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BS: Random Traces From All Over
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 23 Jan 08 - 04:05 PM Weight of Hawaiian volcanoes may rupture earth's crust By John Timmer | Published: January 23, 2008 - 12:11PM CT The basic outlines of the geology that produced the Hawaiian Islands are pretty well known. The current islands sit on top of a plume of hot material from the mantle that works its way through the oceanic crust, building massive volcanoes that gradually ride the Pacific plate away from the source of magma. But many of the details of the system are not well understood. Given that geologic activity there can spawn tsunamis that affect the entire Pacific basin, closing the gaps in our understanding seems like a worthwhile endeavor. A paper that will be released later today by Nature attempts to do just that. It took a year's worth of seismic data, containing about 45,000 events, and used it to build a model of the internals of the big island of Hawaii at a resolution of one cubic kilometer—the resulting model contained nearly a million individual objects. They then validated this model against a set of over a thousand earthquakes recorded at the Kilauea volcano. With the model in hand, they explored the strains and movements that would be expected to occur given known properties of the volcanic rock and oceanic crust. The authors say the resulting model reveals significant deformation of the oceanic crust and helps explain various features of the big island, including an area of rifts and an aseismic zone. Perhaps the most striking feature, however, is what happens at the edge of the volcanic masses: the underlying crust is deformed to the point of rupture, opening up a path to the mantle. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 23 Jan 08 - 09:18 PM The entire country of China has exactly one time zone. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 23 Jan 08 - 10:36 PM Chocolate Penis invetment opportunity http://cgi.ebay.com/14ct-KOROIT-BOULDER-OPAL-RARE-GEM-CHOCOLATE-PENIS-PIC_W0QQitemZ180190306293QQihZ008QQcategoryZ110810QQcmdZVi |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 23 Jan 08 - 10:46 PM Not THAT random, Donuel!!! LOL! A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: JohnInKansas Date: 23 Jan 08 - 11:29 PM NOW YOU'VE DONE IT DONUEL. Neither of your links works! They probably saw your post here and pulled to the item for "PC-correctness" reasons and now the guy with the chocolate thingy will NEVER be able to invet it with the gal (or guy?) what want's it. You should be shamed and ASShamed. Discretion? - NO!, not Donuel! John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: JohnInKansas Date: 24 Jan 08 - 07:26 AM Drought could close nuclear power plants Southeast water shortage a factor in huge cooling requirements The Associated Press updated 1:54 p.m. CT, Wed., Jan. 23, 2008 LAKE NORMAN, N.C. - Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate. Utility officials say such shutdowns probably wouldn't result in blackouts. But they could lead to shockingly higher electric bills for millions of Southerners, because the region's utilities could be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other energy companies. Already, there has been one brief, drought-related shutdown, at a reactor in Alabama over the summer. "Water is the nuclear industry's Achilles' heel," said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an environmental group critical of nuclear power. "You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants." He added: "This is becoming a crisis." An Associated Press analysis of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors found that 24 are in areas experiencing the most severe levels of drought. All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants' turbines. [Quite a bit more at the link] John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 24 Jan 08 - 10:53 AM Pitter-patter of raindrops could power devices24 January 2008 Paul Marks Magazine issue 2640 Here's something residents of cloudy northern Europe should appreciate: a way of using rain to generate power. Jean-Jacques Chaillout and colleagues at the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Grenoble, France, have shown that piezoelectric materials, which generate voltage in response to mechanical force, can be made to produce useful amounts of electrical power when hit by falling rain. "We thought of raindrops because they are one of the still- unexploited energy sources in nature," Chaillout says. His team started by looking up data on different types of rainfall. Drizzle, they found, produces droplets of about 1 millimetre in diameter which have an impact energy of around 2 microjoules, while droplets from a downpour were typically 5 millimetres across and gave 1 millijoule of impact energy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 24 Jan 08 - 11:01 AM 1814, Sir Walter Scott, Waverley: "'D--n her gooseberry wig,' said the corporal, when she was out of hearing, 'that gimlet-eyed jade -- mother adjutant, as we call her -- is a greater plague to the regiment than the provost-marshal," ... Random, yes? :D That boy could turn a phrase, no? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 24 Jan 08 - 11:09 AM Transplant teen who changed blood type is 'a girl in six billion' Last updated at 15:37pm on 24.01.08 A teenage transplant patient from Australia has astounded scientists from around the world by becoming the first person ever to switch blood type and completely accept a transplanted organ. Demi-Lee Brennan, 15, spontaneously switched from blood type O-negative to O-positive after taking on her liver donor's immune system. Experts down under say the teenager is the living "holy grail of transplants" are have put together a team to research her against-the-odds transformation. They hope their findings will help other transplant patients and even multiple sclerosis and type-1 diabetes sufferers. Demi-Lee suffered liver failure and had a liver transplant at the age of nine in 2001. Several months on from the transplant, her doctors at Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney were shocked to discover her blood type had changed to match the blood type of her deceased male donor. On closer inspection, specialists found that stem cells from the donor liver had penetrated her bone marrow, effectively resulting in a naturally occurring bone marrow transplant. It makes Demi-Lee the first person ever recorded whose body has entirely accepted a transplanted organ. Remarkably, Demi-Lee no longer needs anti-rejection drugs to keep her alive. The drugs, known as immunosuppresants, can have toxic effects on organs and cause severe infections. Other organ transplant patients have been taken off anti-rejection drugs, but nearly only with the aid of a bone-marrow transplant. Head of haematology, Dr Julie Curtin, described the phenomenon as a natural bone-marrow transplant: "The holy grail of transplants was achieved. "That's what we were trying to achieve for everybody, but Demi-Lee's body has done that itself." Demi-Lee's doctor, Michael Stormon, said: "We were stunned, absolutely stunned, and also very puzzled," said Dr Stormon, who reported the case in Australia's New England Journal of Medicine. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 24 Jan 08 - 11:16 AM In other news reminiscent of Dickens and the wicked Fagin, police in London raided a number of houses and freed scores of children who had been smuggled into the country by a Romanian smuggling ring and forced to work as pickpockets. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, and all that. I wonder when we will get OUT of the nineteenth century? Story here. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 25 Jan 08 - 09:37 AM That Mushroom Cloud? They're Just Svejking Around PRAGUE — One Sunday, several months ago, early risers gazing at Czech Television's CT2 channel saw picturesque panoramas of the Czech countryside, broadcast to the wordless accompaniment of elevator music. It was the usual narcoleptic morning weather show. Then came the nuclear blast. Across the Krkonose Mountains, or so it appeared, a white flash was followed by the spectacle of a rising mushroom cloud. A Web address at the bottom of the screen said Ztohoven.com. Ztohoven, to no one's great surprise, turned out to be a collective of young artists and friends who had previously tinkered with a giant neon sculpture of a heart high atop Prague Castle, and managed (during a single night, no less) to insert announcements for an art opening inside all 750 lighted advertising boxes in the city's subway system. Now half a dozen members of the group face up to three years in jail or a fine or both, charged with scaremongering and attempted scaremongering. The trial is set for March. Some Czechs expressed outrage over Ztohoven's action, naturally, but in general it drew a mild, tolerant, even amused public response, in contrast to how terrorism-related pranks, or what might seem like them, have been widely greeted elsewhere. The incident instead has highlighted an old Czech tradition of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 25 Jan 08 - 10:28 PM Wired News reports: OUNTAIN VALLEY, California -- As Southern California faces a worsening water crisis, Orange County has implemented a $480 million microfiltration system so advanced it can turn waste water into drinking water. The Groundwater Replenishment System, which started pumping purified water on Jan. 10th, is the largest of its kind in the world and will provide water to more than 100,000 Orange County families for the same or less than buying it wholesale. And because sewage is diverted to the purification system, less waste is dumped into natural water supplies. The new plant is likely to be the first of many as other cities in California, Texas and Florida consider similar plans. Read on as we follow the filtration process on 70 million gallons a day from beginning to end, where it's pumped into the Orange County basin aquifer.... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: JohnInKansas Date: 26 Jan 08 - 12:35 AM Amos - Wichita has been pumping "spare" water back into the Ogallala aquifer for about three years now. They claim to have raised the local level by about 3 feet - of the 30 or 40 that's been lost to the Colorado irrigators. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 26 Jan 08 - 09:36 AM John: Is this gray water or black water? What's "spare". In other news a brief excerpt from a charming article in Slate on the rational economics of marrying: "In Adam Smith's pin factory, if worker Elizabeth can sharpen two pins a minute and mount four pins a minute in paper, while worker James can sharpen one pin a minute and mount one pin a minute in paper, the logic of comparative advantage says that James should be sharpening pins, even though Elizabeth does the job faster. The relevant comparison is not whether Elizabeth sharpens pins faster than James but whether, relative to him, she sharpens pins faster than she mounts them in paper. Imagine that James and Elizabeth are married; now, replace mounting pins in paper with looking after babies. Elizabeth is a more productive worker than James but also a more effective parent. James is a bad worker but a worse dad, and so Elizabeth takes the rational decision to stay home baking cookies and looking after the kids, while James tries to scrape together a living as a real estate agent. The logic of comparative advantage highlighted something that most menÑexcept economistsÑhave found it hard to get their heads around: there is no reason to believe that men were breadwinners because they were any good at it. They might simply have been breadwinners because getting them to help around the house would have been even worse."