NASA Video: Why the World Didn't End Yesterday

NASA delivers a video message 10 days early which explains why the world didn't end yesterday. It essentially goes through the myths of doomsday and debunks each one.

Portable Generator Recall Champion Brand - Fire Hazard

Portable Generators Recalled by Champion Power Equipment Due to Fire Hazard; Sold Exclusively at Costco

Model 41332

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.

Name of Product: Portable generators

Units: About 8,600

Manufacturer: Champion Power Equipment, of Santa Fe Springs, Calif.

Hazard: Fuel can leak from the generator's carburetor, posing a fire hazard.

Incidents/Injuries: There have been 11 reports of fuel leaking from the generators, including eight reports of the generators catching fire and two of property damage.

Description: This recall involves two models of Champion Power Equipment portable generators. Both models have a black frame with black and yellow control panels, a bar handle and two wheels.

   
Model number 41332 has an open frame. The words "Champion Power Equipment" are on the control panel and "8250 starting watts" and "6500 running watts" are on the side of the fuel tank.

  
 Model number 41532 has side panels that cover the long sides of the fuel tank. The words "Champion Power Equipment" are on the side panel above the control panel, and "9000 starting watts" and "7000 running watts" are on the control panel.

  
The model number and serial number are located on the side of the generator with the handle, on a tag on the crossbar above the yellow generator end cap.

Model Number    Serial Number Ranges
41332                  11NOV2600701 to 11NOV2601500
41532                  11NOV1400151 to 11NOV1400360
                            11DEC0700001 to 11DEC0700720
                            11DEC1301077 to 11DEC1402602
                            11DEC2201801 to 11DEC2203600
                            11DEC2501531 to 11DEC2503330
                            11DEC2801073 to 11DEC2801325

Sold exclusively at: Costco Wholesale stores nationwide from December 2011 through July 2012 for about $699.

Manufactured in: China

Remedy: Consumers should stop using the recalled generators immediately and contact Champion Power Equipment for a free repair kit to be installed by an authorized dealer. The consumer may also return the unit to Costco for a full refund.

Consumer Contact: Champion Power Equipment; toll-free at (855) 236-9424, from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT Monday through Friday, e-mail support@cpeauto.com, or online at www.championpowerequipment.com, then click on the red "Important Product Recall Notice" link for more information.

 

 

Model 41532

Location of Model Number and Serial Number

Editor's note: This info is straight out of the Consumer Product Safety Commission site. I tweeted this info last night but wanted to pass on the details. I know that a lot of those affected by Hurricane Sandy are relying on generators for temporary power so be sure to check yours out. Be safe.

 

Doomsday Clock: Another Minute Closer to Midnight

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced on January 10 that they have moved the hands of the hypothetical clock another minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.

They cited the lack of initiatives regarding climate change and rising international tensions as one of the key reasons for the adjustment.

The Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by  the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago using the imagery of apocalypse -- a countdown to midnight -- to convey the level of threats to humanity and the planet. The original time was set at 11:53pm, seven minutes to midnight.

The Bulletin is a periodical founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. The clock was initially focused on nuclear war but has since broadened to reflect other risks that could have a serious impact on human life.

Source:LiveScience

 

Related link:
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Planet in Habitable Zone: Kepler-22b

Artist's rendering of Kepler-22b

The planet-finding Kepler space mission has discovered a planet 2.4 times the diameter of Earth in the liquid water habitable zone (the region around a star where temperatures are neither too high or too low for liquid water to exist) of a star 600 light years away. This is the first confirmed planet in the habitable zone of a star to be found by Kepler, but many more may be on the way. 

The planet's confirmation was announced Monday by NASA along with other discoveries by its Kepler telescope, which was launched on a planet-hunting mission in 2009.

"This is a phenomenal discovery in the course of human history," Geoff Marcy of University of California, Berkeley, one of the pioneers of planet-hunting outside our solar system, said in an email. "This discovery shows that we Homo sapiens are straining our reach into the universe to find planets that remind us of home. We are almost there."

