BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 11:50 AM

"Star Trek fans, prepare to be disappointed. Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew would die within a second of the USS Enterprise approaching the speed of light.

The problem lies with Einstein's special theory of relativity. It transforms the thin wisp of hydrogen gas that permeates interstellar space into an intense radiation beam that would kill humans within seconds and destroy the spacecraft's electronic instruments.

Interstellar space is an empty place. For every cubic centimetre, there are fewer than two hydrogen atoms, on average, compared with 30 billion billion atoms of air here on Earth. But according to William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, that sparse interstellar gas should worry the crew of a spaceship travelling close to the speed of light even more than the Borg decloaking off the starboard bow.

Special relativity describes how space and time are distorted for observers travelling at different speeds. For the crew of a spacecraft ramping up to light speed, interstellar space would appear highly compressed, thereby increasing the number of hydrogen atoms hitting the craft.
Death ray

Worse is that the atoms' kinetic energy also increases. For a crew to make the 50,000-light-year journey to the centre of the Milky Way within 10 years, they would have to travel at 99.999998 per cent the speed of light. At these speeds, hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts – the same energy that protons will eventually reach in the Large Hadron Collider when it runs at full throttle. "For the crew, it would be like standing in front of the LHC beam," says Edelstein.

The spacecraft's hull would provide little protection. Edelstein calculates that a 10-centimetre-thick layer of aluminium would absorb less than 1 per cent of the energy. Because hydrogen atoms have a proton for a nucleus, this leaves the crew exposed to dangerous ionising radiation that breaks chemical bonds and damages DNA. "Hydrogen atoms are unavoidable space mines," says Edelstein.

The fatal dose of radiation for a human is 6 sieverts. Edelstein's calculations show that the crew would receive a radiation dose of more than 10,000 sieverts within a second. Intense radiation would also weaken the structure of the spacecraft and damage its electronic instruments.

Edelstein speculates this might be one reason why extraterrestrial civilisations haven't paid us a visit. Even if ET has mastered building a rocket that can travel at the speed of light, he may be lying dead inside a weakened craft whose navigation systems have short-circuited." Phys. ORg.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Feb 10 - 02:43 PM

SYDNEY: Previously unknown organic molecules have been discovered in a 100 kg meteorite that hit Australia in 1969, suggesting that our early Solar System contained a soup of highly complex organic chemistry long before life appeared.

In a recent study scientists analysed the Murchison meteorite, which landed in Murchison near Melbourne, Australia, in 1969.

The meteor is thought to have originated in the early days of our Solar System, perhaps even before the Sun formed around four and a half billion years ago.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3313/extraterrestrial-organic-molecules-more-complex-earth

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 01:11 PM

Genetically, (Archbishop) Tutu serves as a poster child for southern African genetics, with a lineage primarily from the Sotho-Tswana and Nguni language groups—and a surprise ancestor discovered from the sequencing results. "With a single person, we pretty much covered the largest possible breadth of diversity," Schuster says. "At the same time, there was this amazing outcome in which we could also show Archbishop Tutu coming from the Bushmen, which was something he didn't know and was pleased to learn."

The original sequencing of the human genome a decade ago is now being widely extended. "Overall, I think the paper is a good example of how genome sequencing is rapidly becoming a ubiquitous tool," comments Jonathan Pritchard, a geneticst from the University of Chicago, who cited a study reported last week about sequencing the genome of a human who lived 4,000 years ago on the western coast of Greenland.

Sci. Am.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 01:21 PM

Five billion year prediction

"Our planet's fate is inexorably tied to that of our Sun, which has been shining for five billion years, with at least five billion to go. The Sun shines by burning hydrogen in its core, fusing it into helium. As the Sun's nuclear fuel supply starts to run out, it will begin some peculiar contortions.

Gravity will at first cause it to shrink in size – but this will make the Sun's core hotter, which will actually cause its outer layers to expand significantly. At this stage, five to seven billion years from now, the Sun will loom in our sky as a blazing 'red giant'.

A few hundred million years later – a short period in terms of the Sun's lifetime – it will undergo yet another phase of heating and expansion, shedding much of the material in its outer layers, and finally collapsing into a so-called 'white dwarf'. By this time, its mass will still be about three-quarters of its current value, but compressed into a sphere the size of the Earth.

Click here to read the end of the universe timeline that goes with this feature.

The Sun's initial swelling during the onset of the red giant phase will destroy our blue planet. The additional sunlight reaching our atmosphere will cause global warming beyond Al Gore's worst nightmares. The oceans will evaporate into space, leaving only deserts; life as we know it will not be able to sustain itself. As astronomer Fred Adams of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, put it: "Within a few billion years, our world – nowgreen and flowering with life – will closely resemble present-day Venus, with a hellish atmosphere fuelled by a runaway greenhouse effect."

According to recent calculations by Klaus-Peter Schröder, at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, the Sun's diameter will eventually swell from its current 1.4 million km to as much as 358 million km. The inner planets, Mercury and Venus, will be swallowed outright by the raging Sun.

Given that the diameter of the Earth's orbit is only about 300 million km, our own prospects don't seem much better. But it's not quite that simple: because of the Sun's weakening gravitational attraction, the Earth's orbit will have expanded to about 370 million km. So we won't be engulfed by the swelling Sun – not yet.

What is left of our planet, however, will be scorched beyond recognition, baked by a crimson Sun that takes up half the sky. At its brightest, the Sun will shine with an intensity more than 4,000 times greater than today. As Adams put it in a recent paper: "Current estimates indicate that our biosphere will be essentially sterilised in about 3.5 billion years, so this future time marks the end of life on Earth."" (Cosmos)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Feb 10 - 01:30 PM

The common periwinkle, winkle, or Littorina littorea, is a small edible species marine gastropod with gills and an operculum in the family Littorinidae, the winkles.

The shells range from 10 to 12 mm at maturity, with 30 mm being the upper limit.[1]

Common periwinkles are native to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean along the coasts of northern Spain, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and Russia.

Common periwinkles have been introduced to the Atlantic coast of North America, possibly by rock ballast in the mid-1800s.[2]

The first recorded case was in 1840 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[2] It is now a predominant mollusc from New Jersey northward. It is also found on the western coast from California to Washington. Its presence has caused extensive damage due to interspecific competition with native gastropods.

The common periwinkle is mainly found on rocky shores in the higher and middle intertidal zone. It sometimes lives in small tide pools ranging from 1 to 2 m in characteristic size. It is also found in muddy habitats such as estuaries. They are situated on the splash zone, the extreme high tide mark. It can also reach depths of 60 m.

Females lay 10,000 to 100,000 eggs contained in a corneous capsule from which larvae escape and settle to the bottom. It can breed year round depending on climate. It reaches maturity at 10 mm. It lives 5 to 10 years.

The common periwinkle is primarily an algae grazer, but will feed on small invertebrates such as barnacle larvae. They use their radula to scrape algae from rocks, and, in the salt marsh community, pick up algae from the cord grass, or from the biofilm that covers the surface of mud in estuaries or bays.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 11:35 AM

PARIS: Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that gravity affects the flow of time, just got 10,000 times more accurate.

How quickly time passes depends on where you are, a lesson learnt the hard way by that first-time reviewer of Wagner who observed: "After two hours, I looked at my watch and found that 20 minutes had gone by."

For physicists rather than opera-lovers, relativity was famously expressed in 1915 by Albert Einstein who suggested, among other things, that the flow of time was affected by the force of gravity.

Flow of time gets tested

Clocks will run faster the farther they are from a large gravitational source and run slower they closer they are to it, goes the theory.

Various experiments have been carried out to explore Einstein's insight.

They include a 1976 exploit in which an atomic clock was taken on a 115-minute rocket ride to a point some 10,000 km above Earth, and was found to measure more time compared to a counterpart on Earth.

Now 10,000 times more accurate

Now physicists in the United States have gone a step further.
They have proved Einstein's theory with an accuracy 10,000 times greater than before, according to a paper published in the British journal Nature.

A team that included Nobel winner Steven Chu - now U.S. energy secretary - used a trap that involved three lasers that zapped waves of caesium atoms, making them move up and down like a fountain.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 11:29 AM

Two years ago, several research vessels shipped out to the North and the South poles to assemble a census of creatures living under the ice. One of the most surprising results was a discovery that 235 identical species lived on opposite sides of the world but were undocumented anywhere else. It's easy to understand how massive humpbacks can swim from Arctic to Antarctic waters, but most of the miniature worms, snails and crustaceans on the researchers' list are no bigger than grains of rice. How could tiny creatures adapted for the frigid waters travel 9,500 kilometers through warmer climes to reach the opposite pole?