... Grin for the day. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 26 Jan 08 - 09:53 AM Actually, here's a link to the whole article. It is a wicked good read. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 26 Jan 08 - 10:00 AM Why Mike Huckabee's Tax Plan is Brilliant, in Slate Magazine, is also an interesting view on tax issues. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 28 Jan 08 - 11:50 AM Entire Synthetic Genome Created John Roach |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 28 Jan 08 - 08:33 PM Nearly a half a billion years ago, tiny horseshoe crabs crept along the shorelines much like today's larger versions do, new fossil evidence suggests. Two nearly complete fossil specimens discovered in Canada reveal a new genus of horseshoe crab, pushing their origins back at least 100 million years earlier than previously thought. Dubbed Lunataspis aurora, the ancient horseshoe crab is estimated to have been just 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) from head to tail-tip. That's much smaller than its modern-day relatives that can span nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters). Headgear Reverses AlzheimerÕs? January 26th, 2008 Author Robert Roy Britt A futuristic helmet, worn 10 minutes a day, reverses symptoms of AlzheimerÕs, its maker claims. The helmet was built after a study at the University of Sunderland found infrared light can reverse memory loss in mice, according to The Daily Mail. ÒCurrently all you can do with dementia is to slow down the rate of decay Ñ this new process will not only stop that rate of decay but partially reverse it,Ó said Gordon Dougal, a director of Virulite, a medical research company based in County Durham. (Both from LiveScience.com's website) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 30 Jan 08 - 10:59 AM Is the Pacific splitting in two? 26 January 2008 Michael Reilly NEw Scientist Magazine issue 2640 MOSES may have parted the Red Sea, but that was nothing compared to this feat. The world's biggest tectonic plate under the Pacific seems to be tearing apart, forming a new mid-ocean ridge and two distinct plates. Muriel Gerbault and Valerie Clouard of the University of Chile in Santiago believe this is happening because the northern half of the plate has been moving west at a faster rate than the southern half for the past 7 million years. North of the equator, the plate is moving relatively quickly toward the Mariana trench, where the ocean crust is disappearing into a subduction zone. Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere, the Tonga trench is consuming crust more slowly, and is itself migrating in the opposite direction to the Pacific plate. Both of these factors have slowed the movement of the southern half of the plate by as much as a centimetre per year |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 30 Jan 08 - 11:51 PM A leatherback turtle was tracked by satellite traveling 12,774 miles (20,558 kilometers) from Indonesia to Oregon, one of the longest recorded migrations of any vertebrate animal, scientists announced in a new report on sea turtle conservation. Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are the largest of all living turtles and are widely distributed throughout the world's oceans. They have been seen in the waters off Argentina, Tasmania, Alaska and Nova Scotia. Adult leatherbacks periodically migrate from their temperate foraging grounds to breeding grounds in the tropics. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 31 Jan 08 - 11:11 AM The Wall Street Journal today has an article on a widening habit--chewing on crushed ice. A lot. "Compulsive ice eating was observed at least as far back as the 1600s, according to "Pagophagia, or Compulsive Ice Consumption: a Historical Perspective," an academic article published in the journal Psychological Medicine in 1992. Lazarus Riverius, a French royal physician, described young women afflicted with an "evil" diet ingesting great quantities of snow and ice, among other things, according to the journal article. The American Dental Association says that ice-chewing can damage teeth. "People have the right to do things that may hurt them," says Matt Messina, a dentist in Cleveland and spokesman for the association. "If something breaks, we'll fix it." Today, obsessive ice chewing has been linked to iron deficiency, which afflicts about 2% of U.S. adult males and as many as 16% of young females between the ages of 16 and 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Treating the deficiency -- whose link to ice eating is unclear -- tends to end the compulsive chewing for such people. But many ice chewers say they just do it because they like to. Sometimes that leads to conflict with friends and family. Jean Collins, a 44-year-old substitute teacher in Riverton, Wyo., says she chews through 10 to 14 28-ounce cups of shaved ice a day. "It's the first thing I did when I came home for lunch," she said in a phone interview. She says her husband and three children have grown irritated by the frequent high-pitched whir of her ice-shaving machine -- and have threatened to destroy it. They've never followed through, but she has worn out four or five of the machines." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 31 Jan 08 - 11:42 AM "In 1877 The Dodge City Times coverad a prize fight between Nelson Whitman and Red Hanley, who was billed as the "Red Bird from the South." The Times reporter took detailed notes on Hanley's demolition: "During the forty-second round Red Hanley implored Norton (the referee) to take Nelson off for a little while till he could have time to put his right eye back where it belonged, set his jawbone and have the ragged edge trimmed off his ears where they had been chewed the worst. This was against the rules of the ring so Norton declined, encouraging him to bear it as well as he could and squeal when he got enough. About the sisty-fifth round Red squealed unmistakably and Whitman was declared winner. Red retired from the ring in disgust." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 31 Jan 08 - 11:46 AM From the same source (a book of ohotos and essays ont he taming of the West): "Margaret "Molly" Tobin Brown had come to Leadville from Hannibal, Missouri. At 19, short on literacy but long on Irish charm, she married James Joseph "Leadville Johnny" Brown - no relation to Henry, creator of the elite suburb, Brown discovered gold in the previously silver-rich Little Johhn mine and set her up in a stately Brown's Bluff palace that was guarded by imported Egyptian sphinxes and stone lions. But it took more than a big house and trips to Paris, from which she returned hautely coutured and speaking French, to break into Denver society. It took the Titanic. "On that ship, when it began to sink after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage, she grabbed command of a lifeboat, pistol in hand to enforce the women-and -children-first tradition, and kept up the spirits of her fellow cast-aways by singing hymns. After that, even Brown's Bluff noticed the Unsinkable Molly Brown". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 31 Jan 08 - 03:06 PM "A well-connected Vatican insider who was accused of molesting young priests in training has died. Father Marcial Maciel never faced a trial nor was he punished by the Vatican despite the fact the church had asked him to stop all public ministry appearances. A number of former priests had told Vatican investigators they were abused by Father Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, a small but wealthy Catholic order that operates in United States and 25 other countries. The allegations were presented to Pope Benedict XVI in 1998 when he was a cardinal. Some of the accusers said then-Cardinal Ratzinger attempted to cover up the case because of Maciel's prominence and close relationship with Pope John Paul II. The then-Cardinal Ratzinger became visibly upset when asked about the Maciel case by ABC News' Brian Ross in April 2002. "You do not ask such questions," he said and then slapped Ross's hand." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 31 Jan 08 - 10:49 PM How to spot a wormhole in space 31 January 2008 Amarendra Swarup IF THERE were a portal linking us to a parallel universe or some other region of space, how would we spot it? One suggestion is that it will give itself away by the curious way it bends light. The existence of wormholes linking different regions of space was suggested in 1916 by the Austrian physicist Ludwig Flamm as a possible solution to equations of general relativity, which Einstein had published that year. They have since become accepted as a natural consequence of general relativity, which predicts that matter entering one end of a wormhole would instantly emerge somewhere else, so long as the wormhole is somehow propped open. Though no direct evidence for wormholes has been observed, this could be because they are disguised as black holes. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: JohnInKansas Date: 01 Feb 08 - 03:12 AM If they're disguised as black holes, then they must have the same external characteristic as a black hole: "you can fly in but you can't fly back out." This would likely also mean that even if you flew into an indistinguishable object that looked like a black hole but might be a wormhole and successfully reached another point across the universe, you wouldn't be able to exit to find out where you were at the other end, or be able to return and exit back to your starting point? This travel system must be provided by the same people who run some of our airlines. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 01 Feb 08 - 09:44 AM Well, it is possible the front end is disguised, but the exit is not. I've known some businesses that have been run like that. In other news: Say What?? "Tonight, 200,000 men and women who wore our uniform proudly, and served this country courageously, as veterans will go to sleep under bridges, and on grates." -- John Edwards "Come on. The only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's brain. We're still looking for all the veterans sleeping under the bridges, so if you find anybody, let us know." -- Bill O'Reilly, whose NYC office will be the site of a demonstration today by homeless vets |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 01 Feb 08 - 12:25 PM One of the world's favorite operas, La bohème, had its debut performance at Teatro Regio Torino in Turin, Italy, on this date in 1896. The temperamental Arturo Toscanini conducted. Giacomo Puccini composed the romantic, sentimental music and Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa wrote the libretto about four young, poverty-stricken artists, struggling to survive a Paris winter. Puccini, Illica and Giacosa went on to collaborate on two other famous operas, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. Quote: "God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way." — Arturo Toscanini, to a hapless trumpet player |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 01 Feb 08 - 07:51 PM The U.S. Navy yesterday test fired an incredibly powerful new big gun designed to replace conventional weaponry aboard ships. Sci-fi fans will recognize its awesome power and futuristic technology. The big gun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun, as it is called, will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact. The test-firing, captured on video, took place Jan. 31 in Dahlgren, Va., and Navy officials called it the "world's most powerful electromagnetic railgun." The Navy's current MK 45 five-inch gun, by contrast, has a range of less than 23 miles (37 kilometers). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 03 Feb 08 - 10:56 AM Beatles hit to be played in space Sir Paul McCartney asked Nasa to "send my love to the aliens" "Across the Universe" by the Beatles will become the first song ever to be beamed directly into space next week, US space agency Nasa has announced. The track will be transmitted through the Deep Space Network - a network of antennas - on the 40th anniversary of the song being recorded. It will be aimed at the North Star, Polaris, 431 light-years from Earth. In a message to Nasa, the former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney said the project was an "amazing" feat. "Well done, Nasa," he added. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 04 Feb 08 - 01:29 PM STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Fresh milk from 1,100 cows will help heat up the historic salons of an 18th century castle in southwestern Sweden, a spokesman for the estate dairy producer said Saturday. Although the 7,900 gallons of milk per day is still destined for consumers, the heat that it releases as it is chilled will warm a gym, a workshop, and a 50-room accommodation complex. "We knew that there was a lot of energy when chilling the milk — which we do to make sure it stays fresh — and so we decided to try to put it to use," said Lennart Bengtsson, the chief executive of Wapno AB, which runs the dairy production on the castle estate situated near Halmstad, around 310 miles southwest of Stockholm. Bengtsson said the estate had considered both biogas and windpower solutions as the castle looked to shift from its old oil-heating system, but that it finally settled on its own environmentally friendly "milk-heating" solution. The castle's milk-heating system will start up in the next few weeks, while other buildings will be added at a later stage. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Lonesome EJ Date: 04 Feb 08 - 11:43 PM For Rapaire... Cahokian. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 05 Feb 08 - 05:29 PM http://bcast1.imaginova.com/t?r=2&ctl=291F4:34C72 Lunar eclipses are wondrous celestial events that have launched many curious onlookers into the fascinating world of astronomy. On the evening of February 20, 2008, viewers across the Americas and much of Europe will be treated to the third total lunar eclipse in eleven months! The eclipse will enter its umbral phase, as the Moon rises in the East just after 6pm (PST). At about 16¡ above the eastern horizon in the constellation Leo, and lasting just over 50 minutes in totality, this eclipse should provide a great opportunity for some detailed lunar observation. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 06 Feb 08 - 01:42 PM This is the opening session of the ninth annual meeting of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA) in Chicago. Sandberg and his fellow transhumanists plan to bypass death by using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering and nanotechnology to radically accelerate human evolution, eventually merging people with machines to make us immortal. This may not be possible yet, the transhumanists reason, but as long as they live long enough - a few decades perhaps - the technology will surely catch up.... From New Scientist on-line. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 06 Feb 08 - 03:04 PM Dark matter is supposed to be spread throughout the universe, but a new study reports a spiral galaxy that seems to be empty of the stuff, and astrophysicists cannot easily explain why. In the outer regions of most galaxies, stars orbit around the centre so fast that they should fly away. The combined mass of all the observable inner stars and gas does not exert strong enough gravity to hold onto these speeding outliers, suggesting some mass is missing. Most astronomers believe that the missing mass is made up of some exotic invisible substance, labelled dark matter, which forms vast spherical halos around each galaxy. Another possibility is that the force of gravity behaves in an unexpected way, a theory known as modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND. In the spiral galaxy NGC 4736, however, the rotation slows down as you move farther out from the crowded inner reaches of the galaxy. At first glance, that declining rotation curve is just what you would expect if there is no extended halo of dark matter, and no modification to gravity. As you move far away from the swarming stars of the inner galaxy, gravity becomes weaker, and so motions become more sedate. The rotation measurements only stretch 35,000 light years out from the galactic centre, which is not far enough to confirm that first impression. So a team of astronomers in Poland developed a more sophisticated analysis. Joanna Jalocha, Lukasz Bratek and Marek Kutschera of the Polish Academy of Science in Krakow have found a way to splice the rotation curve together with another measurement: the density of hydrogen gas far from the galactic centre. According to their combined mathematical model, ordinary luminous stars and gas can indeed account for all the mass in NGC 4736. Sceptical response"If this paper is correct, then this galaxy contains very little or no dark matter," says astrophysicist Jürg Diemand of the University of California, Santa Cruz, US, who is not a member of the team. "That is surprising." Diemand says numerous other techniques – including studies of how galaxies move inside clusters and measurements of the big bang's afterglow – all show evidence for dark matter. So could the new analysis be faulty? "One really needs excellent data to pull this off," says Stacy McGaugh of the University of Maryland in College Park, US, an expert in galaxy formation and evolution. "I'm afraid my grumpy first impression is that I just don't buy it." Great puzzle McGaugh points out that other