.
"Using THz cameras, we could detect weapons or drugs concealed on a human body, or look inside envelopes and boxes," he says. There are many other applications for THz radiation, including material studies, chemistry, biology and medicine."
Provided by Texas A&M University

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 01:14 PM

Tens of thousands of people have already been evacuated from the foothills of Mayon, which on Monday emitted lava fountains, powerful booming noises and other signs of an approaching eruption. But authorities are having trouble keeping villagers away from their homes and farms, said Gov. Joey Salceda.

"There are people who have been evacuated three times, and we sigh: 'You again?' " said Salceda of central Albay province. "We've been playing cat and mouse with them."

After a week of puffing out ash and sending bursts of lava trickling down its steep slopes, the 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) mountain overlooking the Gulf of Albay and Legazpi city shook with nearly 2,000 volcanic earthquakes and tremors between Sunday and Monday, state volcanologists said.

The emission of sulfur dioxide - an indication of magma rising inside the volcano - jumped to 6,000 tons per day from the normal 500, said the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. It also reported "audible booming and rumbling sounds" in the eastern flank of the volcano, accompanied by intensified crater glow at night.

Lava fountains bursting from the cone-shaped volcano overnight rose 650 feet (200 meters) in the air, the institute said.

Scientists raised the alert level Sunday to one step below a hazardous eruption, saying one was possible within days. The only higher level is when a major eruption is already in progress.

Army troops and police added more patrols to enforce a five-mile (eight-kilometer) exclusion zone around the mountain, Salceda said. The area is about 210 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Manila.

More than 44,000 residents were given sleeping mats and food inside school buildings, gyms and other emergency shelters, but some have still been spotted checking on their farms in the prohibited zone.

About 3,000 more villagers have held out, staying behind on the fringes of the danger zone out of concern for their homes and belongings. Many have been evacuated only to come back to tend to farms and property.

Army troops have been deployed to persuade them to move to safety, said Jukes Nunez, a disaster management official.

"We won't bodily carry them away because that will violate their rights," Nunez told The Associated Press. "But we've sent troops to persuade and nag them nonstop to move to safer areas."

Scientists said red hot lava flows had reached three miles (five kilometers) from the crater.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 07:02 PM

Bacteria Engineered to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Liquid Fuel
ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2009) — Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels.
In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds great potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis.
The research appears in the Dec. 9 print edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology and is available online.
This new method has two advantages for the long-term, global-scale goal of achieving a cleaner and greener energy economy, the researchers say. First, it recycles carbon dioxide, reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Second, it uses solar energy to convert the carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel that can be used in the existing energy infrastructure, including in most automobiles.
While other alternatives to gasoline include deriving biofuels from plants or from algae, both of these processes require several intermediate steps before refinement into usable fuels.
"This new approach avoids the need for biomass deconstruction, either in the case of cellulosic biomass or algal biomass, which is a major economic barrier for biofuel production," said team leader James C. Liao, Chancellor's Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA and associate director of the UCLA-Department of Energy Institute for Genomics and Proteomics. "Therefore, this is potentially much more efficient and less expensive than the current approach."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 31 Dec 09 - 11:21 PM

Russia in secret plan to save Earth from asteroid: official
December 30, 2009


Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a possible catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia's space agency said Wednesday.


"We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done" to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.

"We are talking about people's lives," Perminov was quoted by news agencies as telling the radio station.

"Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed," he said.

The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France.
Perminov said a serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space experts.
Interfax quoted him as saying that one option would be to build a new "space apparatus" designed solely for the purpose of diverting Apophis from a collision course with Earth safely.

"There won't be any nuclear explosions," Perminov said. "Everything will be done according to the laws of physics. We will examine all of this."

In a statement dated from October and posted on its website, the US space agency NASA said new calculations on the path of Apophis indicated "a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036."

"Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a-million," NASA said.]

RIA Novosti said the asteroid was expected to pass within 30,000 kilometres (18,600 miles) of Earth in 2029 -- closer than some geo-stationary satellites -- and could shift course to hit Earth seven years years after that.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 11:05 AM

(AP) -- Remains of the first airplane ever taken to Antarctica, in 1912, have been found by Australian researchers, the team announced Saturday.