“Kepler 22b is exciting for two reasons; one, because it is right smack in the middle of the habitable zone,” says Natalie Batalha, Kepler’s deputy science team leader from NASA’s Ames Research Center “The second really exciting reason is that it is orbiting a star very similar to our own Sun, it’s a solar twin.”

Although the planet lies 15 percent closer to its star than Earth does to the Sun, Kepler 22b’s star is a little dimmer and cooler than the Sun, so the planet can get away with being a bit closer. However, exactly what this planet is like is a bit of a mystery: being in the habitable zone isn’t enough to state that a planet is habitable – it requires an atmosphere for starters. Worlds of this size are however a bit of a mystery at the moment.

"If this planet has a surface, it would have a very nice temperature of some 70° Fahrenheit [21°C]," says William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center here, who is the principal investigator of NASA's Kepler space telescope. "[It's] another milestone on the journey of discovering Earth's twin," adds Ames director Simon "Pete" Worden.

Unfortunately, the true nature of the planet, named Kepler-22b, remains unknown. It is 2.4 times the size of Earth, but its mass, and hence its composition, has not yet been determined. "There's a good chance it could be rocky," Borucki says, although he adds that the planet would probably contain huge amounts of compressed ice, too. It might even have a global ocean. "We have no planets like this in our own solar system."

The planet is 600 light years away. Each light year is 5.9 trillion miles. It would take a space shuttle about 22 million years to get there.

Watch the press conference announcing the discovery of Kepler 22b (vid is over an hour long)

A shorter news coverage of the findings:

First Lab-Grown Blood Transfusion a Success

Researchers at Pierre and Marie Curie University have successfully completed the first-ever artificial blood transfusion after extracting stem cells from a patient's bone marrow, which were then used to grow the red blood cells under laboratory settings.

"After five days, 94 to 100 percent of the blood cells remained circulating in the body. After 26 days, 41 to 63 percent remained, which is a normal survival rate for naturally produced blood cells." The cells carried oxygen throughout the patient's body, just as normal red blood cells would.

"The results show promise that an unlimited blood reserve is within reach," says Luc Douay, of Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris. The transfusion's success is an important step towards mass produced artificial blood. Only a small amount of blood was transfused in the experiment. A complete real-life transfusion would require 200 times the amount of blood used by Douay.

[Source: New Scientist]

75% of Honey in U.S. Groceries are Fake

Most of the honey sold in chain stores across the country doesn't meet international quality standards for the sweet stuff, according to a Food Safety News analysis released this week.

One of the nation's leading melissopalynologists analyzed more than 60 jugs, jars and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia for pollen content, Food Safety News said. He found that pollen was frequently filtered out of products labeled "honey." "The removal of these microscopic particles from deep within a flower would make the nectar flunk the quality standards set by most of the world's food safety agencies," the report says. "Without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources."

Why does it matter where your honey comes from? An earlier Food Safety News investigation found that at least a third of all the honey consumed in the United States was likely smuggled from China and could be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals.

Foreign honey also puts a squeeze on American beekeepers, who have been lobbying for years for an enforceable national standard to prevent foreign honey from flooding the market.

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says that any product that's been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen isn't honey. However, the FDA isn't checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.

The food safety divisions of the  World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others also have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey came from legitimate and safe sources.

Ultra filtering is a high-tech procedure where honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the source of the honey. It is a spin-off of a technique refined by the Chinese, who have illegally dumped tons of their honey - some containing illegal antibiotics - on the U.S. market for years.

Some of the findings:
76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald's and KFC had the pollen removed.

Every one of the samples Food Safety News bought at farmers markets, co-ops and "natural" stores like PCC and Trader Joe's had the full, anticipated, amount of pollen.

And if you have to buy at major grocery chains, the analysis found that your odds are somewhat better of getting honey that wasn't ultra-filtered if you buy brands labeled as organic. Out of seven samples tested, five (71 percent) were heavy with pollen. All of the organic honey was produced in Brazil, according to the labels.

________

Note:  Another reason to buy from your local farmer's market and beekeepers.

[Source: Food Safety News, CNN]

The Christmas Tree Tax brought to you by the Agriculture Dept.