Under the microscope, these invertebrates sometimes look like shredded plastic bags or shrimp with bullhorns. It's unclear how they could cross a swimming pool, let alone the globe. So, their "bipolarity" poses a 160-year mystery of the ocean—one that has only grown with time. "If bipolar species are as common as our initial list suggests, it really means we don't appreciate the mechanisms that are important for connectivity in the ocean as well as we thought," says Russ Hopcroft, project leader of the Arctic portion of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership's Census of Marine Life.

The discovery of bipolar species dates back to the 1840s expeditions of Victorian explorer James Clark Ross and his two heavy-duty battle cruisers, the HMS Erebus and Terror. During missions to map the North and South poles, he collected samples of marine flora and fauna that looked remarkably similar. He theorized that somehow these tiny species had been able to survive not only the icy waters that would eventually sink his ships, but also a journey halfway around the planet.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 07:23 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- The idea of dwarf dinosaurs on Haţeg Island, Romania, was proposed 100 years ago by the colourful Baron Franz Nopcsa, whose family owned estates in the area. He realized that many of the Haţeg dinosaurs had close relatives in older rocks in England, Germany, and North America, but the Romanian specimens were half the size.


In new work by Professor Mike Benton at the University of Bristol, and six other authors from Romania, Germany, and the United States, NopcsaÕs hypothesis is tested for the first time. They found that the Haţeg Island dinosaurs were indeed dwarfs.

One much debated theme among evolutionary ecologists is whether there is an Ôisland ruleÕ, the observation that large animals isolated on islands tend to become smaller. There is no doubt that the Haţeg dinosaurs were small, but were they just juveniles?
Three species of the Haţeg dinosaurs - the plant-eating sauropod Magyarosaurus and the plant-eating ornithopods Telmatosaurus and Zalmoxes - are half the length of their nearest relatives elsewhere.

The team examined these three dinosaurs, each represented by many specimens, but they found no evidence of any large bones such as they would expect to find in their normal-sized relatives. More importantly, a close study of the bones confirmed that the dinosaurs had reached adulthood.

As dinosaurs matured, just like humans, their bones lost their growing centres and fused. In addition, detailed studies by Martin Sander in Bonn and his students, show that the bone histology (the microscopic structure) is adult. Traces of earlier growth can be tracked in the core of the bone, and the outer surfaces are solid and show evidence of ÔremodelingÕ only seen in adults.

Professor Benton said: "The idea of Ôisland dwarfingÕ is well established for more recent cases. For example, there were dwarf elephants on many of the Mediterranean islands during the past tens of thousands of years. These well-studied examples suggest dwarfing can happen quite quickly.

The general idea is that larger animals that find themselves isolated on an island either become extinct because there isnÕt enough space for a reasonably-sized population to survive, or they adapt. One way to adapt is to become smaller, generation by generation."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 07:39 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- Whether life exists elsewhere in our universe is a longstanding mystery. But for some scientists, there?s another interesting question: could there be life in a universe significantly different from our own?


A definitive answer is impossible, since we have no way of directly studying other universes. But cosmologists speculate that a multitude of other universes exist, each with its own laws of physics. Recently physicists at MIT have shown that in theory, alternate universes could be quite congenial to life, even if their physical laws are very different from our own.

In work recently featured in a cover story in Scientific American, MIT physics professor Robert Jaffe, former MIT postdoc, Alejandro Jenkins, and recent MIT graduate Itamar Kimchi showed that universes quite different from ours still have elements similar to carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and could therefore evolve life forms quite similar to us. Even when the masses of the elementary particles are dramatically altered, life may find a way.

ÒYou could change them by significant amounts without eliminating the possibility of organic chemistry in the universe,Ó says Jenkins.

Pocket universes

Modern cosmology theory holds that our universe may be just one in a vast collection of universes known as the multiverse. MIT physicist Alan Guth has suggested that new universes (known as Òpocket universesÓ) are constantly being created, but they cannot be seen from our universe.

In this view, Ònature gets a lot of tries Ñ the universe is an experiment thatÕs repeated over and over again, each time with slightly different physical laws, or even vastly different physical laws,Ó says Jaffe.

Some of these universes would collapse instants after forming; in others, the forces between particles would be so weak they could not give rise to atoms or molecules. However, if conditions were suitable, matter would coalesce into galaxies and planets, and if the right elements were present in those worlds, intelligent life could evolve.... (Phys.org)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 07:54 PM

CNN Breaking NEWS : Chest Pains are resting comfortably after experiencing former Vice President Cheney.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 11:58 AM

A remarkably important event has just occurred in the world of psychology: A leading, peer-reviewed journal has published the strongest evidence yet that psychodynamic psychotherapy -- "talk therapy" -- works. In fact, it not only works, it keeps working long after the sessions stop.

Full disclosure: We report this not as disinterested observers, but as psychotherapists and researchers on the process and efficacy of therapy. Our book, "Handbook of Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy," summarized the body of research through last year and another will follow late this year. Still, we can state as fact: The movement to establish an evidence base for psychodynamic therapy has taken a giant new step forward.

This new academic paper reports positive findings about the form of therapy that began with Sigmund Freud and has historically been utilized more than any other psychotherapy treatment. What does modern psychodynamic psychotherapy look like? Its distinctive features include several basic building blocks: A focus on emotion and relationships; identification of recurring themes and patterns; discussion of past experiences; a focus on the therapy relationship; exploration of attempts to avoid distressing thoughts and feelings; and exploration of fantasy life.

Overall, the paper found, psychodynamic psychotherapy demonstrates efficacy at least equivalent to other psychotherapy treatments commonly labeled as "empirically supported" and "evidence based." And in fact, it notes, psychodynamic therapy's "active ingredients" are shared by many other forms of therapy as well.

Full article here in Scientific AMerican

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 04:43 PM

Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible

By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 06 May 2009
09:50 am ET

The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.

Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.

The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity.

Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.

"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."

Already happened?

One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.

"If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.

To make the technique feasible, scientists will have to think of some creative new means of propulsion to move space-time rather than a spaceship.

According to General Relativity, any concentration of mass or energy warps space-time around it (by this reasoning, gravity is simply the curvature of space-time that causes smaller masses to fall inward toward larger masses).

So perhaps some unique geometry of mass or exotic form of energy can manipulate a bubble of space-time so that it moves faster than light-speed, and carries any objects within it along for the ride.

"If we find some way to alter the properties of space-time in an imbalanced fashion, so behind the spacecraft it's doing one thing and in front of it it's doing something else, will then space-time push on the craft and move it?" Millis said. This idea was first proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.

In the lab

Already some studies have claimed to find possible signatures of moving space-time. For example, scientists rotated super-cold rings in a lab. They found that still gyroscopes placed above the rings seem to think they themselves are rotating simply because of the presence of the spinning rings beneath. The researchers postulated that the ultra-cold rings were somehow dragging space-time, and the gyroscope was detecting the effect.

Other studies found that the region between two parallel uncharged metal plates seems to have less energy than the surrounding space. Scientists have termed this a kind of "negative energy," which might be just the thing needed to move space-time.

The catch is that massive amounts of this negative energy would probably be required to warp space-time enough to transport a bubble faster than light speed. Huge breakthroughs will be needed not just in propulsion but in energy. Some experts think harnessing the mysterious force called dark energy — thought to power the acceleration of the universe's expansion — could provide the key.

Even though it's a far cry between these preliminary lab results and actual warp drives, some physicists are optimistic.

"We still don't even know if those things are possible or impossible, but at least we've progressed far enough to where there are things that we can actually research to chip away at the unknowns," Millis told SPACE.com. "Even if they turn out to be impossible, by asking these questions, we're likely to discover things that otherwise we might overlook."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 04:55 PM

During an exclusive cosmic question answer forum I asked how a FSL engine might work and a diagram of a spinning disk was presented along with the notion that "fictionite" would be required to hold the assembly together.
Another "prediction" was pictured as a triangle entering a sphere that some thought was Lithium being combined with hydrogen to produce something wonderful.

The diagramic presentation was well done and would raise the hair on your neck but

while this was a real event I can not attest to any valid proof of its significance.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 24 Feb 10 - 12:14 PM

"Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues have discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material. The find may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity. Credit: Lauren Brennan, Brown University

At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship. Superconducting materials repel a magnetic field, so to create a superconducting current, the magnetic forces must be strong enough to overcome the natural repulsion and penetrate the body of the superconductor. But there's a limit: Apply too much magnetic force, and the superconductor's capability is destroyed.

