In studying the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image… this one:

Hubble Ultra Deep Field - the small, cramped version. NASA/ESA Hubble ST

Scientists discovered a distant galaxy in the constellation Fornax, believed to have been present about 600 million years after the Big Bang.  We’re seeing light from this galaxy after it’s traveled about 13 billion light years.  This places the galaxy (its “common name” is HUDF.YD3) at about 30 billion light years away from us.  Here it is:

NASA/ESA Hubble ST - UDFy-38135539

With a redshift of about 8.6″, HUDF.YD3 is the most distant object in the observable universe found so far.  You know your “universe history”, right?  Well, HUDF.YD3 proves that by 600 million years post Bang, stars in these first galaxies had almost completed the process of hydrogen reionization, ending the Dark Ages.

HUDF.YD3 is believed to have been about 1/10th the diameter of the Milky Way, and contained about a billion stars.  It’s total mass would have been about 1% of the Milky Way.  The most distant object previously known was GRB 090423; which has a redshift of 8.2″.  GRB 090423 is about 30 million years younger than HUDF.YD3… or rather, the light we’re currently receiving was emitted about 630 million years post Bang.

Gemini/NASA - GRB 090423

HUDF.YD3 sits in a clear “bubble” in the early hydrogen fog.  Scientists are hoping to find even more distant objects, as the first galaxies are believed to have formed about 200 million years post Bang.  There are probably other galaxies near HUDF.YD3, but they haven’t been identified as of yet. HUDF.YD3 appears as a very faint “smudge” in the Ultra Deep Field image.  Announced October 2010, this discovery is nothing short of spectacular.

Scientists will be studying the Ultra Deep Field image for decades to come.  Who knows?  Maybe YOU will be the one to discover a more distant object.

Comet Hartley 2 from EpOXI October 23, 2010 Credit: NASA/JPL/UMD

Hey we’re only about a week away from the EPOXI/Hartley meet up. Everything is looking good.

The picture was taken by the EPOXI spacecraft from a range of 13 million km (8.7 million miles) with the Medium Resolution Instrument.

There was some talk of a debris trail and although some are saying no, there have been a couple of fireballs in Canada of the low and slow variety – yeah the good ones!  I don’t know for sure but you can check out that story and one of the very best images of the comet I’ve seen so far at the Science@NASA site.

Andromeda Galaxy by Anon via SEDS. Click for larger.

We all know the Andromeda Galaxy but how many have actually seen it from your back yard?  You can you know, if you have good dark adapted eyes and fairly dark skies you need nothing else.

If you are like me you need a little help and binoculars are all you really need.  It’s not going to look quite like the picture above.  I’ve got no decent images of M 31 either I am always fighting a Maple tree for it and the tree always wins.  Pity.  Ah well, it won’t be long and I’ll be packing the observatory up and moving away from here – darker skies and no obstructions but that’s a whole other story.

Oh M31?  Yeah that’s still the Andromeda Galaxy, it’s just the designation given to it my Charles Messier in his famous catalogue in 1764.  Andromeda was known to man long before that, there is mention of it in the volume Book of Fixed Stars by the Persian astronomer Abd-al-Rahman Al-Sufi as it was indeed a naked-eye object with the dark skies back then.

Andromeda is notable for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is blue shifted.  Mostly we hear about red shifted objects, those objects that are moving away from us.  Andromeda is moving toward is at roughly 300 km/sec, that’s a little over 671,000 miles per hour, but don’t worry, even at that prodigious rate it’s going to be a very long time before it gets here.

Ok, enough babbling, how do you find it?  As usual, be out of bright lights for a time.

If you have a scope, point it to: RA: 00h 43m 22s   Dec: +41°19’58″(current), someday I will endeavor to explain that too.

If you do not then use the following as a guide:
9pm local time:  Azim: 84°16’28″   Alt: +65°19’24″
12 midnight:  Azim: 257°03’02″   Alt: +81°05’36″

For the azimuth a compass will help you greatly, for the altitude you can easily estimate that by holding your fist out in front of you (get that arm straight).  It’s about 10 degrees wide, so start parallel to the ground and simply count up putting one fist atop the other.  Also note the position change, you will need to estimate that depending on your time.  The nice thing about binoculars is the field of view is generally large enough so it looks at a good portion of the sky.