One of Christmas' most recognizable symbols apparently needs a PR campaign -- and a new tax to pay for it.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the green light to a new 15-cent tax on live Christmas trees on Tuesday in order to pay for a new board tasked with promoting the Christmas tree industry.

The new fee and board were announced in the Federal Register on Tuesday, to be effective Wednesday. According to the Agriculture Department announcement, the government will impose a 15-cent-per-tree charge on "producers and importers" of fresh Christmas trees, provided they sell or import more than 500 trees a year. 

The change quickly drew opposition from Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who vowed to fight what he described as a "Grinch" move by the administration. "It is shocking that President Obama tried to sneak through this new tax on Christmas trees," Scalise said in a statement Wednesday.

The program and fee, though, were supported by some in the Christmas tree industry. The money is not meant to pay down the debt or fund any other program. The Agriculture Department-imposed tax is designed to go back into the new Christmas Tree Promotion Board.

The board, proposed earlier this year, is the culmination of a years-long effort by the fresh Christmas tree industry to promote itself, according to the background provided in the Federal Register. The industry has faced increasing competition from producers of artificial trees, but efforts to collect voluntary contributions for a fresh-tree marketing campaign have repeatedly run out of funding. So the government stepped in to mandate a fee to support the promotion board.

Heritage Foundation Vice President David Addington, who first reported on the rule on his blog Tuesday evening, said there are two problems with the new fee. First, he said it's likely the 15 percent fee will be passed on to consumers. Second, he said it's inappropriate for the government to be putting its "thumb on the scale," helping out the fresh-tree sellers and not the artificial-tree sellers.

"If it's one thing I think the free market could handle, it's letting people decide what kind of tree they want to buy for Christmas," Addington told FoxNews.com.

But Agriculture Department spokesman Michael T. Jarvis defended the program, saying it's along the lines of over 20 other promotional programs supported by the department, such as the "got milk" campaign.

"It's worked great for beef, pork, chicken, eggs," he added.

Jarvis also insisted the fee does not count as a tax, since the industry is effectively "assessing themselves."

"This one's not a tax," he said.

The industry itself further rejected the claim that the fee would be passed onto consumers. The National Christmas Tree Association said in a statement that the program "is not expected to have any impact on the final price consumers pay for their Christmas tree."

The group said most growers who weighed in on the proposal were in favor of it.

According to the Federal Register, the new board is supposed to launch a "program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry's position in the marketplace."

As part of that job, the board has been charged with improving the image of both Christmas trees and the industry itself. After three years, an industry-wide referendum will be held to determine whether to renew the program.

The tax was requested by the Christmas Tree Checkoff Task Force, an industry group, worried by declining market-share for fresh-cut trees.

Per the rule:

According to additional data supplied by the Task Force, the market share of fresh Christmas trees in the U.S. from 1965 to 2008 has declined by 6 percent. In comparison, the market share of artificial trees has increased 655 percent from 1965 to 2008


_________________________________________

(On a slightly humorous, mildly snarky) Note:
First off, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there's such a thing as a Christmas Tree Checkoff Task Force. Seriously? That sounds like something out of Tim Allen's Santa Clause movies.

Taxing Christmas trees to help promote it? It's a pretty popular holiday symbol as it is, it doesn't need anyone's PR help.

As lovely as they look and smell, live Christmas trees are overrated, high maintenance, not very eco-friendly at all and for the most obvious practical reason - it's too much cleanup. You ever have one of those guys cut the trunk off way too high and you're left with a stump to try to ram down the tree stand. So what happens is that you end up having a wobbly, wonky tree that you try to counterbalance and offset with more ornaments on one side...you get the point. I think I still have pine needles in the back of my truck from last year's tree.

This year, we're welcoming back the artificial Christmas tree into our home.

Remember, remember the 5th of November (Guy Fawkes, Occupy Movement, Operation Cashback)

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

Over in Britain, the 5th of November becomes a special night where people up and down the country let off fireworks and light bonfires to celebrate Bonfire Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Night.