This relationship is pretty well known. But why it is so remains mysterious. Now physicists at Brown University have documented for the first time a quantum-level phenomenon that occurs to electrons subjected to magnetism in a superconducting material. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Vesna Mitrovic, joined by other researchers at Brown and in France, report that at under certain conditions, electrons in a superconducting material form odd, fluctuating magnetic waves. Apply a little more magnetic force, and those fluctuations cease: The electronic magnets form repeated wave-like patterns promoted by superconductivity.

The discovery may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity at the quantum level. The insight also may help advance research into superconducting magnets, which are used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a host of other applications. "If you don't understand [what is happening at] the quantum [level], how can you design a more powerful magnet?" asked Mitrovic, assistant professor of physics.

When a magnetic field is applied to a superconducting material, vortices measured in nanometers pop up. These vortices, like super-miniature tornadoes, are areas where the magnetic field has overpowered the superconducting field state, essentially suppressing it. Crank up the magnetic field and more vortices appear. At some point, the vortices are so widespread the material loses its superconducting ability altogether...." Phys. Org

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Feb 10 - 01:21 PM

The previously unknown letter was found by Bos through Google. "I regularly browse online. A month ago, I was on one of my little forays when I stumbled upon something I hadn't seen before." The document Bos found was a summary of autographs (handwritten, signed texts) that mentioned the letter. The collection the summary referred to is the property of a Quaker-run college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. "They didn't know this letter had never been published before," Bos said. The newly discovered letter is only the third by Descartes found in the last 25 years.

An excerpt from Descartes' letter

I have met Mr. Picot here. It is clear that he is a sensible man and I owe him a lot. A nobleman from Touraine is in his company, and he has sent me the warmest regards on behalf of father Bourdin, of whom he is a student. He has spoken about Mr. Petit in such terms that I feel obliged to moderate my criticism of him, as you will see in the reader's introduction. I am sending it to you with the friendly request to have it printed at the beginning of the book, after the dedication to the lords of the Sorbonne.

Nor the fourth part of the discours de la méthode, nor the short introduction following it, nor the introduction preceding the objections raised by the theologians are to be printed, only the synopsis.

Finally, I can assure you that there is nothing about Mr. Gassendi's objections that I have trouble with. The only thing I should pay heed to is style – since he took such great care to express himself so eloquently, I should try to respond in kind.

I am

Your most obliged and caring servant

Des Cartes

In May of 1641, Descartes had been living in the Dutch Republic for 13 years. He resided in Endegeest castle near Leiden, and had just completed one of his greatest works: Meditationes de prima philosophia (Meditations on first philosophy). In this book he demonstrates the existence of God and argues against transubstantiation, the rendering of wine into Christ's blood and bread into his body Catholics commonly believe occurs during Holy Communion.

The monk Mersenne assisted in the printing of Descartes work in Paris and corresponded with the philosopher. Descartes was looking to include commentary by prominent theologians in his Meditations. He hoped exposure to others' ideas would improve his own, and, as a devout Catholic, was also looking to avoid censorship by the Church. This would prove unnecessary until 13 years after Descartes death. It wouldn't be until 1663 that the pope would put Descartes' works on the Index of Prohibited Books.

Mersenne was charged with collecting the arguments countering Descartes, and the newly discovered letter deals with these matters. "Descartes had just received objections raised by another philosopher, a priest called Pierre Gassendi (1582-1655)," Verbeek said. "Descartes was always very negative about Gassendi. He said he was no good and wrote nothing but rubbish. In this letter however, Descartes seems to be quite satisfied with his objections. He finds them provocative and well written."

Descartes mentions two visitors from France at the bottom of the letter. One was Claude Picot, who would later translate Descartes' Principia Philosophiae ('Principles of philosophy', 1644). The other, a man from Touraine, convinced him to moderate his scathing criticism of another Pierre Petit, a doctor and humanist Descartes had issues with.

After Mersenne's death in 1648, the letter became the property of the French mathematician Gilles de Roberval. When he died in 1675, the French Academy of the Sciences watched over the document for more than a century, until it was stolen by count Guglielmo Libri (1803-1869), a notorious kleptomaniac.

"Libri started out as a legitimate collector and published some of Descartes' letters. When was appointed secretary of a committee charged with inventorying historic documents however, he proved to be unable to resist temptation and stole thousands of autographs. He later sold some of these at auctions in France, Italy and England," Verbeek explained.

An American collector, Charles Roberts (1846-1902), purchased the letter at an auction in the UK. After his death, he bequeathed his collection to his fellow Quakers at Haverford College.

When the college learnt the letter had been stolen it decided to return it to it former owners. It has since transferred the letter to the French Institute, of which the Academy of the Sciences is a part.

The Institute has granted Haverford College a Grand Prize for "good custodianship" in reward.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Feb 10 - 03:29 PM

Establishing whether life ever existed, or is still active on Mars today, is one of the outstanding scientific quests of our time. Both missions in the ExoMars programme will address this important goal.

The first spacecraft is the Trace Gas Orbiter, which ESA will build and NASA will launch.

Today, both space agencies issued an Announcement of Opportunity inviting scientists to propose instruments to be carried on the mission. Once all proposals are in, they will be evaluated and the winning teams will be tasked with building the actual hardware.

A Joint Instrument Definition Team has identified a model payload based on current technology, but turning that blueprint into reality is now the job of the scientific community. "We are open to all instrumental proposals so long as they help us achieve our scientific objectives," says Jorge Vago, ESA ExoMars Project Scientist.
The priority for this mission is to map trace gases in the atmosphere of Mars, distinguishing individual chemical species down to concentrations of just a few parts per billion. Of these gases, one in particular attracts special attention: methane. Discovered on Mars in 2003, it happens to be a possible 'biomarker', a gas that is readily produced by biological activity. Understanding whether the methane comes from life or from geological and volcanic processes takes precedence. "The methane is the anchor point around which the science is to be constructed," says Vago.

Adding to the mystery is that methane was found to be concentrated in just three locations on Mars, and then disappeared much faster from the atmosphere than scientists were expecting. This points to an unknown destruction mechanism much more powerful than any known on Earth. It may also indicate a much faster creation process to have produced such large quantities of the gas in the first place. (Sci. Am)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 12:48 PM

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the "chemist's war of Prohibition" remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was "our national experiment in extermination." Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes—but that's due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.

From Slate article here.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Mar 10 - 09:50 AM

WASHINGTON: A radar aboard an Indian spacecraft has detected craters filled with ice on the Moon's north pole, NASA scientists said.

The U.S. space agency's Mini-SAR radar found more than 40 small craters ranging in size from 1.6 to 15 km, each full of water ice.

"Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice," NASA said in a statement.

Mapping permanently shadowed polar craters

The finding came weeks after President Barack Obama put on ice US ambitions to return astronauts to the moon.

The lightweight, synthetic aperture radar's findings "show the Moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought," said Paul Spudis, lead investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.

The Mini-SAR has spent the last year mapping the Moon's permanently shadowed polar craters that are not visible from Earth, using the polarisation properties of reflected radio waves.

Water found in many forms

"After analysing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit," said Jason Crusan of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Mar 10 - 11:29 AM

Sydney, Australia -- American biker, Seth Enslow, broke the world record for the longest jump on a Harley-Davidson Tuesday morning in Sydney, local media reported.

Enslow jumped 184 feet between ramps breaking a previous record of 157 feet set in Las Vegas in 1999 by Bubba Blackwell.
Enslow then attempted a second jump for viewers and injured himself on the landing.

Local media said the stunt took 12 months to prepare and Enslow was satisfied with the outcome.

"Lot of hard work putting this ramp together the last few days, the weather has been testing us but we made it happen so accomplished the job we set out to do," he said.

Enslow previously tried to break a distance jump record in 1999 in the United States with a custom Honda motorbike but failed his landing and hit his head against the handlebar.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 10 - 11:17 AM

"...Past efforts at a BCI to animate an artificial limb involved electrodes inserted directly into the brain. The surgery required to implant the probes and the possibility that implants might not stay in place made this approach risky.

The alternative—recording neural signals from outside the brain—has its own set of challenges. "It has been thought for quite some time that it wasn't possible to extract information about human movement using electroencephalography," or EEG, says neuroscientist and electrical engineer Jose Contreras-Vidal. In trying to record the brain's electrical activity off the scalp, he adds, "people assumed that the signal-to-noise ratio and the information content of these signals were limited."