MESSENGER, an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, is the first probe to visit Mercury since the three Mariner 10 flybys back in 1974/75.  As of the time of writing, this is where MESSENGER is located:

Where MESSENGER is located at 10:00 CDT, from the website

Launched August 3rd, 2004, MESSENGER hit the cosmos on a Delta II rocket, and is currently packing a Delta V rocket.  MESSENGER needs this extraordinarily powerful rocket to brake as it approached the Sun, and when it accomplishes orbit insertion because of the Sun’s gravity well.  MESSENGER will insert into a highly elliptical orbit because of the thrust required to slow it down.   MESSENGER will come as close as 125 miles (200 km) above the surface of Mercury on its orbit.

Just… WOW!

NASA image, building MESSENGER

In addition to its Mercury flybys, MESSENGER buzzed Earth and Venus.  It will begin braking for orbit insertion around March 18, 2011.  Lets keep our fingers crossed it doesn’t end up a little pile of rubble on Mercury’s surface, or get shot out of the solar system.  Of course, MESSENGER will eventually end as a pile of rubble on the surface of Mercury, but lets hope that doesn’t occur in 2011.

MESSENGER was designed to answer six questions:

• Why is Mercury so dense?
• What is the geologic history of Mercury?
• What is the nature of Mercury’s magnetic field?
• What is the structure of Mercury’s core?
• What are the unusual materials at Mercury’s poles?
• What volatiles are important at Mercury?

What we’ve learned so far is astonishing.  For instance, did you know there is water in Mercury’s exosphere?  Neither did the scientific community.  It wasn’t even suspected, but there it is.  Mercury also has volcanic activity, and a suspected liquid core.  Studies of Mercury will help us determine why the Earth is the way it is, and not like Venus or Mars.  Mercury is the “extremist” of the inner solar system.

MESSENGER on-board instruments, from the website

On MESSENGER’s third, and final, flyby, it entered “safe mode” for about 7 hours.  MESSENGER is designed to shut off communications with Earth if it senses something wrong.  It will go “safe”, and attempt to diagnose and repair itself.  When it re-established communication, everything tested fine.  We don’t know why it went into safe mode, but it did accomplish its gravity boost to shoot it around for orbit insertion.  For normal operations, MESSENGER is powered by its solar panels.

I recommend you take a moment to browse the MESSENGER website.  You’ll find mind-blowing images of Mercury, in addition to some great information.  There’s even a section for the kids.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source

NCBI ROFL: The case of the haunted scrotum. “On CT scanning of the abdomen and pelvis, the right testis was not identified but the left side of the scrotum seemed to be occupied by a screaming ghost-like apparition (Figure 1).”

NCBI ROFL: Does garlic protect against vampires? An experimental study. “Garlic has been regarded as an effective prophylactic against vampires. We wanted to explore this alleged effect experimentally. Owing to the lack of vampires, we used leeches instead.”

NCBI ROFL: Exorcism-resistant ghost possession treated with clopenthixol. ”An Indian man now in Britain explained his criminal behaviour as episodic ghost possession. Traditional exorcisms failed to help. ”

NCBI ROFL: Word of the day: cacodemonomania.“The experience of having had intercourse with the devil has in the past been regarded as evidence that the individual is a witch.”

NCBI ROFL: This paper is ghastly. “To test the hypothesis that experiences of apparitional phenomena with accompanying fear can be simulated within the laboratory, a 45-yr.-old journalist and professional musician who had experienced a classic haunt four years previously was exposed to 1 microTesla, complex, transcerebral magnetic fields.”

NCBI ROFL: That vampire bat recognizes you. And he’s coming back tomorrow night. “Using psychoacoustical methods, we show that vampire bats can recognize individual humans by their breathing sounds”

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

Researchers found new evidence of the importance of make-up while studying Spanish flamenco dancers flamingos. The scientists discovered that the birds augment their signature coloring by applying tints drawn from their own glands–and they use their painted plumage to attract mates.

The hue of the leggy birds’ feathers come primarily from the pigments in their diet, but researcher Juan Amat found that they also secrete the colored pigments, called carotenoids, from their preen glands. Flamingos (and many other birds) press their heads to the preen glands at the base of their tails to pick up feather-protecting oils, which they then spread around their bodies.

