From Discovery News - Top Stories:
Determined never to repeat the tragic Challenger launch accident, NASA not only is developing a crew escape system for the space shuttles' replacements; the space agency also has a backup system that could fly astronauts to safety in case of an em
A new study cites the dangers inherent in combining caffeine and alcohol, raising questions about the safety of the alcoholic energy drinks on the market. It seems the issue is one of perception: people who drink only alcohol are more likely to acknowledge that they are impaired, while those who dra
First, the important point: lots of people believe lots of different things, but nobody has proof. I'm not talking about life after death; I'm talking about whether cell phones cause brain tumors. Unlike questions of spirituality, this is the sort of question that science can answer, eventually. But
Hi guys, John Mayer here. I know it's been a while since I've "touched base," but you know I've been pretty busy with my fourth album launch, y'know, the "heartbreak handbook"? About that anti-Twitter girl?
Anyway, Imma here to let you know that I think you should all take a one week digital cleanse. Defragment your mind, man—I'm talking about your mental and psychological hard drive!
Here's what I wrote on my Tumbly-blog-thang about my super-cool idea:
"The cleanse will begin at 9am on January 1. This gives everyone a chance to text and tweet their new year's well wishes, and theoretically begins upon waking up the morning of January 1. The cleanse will end at 9am on January 8.
Guidelines:
*email only from laptop or desktop computers
*cell phones can only be used to make calls, and no text messages or e-mails are allowed - if you receive a text, you must reply in voice over the phone. E-mails must be returned from a laptop or desktop computer.
*no use of Twitter or any other social networking site - this includes reading as well as posting.
*no visiting of any entertainment or gossip sites. (No need to detail which ones - you know what they are.)"
I probably shoulda thought of those people who don't wake up until after 9am on New Year's Day, clutching their vodka-soaked stomachs. But hey, I'm a clean-living soul, remember?
I'll leave you with the final words of encouragement from my blog. Put on Eye of the Tiger, or a super-positive song, maybe even my hit single Gravity if you're up for the power. Say these words with me, people, come on:
"This can be done, people. Do it with me. When we pop back up on the grid on January 8, let's trade stories on what it felt like, how hard it was, and maybe how hard it actually wasn't."
Peace, JM.
———
Wise words from our buddy John Mayer there. Just so you know, we're taking his advice and are hanging up our internet connections tomorrow for a week. Sorry readers—we know you were looking forward to our CES coverage next week, but Mayer's right. Peace. We're off to do some serious defragmentation.
Image Credit: Newsgroper
No, I'm not obsessed with Saturn. OK, I am obsessed with Saturn. But so is Time, who picked this deliciously crispy photo as one of the images of the year, revealing ring bumps as high as the Rocky Mountains.
I'm not surprised, because it's a truly unique moment, one that happens at Saturn's equinox, which is an event that only happens twice in 10,179 Earth days. And this time, we had Cassini there to take this amazing photo, just when the sun illuminates the rings edge-on. As Carolyn Porco—Cassini imaging team leader—puts it:
The geometry revealed structures and phenomena in the rings we had never seen before. We saw this famous adornment spring from two dimensions into three, with some ring structures soaring as high as the Rocky Mountains. It made me feel blessed.
The team used Cassini during a week to take photos of vertical clumps in the ring, and when the equinox happened, they could measure their true size looking at the shadows. According to NASA's Bob Pappalardo at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:
It's like putting on 3-D glasses and seeing the third dimension for the first time. This is among the most important events Cassini has shown us.
Well, Bob and Carolyn, Carolyn and Bob and the rest of the Cassini team, all I can say is thank you for an amazing work, and the stunning desktop backgrounds in 2009. [NASA Full Resolution Image]
Can any one tell me how can I calculate the required power (in KW) for tower crane brand JASO model (J 140 N)? Is it by adding up all motors KWs for all movements together??
Congress is apparently not going to fix the odd dynamics of the estate tax, with awkward implications:
Starting Jan. 1, the estate tax -- which can erase nearly half of a wealthy person's estate -- goes away for a year. For families facing end-of-life decisions in the immediate future, the change is making one of life's most trying episodes only more complex.