Evidently, that is not the case. In the March issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, Contreras-Vidal and his team from the bioengineering and kinesiology departments at the University of Maryland, College Park, show that the noisy brain waves recorded using noninvasive EEG can be mathematically decoded into meaningful information about complex human movements. "This means we can use a noninvasive method to develop the next generation of brain–computer interface machines," Contreras-Vidal says. "It can expand considerably the range of clinical and rehabilitative applications."

Instead of undergoing brain surgery, users would wear an electrode-covered head cap that records the electric impulses from neurons—the only mess involved is the clear gel applied to the head to enhance conduction. Some patients have already used the caps to communicate via word processors. (The recognition of a letter flashing on a screen signals the word processor to choose that letter.) The next step is to put the decoded movement information to work. "We hope to show that a person with a stroke or an amputee would be able to control an assistive device," Contreras-Vidal says. He already has healthy volunteers testing two different setups: One has them moving a computer cursor on a screen; the other has them controlling an artificial hand.

Contreras-Vidal also hopes to integrate sensory feedback into the system to optimize the user's control over the device. "In all the studies so far people have used visual feedback to close the loop between the user and the machine," he says. "We think it's important to use other types of feedback, too, because vision is a slow signal" compared with the sensory signal a person would get from an intact limb.

Whether such a system would work for patients with longstanding nerve damage is unknown. Such patients haven't activated their movement-generating neurons or received the related sensory feedback for many years and could generate abnormal brain wave–based movement information. "We're starting to look at patient populations to answer that question," Contreras-Vidal says, naming stroke patients and below-elbow amputees as the first test subjects. "We know the brain is highly redundant, so we think that even if there's a deletion in the brain, we might be able to decode from another place. One advantage to using electroencephalography is access to the whole brain, not just a specific area."..."

Scientific AMerican

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

Anne Hutchinson's "No in Thunder."

    "Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. … It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. …Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin."—Robert Green Ingersoll

In the perpetually new world that is America, orthodoxy is never more than a temporary consensus. Yesterday's heresy is today's revelation—and today's revelation is tomorrow's worn out creed. Most great religious movements begin as heresies; when they cease to inspire, they are either revivified or supplanted by new heresies.

However reviled and despised their ideas might be, heretics—important historical ones like Pelagius, Martin Luther, and Giordano Bruno, and obscure contemporary sectarians like Marie-Paule Giguère, the self-styled reincarnation of the Virgin Mary and the founder of The Community of the Lady of All Nations, aka the Army of Mary—aren't nihilists or wishy-washy relativists; they are believers par excellence. "In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic," G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Heretics. "It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox."...

"Consider Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), whose arguments with mainstream Puritanism made her, at one time, the most hated woman in America. "Your opinions fret like a gangrene and spread like a leprosy, and infect far and near, and will eat out the very bowels of religion," her erstwhile teacher Minister John Cotton admonished her, as she was excommunicated from the Church of Boston and consigned to the mercies of the wilderness. The Puritans celebrated when they received word of her death seven years later; its grisly circumstances—she and more than a dozen members of her household, including six of her fifteen children, were scalped by an Indian war party—were regarded as wondrous evidence of divine providence.

American history textbooks usually describe Anne Hutchinson as a martyr to Puritan narrow-mindedness, as an early—perhaps the first—American feminist, and a courageous champion of civil liberty and religious tolerance. There is a germ of truth in this description of her, but it does justice neither to her nor her persecutors.

The controversy that brought about Anne Hutchinson's expulsion from Boston revolved around questions that had been roiling Christianity since its beginnings: Did good works play any role in one's salvation, or was salvation something unmerited and unearned, a gift freely bestowed by God through Christ? If human beings are so steeped in sin that only Christ can redeem them, do they cease to be human when and if they're saved? Since obedience to the law doesn't earn one grace, does breaking the law cause grace to be forfeited?

Those who answer this last question in the negative are called Antinomians. The word (which means "against the law") was coined by Martin Luther to describe the errors of his student Johannes Agricola, who argued that believing Christians might abandon every scruple without any risk to their souls. "Art thou steeped in sin, an adulterer or a thief?" he asked. "If thou believest, thou art in salvation. All who follow Moses must go to the Devil."

Most of the particulars of Hutchinson's alleged doctrinal errors, wrapped as they are in obscurities, are difficult for modern readers to grasp. "Theological controversies are as a rule among the most barren of the many barren fields of historic research," Charles Francis Adams wrote in his classic Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (1892), "and the literature of which they were so fruitful may, so far as the reader of to-day is concerned, best be described by the single word impossible." With offhand condescension, Adams portrayed Hutchinson as an irritatingly superior busybody, a bored housewife who took a dislike to her ministers and got in over her head. "She knew much," he sniffed, "But she talked out of all proportion to her knowledge. She had thought a good deal, and by no means clearly; having not infrequently mistaken words for ideas."...

From Killing the Buddha.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 09:27 AM

Want to know what a jam session between Jack White and Stevie Ray Vaughan might have sounded like, or how Billie Holliday would interpret the latest dreck from Avril Lavigne? Advances in artificial intelligence are resurrecting musical legends of the past, tapping into old recordings to establish a musician's style and personality, then applying those attributes to newer recordings of old songs, or even to songs the musician never played before.

Every generation has its musical heyday. Then, just as one era is about to give way to the next, the older generation declares that music is dead, claiming the greats of one small epoch in musical history will never be topped. This is why Kurt Cobain was never as good as Jimmy Page who couldn't touch Lennon and McCartney who could never compare to Buddy Holly who owed a creative debt to Elvis who, as we all know, referred to Fats Domino as the real King of Rock and Roll. And so on.

New software, developed by North Carolina-based Zenph Sound Innovations, is something like a Pandora for live musical style; sophisticated software analyzes musicians based on how they sound on old, archaic recordings. The software can then reconstruct songs as they would have sounded if those musicians had recorded in a modern studio and on superior media.

But it doesn't end there. Zenph is working on a means to not only recreate old performances, but to dissect a style to the point that it can manifest an artist's personal touch into pieces he or she never performed in life. Meaning the software could potentially lift Jimmy Page out of Black Dog and replace him with, say, Jimi Hendrix, just so see how it sounds.

Zenph has already created three "ghost" pianos that play the likes of Rachmaninoff to the exact stylistic specifications -- supposedly -- of Sergei himself. The company plans to explore all kinds of markets with the technology, like licensing clearer versions of old recordings to films and creating software that will let you Clapton-ize your own guitar riffs. It's also working up virtual versions of more instruments, meaning it's possible that in the future, the company could put together phantom all-star bands melding musicians across decades, or recreate the Beatles with virtual stand-ins for John and George. (Popular Science)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 11:12 AM

COSMOS Mag:

"...PARIS: A census of microbes in the human digestive tract found at least 1,000 microbes, many previously unknown, and could lead to new cure for gut ailments with the help of personal microbial profiles.

"This completely changes our vision," said Stanislav-Dusko Ehrlich, a researcher at France's National Institute for Agricultural Research, after the study was published in the journal Nature.

Knowing which core bacteria populate a healthy intestine should lead to more accurate diagnosis and prognosis for diseases ranging from ulcers to irritable bowel syndrome to Crohn's, which also causes painful inflammation, he said.

Your personal microbial profile

"In the future, we should be able to modify the (microbial) flora to optimise health and well being," he said.

"This also opens up the possibility of prevention through diet, and treatments tailored a person's genetic and microbial profile."

More than 100 researchers working over two years found some 3.3 million distinct genes spread across at least 1,000 species of single-celled organisms, virtually all bacteria...."

A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 04:10 PM

PhysOrg.com) -- A worldwide team of researchers have for the first time created a particle that is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe - the so-called "Big Bang" - and it could lead to new questions and answers about some of the basic laws of physics because in essence, it creates a new form of matter.


An international team of scientists studying high-energy collisions of gold ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, has published evidence of the most massive antinucleus discovered to date. The new antinucleus, discovered at RHIC's STAR detector, is a negatively charged state of antimatter containing an antiproton, an antineutron, and an anti-Lambda particle. It is also the first antinucleus containing an anti-strange quark. The results will be published online by Science Express on March 4, 2010.

"This experimental discovery may have unprecedented consequences for our view of the world," commented theoretical physicist Horst Stoecker, Vice President of the Helmholtz Association of German National Laboratories. "This antimatter pushes open the door to new dimensions in the nuclear chart — an idea that just a few years ago, would have been viewed as impossible."

The discovery may help elucidate models of neutron stars and opens up exploration of fundamental asymmetries in the early universe.