The researchers realized that those oils contain pigments, ranging from red to yellow, by keeping an eye on the flamingos’ feathers and behavior: They noticed that the coloring of the birds was brightest during the mating season, and quickly diminished after they found a mate. Amat told BBC News:

“The rubbing is time-consuming,” Dr Amat told BBC News. “And the more frequently the birds practise it, the more coloured they appear. If the birds stop the rubbing, [their] plumage colour fades in a few days because carotenoids[pigments] bleach quickly in the sunlight.”

So the birds go through extensive preening rituals, using their cheeks to rub the colored oils into their feathers, in the hopes of attracting mates (similar to characters from the Jersey Shore). Amat explained to BBC News that the flamingos who paid more attention to their plumage were more successful in their mating endeavors:

“We found that the more coloured birds started breeding earlier than paler ones,” explained Dr Amat. “So by mating to a colourful bird an individual may increase its reproductive success, as from previous studies we know that the first pairs to start breeding gain access to the best breeding sites.”

The researchers published their findings in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. It isn’t just the male flamingos that work hard to attract mates; the game goes both ways with this species. Amat’s team noticed that the females actually spent more time coloring their feathers than the males. And, as he told BBC News, they reaped the rewards for this extra investment:

“We have data indicating that females make-up much more often than males – just like in humans,” he told BBC News. “Also, we know that flamingos apply make-up more often in better habitats, and that the more coloured birds obtain food of better quality.”

Related content:
DISCOVER: Stunning High-Speed Photos of Birds (photos)
DISCOVER: The Mating Game’s Biggest Cheaters (photos)
Not Exactly Rocket Science: The renaissance of technicolour dinosaurs continues (and the gloves come off…)
Gene Expression: Pigments: zebrafish and humans
80beats: Geneticists Shake the Avian Family Tree

Image: Flickr/stevehdc

A new study of 218 Chinese men found that even low levels of the controversial plastics chemical bisphenol A (BPA) can lower sperm quality and count.

For the study, which was published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, researchers noted the participants’ sperm quality and urine BPA levels over five years. When compared to participants without detectable levels of the chemical, men with BPA in their urine were three times more likely to have low quality sperm.

“This adds additional human evidence that BPA is bad,” said [the study's first author] De-Kun Li…. “The general public should probably try to avoid exposure to BPA as much as they can.” [Washington Post]

That’s a tough order, because BPA is all over the place. It’s found in everything from sports equipment to medical devices to the plastic lining in canned foods.

Li’s previous studies have shown sexual effects of high levels of BPA, including inducing impotence in male factory workers exposed to it. Those studies were done with men exposed to about 50 times as much BPA as the average U.S. man, so the results might not apply to your average Joe.

However, in the current study Li argues that the chemical didn’t only have a detrimental effect on individuals with sky-high BPA levels. Even participants with low levels, comparable to the average American, had diminished sperm quality and count.

“The higher your exposure, the lower your sperm quality is,” he said. [Washington Post]

Much of the controversy about BPA has focused on the question of what level of BPA exposure is safe. This study adds weight to the argument that the chemical is hazardous to everyday people.

“Evidence has indicated that for the past few decades, sperm counts have been declining in some human populations–and that this might be related to exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as BPA is very reasonable,” [Gail] Prins said. “I strongly believe that the U.S. should take measures to reduce the use of this chemical, since levels build over time.” [Live Science]

Canada must be feeling smug, since the country officially labeled the chemical as toxic earlier this month, making it easier to ban it and reduce environmental exposure to the chemical.

Related content:
Discoblog: Warning All Competitive Male Cyclists: Less than 5% of Your Sperm May Be Normal
80beats: Study Finds BPA in Store Receipts; Health Effects as Yet Unclear
80beats: BPA-Heart Disease Link Confirmed, But Levels in People Have Declined
80beats: BPA Won’t Leave Public-Health Conversatio–or Your Body
80beats: More Bad News on BPA: Linked to Heart Disease and Diabetes in Humans

Image: Flickr/SantaRosa OLD SCHOOL

I’m a fan of the webcomic Big Fat Whale — he nails just the right tone of satire, snark, and intelligence that really resonates with me. Today he has a Halloween list of pretty funny scary movies that need to be made.

