From NYT > Science:
One day early in 2004, Robert Noble, an architect specializing in sustainable design, asked himself why parking lots in the United States weren't covered in solar panels and used to generate clean energy. A few firms had been building carports with solar panels
Hi,
How to calculate the area for 90° Rectangular Elbow Duct (Square throat - 100mm)??
Explain about babitting process and welder qulification is required for that
I want to operate my house by my cell phone. Moreover, I want the security signals, like gas leakage, on my cell phone by sms. and my house should be operated weather m at home or anywhere in the world. please suggest me in detail. I want to do it in the time period of one month.
Why vektor goup Ynd5 and Dyn5 most of use for distribution transformer?
if the power factor of the utility is low ,is it effect the performance of the induction motor ? What does means by the P.F mentioned on the nameplate of the motor. Is it constant or changes with load?
Beam NASA up from this order, editorial, Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
"The president is known to be a fan of the old "Star Trek" series, which frequently moralized on the pitfalls of "imperial condescension." Mr. Bolden may find some in the Muslim world more intransigent than a Klingon as he attempts to launch them into the space age."
NASA - no longer "The Right Stuff", opinion, Sussex Sun
"Wouldn't it be interesting to find out what Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldren (sic), or any of the other former NASA astronauts think about the new goals established for NASA by the president of the United States?"
Retro Rockets, opinion, Washington Times
"Was this the big liftoff? Well, no. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden elaborated on the agency's "priority" to reach out to Muslim countries during a July 1 appearance on the Al Jazeera network. Conservatives were vexed, and the White House predictably sprang to his defense. But the offending glare is not new, if a speech Mr. Bolden made June 15 at the American University in Cairo is any gauge."
Ramirez Editorial Cartoons (A take on an iconic image)
NASA logo makeovers: New Arabic Sensitivity Administration
"MichelleMalkin.com readers have answered the call of duty! Last night, inspired by reader Duke, I put out a call for NASA logo redesign Photoshops to mock Team Obama's Muslim-pandering makeover of the space program. Entries are pouring in to my mailbox. Had to share some of the best and most pointed images with you right away. Pick your favorites:"
Video: Obama's NASA mission to Muslims, Fox News
NASA's Final Frontier: The Muslim World, Fox News
Yet again, an Obama official says "Muslim," right-wing media freak-out follows, Media Matters
"Of course, since an Obama official made completely noncontroversial comments about reaching out to the Muslim world in order to gain contributions to the fields of science and technology, the right-wing media freaked out."
NASA: Mission to Mecca?, Washington Post
"But I still found Bolden's comment troubling, for a reason of my own: since when is it U.S. government policy to offer or refuse cooperation with various nations based on the religion their people practice? Last time I checked, the Constitution expressly forbid the establishment of religion. How can it be consistent with that mandate and the deeply held political and cultural values that it expresses for the U.S. government to "reach out" to another government because the people it rules are mostly of a particular faith?"
If you don't have coal, salt and copper, then how would you earth your connection temporarily at a campsite?
A comment below about intelligent people who believe in dumb ideas made me want to revisit the Creationism demographics in the GSS. More on point I wanted to look at the relationship between IQ and Creationism crossed with demographic variables. I used the WORDSUM variable as a proxy for IQ (the correlation is ~0.70). WORDSUM scores range from 0 to 10; 10 being a perfect and 0 being not so perfect. To get a sense of the range, here are mean WORDSUM scores by highest degree attained, constrained for the years 2004 and later:
| Mean WORDSUM | |
| No High School Diploma | 4.57 |
| High School Diploma | 5.91 |
| Junior College | 6.29 |
| Bachelor | 6.82 |
| Graduate | 7.73 |
I decided to limit the year to 2004 and later because to explore Creationism I want to use the variable EVOLVED, which was asked in 2004 and 2008. I selected EVOLVED because the sample size was not that small, nearly 1,500, and, the response is dichotomous. Here’s what EVOLVED asked:
Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. (Is that true or false?)
