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Atlantis makes its final trip into space. The launch looked to be picture perfect. The video goes from JUST before lift off to external tank separation just over 9 minutes.
It’s a sad day for US manned spaceflight. The term “Lucky Dog” was used by the Atlantis crew as it turned into a heads up position prior to external tank separation.
Cupcake? Froyo? Ben&Jerry's? I can't be the only one who's unable to remember the various iterations of Android running on various handsets. This chart will clear things up...for a few weeks before its obviated by new firmware updates. [Android Tapp] More »
Fighting infection is one of the more important parts of medicine, but the doctors of tomorrow get to treat it like a game when they play The Healing Blade. In this card game, developed by a gaming company led by two San Francisco physicians, students take on roles of characters like the Lord of Pestilence or Apothecary Healer in a fantasy world called Soma. According to The Scientist:
"A Lord of Pestilence, for example, might play Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a highly opportunistic, gram-negative bacterium that commonly causes infections in hospitals. An appropriate counter-play by the Apothecary Healer would be to play ciprofloxacin or ticarcillan, two antibiotics that have action against P. aeruginosa.
The Lord of Pestilence can also play a multi-drug resistant card against the Healer, who might have to choose whether to use a narrow- or broad-spectrum antibiotic against the infection. Just like in other role-playing games, such as Wizards and Warriors, students have to use the information they have about their environment and the characters in play in order to win the game. Only this time, they're learning important facts and critical thinking skills they could potentially use in their jobs. If fun and games help med students learn how to most ...
We never ask you for stuff like this. But if you want to do something good today, here's how you can help someone we know: More »
hello fellows, I have a capacitor bank rated 50 kvar supplying a 380v/ 60hz/500kva load but the protection devices like fuses 100A per phase (3 phase) always burned may be 6 times in a year..whats the problem with this capacitor bank..
Life is uncertain--eat the head first. That's the philosophy behind every meal a Zodarian spider eats, and there's a strategy behind it. Consuming certain body parts first ensures the spiders consume the maximum concentration of vital nutrients during the meal, according to research published in the journal Animal Behavior. LiveScience reports:
"When chowing down on ants, the spiders consistently began with the protein-packed front parts before getting to the fattier hind segment, called a gaster or abdomen. The picky eating seemed to pay off: Spiders reared on just front-end ant pieces grew faster and bigger, and they lived longer than those served only gasters or even whole ants."
Of course, the spiders can't sit down to dinner until they've injected their prey with a fearful venom that leaves the ants completely paralyzed in a matter of minutes. Then it's time to liquefy the ants' inside and slurp up the yummy goo. But the ants' hind parts don't go totally to waste; when given an entire ant to eat, the spiders would eat some of that, too, perhaps because certain nutrients are found chiefly in the gaster.
The findings jibe with the emerging view that for predators, achieving proper nutrition is ...
This stack of mints was entered into an architectural competition to design a fashion museum in Tokyo. A spotlight fires straight up though the roof into the sky...which must be blinding to those working the runway on top: More »
NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis Lifts Off to Put Finishing Touches on the International Space Station
"One of the final space shuttle visits to the International Space Station began at 2:20 p.m. Friday with the launch of Atlantis and six astronauts from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will deliver cargo, critical spare parts and a Russian laboratory to the station. The third of five shuttle missions planned for 2010, this was the last planned launch for Atlantis. The Russian-built Mini Research Module-1 is inside the shuttle's cargo bay. Also known as Rassvet (dawn in Russian), it will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. The laboratory will be attached to the bottom port of the station's Zarya module."
In this month's issue of The Atlantic, Mark Bowden takes a long, smart look at 2009's biggest cyber-security celebrity: the Conficker super worm. You can—and should—read the full article at The Atlantic. [Jon Phillips] More »
I have a boat that has sat out in the elements and has destroyed the boat's floor.
The runner's in the bottom along with the foam thats between the runner's is in great shape, there is no moisture and the wood runners look like brand new.
I want to re-fiberglass the floor , I have taken th
Videos of the oil leak 5,000 feet down in the Gulf of Mexico are coming out, and according to some scientists, the news is even worse than we thought.
If you remember back a few weeks to the outset of the BP oil spill, the official estimate was that 1,000 barrels of oil (42,000 gallons) was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. While that’s nothing to sneeze at, the total wasn’t catastrophic compared to historic spills like the Exxon Valdez. Then, more than a week after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did their own quick calculation and quintupled the estimate to 5,000 barrels per day.
BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil [The New York Times].
Now, according to an independent analysis done by Purdue’s Steve Werely with video footage of the leak, that worst-case figure by BP is close to what’s actually happening, and the true total might be even higher. Werely estimates the leak at 70,000 barrels per day, and with a 20% uncertainty in the numbers, that gives a range of 56,000 to 84,000.
Werely told The Guardian he based his estimate on techniques which track the speed of objects travelling in the flow stream.”You can see in the video lots of swirls and vortices pumping out of the end of the pipe, and I used a computer code to track those swirls and come up with the speed at which the oils is shooting out of the pipe,” he said. “From there it is a very simple calculation to figure out what is the volume flow” [The Guardian].