Turns out that the artist of BFW, Brian McFadden, reads my blog, too. The last panel of the comic is dedicated to me! Watch your back, Zach.

We’re beginning to ramp up the Geoffrey Beene Gives Back® Rock Stars of Science™ campaign, as the new launch approaches in the December “Men of the Year” issue of GQ. With the new images still not public, though, it’s first worth going back over last year’s campaign and reminiscing, as well as reminding folks of what came before.

To that end, I really liked this video of Seal explaining why he got involved–saying very frankly that if his celebrity can help scientists gain more recognition and research funding, it will be “a day in my life well spent”:

What do folks think–does Seal’s message work for you, and work for science?

(For more on Rock S.O.S.™, see the website, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.)

This week’s episode of South Park was OK, but I really loved this take off on a scene from A Clockwork Orange:

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When the space shuttle Discovery launches next Tuesday (weather and technology permitting), it will be ferrying an unusual passenger to the International Space Station: Robonaut 2. This humanoid robot was designed by NASA and General Motors to work alongside astronauts on the space station, and could eventually take over some tedious or dangerous tasks.

Human beings who dream of becoming astronauts acquire things like advanced science degrees or the ability to fly jet planes in hopes of catching NASA’s eye and being chosen as astronaut candidates. If they do become candidates, there’s still scads of training before they can take a flight up to the ISS. But how does a robot qualify for and prepare for that trip to orbit? DISCOVER spoke with Marty Linn, General Motor’s principal engineer of robotics, to find out.

Qualifications

Physical Fitness: Human astronauts have to pass the NASA long-duration space flight physical to prove that they’re healthy, fit, and strong enough for astronaut duties. Robonaut 2 has to be pretty strong, too: Here on Earth, he proved that he can do arm curls with 20-pound free weights. “The limitation is grasp strength,” says Linn. “The weak link is how strong the fingers are.” The robot didn’t have to spend any time on the treadmill, though, because this model doesn’t have lower limbs—it’s simply a torso with arms and a head.

Intelligence: To be honest, R2 (as its buddies call it) isn’t that bright—it can’t make independent decisions. NASA’s top priority for the experimental bot is guaranteeing that it won’t pose a threat to the astronauts or the space station, so for now R2 will be under the strict control of astronauts and ground crew. Linn explains that its actions can be programmed joint by joint, or it can be controlled by a tele-ops system, in which an astronaut dons the tele-ops gear and puts the robot through its paces by moving her own arms or head.

Vision: NASA has always paid careful attention to the eyesight of its astronaut candidates, and only recently decided that people who have gotten laser surgery to correct their vision can still be considered for the job. R2’s vision is top-notch. It’s equipped with high-resolution digital cameras, can detect motion and distinct objects, and has a 3D mapping tool to allow it to determine where objects are in space. It also has lower resolution cameras for tele-operation, Linn explains, which “allow the operator to see through the eyes of the robot.”

Dexterity: This isn’t a top priority for NASA when selecting human astronauts, but it was a big factor in R2’s selection. Linn explains that R2 is one of the most nimble-fingered robots ever built. “Traditional robots don’t do well in an unstructured environment, where the objects aren’t rigid,” he says. “It’s very difficult for them to grasp a flexible object like a space blanket.” R2 can handle not only flexible objects, but can also deal with the small switches and cables that astronauts routinely work with on the space station.

Training

Microgravity: An important part of astronauts’ training is exposing them to the weightlessness they’ll experience in orbit. NASA handles the prep with a modified jet plane that flies in long parabolic arcs to produce brief, half-minute bursts of weightlessness; fully suited astronauts also train for zero-G spacewalks in a water tank called the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. That’s one big gap in R2’s preparations for spaceflight: It has no experience with microgravity. Obviously R2 couldn’t be dunked in the pool, and the parabolic flights wouldn’t provide enough time to do meaningful tests of R2’s capabilities, Linn says. “The best experiment will be on the space station,” says Linn. That’s when the engineers will learn whether the procedures they tried on Earth will translate to orbit.