"I have two clients on life support, and the families are struggling with whether to continue heroic measures for a few more days," says Joshua Rubenstein, a lawyer with Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP in New York. "Do they want to live for the rest of their lives having made serious medical decisions based on estate-tax law?"
The greater challenge will toward the end of 2010 if Congress has still failed to act:
Under current laws in effect until the end of this year, the size of the exemption is $3.5 million per individual or up to $7 million per couple. The tax is slated to disappear entirely on Jan 1. ...
The estate tax is scheduled to return in 2011 at a 55% rate with an exemption of slightly more than $1 million.
Thus, next December, heirs will face a strong incentive to pull the cord on ederly relatives.
The right policy is to make repeal permanent. The estate tax punishes saving relative to spending and serves mainly to prop up the incomes of estate tax lawyers and accountants.
Ohoho, this is a mod that tickles my funnybone. Remember the Dell Mini 3i Android phone, destined for China only? Some dude has taken his Inspiron Mini netbook to pieces and turned it into his take on the Dell phone.
Because after all, who doesn't want a 10.1-inch Dell phone? Err... [Shanzai via JkkMobile]
What is difference between different stamp like U , UM and UD?
Seems like Apple is not giving up on alternative control methods: They have just updated their March Wiimote-like controller patent, so that means they may still working on it. Or maybe not.
A remote wand for controlling the operations of a media system is provided. The wand may be operative to control the movement of a cursor displayed on screen by the position and orientation at which the wand is held. As the user moves the wand, the on-screen cursor may move. The user may use the wand to control a plurality of operations and applications that may be available from the media system, including for example zoom operations, a keyboard application, an image application, an illustration application, and a media application.
I wish they fixed Apple TV instead, so it could play any media, and not only iTunes-branded stuff. Actually, if I were Apple, I will forget about wands and license Microsoft Natal to integrate it in all their computers, especially the iMac. [MacRumors]
This week, a eight-year double-blind study of the nutritional supplement ginkgo biloba finally reached the pages of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Many health food stores sell ginkgo supplements to people who are hoping to improve their wits and memory, and particularly to elderly people worried about cognitive decline and dementia. But the conclusion by lead researcher Steven DeKosky? Save your money.
In the GEM [Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory] study, participants aged 72-96 years with little or no cognitive impairment were recruited from four communities in the eastern United States and received either a twice-daily dose of 120-milligrams of extract of G biloba or an identical-looking placebo [AFP]. For the more than 3,000 study participants, researchers found no difference in age-related cognitive decline—including the incidence of dementia or Alzheimer’s—between ginkgo takers and placebo takers.
What about younger people taking ginkgo? The findings don’t necessarily apply to acute use of the extract — or to younger patients who are attempting to prevent disease many years in the future. Yet DeKosky noted that “there’s nothing about antioxidants that would make you think they’d help in the short-term” [ABC News].
For more, check out this post by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy.
Related Content:
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80beats: New Theory of Alzheimer’s: Brain’s Memory Center is “Overworked”
80beats: Herbal Remedy Doesn’t Help Kids With Attention Deficit Disorder
DISCOVER: Alternative Medicine Man
Image: Wikimedia Commons / darkone
1. Build like an engineer
Everyone likes to make something fly. Try making this simple soda-straw rocket activity at home and see what it's like to be an engineer. You probably have all the required materials and the rocket takes less than 20 minutes to make. Besides having fun, you may just discover a budding engineer!
-- Soda-straw rocket instructions
2. Think like a scientist
Enroll in an after-school or summer camp science program. Visit local science museums and planetariums to learn more about the world -- and universe -- around us.
3. Educators: Get free NASA teaching materials
Visit a NASA Educator Resource Center (ERC) to receive free information and teaching materials for science and math lessons. JPL's ERC is located in Pomona, Calif. Also, check a state-by-state listing to find an ERC close to you.
-- For information about JPL's ERC, go to http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/erc.html .
-- A state-by-state listing of ERCs can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/ercn/home/ERCN_State_Listing.html .