The Mawson's Huts Foundation had been searching for the plane for three summers before stumbling upon metal pieces of it on New Year's Day.

"The biggest news of the day is that we've found the air tractor, or at least parts of it!" team member Tony Stewart wrote on the team's blog from Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay.

Australian polar explorer and geologist Douglas Mawson led two expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s, on the first one bringing along a single-propeller Vickers plane. The wings of the plane, built in 1911, had been damaged in a crash before the expedition, but Mawson hoped to use it as a kind of motorized sled.

Stewart said the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition used the plane to tow gear onto the ice in preparation for their sledging journeys.

But the plane's engine could not withstand the extreme temperatures and it was eventually abandoned.

The plane, the first from France's Vickers factory, had not been seen since the mid-1970s, when researchers photographed the steel fuselage nearly encompassed in ice.

The foundation - which works at Cape Denison to conserve the huts used by Mawson in his expeditions - believed the plane would still be where it was left by Mawson, near the huts and the harbor, which is covered in ice for most of the year.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jan 10 - 01:20 PM

Spectacular satellite images suggest that Mars was warm enough to sustain lakes three billion years ago, a period that was previously thought to be too cold and arid to sustain water on the surface, according to research published today in the journal Geology.

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The research, by a team from Imperial College London and University College London (UCL), suggests that during the Hesperian Epoch, approximately 3 billion years ago, Mars had lakes made of melted ice, each around 20km wide, along parts of the equator.

Earlier research had suggested that Mars had a warm and wet early history but that between 4 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, before the Hesperian Epoch, the planet lost most of its atmosphere and became cold and dry. In the new study, the researchers analysed detailed images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the red planet, and concluded that there were later episodes where Mars experienced warm and wet periods.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 03:58 PM

Scientists show 'lifeless' prions capable of evolutionary change and adaptation (PhysOrg, December 31, 2009)


Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have determined for the first time that prions, bits of infectious protein devoid of DNA or RNA that can cause fatal neurodegenerative disease, are capable of Darwinian evolution.


The study from Scripps Florida in Jupiter shows that prions can develop large numbers of mutations at the protein level and, through natural selection, these mutations can eventually bring about such evolutionary adaptations as drug resistance, a phenomenon previously known to occur only in bacteria and viruses. These breakthrough findings also suggest that the normal prion protein - which occurs naturally in human cells - may prove to be a more effective therapeutic target than its abnormal toxic relation.

The study was published in the December 31, 2009 issue of the journal Science Express.

"On the face of it, you have exactly the same process of mutation and adaptive change in prions as you see in viruses," said Charles Weissmann, M.D., Ph.D., the head of Scripps Florida's Department of Infectology, who led the study. "This means that this pattern of Darwinian evolution appears to be universally active. In viruses, mutation is linked to changes in nucleic acid sequence that leads to resistance. Now, this adaptability has moved one level down - to prions and protein folding - and it's clear that you do not need nucleic acid for the process of evolution."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 06:09 PM

I have always held prions as the ultimate exraterresrial invasion weapon. Indestructable under 1400 degrees, lifeless but replicating and able to eat the brains of all the highest lifeforms.
Instead of calling them proteins I would call them anti-teins.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Jan 10 - 06:35 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY02Qkuc_f8


orders are orders

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 10:59 AM

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists studying dolphin behavior have suggested they could be the most intelligent creatures on Earth after humans, saying the size of their brains in relation to body size is larger than that of our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, and their behaviors suggest complex intelligence. One scientist said they should therefore be treated as "non-human persons" and granted rights as individuals.

The behavioral studies showed dolphins (especially the bottlenose) have distinct personalities and self-awareness, and they can think about the future. The research also confirmed dolphins have complex social structures, with individuals co-operating to solve difficult problems or to round up shoals of fish to eat, and with new behaviors being passed from one dolphin to another.

Several examples of learning being passed on to other individuals have been observed. In one case a rescued dolphin in South Australia, taught to tail-walk during recuperation, in turn taught the trick to other wild dolphins in the Port Adelaide river estuary when she was released. According to marine biologist Mike Bossley it was "like watching a dance craze take off", with the dolphins apparently learning the trick just for fun, since tail-walking has no natural function.