Health Check: The flight crew for the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission was famously changed at last minute, when pilot Ken Mattingly was grounded due to his exposure to German measles. The final health checks for R2 were a little different. The engineering team wasn’t worried about biological contaminants, but they did need to check for chemical hazards. “The robot did go to White Sands [Test Facility], and it went through a bunch of outgassing tests,” Linn says. “They put him in a chamber to see what kinds of chemicals were coming off this thing, to make sure it was all safe for humans to breathe.”

Spacesuit Fitting: Just like human astronauts, R2 had to get suited up for space. Its original “skin” of Lycra and neoprene didn’t meet the Space Station’s stringent flammability requirements, so it was swapped out for a fire-resistant spacesuit material. The new skin is made of Kevlar, Teflon, and Nomex.

Practice for Mission: Astronauts practice for their missions with shuttle simulators and full-sized mockups of the Space Station’s flight deck and payload bay. Operating on a more modest scale, R2 has practiced with a task board that has “typical switches that are found on the space station, and different kinds of buttons,” says Linn. Since R2 is the first of its kind, it won’t be given any crucial tasks aboard the ISS; once it’s unpacked and set up it will be put into action so that engineers can study its capabilities and limitations in zero-G. Eventually, they may let R2 try its hand at one tedious task: cleaning. “We’ve experimented with various kinds of cleaning tasks, like cleaning air filters and wiping down surfaces,” says Linn.

Preparing for Travel: The astronauts who will fly on mission STS-133 won’t climb aboard the shuttle until Tuesday (assuming the launch date remains the same), but R2 is already stowed safely in the cargo bay. Here’s a time-lapse video from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center showing how R2 got prepped for flight and packed up:

The Future

Upgrades: NASA and General Motors have grand hopes for R2, and say this experimental bot can be upgraded to become more functional. Lower limbs would let the robot move around the space station on its own, and engineers have already experimented with a number of different movement systems. One strong argument for lower limbs: They would provide both stability and maneuverability, which could also allow R2 to take part in spacewalks. Says Linn: “From a time constraint point of view, it’s a lot easier to send the robot outside that for an astronaut to get all suited up and go outside.”

No Return: One thing that NASA didn’t have to worry about when preparing R2 for his trip was psychology. If you told human astronauts that they’d be taking a one-way trip to the space station, they’d be pretty upset. Not so with R2. This robonaut isn’t coming back, but will instead remain on the ISS for as long as the space station is in orbit. But it doesn’t seem alarmed about the prospect. As R2 recently proclaimed on its Twitter feed, “I’m living on the station as long as there is a station. ISS 4 LIFE!”

Related Content:
80beats: Japanese Consortium: We’ll Send a Humanoid Robot to Walk on the Moon
80beats: A New Crew Member for the Space Station: The “Robonaut 2″
80beats: Robonaut 2: Coming Soon to Space Stations and Assembly Lines Near You

Images: NASA

Charges by South Korean health officials that octopus heads contain large and unhealthy amounts of the heavy medal cadmium have sparked a war with the fishermen who profit from the $35 million-a-year trade.

Octopus heads are a popular delicacy in South Korea, revered by locals for their health benefits and their supposed role as an aphrodisiac. About 12 million octopuses are sold for eating every year, says the LA Times:

Nakji, a dish featuring baby octopuses, head and all, is a popular snack at sporting events. Another dish, sannakji (”live octopus”), features squirming tentacles dipped in a sesame oil and salt sauce. Enthusiasts have been hospitalized after a wiggling tentacle lodged in the throat.

The Seoul city government tested octopus heads for cadmium and found that the delicacy had dangerously high levels of the toxic metal, almost 15 times higher than the recommended 2 milligram per kilogram limit set by the government. Ingestion of high levels of cadmium can lead to liver and kidney poisoning, and the metal is a known carcinogen. After the findings were announced, the price of octopus fell substantially and turmoil ensued, reports the LA Times:

After conducting their own tests, officials from South Korea’s Food and Drug Administration declared that it was safe to eat as many as two octopuses a day, heads and all. Emboldened fishermen threatened to sue unless the Seoul government apologized. But city officials refused to back down.

To lower the risk of cadmium poisoning, the government officials recommend that customers remove the internal organs and ink sac of the squirming cephalopods before consuming them, but many people are saying this would remove the delicacy’s unique taste.