Querying Americans about human descent from animals primes them to be a bit on the Creationist side. True and false come at at about 50:50 for the above question. Below is a table where the columns have mean WORDSUM scores for non-Creationists and Creationists, and the rows indicate the particular demographic. I have put in bold those variables where the horizontally adjacent cells are outside each other’s 95% confidence interval. Additionally I constrained the sample to non-Hispanic whites (so the N is closer to 1,350).
| Accepts Human Evolution | Creationist | |
| No College Degree | 6.14 | 5.95 |
| College Degree | 7.43 | 6.96 |
| Liberal | 7.36 | 5.84 |
| Moderate | 6.25 | 5.78 |
| Conservative | 6.42 | 6.48 |
| Democrat | 6.9 | 5.84 |
| Independent | 6.13 | 5.92 |
| Republican | 6.54 | 6.35 |
| Bible is…. | ||
| Word of God | 5.03 | 5.93 |
| Inspired Word | 6.71 | 6.45 |
| Book of Fables | 7.11 | 5.88 |
| Protestant | 6.61 | 6.21 |
| Catholic | 6.35 | 6.08 |
| No Religion | 6.8 | 5.31 |
| Confidence in existence of God…. | ||
| Atheist and Agnostic | 7.13 | 6.87 |
| Higher Power | 6.74 | 5.66 |
| Believe Sometimes | 6.8 | 6.06 |
| Believe With Doubts | 6.52 | 6.06 |
| Know God Exists | 6.49 | 6.18 |
| Male | 6.51 | 5.8 |
| Female | 6.82 | 6.4 |
| Age | ||
| 18-34 | 6.1 | 6.03 |
| 35-64 | 6.79 | 6.29 |
| 65 and older | 7.25 | 5.89 |
First, I have no explanation for the age differences. Second, notice that liberals and Democrats who are Creationists tend to be kind of unintelligent. It’s not surprising to me that those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God but are not Creationists are less intelligent than those who are (the two ranges were almost outside of the 95% confidence interval). I suspect these are individuals lacking in the faculties with which to make any inferences at all from their putative beliefs, or, those who regularly get confused on questions because they have minimal comprehension of complex grammatical constructions. In my opinion something similar is going on with liberals and Democrats who are Creationist, though there is a subtle difference. In this case their social-political milieu would tolerate acceptance of the scientific consensus, but they go with their common sense gut. I have minimal experience with politically liberal Creationists of late, but when I was younger I knew a few, and their opinions were generally inchoate and vague due to an indistinct comprehension of the basic abstract issues. In other words, these were just not the sharpest tools in the shed.
How do I test switching time of external relay with LabView switching executive?
I am using PXI 2529 switch to test relay, I can get my drop and pick up voltage and current now I want to record my pick up and drop away time on a graph and values.
Keith's 1 July note: NASA's New AA for Public Affairs is David Weaver. He starts work on 19 July at NASA HQ. Details to follow.
Van Hollen chief of staff tapped for NASA post, Gazette.net
"President Barack Obama has appointed Rep. Christopher Van Hollen's top aide to be the chief spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."
Of Moose and Men: 50-Year Study Into Moose Arthritis Reveals Link With Early Malnutrition:
“As the study entered its second decade there was increasing evidence of Osteoarthritis (OA) in the moose population,” said lead author Rolf Peterson from Michigan Technological University. “OA is a crippling disease and is identical to that found in humans. It is commonly believed to be caused by ‘wear and tear,’ but the complex causes have remained poorly understood.”
…
Over the course of the study the team discovered a rise in OA as the moose population increased, and a decrease when the population fell, leading to the idea that OA is linked to moose malnutrition when food is scarcer. The team found moose that were malnourished when young would develop OA in older age.“We have shown how malnutrition early in life increased the risk of OA later in life, but this also applies to humans as much as to a herd of moose in the wild,” said Peterson.
“These findings cast new light on how early humans first developed OA,” said co-author Dr Clark Spencer Larsen, an anthropology expert from Ohio University. “The study of human remains from archaeological contexts reveals OA increased where societies changed from foraging plants and animals to an increased dependency on farming.”
Such changes were documented in a mid-continental population of Native Americans 1000 years ago. In this group arthritis increased by 65% as society turned from foraging and hunting to agriculture and the cultivation of maize.
“Initially the increase in OA was put down to increased joint stress due to the labour of agriculture. However research now shows that, like the moose in Isle Royale, nutritional deficiencies early in life may have been the main cause. Early malnutrition was certainly a part of existence for many pre-historic human societies, and remains a fact of life for millions of people across the world, so this study is also relevant for modern human society.”
The original paper is in Ecology Letters, and it should be online at this address. I do wonder if more detailed understanding of the long term impact of early life nutrition is going to drive parents crazy with alarm as every new study which comes out produces a shift in recommendations.