The tradition stems back to the events of the 5th November 1605. Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder plot, was caught guarding explosives which were set to go off under the House of Lords – in an attempt to assassinate King James I whilst he attended the State Opening of Parliament. Guy Fawkes was then found guilty and hung, drawn, and quartered; a rather grizzly end.

With the plot failed, the government proclaimed the 5th of November as a day of thanksgiving and since then celebrations in one form or another have taken place across the country on this day.

Most local towns and villages nowadays will have a fireworks display, and will occasionally burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes on the large communal bonfire.

***
You may have recognized the photo above as a still from the film V for Vendetta, based on the comic book series by Alan Moore.

From wikipedia:
The series depicts a near-future UK after a nuclear war, which has left much of the world destroyed, though most of the damage to the country is indirect, via floods and crop failures. In this future, a fascist party called "Norsefire" has exterminated its opponents in concentration camps and now rules the country as a police state. "V", an anarchist revolutionary dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask, begins an elaborate, violent, and intentionally theatrical campaign to murder his former captors, bring down the government, and convince the people to rule themselves.

The face of "V" is also being used today by many of the Occupy protestors as a sign of discontent.

Today many customers of big banks are transferring their money into smaller local institutions such as credit unions to show solidarity with the ever-growing Occupy movement. You can read my Bank Transfer Day / Move Your Money Project post from yesterday.

There's also been word that the hacktivist group Anonymous will host a series of attacks on various institutions waged by members of the online collective Anonymous. Among the rumored targets this weekend include Fox News, Facebook and a notorious Mexican drug cartel. 

Anonymous posted a video on YouTube regarding this:

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." - V


"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -  John F. Kennedy

Food Price Inflation, Job Loss, & the National Debt

More stores closing, more jobs lost:

The Gap plans on closing 189 locations or 21% of its namesake stores (Old Navy and Banana Republic) by the end of 2013 but plans to open more stores in China (from 15 by end of the year to 45 by end of next year).

Discount retailer Syms and its subsidiary Filene's Basement have filed for bankruptcy protection and plan to close all 46 of their stores.

**********

1 in 15 people in America now living in poverty.

44 million + (15%)  Americans are benefiting from Food Stamp (Supplemental Nutrition Assurance Program) program. The program is facing possible cuts as policymakers search for new ways to curb the rising cost.

National debt is closing in on the $15 Trillion mark. 

 

 From Treasury Direct

Food price inflation:

The price of food is expected to increase 3.5 to 4.5 percent this year overall

With Halloween over, the nation’s thoughts turn now to Thanksgiving.  This most American of holidays is a cornucopia of culinary delights -turkey and dressing; mashed potatoes and gravy; cranberry sauce and all the other traditional Thanksgiving dishes which are at the heart of this celebration.

One of the greatest aspects of life in this country is the fact that overall, we as Americans enjoy a true abundance of food. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, this year U.S. farmers are expected to produce 750 million pounds of cranberries, along with 2.4 billion pounds of sweet potatoes, 1.1 billion pounds of pumpkins and more than 2 billion bushels of wheat, the essential ingredient for bread, rolls and pie crust. The typical American consumes 13.3 pounds of turkey each year, with no doubt a hearty helping eaten at Thanksgiving time.  As you may have noticed if you have visited the grocery store recently, prices for all this abundance have been on the rise. Thus, the question is: how much more will the Thanksgiving feast cost us this year?

Price inflation is measured by the changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).  The CPI is a measure of the level of average prices paid by urban consumers for a defined market basket of goods and services, including food.  The CPI for “food at home” is a component of the full CPI and is the principal indicator of changes in retail food prices. Thus, the CPI for food consumed at home and its changes are an accurate measure of price inflation for food items.

The 6.3% rise in “food at home” prices over the year has been much higher than the 3.9% increase in overall prices.  Food commodities such as soybeans, corn and wheat, along with energy prices, have increased over the past year. These increases, combined with a weak U.S. dollar, have caused most of the grocery store price increases which have been observed in 2011.  Several key ingredients for the Thanksgiving feast have risen substantially over the past year, including turkey, which is up 7 percent to an average of $1.68 a pound.  So, that 10-pound turkey, which cost $15.66 last year, is going to set you back $16.80 this year.  Other food items with above average price increases include: white potatoes, up 23%, dairy products, up 10.2%, fats and oils, up 11.3% and fruits and vegetables, up 6.7%.  Thanksgiving dinner is still going to be well within the reach of most American families, but it is going to be more expensive this year.