4. Apply for internships
Internships are a great way to learn about different careers first hand. JPL and NASA offer a wide range of opportunities for students ages 16 and older. Depending on a student's level, they may be exposed to and involved in a wide range of space science activities. Interns also work with scientists and engineers and can ask them all about getting started in these fields.
-- Visit http://education.jpl.nasa.gov to find stundet opportunities at JPL.
-- To find all student opportunities offered by NASA, go to http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/current-opps-index.html .
5. Stay connected - with us!
We want to share our information, resources and cool opportunities with you.
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When I saw "Official iPhone Lego App" in my mailbox today, I got instantly wet. Then I checked it out in the iTunes App Store, and my dreams were destroyed. But when I tried it, I loved it anyway.
But then again, I'm a Lego sucker. Big time. So, while the Lego Photo application is obviously not my dream virtual Lego construction app, I definitely like it very much. It's elegant, well designed, and the results—which convert your images into pretty 1x1 Lego mosaics—are pretty.
I wish they add an option to give you a list of bricks needed to complete the mosaic in real life. [iTunes—Thanks John]
The Calabrian Peninsula appears shortened and distorted due to the extreme sideways viewing angle from the ISS. Such a perspective is termed oblique, as opposed to a nadir view, in which the astronaut is looking directly downwards towards the Earth's surface from the ISS. This highly oblique view also highlights two distinct cloud patterns over the Calabrian interior. Patchy, highly textured cumulus clouds are present at lower altitudes, while grey altostratus clouds are stretched out by prevailing winds at higher altitudes. The Strait of Messina, just visible at image upper right, marks the boundary between the coastline of Italy and the island of Sicily.
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Murmurings of an Acer Aspire packing Intel's new Pine Trail N450 processor have been doing the rounds for a while, but finally pics and more specs have been leaked, cementing the existence of this still-unofficial model.
It's a 10.1-inch model with a 1024 x 600 resolution display, and runs on the aforementioned processor, along with an Intel GMA 3150 graphics card, 1GB of RAM, and has either a 160GB or 250GB HDD. A 0.3-megapixel webcam, 5-in-1 card reader, 3 x USB ports, VGA out port and audio jacks round it off, as does the Windows 7 Starter edition OS.
It'll come in black, red, white and blue colorways, with the leaked prices so far suggesting it'll be under $300. Expect to hear more on this netbook soon, with CES just over the peak of the hill. [Netbook News]
Studies of two supernova remnants using the Japan-U.S. Suzaku observatory have revealed never-before-seen embers of the high-temperature fireballs that immediately followed the explosions. Even after thousands of years, gas within these stellar wrecks retain the imprint of temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface."This is the first evidence of a new type of supernova remnant -- one that was heated right after the explosion," said Hiroya Yamaguchi at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research in Japan.
A supernova remnant usually cools quickly due to rapid expansion following the explosion. Then, as it sweeps up tenuous interstellar gas over thousands of years, the remnant gradually heats up again.
Capitalizing on the sensitivity of the Suzaku satellite, a team led by Yamaguchi and Midori Ozawa, a graduate student at Kyoto University, detected unusual features in the X-ray spectrum of IC 443, better known to amateur astronomers as the Jellyfish Nebula.
The remnant, which lies some 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Gemini, formed about 4,000 years ago. The X-ray emission forms a roughly circular patch in the northern part of the visible nebulosity.
Suzaku's X-ray Imaging Spectrometers (XISs) separate X-rays by energy in much the same way as a prism separates light into a rainbow of colors. This allows astronomers to tease out the types of processes responsible for the radiation.
Some of the X-ray emission in the Jellyfish Nebula arises as fast-moving free electrons sweep near the nuclei of atoms. Their mutual attraction deflects the electrons, which then emit X-rays as they change course. The electrons have energies corresponding to a temperature of about 12 million degrees Fahrenheit (7 million degrees Celsius).
Several bumps in the Suzaku spectrum were more puzzling. "These structures indicate the presence of a large amount of silicon and sulfur atoms from which all electrons have been stripped away," Yamaguchi said. These "naked" nuclei produce X-rays as they recapture their lost electrons.