New nuclear terrain

All terrestrial nuclei are made of protons and neutrons (which in turn contain only up and down quarks). The standard Periodic Table of Elements is arranged according to the number of protons, which determine each element's chemical properties. Physicists use a more complex, three-dimensional chart to also convey information on the number of neutrons, which may change in different isotopes of the same element, and a quantum number known as "strangeness," which depends on the presence of strange quarks (see diagram). Nuclei containing one or more strange quarks are called hypernuclei.

For all ordinary matter, with no strange quarks, the strangeness value is zero and the chart is flat. Hypernuclei appear above the plane of the chart. The new discovery of strange antimatter with an antistrange quark (an antihypernucleus) marks the first entry below the plane.

This study of the new antihypernucleus also yields a valuable sample of normal hypernuclei, and has implications for our understanding of the structure of collapsed stars.

"The strangeness value could be non-zero in the core of collapsed stars," said Jinhui Chen, one of the lead authors, a postdoctoral researcher at Kent State University and currently a staff scientist at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, "so the present measurements at RHIC will help us distinguish between models that describe these exotic states of matter."

The findings also pave the way towards exploring violations of fundamental symmetries between matter and antimatter that occurred in the early universe, making possible the very existence of our world...."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Mar 10 - 10:04 AM

ut according to a new study in the journal Psychological Science it might be best if you move from small talk quickly into a more substantial conversation.

Researchers analyzed 20,000, 30-second samplings of the daily conversations of study volunteers, and organized them into trivial chatter or more serious discussion. The participants also took personality and well-being assessment tests.

And they found that the happiest participants spent 70 percent more time talking with others than the least happy people. But more than just measuring amount of time spent talking with others, they also found a difference in the type of conversation happier folks engage in.

The happiest participants had twice as many substantive conversations and only a third as much small talk as those who are least content.

Of course this study finding shows correlation not causation. Still, the authors note, "Just as self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners."

(SciAm)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Mar 10 - 07:56 PM

For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts - acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation - spread just as easily as bad. And it takes only a handful of individuals to really make a difference.

In a study published in the March 8 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Harvard provide the first laboratory evidence that cooperative behavior is contagious and that it spreads from person to person to person. When people benefit from kindness they "pay it forward" by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of cooperation that influences dozens more in a social network.

The research was conducted by James Fowler, associate professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Political Science and Calit2's Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, who is professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine and medical sociology at Harvard Medical School. Fowler and Christakis are coauthors of the recently published book "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives."

In the current study, Fowler and Christakis show that when one person gives money to help others in a "public-goods game," where people have the opportunity to cooperate with each other, the recipients are more likely to give their own money away to other people in future games. This creates a domino effect in which one person's generosity spreads first to three people and then to the nine people that those three people interact with in the future, and then to still other individuals in subsequent waves of the experiment.

The effect persists, Fowler said: "You don't go back to being your 'old selfish self.''' As a result, the money a person gives in the first round of the experiment is ultimately tripled by others who are subsequently (directly or indirectly) influenced to give more. "The network functions like a matching grant," Christakis said.

"Though the multiplier in the real world may be higher or lower than what we've found in the lab," Fowler said, "personally it's very exciting to learn that kindness spreads to people I don't know or have never met. We have direct experience of giving and seeing people's immediate reactions, but we don't typically see how our generosity cascades through the social network to affect the lives of dozens or maybe hundreds of other people."
The study participants were strangers to each other and never played twice with the same person, a study design that eliminates direct reciprocity and reputation management as possible causes.

In previous work demonstrating the contagious spread of behaviors, emotions and ideas - including obesity, happiness, smoking cessation and loneliness - Fowler and Christakis examined social networks re-created from the records of the Framingham Heart Study. But like all observational studies, those findings could also have partially reflected the fact that people were choosing to interact with people like themselves or that people were exposed to the same environment. The experimental method used here eliminates such factors.

The study is the first work to document experimentally Fowler and Christakis's earlier findings that social contagion travels in networks up to three degrees of separation, and the first to corroborate evidence from others' observational studies on the spread of cooperation.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Mar 10 - 07:02 PM

Ten years ago, the collapse of the Internet Dot.Com Bubble.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Mar 10 - 04:52 PM

Cryogenic electron emission phenomenon has no known physics explanation

March 10, 2010 By Lisa Zyga Cryogenic electron emission phenomenon has no known physics explanation


In cryogenic electron emission, at first as temperature decreases, the dark rate decreases. But at about 220 K, the dark rate levels off, and with further cooling, it begins rising again. Image credit: Meyer.

(PhysOrg.com) -- At very cold temperatures, in the absence of light, a photomultiplier will spontaneously emit single electrons. The phenomenon, which is called "cryogenic electron emission," was first observed nearly 50 years ago. Although scientists know of a few causes for electron emission without light (also called the dark rate) - including heat, an electric field, and ionizing radiation - none of these can account for cryogenic emission. Usually, physicists consider these dark electron events undesirable, since the purpose of a photomultiplier is to detect photons by producing respective electrons as a result of the photoelectric effect.



In a recent study, Hans-Otto Meyer, a physics professor at Indiana University, has further investigated cryogenic electron emission by performing experiments that show how the electron firings are distributed in time. His results reveal that electrons are emitted in bursts that occur randomly, although within a burst the electrons are emitted in a peculiar, correlated way. He suggests that the correlations indicate some kind of trapping mechanism, but the unusual behavior is inconsistent with any spontaneous emission processes currently known. At least at the moment, there seems to be no physics explanation of the observations.

"Cryogenic emission is a physics phenomenon that defies an explanation," Meyer told PhysOrg.com. "The physics responsible for it may or may not be fundamental, only the future will tell. Photomultipliers happen to offer the environment in which the phenomenon may be observed, but I doubt if my work will be of great significance to the users of photomultipliers."

In his experiments, Meyer placed a photomultiplier inside an empty container, which he then submerged in liquid nitrogen or helium. Using radiation cooling, he cooled the photomultiplier to a temperature of 80 K (-193° C) after about one day, and to 4 K (-269° C) in another day. With this setup, he could detect cryogenic dark events, which are shown to be caused by single electrons emitted from the cathode of the photomultiplier.

As previous research has shown, starting from room temperature, the dark rate decreases as temperature decreases, but only up to a point. Below about 220 K (-53° C), the dark rate levels off. With further cooling, it begins to rise, and continues to increase at least down to 4 K (-269° C), the lowest temperature for which Meyer has data. Most of Meyer's experiments were performed at around 80 K (-193° C).

In his experiments, Meyer found that electrons are emitted in "bursts" - numerous electron firings that occur close together in time. Although these bursts occur randomly, they last for different lengths of time, with their duration distribution following a power law. Further, Meyer found that the individual firing events within a burst are highly correlated. Specifically, within a burst, events first occur rapidly, and then less and less frequently as the burst "fades away."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Mar 10 - 08:29 PM

hysOrg.com) -- The best hybrid cars of today can only deliver about 48 miles per gallon. By using this newly developed fuel injection system a test vehicle was measured at achieving 64 miles per gallon in highway driving. This is approximately a 50% increase in fuel efficiency in a gasoline engine.

The fuel injection system was developed by a startup company Transonic Combustion and their goal is to increase fuel efficiency of existing gasoline engines. The cost for this ultra-efficient system would be as much as high-end fuel injection systems currently on the market today.

By heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion chamber places it into a supercritical state that allows for very fast and clean combustion. This in turn decreases the amount of fuel needed to run the vehicle. The gasoline is also treated with a catalyst to further enhance combustion.

What makes Transonic's fuel injection system different from a direct injection is that it uses supercritical fluids and requires no spark to ignite the fuel. The supercritical fluid is mixed with air before injected into the cylinder. The heat and pressure, in the cylinder, alone is enough to cause the fuel to combust without a spark.

Ignition timing happens just when the piston reaches the optimal point, so that the maximum amount of energy is converted into mechanical movement of the engine.
Proprietary software has also been developed by Transonic Combustion that allows the system to adjust the fuel injection precisely depending on engine load.

Transonic Combustion is currently testing their new fuel injection system with three automakers. One key concern is the life of the engine when itÕs subject to high pressures and temperatures. The company plans to manufacture the system themselves and not license the technology. Transonic Combustion plans to build its first factory in 2013, and place the technology into production cars by 2014....

---

..."n analysis of more than 70,000 galaxies by University of California, Berkeley, University of Zurich and Princeton University physicists demonstrates that the universe - at least up to a distance of 3.5 billion light years from Earth - plays by the rules set out 95 years ago by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity.

By calculating the clustering of these galaxies, which stretch nearly one-third of the way to the edge of the universe, and analyzing their velocities and distortion from intervening material, the researchers have shown that Einstein's theory explains the nearby universe better than alternative theories of gravity.