This paper suggests that the relationship between mitochondrial DNA variants and longevity is complex: "There is substantial evidence that mitochondria are involved in the aging process. Mitochondrial function requires the coordinated expression of hundreds of nuclear genes and a few dozen mitochondrial genes, many of which have been associated with either extended or shortened life span. Impaired mitochondrial function resulting from mtDNA and nuclear DNA variation is likely to contribute to an imbalance in cellular energy homeostasis, increased vulnerability to oxidative stress, and an increased rate of cellular senescence and aging. The complex genetic architecture of mitochondria suggests that there may be an equally complex set of gene interactions (epistases) involving genetic variation in the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. Results from Drosophila suggest that the effects of mtDNA haplotypes on longevity vary among different nuclear allelic backgrounds, which could account for the inconsistent associations that have been observed between mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups and survival in humans. ... We hypothesize that aging and longevity, as complex traits having a significant genetic component, are likely to be controlled by nuclear gene variants interacting with both inherited and somatic mtDNA variability."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20601194
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
This post at Less Wrong makes the case for cryonics as a business that would work well at large scale: "Cryonics scales very well. People who argue from the perspective that cryonics is costly are probably not aware of this fact. Even assuming you needed to come up with the lump sum all at once rather than steadily pay into life insurance, the fact is that most people would be able to afford it if most people wanted it. There are some basic physical reasons why this is the case. ... Surface area is where heat gains entry. Thus if you have a huge container holding cryogenic goods (humans in this case) it costs less per unit volume (human) than is the case with a smaller container that is equally well insulated. ... liquid nitrogen, the super-cheap coolant used by cryonics facilities around the world, is vastly cheaper (more than a factor of 10) when purchased in huge quantities of several tons. The scaling factors for storage tanks and high-capacity tanker trucks are a big part of the reason for this. ... The conclusion I get from this is that there is a very strong self-interested case (as well as the altruistic case) to be made for the promotion of megascale cryonics towards the mainstream, as opposed to small independently run units for a few of us die-hard futurists."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2f5/cryonics_wants_to_be_big/
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
Mobile phone recycling is a fast increasing notion that is taking the world by storm, and a way of earning yourself some additional money. Even so, people across the world are still very much unacquainted towards the potential behind this new cash earning arrangement.
Should you or any person you know have any old mobile phones lying around their abode then now is the best time to see how much they could be worth by using a mobile phone recycling comparison website like SellMyMobile.com, and the course of action couldn’t be any simpler. When you come to sell your mobile, you can calculate all the UK’s leading mobile phone recycle companies to give you the utmost price possible on your broken, unused or even new mobile phone, saving you time and cash from having to actually visit each web site and take note of the prices.
The course of action to selling your phones for money is clear-cut and will literally only take you a matter of minutes to finalize. To sell mobile handsets simply search for your phone, look out for the best price label and send it in using information that will be emailed across to you. It doesn’t cost you a penny and you will obtain the money for it within the post within several working days. Help declutter your house, get yourself some extra money, and help the environment by recycling your mobile phones with SellMyMobile.com.
According to the website, TTMed Urology is a multimedia educational platform aimed at delivering continuing education to urologists.
The website includes:
- Webcasts
- Articles (full text) and Congress Reports
- Clinical Scenarios
- Expert Interviews
- Online Courses
- Ask the Expert section
- Surgical Video Library
- Teaching Slides
- Multimedia Animations
- Podcasts
This is the link to the Editorial Board of the website - most of the experts are from Europe but a large portion of the content is from U.S.-based conferences. The project is sponsored by Prous Science S.A.U., a part of Thomson Reuters.
The access to most of the resources requires free registration.
References:
Urology Podcast
Urology News
Urology online Courses
Posted at Clinical Cases and Images. Stay updated and subscribe, follow us on Twitter and connect on Facebook.
Dutch designer Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny built a glass vitrine and suspended this martyred figure in the middle during Design Miami/Basel 2010 back in June. He then released 40,000 worker bees over the course of the event to create a wax honeycomb structure over the figure. Libertiny infused the figure with a natural red pigment that tinted the entire honeycomb structure red. This came to represent flesh and blood. Read more about the religious theme behind this work here.
I must admit, the site of this is a bit creepy, but mesmerizing at the same time.
[spotted by JTS via Designboom]
Mobile phone recycling is a fast increasing notion that is taking the world by storm, and a way of earning yourself some additional money. Even so, people across the world are still very much unacquainted towards the potential behind this new cash earning arrangement.
Should you or any person you know have any old mobile phones lying around their abode then now is the best time to see how much they could be worth by using a mobile phone recycling comparison website like SellMyMobile.com, and the course of action couldn’t be any simpler. When you come to sell your mobile, you can calculate all the UK’s leading mobile phone recycle companies to give you the utmost price possible on your broken, unused or even new mobile phone, saving you time and cash from having to actually visit each web site and take note of the prices.
The course of action to selling your phones for money is clear-cut and will literally only take you a matter of minutes to finalize. To sell mobile handsets simply search for your phone, look out for the best price label and send it in using information that will be emailed across to you. It doesn’t cost you a penny and you will obtain the money for it within the post within several working days. Help declutter your house, get yourself some extra money, and help the environment by recycling your mobile phones with SellMyMobile.com.