But removing all electrons from a silicon atom requires temperatures higher than about 30 million degrees F (17 million C); hotter still for sulfur atoms. "These ions cannot form in the present-day remnant," Yamaguchi explained. "Instead, we're seeing ions created by the enormous temperatures that immediately followed the supernova."
The team suggests that the supernova occurred in a relatively dense environment, perhaps in a cocoon of the star's own making. As a massive star ages, it sheds material in the form of an outflow called a stellar wind and creates a cocoon of gas and dust. When the star explodes, the blast wave traverses the dense cocoon and heats it to temperatures as high as 100 million degrees F (55 million C), or 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface.
Eventually, the shock wave breaks out into true interstellar space, where the gas density can be as low as a single atom per cubic centimeter -- about the volume of a sugar cube. Once in this low-density environment, the young supernova remnant rapidly expands.
The expansion cools the electrons, but it also thins the remnant's gas so much that collisions between particles become rare events. Because an atom may take thousands of years to recapture an electron, the Jellyfish Nebula's hottest ions remain even today, the astronomers reported in the Nov. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
"Suzaku sees the Jellyfish's hot heart," Ozawa said.
The team has already identified another fossil fireball in the supernova remnant known as W49B, which lies 35,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. In the Nov. 20 edition of The Astrophysical Journal, Ozawa, Yamaguchi and colleagues report X-ray emission from iron atoms that are almost completely stripped of electrons. Forming these ions requires temperatures in excess of 55 million degrees F (30 million C)-- nearly twice the observed temperature of the remnant's electrons.
Launched on July 10, 2005, Suzaku was developed at the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), which is part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in collaboration with NASA and other Japanese and U.S. institutions.
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Williams, Creamer and Noguchi are members of the station's Expedition 22 crew. Williams is a 1976 graduate of Winter High School and considers Winter his hometown.
The live call from orbit will take place between 8:40 a.m. and 9 a.m. CST during an event at Winter High School from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The event will include videos of the astronauts' launches to the orbiting outpost aboard Soyuz rockets. Additionally, Mike Simonson of Wisconsin Public Radio will display objects brought back from Williams' launch in Kazakhstan.
Students have been preparing for the downlink by studying science experiments, designing presentations and creating space and mission-themed art projects. Students also have made a welcome center in the main entrance of the school that contains a moonscape, 3-D star and planet mobiles, a spaceship and an astronaut.
The downlink is one in a series with educational organizations in the U.S. and abroad to improve teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is an integral component of Teaching From Space, a NASA Education office. Teaching From Space promotes learning opportunities and builds partnerships with the education community using the unique environment of human spaceflight.
NASA Television will air video of Williams, Creamer and Noguchi during the downlink. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:
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As Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco tells Time, "The geometry revealed structures and phenomena in the rings we had never seen before. We saw this famous adornment spring from two dimensions into three, with some ring structures soaring as high as the Rocky Mountains. It made me feel blessed."
The spectacle occurs twice during each orbit Saturn makes around the sun, which takes approximately 10,759
Earth days, or about 29.7 Earth years. Earth experiences a similar equinox phenomenon twice a year; the autumnal equinox will occur Sept. 22, when the sun will shine directly over Earth's equator.For about a week, scientists used the
Cassini orbiter to look at puffy parts of Saturn's rings caught in white glare from the low-angle lighting. Scientists have known about vertical clumps sticking out of the rings in a handful of places, but they could not directly measure the height and breadth of the undulations and ridges until Saturn's equinox revealed their shadows."It's like putting on
3-D glasses and seeing the third dimension for the first time," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is among the most important events Cassini has shown us."Time isn't the only publication recognizing
NASA for outstanding imagery this year:View my blog's last three great articles....
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It's the last day of 2009 and a fine time for the year in review. Get ready for lots of links, too.
The Caption Contest has become the most popular feature of the blog. I think this pic was my favorite.
We found a ton of cool and crazy rides on eBay this year. I really love