Government officials even sponsored a “Seoul Nakji day” to encourage customers to eat the dish with the heads removed. Im Hyun-ki, an official with an octopus production association in South Jeolla province, told the LA Times that this just wasn’t enough:

“Why sponsor a day promoting Korean octopus if you’re not going to eat the best part?” Im said. “It makes no sense and adds salt to the wound.”

Related content:
Discoblog: Tool-Using Octopus: Coconut Shells Become Body Armor
Cosmic Variance: Live octopus lollipop
DISCOVER: Through the Eye of an Octopus
DISCOVER: In the Octopus’s Kindergarten
Not Exactly Rocket Science: The mimic octopus (my first ever post)

Image: Flickr/thiswholeworld

A few days ago Dienekes opened up the Dodecad project to a wider range of Eurasians. I decided to send my 23andMe sample to Dienekes ASAP, and the results came back today. I’m DOD075. Dienekes also just put up an explanation of the 10 ancestral components he’s generating from ADMIXTURE (along with tree-like representations of their distances). Below I’ve placed myself in the more local context of populations to which I’m close to:

Here are all the populations.

Karnataka is a state in northwest South India, and can be taken as somewhat representative of the Dravidian populations. The purple component is a South Asia distinctive element. Using the terminology of Reich et al. it would be the ancient stabilized hybrid population which came out of the admixture of Ancient North Indians (ANI) and Ancient South Indians (ASI). On the margins I assume there’s just noise popping out; e.g., the “East Asian” sliver among the Kannada speakers from South India. On the other hand, the Burusho have shown evidence of East Asian admixture in other studies I’ve seen. They have a bit of the derived East Asian EDAR variant for example.

As for me, no surprise that I have a lot of “East Asian” for a South Asian. Since Dienekes is more interested in Western Eurasia he didn’t go to the point of dividing the East Asians into a northern and southern branch. I’m pretty sure I’d be in the southern branch, along with the Miaozu sample (more well known as Hmong to Americans). The bigger question is how atypical for an east South Asian I am. There is a certain basal load of East Asian ancestry among northeast South Asian Indo-Aryan speakers. Another question is whether my East Asian component can be attributed to the Mundari substrate absorbed by Indo-Aryans in northeast India, or by a more recent admixture of Tibeto-Burmans. Some of both surely, but knowing my family’s long residence on the eastern margins of the Indo-Aryan speaking domains of South Asia, cheek-by-jowl with Tibeto-Burmans, I believe I am likely to have some recent Burmese ancestry. Specifically through my paternal grandfather.

Finally, though it is just as likely to be nothing, I have a bit more “Southern European” than the other South Asians. I assume this is from my great-grandfather who was from Delhi, and part of the polyglot Muslim religious intellectual class of that city. His physical type, which my maternal grandmother inherited, was clearly West Asian. He probably had non-trivial Persian or Central Asian ancestry.

Using a giant radio telescope like a cop’s radar gun, astronomers have made some pretty cool images of the nucleus of the comet Hartley 2:

Hartley 2 is a comet that is currently very close to the Earth as these things go: last week it passed us at a distance of about 18 million km (11 million miles). Astronomers took advantage of the close pass to ping the comet with radar pulses. By timing exactly how long it took the pulses to go from the telescope to the comet and back to Earth, they can create a map of the comet’s shape and other characteristics — something like how dolphins and bats use echolocation to map their surroundings… though, as Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society Blog explains, it’s a bit more complicated.

From the images, it looks like the nucleus — the solid, central part of a comet — is highly elongated, about 2.2 km (1.4 miles) in length, and rotates once every 18 hours. We’ve only seen a handful of comets up close, and in general the nuclei are potato-shaped, so this one fits that description. The image has a scale of about 75 meters per pixel.

These observations were made to help out the EPOXI space mission, which will pass just 700 km (420 miles) from the nucleus of Hartley 2 on November 4. That means we’ll be getting some really cool close-up images and data from the comet very soon! Stay Tuned.

1. First, a post from the past: Atheism, Heresy and Hesychasm. I used to post about religion a lot more, especially in the fall of 2006. That was back when ScienceBlogs was small enough and tight enough to have a back & forth discussion among the weblogs pretty easily. I also was working a lot of hours at my job at the time and that imposed a sort of tight discipline on me, I remember hustling off posts after work, before sleep, and on Saturday (into schedule queue).