One major implication of the new study is that the existence of dark matter is the most likely explanation for the observation that galaxies and galaxy clusters move as if under the influence of some unseen mass, in addition to the stars astronomers observe.

"The nice thing about going to the cosmological scale is that we can test any full,
alternative theory of gravity, because it should predict the things we observe," said co-author Uros Seljak, a professor of physics and of astronomy at UC Berkeley, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a professor of physics at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Zurich. "Those alternative theories that do not require dark matter fail these tests."

In particular, the tensor-vector-scalar gravity (TeVeS) theory, which tweaks general relativity to avoid resorting to the existence of dark matter, fails the test.
The result conflicts with a report late last year that the very early universe, between 8 and 11 billion years ago, did deviate from the general relativistic description of gravity...."

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

..."EinsteinÕs wife Elsa donated the manuscript to the Hebrew University on the occasion of its opening in 1925 and in a letter he thanked her for doing so. A founder of the university and a member of its board, he donated all his papers to it upon his death.

And there, outside the room where the theory of general relativity is on display, are a few more of his papers, including a postcard he sent to his mother in 1919 after a British astronomer confirmed during an eclipse one of EinsteinÕs key predictions. It too offers a poignant mix of the celestial and personal.

ÒDear Mother!Ó it begins, ÒToday some happy news. Lorentz telegraphed me that the British expeditions have verified the deflection of light by the sun.Ó So sorry, he adds, to hear that you are not feeling well...".NYT

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 12 Mar 10 - 05:25 PM

French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment
A 50-year mystery over the 'cursed bread' of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.


Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 7:00AM GMT 11 Mar 2010
French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment
An American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: "Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead."

Eventually, it was determined that the best-known local baker had unwittingly contaminated his flour with ergot, a hallucinogenic mould that infects rye grain. Another theory was the bread had been poisoned with organic mercury.

However, H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army's top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The scientists who produced both alternative explanations, he writes, worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD.

Mr Albarelli came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of Frank Olson, a biochemist working for the SOD who fell from a 13th floor window two years after the Cursed Bread incident. One note transcribes a conversation between a CIA agent and a Sandoz official who mentions the "secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit" and explains that it was not "at all" caused by mould but by diethylamide, the D in LSD.

While compiling his book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments, Mr Albarelli spoke to former colleagues of Mr Olson, two of whom told him that the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident was part of a mind control experiment run by the CIA and US army.

After the Korean War the Americans launched a vast research programme into the mental manipulation of prisoners and enemy troops.

Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated "local foot products".

Mr Albarelli said the real "smoking gun" was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the "Pont St. Esprit incident." In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

None of his sources would indicate whether the French secret services were aware of the alleged operation. According to US news reports, French intelligence chiefs have demanded the CIA explain itself following the book's revelations. French intelligence officially denies this.

Locals in Pont-Saint-Esprit still want to know why they were hit by such apocalyptic scenes. "At the time people brought up the theory of an experiment aimed at controlling a popular revolt," said Charles Granjoh, 71.

"I almost kicked the bucket," he told the weekly French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. "I'd like to know why."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 10 - 07:46 PM

The macabre discovery in June of a neatly stacked pile of skulls next to a mass of male bones in a burial pit near Weymouth, on the southern English coast, sparked speculation about who the victims were.

Scientists from NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory analysed food and drink isotopes from the teeth of 10 of the 51 skulls and found it highly likely that the unfortunate men came from Scandinavia.

It is believed that the raiding Vikings were slaughtered in public by local Anglo-Saxons between AD 910 and AD 1030.

"The isotope data we obtained from the burial pit teeth strongly indicate that the men executed on the Ridgeway originated from a variety of places within the Scandinavian countries," said NERC scientist Jane Evans.

"These results are fantastic. This is the best example we have ever seen of a group of individuals that clearly have their origins outside Britain," she added.
Oxford Archaeology members have been painstakingly uncovered the pit, which was found during investigative excavation work for an £87 million relief road.

"The find of the burial pit on Ridgeway was remarkable and got everyone working on site really excited," Oxford Archaeology project manager David Score said.
"To find out that the young men executed were Vikings is a thrilling development," he added.

"Any mass grave is a relatively rare find, but to find one on this scale, from this period of history, is extremely unusual and presents an incredible opportunity."
(c) 2010 AFP

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Mar 10 - 05:21 PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8567414.stm

"In 1985, a total of six dotcom domain names were registered."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 11:58 AM

Man used penis to assault female police officer

A man who assaulted a female police officer with his penis has been fined.

Marium Varinauskas, 28, tried to strike the officer on the head with his penis when she was called out to his flat, but she got out of the way.

Lithuanian Varinauskas admitted a charge of assault at Aberdeen Sheriff Court and was fined £600.

The court heard he had been drinking heavily and could not remember committing the offence at his home in Aberdeen.

Police were called to his home by his girlfriend, who had complained about him being drunk last November.

They arrived to find the self-employed engineer sitting on the sofa wearing a pair of underpants.
        
Fiscal depute Elaine Lynch said: "The accused got to his feet and was standing over the police officer exposing his penis and thrusting it in her face, forcing her to take evasive action to avoid getting struck."

Defence solicitor John Hardie said: "He was sitting on the couch drunk with his pants on.

"He can't remember anything but accepts that if that's what the police say then that's what happened.

"He has never been so drunk before that day and accepts he has to take full responsibility. He apologises profusely and is extremely embarrassed."

His not guilty plea to committing a breach of the peace by uttering offensive and sexual remarks was accepted by the Crown.

Sheriff Annella Cowan was told that the Lithuanian had now quit binge drinking because of the incident.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 12:45 PM

1 gene lost = 1 limb regained? Scientists demonstrate mammalian regeneration through single gene deletion
March 15, 2010

A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander. In a report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Wistar Institute demonstrate that mice that lack the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue.

Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth and de-differentiation as seen in amphibians. According to the Wistar researchers, the loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like embryonic stem cells than adult mammalian cells, and their findings provide solid evidence to link tissue regeneration to the control of cell division.

"Much like a newt that has lost a limb, these mice will replace missing or damaged tissue with healthy tissue that lacks any sign of scarring," said the project's lead scientist Ellen Heber-Katz, Ph.D., a professor in Wistar's Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis program. "While we are just beginning to understand the repercussions of these findings, perhaps, one day we'll be able to accelerate healing in humans by temporarily inactivating the p21 gene."

Heber-Katz and her colleagues used a p21 knockout mouse to help solve a mystery first encountered in 1996 regarding another mouse strain in her laboratory. MRL mice, which were being tested in an autoimmunity experiment, had holes pierced in their ears to create a commonly used life-long identification marker. A few weeks later, investigators discovered that the earholes had closed without a trace. While the experiment was ruined, it left the researchers with a new question: Was the MRL mouse a window into mammalian regeneration?

The discovery set the Heber-Katz laboratory off on two parallel paths. Working with geneticists Elizabeth Blankenhorn, Ph.D., at Drexel University, and James Cheverud, Ph.D., at Washington University, the laboratory focused on mapping the critical genes that turn MRL mice into healers. Meanwhile, cellular studies ongoing at Wistar revealed that MRL cells behaved very differently than cells from "non-healer" mouse strains in culture. Khamilia Bedebaeva, M.D., Ph.D., having studied genetic effects following the Chernobyl reactor radiation accident, noticed immediately that these cells were atypical, showing profound differences in cell cycle characteristics and DNA damage. This led Andrew Snyder, Ph.D., to explore the DNA damage pathway and its effects on cell cycle control.

Snyder found that p21, a cell cycle regulator, was consistently inactive in cells from the MRL mouse ear. P21 expression is tightly controlled by the tumor suppressor p53, another regulator of cell division and a known factor in many forms of cancer. The ultimate experiment was to show that a mouse lacking p21 would demonstrate a regenerative response similar to that seen in the MRL mouse. And this indeed was the case. As it turned out, p21 knockout mice had already been created, were readily available, and widely used in many studies. What had not been noted was that these mice could heal their ears.

"In normal cells, p21 acts like a brake to block cell cycle progression in the event of DNA damage, preventing the cells from dividing and potentially becoming cancerous," Heber-Katz said. "In these mice without p21, we do see the expected increase in DNA damage, but surprisingly no increase in cancer has been reported."

In fact, the researchers saw an increase in apoptosis in MRL mice - also known as programmed cell death - the cell's self-destruct mechanism that is often switched on when DNA has been damaged. According to Heber-Katz, this is exactly the sort of behavior seen in naturally regenerative creatures.