galaxies have shown declining rotation curves, but later observations have always shown that beyond a certain distance, they flatten out, which can't be explained by ordinary gravity from visible stars and gas. "If we believe this decline, it seems like the exception and not the rule," he says. Even then, one exceptional dark-matter-less galaxy would be a great puzzle. "The current picture is that galaxies form inside of dark matter halos," Diemand told New Scientist. The dark matter's gravity attracts ordinary gas, which can then coagulate into stars. "It is unclear how one would form a galaxy without a dark halo, or how one could remove the halo without destroying the galaxy," says Diemand. "A galaxy without dark matter really does not fit into our current understanding of cosmology and galaxy formation." I love a good puzzle. Suppose these observations are true? What event in history could possibly account for such an anomaly? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 06 Feb 08 - 03:57 PM 2008: Does time travel start here? 09 February 2008 Michael Brooks Magazine issue 2642 AS YOU may have heard, this will be the year. The Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - will be switched on, and particle physics will hit pay-dirt. Yet if a pair of Russian mathematicians are right, any advances in this area could be overshadowed by a truly extraordinary event. According to Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, the LHC might just turn out to be the world's first time machine. It is a highly speculative claim, that's for sure. But if Aref'eva and Volovich are correct, the LHC's debut at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, could provide a landmark in history. That's because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the creation of the first time machine, and that means 2008 could become Year Zero... (New Scientist) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Bill D Date: 07 Feb 08 - 10:37 PM Bacterium from Mars? "Deinococcus radiodurans has been listed as the world's toughest bacterium in The Guinness Book of World Records because of its extraordinary resistance to extreme conditions. It is the most radioresistant organism known to science and is able to rapidly repair damage to its genome." "Conan the bacterium" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 08 Feb 08 - 10:52 AM Weighing barely an ounce each, the butterflies have been clocked at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, observed as high as 12,000 feet and seen to fly 375 miles over open water. There are at least three major monarch broods in the Americas but only the largest, which lives east of the Rocky Mountains, travels such daunting distances -- farther than any other known insect species. Seeking the secret of time and the butterfly, Dr. Reppert and his colleagues studied rhythmic molecular changes in the four brain cells that serve as the monarch's timing device. He discovered that two similar light-sensitive genes drive the clockworks. The first, common to plants and insects, is sensitive to blue light and appears to synchronize the cells to cycles of light and darkness. The second gene "stunned" the scientists, Dr. Reppert said, because it so closely resembled one previously found only in humans and other mammals. It doesn't respond to light directly but, when triggered, makes a rising amount of protein that measures the passage of time since it was last activated. "It functions in the butterfly clock almost identically to the way it functions in our clock," he said. To completely decipher the biology of monarch navigation, Dr. Reppert and his collaborators at SymBio Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif., started last summer to sequence the 250 million base pairs of DNA that make up the butterfly's entire genome. "When you do something like this, you may discover a lot of genes," said company CEO Robert Feldman. "It is an iconic insect." In small things considered is the world revealed. (Wall Street Journal) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 09 Feb 08 - 12:34 PM LONDON - After the Sunday service in Westminster Chapel, where worshippers were exhorted to wage "the culture war" in the World War II spirit of Sir Winston Churchill, cabbie James McLean delivered his verdict on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. "Evolution is a lie, and it's being taught in schools as fact, and it's leading our kids in the wrong direction," said McLean, chatting outside the chapel. "But now people like Ken Ham are tearing evolution to pieces." Ken Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, a Kentucky-based organization that is part of an ambitious effort to bring creationist theory to Britain and the rest of Europe. McLean is one of a growing number of evangelicals embracing that message -- that the true history of the Earth is told in the Bible, not Darwin's "The Origin of Species." Europeans have long viewed the conflict between evolutionists and creationists as primarily an American phenomenon, but it has recently jumped the Atlantic Ocean with skirmishes in Italy, Germany, Poland and, notably, Britain, where Darwin was born and where he published his 1859 classic. Darwin's defenders are fighting back. In October, the 47-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, condemned all attempts to bring creationism into Europe's schools. Bible-based theories and "religious dogma" threaten to undercut sound educational practices, it charged.... (Newsday.com) If people were only as enthusiastic about gathering data as they are about promulgating conclusions from false or incomplete data, the world would be so much nicer... A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 09 Feb 08 - 02:27 PM LiveScience.com SETI Battle of the Bandwidth: Beatles Outsignaled by Bob MarleyFebruary 3rd, 2008 Author Leonard David