2. Weird search query of the week: “dave mirra wife.” I had no idea who Dave Mirra was before I saw that query.

3. Comment of the week, in response to Daily Data Dump – October 25th, 2010:

White bread tastes good because its a more neutral base on to which to add other flavours. This is something you hicks will never understand.

4) OK, so last week’s poll didn’t work. In that it didn’t record any responses. Rather than do polls, I’ll just throw out a question, and let people answer if they so choose: which science blogs do you read? And do you have one yourself?

5) And finally, your weekly fluff fix:

It’s been days since we’ve hit people up for our Donors Choose 2010 Challenge. As you know, this is our favorite cause. It’s also Stephen Colbert’s favorite, as if you needed any extra motivation.

Our challenge page has had a great response so far — many, many thanks to everyone who has donated. Every donation is rewarded with a direct thank-you from the classroom that you helped. Here are a few of our responses:

“I simply cannot thank you enough for your selfless donation for much-needed supplies to use in my classroom. I know that your generosity will allow students with learning disabilities to engage in hands-on activities that relate to their everyday lives in reading, writing and math.” — Ms. S, Columbus

“I AM SO EXCITED about this project being funded! I have always wanted this Lakeshore kit to assist my instruction in science. I know that the students will be excited when they are able to work in groups and pairs to understand scientific concepts using this set. Words cannot express how thankful I am to each and every one of you for your contribution to our classroom!” — Ms. L, Forsyth, Georgia

“The items that you will provide for my students will help them with counting. Can you imagine the look on their faces when they see all the resources that they will get? I can. Its a look that I constantly get when I introduce a new concept and they are interested in learning more.” — Mrs. B, Los Angeles

We’re kicking serious butt in the Discover Blogs sub-challenge, which is nice, but our collective behinds are in turn being kicked by the pretenders at Seed, especially the squid people. Do you really want to stand for that?

And while we’re stooping to cheap psychology, did you notice this recent study that women give more to charity than men? Guys, are you going to just sit there and make these scurrilous accusations become reality?

More seriously, I love the big donations, but it would be nice to see more at the $5/$10/$20 level. Doesn’t cost too much, and it can mean a lot to kids without basic school supplies. You’ll feel good!

Last but certainly not least, we wanted to give huge thanks to everyone who helped spread the word via blogs or Twitter. Here’s the roll call of honor:

Louise Butt
Swans on Tea
@Paradise_Host
@barneygrubbs
@pandeiacomic
@BadAstronomer
@VeniceRiley
@ronsimon
@cosmicutopia
@buffalodavid
@cbcnasa
@break1ngscience
@leafwarbler
@pjrobar
@alltop_science
@rationalsquad
@leafwarbler
@pie_r_round
@mdsteele47
@reckonso
@katiebisbee

and who could possibly forget

Janiece at Hot Chicks Dig Smart Men.

Thanks! Every little push helps.

This week China unveiled a new supercomputer that’s pretty darn quick.

The Tianhe-1A machine housed at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin reportedly works at the rate of 2.5 petaflops (a petaflop being about a thousand trillion operations per second), and reportedly will take the top spot in the rankings of world supercomputers when the people who attend to this list release the new version next month. That will bump the top U.S. machine down to number 2.

Personally, I’m not going to panic until China leapfrogs the United States on the Princeton Review list of top party countries or People Magazine’s sexiest countries in the world. But the announcement brought talk of American unease about being bested by China, and American alarm over China’s growing technological expertise. So is the vague, festering worry about the Chinese supercomputer justified? Let’s look at both sides of the argument.

Yes

Putting aside the issue of our wounded national pride, some experts say the real concern is whether the United States has the organization to match what China has done. CNET interviewed Jack Dongarra of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, keeper of the former fastest supercomputer, who called China’s achievement a “wake-up call.”

You have to remember that you have to not only invest in the hardware. It’s like a race car. In order to run the race car, you need a driver. You need to effectively use the machine. And we need to invest in various levels within the supercomputer ecology. The ecology is made up of the hardware, the operating system, the compiler, the applications, the numerical libraries, and so on. And you have to maintain an investment across that whole software stack in order to effectively use the hardware. And that’s an aspect that sometimes we forget about. It’s underfunded. [CNET]

Simply, the United States’ supercomputer hegemony may not be possible to maintain.