"The combined effects of an increase in highly regenerative cells and apoptosis may allow the cells of these organisms to divide rapidly without going out of control and becoming cancerous," Heber-Katz said. "In fact, it is similar to what is seen in mammalian embryos, where p21 also happens to be inactive after DNA damage. The down regulation of p21 promotes the induced pluripotent state in mammalian cells, highlighting a correlation between stem cells, tissue regeneration, and the cell cycle."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 09:55 AM

So what is the evolutionary advantage, that caused Mammals without regenerative powers to out-compete mammals that do have it?

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 10:24 AM

I think it is oversimplification to narrow your focus to a single trait and try to map or couple it to a single evolutionary advantage. For example, the non-regenerators might ALSO have had larger brains.

In other news:

"March 17, 2010 Physicists Show Theory of Quantum Mechanics Applies to the Motion of Large Objects


(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have provided the first clear demonstration that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to the mechanical motion of an object large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Their work satisfies a longstanding goal among physicists.


In a paper published in the March 17 issue of the advance online journal Nature, Aaron O'Connell, a doctoral student in physics, and John Martinis and Andrew Cleland, professors of physics, describe the first demonstration of a mechanical resonator that has been cooled to the quantum ground state, the lowest level of vibration allowed by quantum mechanics. With the mechanical resonator as close as possible to being perfectly still, they added a single quantum of energy to the resonator using a quantum bit (qubit) to produce the excitation. The resonator responded precisely as predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics.

"This is an important validation of quantum theory, as well as a significant step forward for nanomechanics research," said Cleland.

The researchers reached the ground state by designing and constructing a microwave-frequency mechanical resonator that operates similarly to -- but at a higher frequency than -- the mechanical resonators found in many cellular telephones. They wired the resonator to an electronic device developed for quantum computation, a superconducting qubit, and cooled the integrated device to temperatures near absolute zero. Using the qubit as a quantum thermometer, the researchers demonstrated that the mechanical resonator contained no extra vibrations. In other words, it had been cooled to its quantum ground state.

The researchers demonstrated that, once cooled, the mechanical resonator followed the laws of quantum mechanics. They were able to create a single phonon, the quantum of mechanical vibration, which is the smallest unit of vibrational energy, and watch as this quantum of energy exchanged between the mechanical resonator and the qubit. While exchanging this energy, the qubit and resonator become "quantum entangled," such that measuring the qubit forces the mechanical resonator to "choose" the vibrational state in which it should remain.

In a related experiment, they placed the mechanical resonator in a quantum superposition, a state in which it simultaneously had zero and one quantum of excitation. This is the energetic equivalent of an object being in two places at the same time. The researchers showed that the resonator again behaved as expected by quantum theory."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 03:51 PM

An international team of astronomers are studying 21 ancient quasi-stellar objects (or "quasars") at the very limits of our observable universe. Each quasar has a supermassive black hole throbbing inside, sucking in the surrounding gas and growing to titanic masses exceeding 100 million suns.

Two of these monsters are located further away than the rest and have been studied by the Spitzer Space Telescope after first being spotted by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

"Quasars are a very early stage of galaxies, a sort of baby galaxies," said Marianne Vestergaard, astrophysicist at the Dark Cosmology Center at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of a paper announcing these findings in the March 18 issue of Nature.

"Most galaxies have a massive black hole with a mass of over a million solar masses, but quasars are different. Their black holes are active and growing."

The pair of distant quasars -- named J0005-0006 and J0303-0019 -- are approximately 13 billion light-years away (the light we receive from them is therefore 13 billion years old), meaning they formed less than 800 million years after the Big Bang. This fact makes these specimens pure; they are the "cleanest" quasars ever detected.

"We have found what are likely first-generation quasars, born in a dust-free medium and at the earliest stages of evolution," said Linhua Jiang of the University of Arizona, Tucson and lead author of the study.

During the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang, there was no dust in the universe, just the most basic of gases. Before galaxies formed, it is thought primordial supermassive black holes were ignited as quasars, blasting the universe with intense X-ray radiation, so these earliest quasars wouldn't have contained any dust.

However, this is the first time that observational evidence of dust-free quasars has been confirmed, providing a tantalizing glimpse at how these gargantuan black holes formed.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 10:40 AM

For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.

Parity was long thought to be a fundamental law of nature. It essentially states that the universe is neither right- nor left-handed — that the laws of physics remain unchanged when expressed in inverted coordinates. In the early 1950s it was found that the so-called weak force, which is responsible for nuclear radioactivity, breaks the parity law. However, the strong force, which holds together subatomic particles, was thought to adhere to the law of parity, at least under normal circumstances.

Now this law appears to have been broken by a team of about a dozen particle physicists, including Jack Sandweiss, Yale's Donner Professor of Physics. Since 2000, Sandweiss has been smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together as part of the STAR experiment at RHIC, a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator, to study the law of parity under the resulting extreme conditions.

The team created something called a quark-gluon plasma — a kind of "soup" that results when energies reach high enough levels to break up protons and neutrons into their constituent quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of matter.

Theorists believe this kind of quark-gluon plasma, which has a temperature of four trillion degrees Celsius, existed just after the Big Bang, when the universe was only a microsecond old. The plasma "bubble" created in the collisions at RHIC lasted for a mere millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, yet the team hopes to use it to learn more about how structure in the universe — from black holes to galaxies — may have formed out of the soup.

(Phys.Org)

---

(It would be such a nice change if we could all emulate these physicists and try to learn from events lasting only millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. Think how many more lessons we would absorb!! As it is the average duration from which individuals try to frame and learn a life lesson is on the order of 62.356 decades for Republicans. Something around 2.8 decades for Democrats.)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 02:29 PM

A quantum leap and other science news:
(From Silicon Valley .com's mailings)

* For the first time, scientists have put something big enough to be visible into a mixed quantum state, simultaneously moving and not moving. The weird nature of quantum effects has been observed at the atomic level, but researchers have been struggling to find a way to maintain those effects at the mechanical level of the everyday world. Components of this experiment, according to team leader Andrew Cleland of UC Santa Barbara, included a material that vibrates 6 billion times a second, a commercially available refrigerator to cool it down to a manageable 50 millionths of a degree above absolute zero, and a particular flavor of quantum bit. Said physicist Markus Aspelmeyer of the University of Vienna, "This is groundbreaking work. Now the door is open. Now the fun begins."

* A team led by Tolga Ergin, a scientist from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, has taken us one tiny step closer to a 3D cloak of invisibility.

* Spanish researchers have found they can put nanoscale silicon chips inside living cells without harm. "Based on our experiments we can conclude that silicon-based top-down fabricated intracellular chips can be internalized by living eukaryotic cells without interfering with cell viability, and functionalized chips could be used as intracellular sensors since they can interact with the cell cytoplasm," said team leader José Antonio Plaza.

* Science journalist Tom Siegfried on the misuse of statistical methods in science: "It's science's dirtiest secret: The 'scientific method' of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation. Statistical tests are supposed to guide scientists in judging whether an experimental result reflects some real effect or is merely a random fluke, but the standard methods mix mutually inconsistent philosophies and offer no meaningful basis for making such decisions. Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing."

* Ever said you'd give your arm for a better broadband connection? The throughput turns out to be pretty good.

* Our solar system as if it were a music box. Of course, that tune might change when an orange dwarf star called Gliese 710 comes ripping through the neighborhood in about 1.5 million years.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 02:41 PM

By Steve Connor, Science Editor, UK Independent

Thursday, 18 March 2010

   


The first planet with a "temperate" climate to orbit a distant star has been discovered by astronomers, who claim that the techniques used to study it will be critical in the search for Earth-like worlds beyond our own solar system.

Corot-9b, as the planet is called, is one of more than 400 "exoplanets" found to be orbiting other stars, but it is the first one with a near-normal temperature range that can be studied as it moves across (or "transits") the sun it orbits. "This is a normal, temperate exoplanet just like dozens we already know, but this is the first whose properties we can study in depth," said Claire Moutou, one of the team of astronomers at the European Southern Observatory who made the discovery. "It is bound to become a Rosetta stone in exoplanet research."

Corot-9b passes in front of its host star, 1,500 light years away in the constellation Serpens, every 95 days, and the transit lasts about eight hours, which is when astronomers can make measurements of the planet's composition and temperature, estimated to range from minus 20C to 160C.

"Corot-9b is the first exoplanet that really does resemble planets in our solar system," said Hans Deeg, the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. "It has the size of Jupiter and an orbit similar to that of Mercury."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 08:54 PM

Perception of effort, not muscle fatigue, limits endurance performance
March 19, 2010

(PhysOrg.com) -- The physiological theory that underpins all endurance training and coaching for the last 100 years has just been disproved.