A second estimate by Eugene Chiang of UC-Berkeley provided a window of 20,000 to 100,000 barrels a day. Though the margin is wider, the estimate roughly coincides with Werely’s. But, if these guys are right, then how the heck did initial estimates miss the mark so badly?
The 5,000-barrel-a-day estimate was produced in Seattle by a NOAA unit that responds to oil spills. It was calculated with a protocol known as the Bonn convention that calls for measuring the extent of an oil spill, using its color to judge the thickness of oil atop the water, and then multiplying [The New York Times].
But according to other experts, that method isn’t especially accurate for large spills, especially one like this with large quantities of oil below the surface, unable to be seen from above.
There’s another alternative way to measure this, too. Researchers can use ultrasound to measure the flow rate; they do it under happier circumstances to measure how much oil or gas a well is providing. But two researchers who were going to take these measurements were turned away because BP was about to commence its now-failed attempt to install a containment box over the leak. They haven’t been invited back yet.
It’s one thing to be wrong, but the troubling development in measuring the spill is that neither BP nor NOAA appears terribly interested in getting the right number. When asked about the varying estimates of the leak total, BP leaders have deflected the question and said that it doesn’t really matter how big the spill is because their response would be the same. The government has responded in much the same way:
“I think the estimate at the time was, and remains, a reasonable estimate,” said Dr. Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator. “Having greater precision about the flow rate would not really help in any way. We would be doing the same things” [The New York Times].
For immediate response that may be true. But what about after the spill is finally, someday, stopped? Just as one example, it came out this week that the Deepwater Horizon, like many other rigs in the Gulf, was given the go-ahead to drill without receiving permits for assessing potential dangers to endangered species in the area. Now that responders are playing catch-up after the fact, it might be nice to know whether the leak amounts to 5,000 barrels a day or an entire order of magnitude higher than that.
In any case, the Coast Guard is beginning to treat the spill as a major disaster, according to Commandant Thad Allen.
“It has the potential to be catastrophic … I am going to act as if it is,” Allen told reporters in a briefing [Reuters].
Previous posts on the Gulf Oil Spill:
80beats: Testimony Highlights 3 Major Failures That Caused Gulf Spill
80beats: 5 Offshore Oil Hotspots Beyond the Gulf That Could Boom—Or Go Boom
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill: Do Chemical Dispersants Pose Their Own Environmental Risk?
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill: Fisheries Closed; Louisiana Wetlands Now in Jeopardy
80beats: Uh-Oh: Gulf Oil Spill May Be 5 Times Worse Than Previously Thought
Image: U.S. Coast Guard
This Monday, Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory "Morbid Magicians, Demented Doctors, and Sinister Swamis: The Golden Age of the American Spook Show," an illustrated lecture by Shane Morton of the Atlanta Silver Scream Spook Show. As an added bonus, DJ Davin Kuntze has promised to play his beloved Victrola until the night ends or until he runs out of needles, whichever comes first. So as you can see, this is a night not-to-be-missed. Full details follow; hope to see you there!
Morbid Magicians, Demented Doctors, and Sinister Swamis: The Golden Age of the American Spook Show
An Illustrated lecture by Shane Morton of Atlanta’s Silver Scream Spook Show
Date: Monday, May 17
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5There was a time when morbid magicians, demented doctors, and sinister swamis ran wild over this country! Audiences packed in to witness live midnight performances of ghosts being conjured above their heads, raging gorillas grabbing women from their seats, and Frankenstein’s Monster stomping loose through darkened movie palaces! The 1930’s-50’s was the golden era of a now virtually lost performance art form. But what resonated with people then, remains powerful to us today. Find out all about the fascinating world of the great American spook show at tonight’s lecture, which will give your goose pimples goose pimples, and scare the yell out of you!
Shane Morton is an artist, performer and musician from Atlanta, Georgia. He runs the Silver Scream Spook Show, the only spook show to exist in over a generation. You can find out more about Morton and his work at http://wwww.silverscreamspookshow.com and http://www.myspace.com/silverscreamspookshow.
You can find out more about this presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here. Click on image to see larger version.
Reader Corey relays his explosive tale, filled with luxury coupes, detonating phones and chemicals in the eye. More »
A new paper on the security of internet-equipped automobiles shows them to be, well, frighteningly insecure. Researchers were able to remotely cut the brakes, stop the engine, and lock out the driver on a typical, new-model networked vehicle. More »
We've been holding off on this, but now it seems there's no other way to put it: The new way Google tried to sell the Nexus One—over the web—failed. Google's killing the web store, and shifting to retail. More »
For some reason I can't grasp, these portraits—profiles that keep their shape but reverse the image inside—freak me out. [JK Keller via Today and Tomorrow] More »
Art - Photography - DNA - Times Square - The New York Times
Hi,
What is the theory of eddy current brake used for reducing the AC frequencies 50/60?
There are tons of sand accumulating under and around belt conveyors carrying sand in the foundry plant where I'm working. We dump the sand back onto the belts using man power and it's gonna turn out to be a big deal every time when the belts were not up to the mark. So I wanna make a mini dredger wh