Drinking coffee may reduce a person's chances of developing oral cancer and even brain tumors.
According to a study published in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, it was found that people who drank three to four cups of coffee per day reduced their risk of neck & head cancer by as much as thirty-nine percent.
According to Dr. Mia Hashibe, a researcher from the University of Utah, the findings of the new study is significant because coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world.
The survival percentage for oral cancer and other associated cancers is low, so the findings provide hope for both men and women. Unfortunately, the study did not make use of data from people who drank decaffeinated coffee. In addition to oral cancer and neck cancer, another study (this time, from London) discovered that coffee also reduced the risk of people developing tumors in the brain.
Other studies agree on the benefits of coffee
Studies around the world seem to acquiesce with the recent findings in the United States; it also appears that coffee may be more than just a cancer preventive:
1. A recent study performed in Sweden states that women who drank four to five cups of Scandinavian coffee (which requires boiling) reduced their risk of developing breast cancer over the long term.
It appears that boiled coffee provides more health benefits because it can contain up to eighty different fatty acids, which have been shown to have cancer-preventing effects when taken by the human body. The benefits of boiled Scandinavian coffee was noted for women between the ages of 49 and 55.
2. According to researchers who published a study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, regular coffee intake may ward off adult-onset diabetes or type 2 diabetes. In animal tests, it was shown that coffee increased the sensitivity of the animals to insulin. Coffee was also effective in combating the sudden rise of blood glucose levels according to the researchers.
3. Past US studies show that coffee may be helpful in reducing LDL or “bad” cholesterol levels. Coffee also contains polyphenols, which are natural antioxidants that protect the body from free radical damage. Polyphenols are also present in abundant quantities in green tea.
4. Based on a Harvard Medical School study on aggressive/advanced prostate cancer and coffee-drinking, it was found that males who regularly drank coffee were sixty percent less likely to develop advanced prostate cancer, compared to males who did not drink coffee at all.
5. A Netherlands study produced the following findings for coffee consumption: 2 to 4 cups of coffee a day reduced the incidence of heart problems by twenty percent. Coffee intake also slightly reduced the chances of a person dying from the most common causes (cancer, heart problems, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, etc.)
Sources:
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
According to a European study, calcium is good not only for the bones of postmenopausal women, but also for their hearts.
In a very recent study presented in the Annual Congress of European League Against Rheumatism, researchers discovered that low levels of calcium translated not only to weaker, less dense bones for postmenopausal women but it also predisposed the latter to high blood pressure.
According to the researchers, women with low calcium levels were forty-three percent more prone to developing degenerative bone conditions such as osteoporosis. The same percentage applies to a woman’s risk of eventually developing hypertension. According to Maria Manara, one of the key researchers, their study establishes the coordinates that associate low intake of calcium with heart problems and bone problems.
Further benefits of getting enough calcium
The RDA for calcium is 990 to 1,000 mg per day for individuals between the ages of nineteen and fifty, according to the National Institutes of Health. Doses exceeding 2,500 milligrams per day may interfere with the body’s ability to absorb other nutrients.
Here are some more reasons to love your calcium supplements and low-fat dairy products:
1. According to a study published in the American Journal of Epidimiology, taking calcium reduces one’s risk of dying from a sudden heart attack.
2. Taking calcium along with the mineral magnesium may help reduce the risk of males from dying of different causes, including heart problems and certain cancer.
3. Combined with vitamin D supplementation, calcium may also help prevent the onset of prostate cancer. According to another study, the same potent combination can also help stop colorectal cancer in its tracks. According to Emory University researchers, laboratory tests show that the two nutrients are capable of normalizing intestinal cells. The study made use of 2,000 mg of calcium, combined with 800 international units of vitamin D.
4. Based on a study published in Obesity Reviews, regular intake of calcium may help in weight loss efforts. Studies show that calcium increases the amount of fat excretion. According to Arne Astrup, a researcher from the University of Copenhagen, calcium may also prevent folks from regaining the weight they have already lost. It was noted that people who had formerly low calcium levels will have enhanced benefits from calcium supplementation.
5. Enough calcium ensures that your muscles will contract and relax efficiently whenever you are on the move. Calcium deficiency can cause problems like muscle pain and cramps.
6. Having problems with premenstrual syndrome? Adding calcium to your daily supplementation may help improve the symptoms of PMS.
7. Sufficient calcium also ensures that your teeth will remain firmly anchored in your gums.
Sources:
nutraingredients.com
nutraingredients.com
nutraingredients.com
nutraingredients.com
vitamins-nutrition.org