As recently as 2008, scientific research papers were citing the theory that endurance performance is limited by the capacity of the skeletal muscles, heart and lungs and that exhaustion occurs when the active muscles are unable to produce the force or power required by prolonged exercise.

Dr Sam Marcora, an exercise physiologist at Bangor University, has now disproved this for the first time and proposed an alternative - that it is your perception of effort that limits your endurance performance, not the actual capability of your muscles. He showed that the muscles were still able to achieve the power output required by endurance exercise even when the point of perceived exhaustion had been reached.

This will inevitably lead to new training and coaching techniques, based on this new understanding of the role of perceived effort in endurance performance.

What Marcora has found is that athletes give up endurance exercise, feeling that they are exhausted, before reaching their absolute physiological limit. In fact, immediately after exhaustion, the leg muscles are capable of producing three times the power output required by high-intensity cycling exercise.

Like other bodily sensations, perception of effort is a powerful feeling that is there for a reason. The perception that we have reached exhaustion prevents us from injuring ourselves by exercising too much. Marcora uses the analogy of pain- if you twist your ankle you might still be able to undertake the mechanics of walking, but the pain prevents you- and so prevents you from causing further injury- so it is with perceived exhaustion, he argues.
The question for sports scientists, coaches and athletes has to be how far can athletes go beyond that perceived exhaustion to improve performance still further?
"We are already developing and testing new training techniques based on the neurobiology of perceived effort that will help endurance athletes improve their performance," says Marcora." (Phys.Org)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 09:04 PM

NYT:

"It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.

ÒWe found this so interesting, because it could have gone the other way Ñ it could have been, ÔDonÕt worry, be happyÕ Ñ as long as you surf on the shallow level of life youÕre happy, and if you go into the existential depths youÕll be unhappy,Ó Dr. Mehl said.

But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people.

ÒBy engaging in meaningful conversations, we manage to impose meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world,Ó Dr. Mehl said. ÒAnd interpersonally, as you find this meaning, you bond with your interactive partner, and we know that interpersonal connection and integration is a core fundamental foundation of happiness.Ó

Dr. MehlÕs study was small and doesnÕt prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the kind of conversations one has and oneÕs happiness. But thatÕs the planned next step, when he will ask people to increase the number of substantive conversations they have each day and cut back on small talk, and vice versa.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, involved 79 college students Ñ 32 men and 47 women Ñ who agreed to wear an electronically activated recorder with a microphone on their lapel that recorded 30-second snippets of conversation every 12.5 minutes for four days, creating what Dr. Mehl called Òan acoustic diary of their day.Ó"...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 04:03 PM

Cold fusion undergoes a revival in the corridors of respectable science.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 05:50 PM

"If weÕre ever suddenly confronted by evidence of alien intelligence, Paul Davies will be one of the first to know. Davies, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, is chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, a volunteer committee whose mission is to Òprepare, manage, advise and consult in preparation for the discovery of a putative signal of extraterrestrial intelligent (ETI) origin.Ó Never mind that the chance of humankind being contacted by aliens is remote, Òit makes sense to think through some of the implications should it happen,Ó he says. While the group is a think tank (it has no legal status and no authority to impose or enforce its recommendations), it has reflected on all manner of post-detection issues and made preparations to counsel all parties concerned.

Earlier this year I sat down with Davies in his office at the Beyond Center in Tempe, Arizona, to discuss the themes of his mind-bending new book ÒThe Eerie SilenceÓ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), in which he suggests reorienting and expanding the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). ÒTraditional SETI is stuck in a conceptual rut,Ó he maintains, and fails to account for the possibility that an alien species may not look, think, or behave like us. In part one of this Failure InterviewÑwhich coincides with SETIÕs 50th anniversary next monthÑDavies addressed issues like: What has SETI accomplished in its first 50 years? And have scientists been looking for ET Òin the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way?Ó..."


Read more: here

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 11:44 AM

PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have succeeded in creating a synthetic crystal that can very effectively control the transmission of heat -- stopping it in its tracks and reflecting it back. This advance could lead to insulating materials that could block the escape of heat more effectively than any present insulator.

This crystal structure was built using alternating layers of silicon dioxide (the basis of the dielectric layers in most microchips) and a polymer material. The resulting two-component material successfully reflected phonons — vibrational waves that are the carriers of ordinary heat or sound, depending on their frequency. In this case, the phonons were in the gigahertz range — in other words, low-level heat.

Edwin L. Thomas, head of MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, was a co-author of a new paper, published on March 10 in the journal Nano Letters, that describes this creation of phononic crystals in the hypersonic range (that is, above the frequency range of sound, and thus can be considered in the range of heat).

Phonons may sometimes be thought of as particles, and sometimes as vibrational waves, analogous to the dual wave and particle nature of light. Physically, the phonons are manifested as a wave of density variation passing through a material, like the wave of compression that travels along a child's Slinky toy when you stretch it out and give one end a shove.

Phys Org

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Mar 10 - 11:54 AM

The three-year grant from the NSF Division of Science, Technology and Society to Hagar, an assistant professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, will support study of the idea that space, rather than being continuous, is made up of discrete units.

Titled "Length Matters: The History and the Philosophy of the Notion of Fundamental Length in Modern Physics," the project will combine philosophy with written and oral history, including interviews with leading figures in the debate over fundamental length. It will seek to bring light to some of the most pressing methodological issues in modern theoretical physics.

"The study will consider the diverse scientific and philosophical motivations for introducing the notion of fundamental length into modern theories of physics," Hagar said. "The discussion will characterize and then analyze the possible phenomenological consequences of this notion, which are currently at the center of heated debates among high-energy physicists who are struggling to unify the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics."

It may seem self-evident that space is a continuum which can be divided into an infinite number of ever-smaller units, and that there is no "fundamental" unit of length. But Hagar points out that scientific advances have often involved "shifts in perspective" that allow us to see the world in new ways -- much as understanding the Earth's rotation demolished the idea that the Sun was circling the Earth.

In the case of fundamental length, the notion goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno, whose paradoxes exposed tension between views of space as infinite and discrete. In the 1930s, Werner Heisenberg and other physicists were drawn to the concept of fundamental length as they attempted to write down a quantum theory of electromagnetism. But the idea was largely rejected as impossible to reconcile with established findings.

Remarkably, Hagar said, the notion of fundamental length made a comeback in the 1950s and '60s with efforts to develop a theory of quantum gravity, a next step in the attempt to develop a unified theory that has driven theoretical physics for decades. But incorporating the idea will not be easy. It would require a theoretical structure that allows for new predictions while maintaining agreement with well-established principles.

"This challenge, currently faced by theories of quantum gravity, is also what makes the story of the notion of fundamental length so timely," Hagar said, "as it best exemplifies the delicate balance between conservatism and innovation that characterizes the practice of extending 'old' physics into new regimes."

---

This is quite important, and long overdue. I made a prediction back in the 90's that this kind of research would lead into the field of "spationics" and break open all kinds of new insights into the nature of space time once we got over our addiction to Newtonian homogeneous and continuous space.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 10 - 04:13 PM

DNA from a female of previously unknown hominid – dubbed the X-woman – lived in southern Siberia some 40,000 years ago and could be a new branch on the human family tree, a finding that would rewrite Homo's exodus from Africa.

In a technical feat, scientists sequenced DNA from the bone fragment of a pinkie finger, possibly from a small female child, found in a cave in the Altai Mountains.

The bone found in Denisova Cave was extricated in 2008 from a soil layer carbon-dated to between 30,000 to 48,000 years ago.

Teased from a cellular component called mitochondria, the genome was compared to the code of our extinct cousins the Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, the bonobo and chimpanzee.

The Siberian hominid, the investigation found, had some 400 genetic differences, which makes it a candidate for being a distinct species of Homo, as the genus for humans and closely related primates is known.

It, us and the Neanderthals all shared a common ancestor who lived around a million years ago, say the investigators.

"It's absolutely amazing... It's some new creature that's not been on our radar screen so far," co-researcher Svante Pääbo told reporters.

The study, published in the weekly journal Nature, is led by Johannes Krause of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Members of the team previously sequenced most of the genome of the Neanderthal.

(SciAm)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Mar 10 - 02:58 PM

Habitual Drunkards of Edwardian England -- generally a grotty-looking lot, but better dressed than their modern counterparts, I think.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 10 - 02:33 PM

The unusual tale of The Woman Who Shot Mussolini in the Nose.


A