Work carried out by professor of psychology at the City University of New York, Diana Reiss, showed dolphins could recognize themselves in a mirror, and could use it to inspect other parts of their bodies, an ability previously only demonstrated in humans and a few animals such as apes, elephants and pigs. In another study Reiss was able to teach captive dolphins a rudimentary language based on symbols.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 03:24 PM

My neighbors seem like non human persons.

The Human Condition.
The words human condition floats about cocktail parties, book tours and galleries but it rarely is embraced with extended clarity.
Primary in my understanding of the human condition is the overwhelming factor of contradiction. If you can not forgive the contradictions you can never forgive and go on to discover more about the human condition or a specific person's human condition.

"How can he be soo smart and yet be so stupid about X?" contradiction
"How can that be a religion of peace and commit horrorific murders?" contradiction.

Love the contradiction and correct the singular problem and you may be more understanding, successful and peaceful yourself.

more later gotta go to scoo

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jan 10 - 03:31 PM

Evidence that four-legged vertebrates walked on Earth some 10 million years earlier than previously believed could force a radical rethink of where they evolved, as well as when.

Tetrapod footprints dating back 397 million years have been discovered in the Świętokrzyskie mountains in southern Poland in what was, at the time they were made, a seashore. All previous fossil evidence for these earliest known four-limbed vertebrates has been found in river deltas and lakes.

"Our discovery suggests that the current scientific consensus is mistaken not only about when the first tetrapods evolved, but also about where they evolved," says Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki of the Department of Palaeobiology and Evolution at the University of Warsaw in Poland, who discovered the footprints in 2002 in an old quarry near the town of Kielce.(New Scientist)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 10:56 AM

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/07/06/vx200-demonstrates-superconducting-stage-full-power/
AD ASTRA ROCKET COMPANY PRESS RELEASE

Ad Astra Rocket Company has successfully demonstrated operation of its VX-200 plasma engine first stage at full power and under superconducting conditions in tests conducted today at the company's Houston laboratory. This achievement is a key milestone in the engine's development and the first time a superconducting plasma rocket has been operated at that power level.

Today's tests build on the achievements of the VX-200i, the engine's non-superconducting predecessor, which last fall underwent similar tests but under a greatly reduced set of requirements. A major difference between the two is the superconducting magnet, featured in the present system, which provides a ten-fold increase in the magnetic field and enables operation of the engine under conditions consistent with actual space flight.

The VX-200 superconducting magnet, the first of its kind, was delivered to Ad Astra's Houston facility on February 10, 2009 by its manufacturer, Scientific Magnetics of Oxford, U.K. After successful acceptance tests, the superconductor was installed in the engine module, replacing the conventional magnet that had been used in the interim. This interim magnet, although incapable of reaching the strong magnetic fields required for full rocket performance, enabled the integrated testing of the remaining engine sub-systems while the company awaited delivery of the superconductor. First plasma in full superconducting mode was achieved on June 24, 2009.

snip

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 11:15 AM

Pi calculation smashes records
January 7, 2010 by Lin Edwards


(PhysOrg.com) -- A computer scientist in France has broken all previous records for calculating Pi, using only a personal computer. The previous record was approximately 2.6 trillion digits, but the new record, set by Fabrice Bellard, now stands at almost 2.7 trillion decimal places.

Bellard, of Paris Telecom Tech, made and checked the calculation by running his own software algorithms for 131 days. The previous record calculation, set by Daisuke Takahashi at the University of Tsukuba in Japan in August 2009, took only 29 hours to complete, but used a super-computer costing millions of dollars, and running 2000 times faster than Bellard's PC.

Pi is the value of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and has been of interest to mathematicians for hundreds of years, since Sir Isaac Newton developed formulae to extend the number of decimal places.

Bellard has been following the records for calculating Pi to the maximum number of decimal places since he received his first book about Pi at the age of 14. Computations to find a value to any number of decimal places are part of a branch of mathematics called "arbitrary-precision arithmetic". For Bellard the calculation was more for fun than because of an obsession with the digits, but he said that arbitrary-precision arithmetic has applications because it can be used for testing algorithms and computers. He claims his method is about 20 times more efficient than previous methods.