“What is scary about this is that the U.S. dominance in high-performance computing is at risk,” said Wu-chun Feng, a supercomputing expert and professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. “One could argue that this hits the foundation of our economic future.” [The New York Times]

No

Tianhe-1A may be of Chinese design, but it is not completely of Chinese origin.

Most of the Tianjin system relies on chips from Intel and Nvidia, which are both based in Santa Clara, Calif. So U.S. customers could presumably construct a system with similar performance, noted Horst Simon, deputy lab director at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. [Wall Street Journal]

And while Feng may be right that this story touches a nerve wired to our economic future, the focus on a particular machine may be misguided. As Boston University computer science professor Azer Bestavros tells Forbes:

“It may be a matter of national pride (and, as a result, an effective mechanism that some may use to siphon funding from Congress to subsidize HPC research), but the much more important question is whether we are investing in the education and training of the next generation of computer scientists who will use the power from such machines. Meantime, the emphasis on the performance of a single machine is a bit misleading. Today, we are increasingly moving towards more distributed forms of computing, including the use of grid and cloud computing infrastructures.” [Forbes]

It’s not the end of the world, but don’t tell the government

Champions lose their crowns. Challengers come along, take the title, and the former champ joins the ranks of the challengers plotting to retake the top spot.

So the jingoistic hand-wringing may not be totally justified, but it is useful. Just look at what happened the last time the United States lost the title.

In 2002, the United States lost its crown as supercomputing kingpin for the first time in stunning fashion when Japan unveiled a machine with more horsepower than the top 20 American computers combined. The United States government responded in kind, forming groups to plot a comeback and pouring money into supercomputing projects. The United States regained its leadership status in 2004, and has kept it, until now. [The New York Times]

As Bestavros says, being surpassed by China may well elicit a similar response, with Congress loosening the purse strings for computing research to try to beat back the competition. Good.

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Image: Nvidia

[Update (15:00 UT Saturday): launch was delayed again. It is now set for Wednesday, November 3, at 15:52 Eastern time.]

Just a quick update: NASA has delayed the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery by a day due to gas leaks in one of the Orbiter Maneuvering System pods (those are the engines housed under the big lumps at the rear of the Orbiter). Currently, launch is set for Tuesday, November 2 at 16:17 Eastern time. This is Discovery’s final scheduled flight.

There may be further delays, of course, so stay tuned.

Ncell, a subsidiary of the Swedish telecom company TeliaSonera, has installed a 3G data network in a Nepalese town that should reach the summit of Mount Everest. This high up, high-tech improvement will allow summit-ers to communicate with friends, family, and organizers from the top of the world.

A phone base station was set up near the town of Gorakshep at 17,000 feet above sea level, and the signal should reach to the peak about 12,000 feet above that, telecom officials said–but it hasn’t been tested yet. The service should be fast enough to allow adventurers to make video calls and surf the Internet from their phones.

Lars Nyberg, CEO of TeliaSonera, told the Associated Foreign Press how excited they were to take the mountain into the wireless internet age:

“This is a great milestone for mobile communications as the 3G high speed internet will bring faster, more affordable telecommunication services from the world’s tallest mountain,” said Lars Nyberg.

The service is definitely an upgrade from the voice-only network set up in 2007 by China Mobile on the Chinese side of the mountain, and the erratic coverage of satellite phones. Who wouldn’t want to update their Facebook status to “chilling at the summit of Mount Everest” or “check-in” there? Now we can all wait with bated breath to see who gets the first Mayorship.

An Irish mountain climber named Gavin Bate was aiming to send the first tweet from the summit in 2009, but because of the weather conditions couldn’t reach the summit. Perhaps as people start to use the data network Everest will get better reviews on Google Maps; right now it’s at 2.5 stars.

But apparently the mountain committee had other ideas of how to use the connection–at least that’s what Ang Tshering Sherpa told the Associated Foreign Press:

“The erratic and expensive satellite connection that many times does not work for days will be replaced with this service, making it possible for all climbers to keep in touch with their organisers and family,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, a member of the International Mountain Protection Commission. “This will also be helpful, possibly, when there is an accident or an expedition mishap,” he added.

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Image: Flickr/stevehicks