Blasting Beatle music into the cosmos in a Òhi-frequencyÓ hello to aliens is behind the power curve. Using its Deep Space Network, NASA is blasting the Beatles Across the Universe directly into deep space at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, February 4th. The transmission is being aimed at the North Star, Polaris, which is located 431 light years away from Earth. But Jamaican musician Bob Marley and his reggae rhythms were shot spaceward some nine years ago. ThatÕs the word from Charles Chafer, the Chief Executive Officer and originator of the Cosmic Call concept. He reminded me of the following: ÒIn 1999 and again in 2002, my company leased the large (70 meter) steerable radio astronomy dish in Evpatoriya, Ukraine from Energia and the Ukrainian Air Force. Under the direction of Russian Academy of Sciences astronomer, Dr. Alexander Zaitsev, and Richard Brastaad, we beamed over 100,000 messages from people from all over the world to several stars selected on the basis of possibly having an Earth-like planet near them,Ó Chafer said. ÒI used my prerogative to be certain that the music of Robert Nesta Marley Ñ the song, One Love Ð was included in both transmissions. I love the Beatles, but somehow I felt that Bob MarleyÕs music best captured the spirit of the planet, so I selected that song as a representation of Planet Earth,Ó Chafer advised me. Meanwhile, thereÕs quite the discussion underway regarding intentional broadcasting to alien civilizations, an off-shoot from the traditional Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in listen-only mode. Do we want to tip off our hand that we are hereÉradio waving to less than friendly aliens? ItÕs dubbed ÒActive SETIÓ - and I asked astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute to relay to me what he thinks. ÒI am sympathetic to the idea that active SETI might be a worthy endeavor. The problems are (1) who will pay for it, given that even passive SETI Ñ which could succeed virtually immediately Ñ doesnÕt ever seem to be over-abundant with funds, and (2) what is the strategy? Just pinging random star systems would take a very long time with the kind of equipment we can muster, and then thereÕs always the matter of monitoring for replies that would be at least decades away,Ó Shostak told me. (...) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 11 Feb 08 - 11:04 PM Hitler's 'lost fleet' of U-boats found in the Black Sea By Andy McSmith Monday, 11 February 2008 Excerpt: "For years, German submarines U-19, U-20, and U-23 were a terrifying presence beneath the waves, preying on British and Russian shipping. Then, 60 years ago, they suddenly vanished to the bottom of the Black Sea. Now the hulk of one of the lost submarines has been found by divers who are confident they can pinpoint the other two boats too. The fate of "Hitler's lost fleet" was the talking point of a conference on international shipwrecks at Plymouth University at the weekend, when the Turkish marine engineer Selcuk Kolay described his painstaking search for the missing wrecks..." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 12 Feb 08 - 02:09 PM By Wayne Drash CNN (CNN) -- Military supporters descended on Berkeley early Tuesday, demanding the famously liberal California college town rescind its vote that says Marine recruiters are "not welcome in this city." The pro-military demonstrators were met by anti-war protesters who had camped out overnight, setting the stage for a dramatic showdown late in the day when the City Council is to discuss whether to revoke its previous vote. "Their treasonous action, especially at this time of war right now, is not acceptable," said Mary Pearson, a spokeswoman for the group Move America Forward. "It's very, very important for everyone to stand united ... to give our Marines and all of our military the greatest respect and honor that they deserve." Before the sun was even up, about 300 demonstrators -- both pro-military and anti-war -- were already standing toe-to-toe in downtown. Many traded jeers and sneers. "Code Pink doesn't stand for us," one sign said, held by a man in military fatigues. Signs held by anti-war activists read, "End the War" and "Bring the troops home now." The City Council is to meet at 7 p.m. PT on whether to take back its previous measure urging the Marine recruiters to leave town. "If recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders," the measure says. It went on to say the council applauds residents and organizations that "volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the City of Berkeley." Ever since the council measure, protesters with the anti-war group Code Pink have camped outside the Marine recruiting office on Shattuck Avenue, singing peace songs and chanting slogans for an end to the Iraq war. Republican lawmakers in Washington fired back last week, threatening to recall more than $2 million of federal funding to the city as well as money designated for the University of California-Berkeley, the campus that became a bastion of liberalism during the Vietnam War. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 13 Feb 08 - 12:27 AM Venezuela's state oil company said Tuesday that it has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil Corp. in response to the U.S. oil company's drive to use the courts to seize billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets. President Hugo Chavez has said Exxon Mobil is no longer welcome to do business in Venezuela. Exxon Mobil is locked in a dispute over the nationalization of its oil ventures in Venezuela that has led President Hugo Chavez to threaten to cut off all Venezuelan oil supplies to the United States. Venezuela is currently the United States' fourth largest oil supplier. Tuesday's announcement by state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, was limited to Exxon Mobil, which PDVSA accused of "judicial-economic harassment" for its efforts in U.S. and European courts. PDVSA said it "has paralyzed sales of crude to Exxon Mobil" and suspended commercial relations with the Irving, Texas-based company. "The legal actions carried out by the U.S. transnational are unnecessary ... and hostile," PDVSA said in the statement. It said it will honor any existing contracts it has with Exxon Mobil for joint investments abroad, but reserved the right to terminate them if permitted by the terms of the contracts. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 13 Feb 08 - 09:28 AM "Did T. rex have a penis? Did he even, as lizards do, have two? I ask the question not out of prurience, but because it's a matter of scientific interest. There are a couple of reasons why. First, the penis is another important indicator of the mating system. In species where females usually mate with a single male during a breeding episode, penises tend to be small and uninteresting. In those where females mate with several males (whether by choice or by force), penises are typically larger, and come with fancy decorations such as grooves, nobbles, and spikes. Second, the question of the dinosaur penis provides an exercise in evolutionary inference. The reason we don't know whether T. rex had one is that the organ is generally too soft to leave a fossil trace. (There's an exception to this: some mammals have a bone in their penis, the os penis or baculum. This can fossilize. Humans are unusual among primates in not having one; in case you're wondering, it's not clear whether the bone plays a role in maintaining erections.) Moreover, whether a male has a penis at all varies from one group to the next. Male salamanders, for instance, don't: they deposit sperm on the ground and the female collects it. Among birds, penises are rare: ostriches, emus, ducks, geese and swans are among the few. The rest just have a cloaca — an all-purpose opening also used for urination, defecation and, in the female, laying eggs. To copulate, two birds bring their cloacae together in what's called a cloacal kiss. So what can we say about dinosaurs? My guess is that the males had members — but it's an educated guess ..." NYT |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 13 Feb 08 - 09:55 AM For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks, principal investigator of the new study. A popular theory, that muscles become tired because they release lactic acid, was discredited not long ago. In a report published Monday in an early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Marks says the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells control muscle contractions. But when muscles grow tired, the investigators report, tiny channels in them start leaking calcium, and that weakens contractions. At the same time, the leaked calcium stimulates an enzyme that eats into muscle fibers, contributing to the muscle exhaustion. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 13 Feb 08 - 10:51 AM The USA executed 8 Japanese military officers for water boarding Americans. Back then it was simply called water torture. THe USA says we only want to use "it" if there is a nuclear bomb about to go off in the USA. You would thnk that the Japanese officers would have had a credible defense since a nuclear bomb DID eventually go off in their country...twice. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Donuel Date: 13 Feb 08 - 10:54 AM Amos why was this post closed: Did you go and question authority AGAIN? Subject: RE: BS: Obama LOVES Bush From: Amos - PM Date: 12 Feb 08 - 10:40 PM . It's not up to people who are ordered to do something by the authorities to determine whether the authorities are or are not acting within the law. Federal agents don't play nice. They don't ask politely. They expect to be obeyed. If not, they can arrange for a wide variety of unpleasant occurences. One phone call to their friends over at the IRS and your tax returns for the last seven years get audited. Unfortunately this was the exact type of defense raised during the Nuremburg trials. Being ordered to break the law, and doing so, is still breaking the law. While this makes it tough on individual conscience, it is the only rational position to take if you are to have a rule of law, rather than a rule of Unary Executive bullying. In the final analysis, orders are not above law, and the individual citizen has to answer to his own conscience and the law. Forgiving them, because it was ordered by the same agency, in broad, as is doing the forgiving, is just convenient as all hell. I can only pray that Obama stands for better standards when he becomes President. I'd be interested to hear his rationalization for this call, which I find disappointing, as I already said. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 13 Feb 08 - 11:19 AM IF the thread was closed, it was because it was originated on false premises, and was strongly inclined toward ad hominem and vituperative style of communication not highly favored inthese parts. He did not make the call of which I spoke, as you would have seen further along in the thread. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: JohnInKansas Date: 13 Feb 08 - 11:35 AM 13 Feb 08 - 09:55 AM: For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks ... In a report published Monday1 in an early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Marks says the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells 1 Monday of this year? - - As no link to source was given, I had to look this up for myself, and find numerous descriptions exactly matching what's said above dating as far back as 1997 (and possibly earlier for a couple undated ones). I'll watch for something new on the subject though. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over From: Amos Date: 13 Feb 08 - 11:38 AM Two-hundred random traces... A |