Bellard said he used the Chudnovsky formula to produce a binary result (a process that took 103 days), which was then checked (which actually took 34 hours on 9 computers, but would have taken 13 days on one PC), and converted to a base-10 result (12 days), which was then verified (3 days).

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Jan 10 - 02:54 PM

Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB, Germany), in cooperation with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol Universities, as well as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. They have measured the signatures of a symmetry showing the same attributes as the golden ratio famous from art and architecture.

The research team is publishing these findings in Science on the 8 January.

On the atomic scale particles do not behave as we know it in the macro-atomic world. New properties emerge which are the result of an effect known as the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In order to study these nanoscale quantum effects the researchers have focused on the magnetic material cobalt niobate. It consists of linked magnetic atoms, which form chains just like a very thin bar magnet, but only one atom wide and are a useful model for describing ferromagnetism on the nanoscale in solid state matter.

When applying a magnetic field at right angles to an aligned spin the magnetic chain will transform into a new state called quantum critical, which can be thought of as a quantum version of a fractal pattern. Prof. Alan Tennant, the leader of the Berlin group, explains "The system reaches a quantum uncertain - or a Schrödinger cat state. This is what we did in our experiments with cobalt niobate. We have tuned the system exactly in order to turn it quantum critical."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 10 - 08:23 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- The less you use your brain's frontal lobes, the more you see yourself through rose-colored glasses, a University of Texas at Austin researcher says.

Those findings are being published in the February edition of the journal NeuroImage.
"In healthy people, the more you activate a portion of your frontal lobes, the more accurate your view of yourself is," says Jennifer Beer, an assistant professor of psychology, who conducted the research with graduate student Brent L. Hughes. "And the more you view yourself as desirable or better than your peers, the less you use those lobes."
The natural human tendency to see oneself in a positive light can be helpful and motivating in some situations but detrimental in others, Beer says.

Her research, conducted at the university's Imaging Research Center, gives new insight into the relationship among brain functions and human emotion and perceptions.
It may help scientists better understand brain functions in seniors or people who suffer from depression or other mental illnesses. It could also have implications for recovering methamphetamine addicts whose frontal lobes are often damaged by drug use and who can overestimate their ability to stay clean.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 02:35 PM

Robot girlfriend unwrapped

LAS VEGAS - ROXXXY the sex robot is having a coming out party Saturday in Sin City. In what is billed as a world first, a life-size robotic girlfriend complete with artificial intelligence and flesh-like synthetic skin will be introduced to adoring fans at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

'She can't vacuum, she can't cook but she can do almost anything else if you know what I mean,' TrueCompanion's Douglas Hines said while giving AFP an early peak at Roxxxy. 'She's a companion. She has a personality. She hears you. She listens to you. She speaks. She feels your touch. She goes to sleep. We are trying to replicate a personality of a person.'

Roxxxy stands five-feet, seven inches tall; weighs 120 pounds, 'has a full C cup and is ready for action,' according to Hines, who was an artificial intelligence engineer at Bell Labs before starting TrueCompanion.

The anatomically-correct robot has an articulated skeleton that can move like a person but can't walk or independently move its limbs. Robotic movement is built into 'the three inputs' and a mechanical heart that powers a liquid cooling system.

Roxxxie comes with five personalities. Wild Wendy is outgoing and adventurous while Frigid Farrah is reserved and shy. There is a young naive personality along with a Mature Martha that Hines described as having a 'matriarchal kind of caring.' S & M Susan is geared for more adventurous types.

People ordering the robots online at truecompanion.com detail their tastes and interests in a way similar to that at online dating sites but the information is used to get the mechanical girlfriend in synch with her mate. 'She knows exactly what you like,' said Hines. 'If you like Porsches, she likes Porsches. If you like soccer, she likes soccer.'

Roxxxy is wirelessly linked to the Internet for software updates as well as technical support and sending her man email messages. People can customise robotic girlfriends' personalities and then share the programs with others online at truecompanion.com, according to Hines. -- AFP

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 05:23 PM

The Faith Instinct

From a review by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review of Nicholas Wade's JTF-supported book, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures:

According to Wade, a New York Times science writer, religions are machines for manufacturing social solidarity. They bind us into groups. Long ago, codes requiring altruistic behavior, and the gods who enforced them, helped human society expand from families to bands of people who were not necessarily related.

We didn't become religious creatures because we became social; we became social creatures because we became religious. Or, to put it in Darwinian terms, being willing to live and die for their coreligionists gave our ancestors an advantage in the struggle for resources.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 10 - 03:14 PM

CAIRO (Reuters) - New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday.

Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.

"These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.

"If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's."

He said the collection of workers' tombs, some of which were found in the 1990s, were among the most significant finds in the 20th and 21st centuries. They belonged to workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.

Hawass had earlier found graffiti on the walls from workers calling themselves "friends of Khufu" -- another sign that they were not slaves.


The tombs, on the Giza plateau on the western edge of Cairo, are 4,510 years old and lie at the entrance of a one-km (half mile)-long necropolis.

Hawass said evidence had been found showing that farmers in the Delta and Upper Egypt had sent 21 buffalo and 23 sheep to the plateau every day to feed the builders, believed to number around 10,000 -- or about a tenth of Greek historian Herodotus's estimate of 100,000.

These farmers were exempted from paying taxes to the government of ancient Egypt -- evidence that he said underscored the fact they were participating in a national project.

The first discovery of workers' tombs in 1990 came about accidentally when a horse stumbled on a brick structure 10 meters (yards) away from the burial area.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 10 - 07:08 PM

ANCIENT HOMINIDS MAY HAVE BEEN SEAFARERS

Hand axes excavated on Crete suggest hominids made sea crossings to go 'out of Africa' By Bruce Bower Web edition : Friday, January 8th, 2010   

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. It was around that time that H. erectus spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe.

Until now, the oldest known human settlements on Crete dated to around 9,000 years ago. Traditional theories hold that early farming groups in southern Europe and the Middle East first navigated vessels to Crete and other Mediterranean islands at that time.

"We're just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place," Strasser says. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jan 10 - 11:42 PM

Today, back in 1902 Henry Haven Windsor published the first issue of Popular Mechanics, helping to empower geeks of future generations with straightforward explanations of scientific and mechanical advances.

"The magazine has reported both the brilliant and ridiculous ideas of its times, depending on the writer, scientist or editor. It once published an article about a Philadelphia physician who supposedly used X-rays to turn blacks into whites: probably not a great editorial decision. Betting on blimps over planes for so long might not have been advisable, and hyping excessive consumption during the birth of the environmental movement in the 1960s also rates a demerit. But beyond those probable transgressions,

Popular Mechanics paved the way for the people's incursion into science's once-exclusive domain. Its longevity argues that science and its sometimes inscrutable possibility have raw mass appeal — even if the subject is cars with steering wheels in the back seat or self-diagnosing appliances."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jan 10 - 04:29 PM

January 12, 2010
A senior Saudi cleric declared that joining al Qaeda is forbidden by Islam, Middle East Online reported Jan. 12. Speaking to the Okaz newspaper, Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al-Obeikan, a leading religious scholar and adviser in King Abdullah's court, reiterated the official Saudi stance that al Qaeda's philosophy is one of "takfirism," or accusing others of apostasy. "Takfir thinking" is forbidden in Islam, he said.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jan 10 - 03:11 PM

"To be perfectly blunt about it, The Beaver was an impediment on the Internet. People were literally writing us and saying, 'We can't get your e-newsletter because it's being spam-filtered out, can you change the title of the heading?' ... There were some really unfortunate but practical reasons why The Beaver couldn't be the universal brand. That's the factor why it was a deterrent — particularly amongst women and people under the age of 45. Unfortunately, sometimes words take on an identity that wasn't intended in 1920, when it was all about the fur trade."

— Deborah Morrison, president of Canada's National History Society, explains why The Beaver, Canada's second-oldest history magazine has decided to change its name to the very straightforward and respectable Canada's History.