The Move Your Money Project - Nov. 5 is Bank Transfer Day

Saturday, Nov. 5, has been declared Bank Transfer Day as thousands of people around the country are set to transferring their money from large corporate banks to small banks & credit unions.


The Move Your Money project is a campaign that aims to empower individuals and institutions to divest from the nation's largest Wall Street banks and move to local financial institutions.

According to Huffington Post:

People fed up with the nation's biggest banks, whose casino-style investment practices are partly responsible for the financial crisis, are pledging to move their money  to small community banks and credit unions. They're taking the power into their own hands and voting with their dollars to help put an end to predatory lending, outrageous fees and impersonal service.

Many are transferring to credit unions instead. 


From Reuters:
The credit unions pulled in some 650,000 new customers since September 29, when Bank of America announced it would add a $5-a-month debit card fee, an industry trade group reported. Deposits from new customers surged to $4.5 billion, according to the survey released Thursday of 5,000 credit unions by the Credit Union National Association.

More info at Move Your Money Project

12% of Americans have no bank accounts

More people in the Southeast don’t have bank accounts than in any other part of the country. Mississippi leads the country with more than 16% of households using cash-and-carry for all their transactions.


A new interactive map released by Wednesday by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows state-by-state comparisons for median bank fees and policies, as well as percentage of households that don’t have a bank account, across the United States.

The national median monthly fee for a checking account is $8.95 — or more than $107 per year. The national median minimum combined balance to avoid a monthly fee is $2,500.

But with fees rising for accounts at the biggest banks — and with the median income falling — more Americans could find themselves on the margins of the banking system, and unable to afford an account. Amenities that are part of having a bank account, including checking, savings, and access to credit, could slip out of reach for more millions. Today, many people without bank account rely on borrowing money from friends and family, or from payday loan operators, short-term lenders that charge interest rates of up to 400% annually.

In eight states and the District of Columbia, at least 10% of households don’t have any kind of bank account, according to the Pew Trust data. Overall, around 12% of all Americans do not have any financial institution to call their own, based on 2009 data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

States with the fewest number of account-less households are clustered in northern New England, as well as Washington, Montana, Utah and Minnesota. Utah has the smallest percentage of unbanked households: Just 1.7% of households are unaffiliated with a financial institution.

People without a bank account also have trouble moving up the social ladder, as their lack of one puts things like mortgage loans out of reach.

“We know that those who are banked are much better able to save for long-term goals,” says Susan Weinstock, director of the Safe Checking in the Electronic Age project for the Pew Trusts.

[Source Daily Finance]

Note: Just a quickie interesting addition to this - I just read that Bank of America has decided to drop the $5 month debit card fees after the public backlash. 

SkyLifter, a Flying Inflatable Saucer, Could Carry Entire Buildings

A new airship that is part flying saucer and part blimp could soon carry entire buildings and offer airgoers a fresh way to travel and explore.

Called the SkyLifter and currently in development by an Australian company  of the same name, the concept airship relies on a lighter-than-air chamber for its buoyancy, just like a blimp or a balloon. But rather than a standard spherical, cigar, or "bomb" profile for its air-filled envelope, or aerostat, the SkyLifter has a flat, disk shape.

This innovative, flying saucer-esque configuration does not catch the wind like a sail as much as some other airship designs, and in effect gives the craft greater directional control even in gusty conditions, its designers said.

As a bonus, its discus shape means the SkyLifter does not have a "front" or "back" and can therefore cruise to a destination or maneuver in tight quarters regardless of its orientation.

The flying saucer-shaped aerostat also doubles as a stabilizing parachute when the SkyLifter is vertically setting down cargo. This payload is suspended well below the hovering aerostat for balance, somewhat like a light weight on the end of a balloon string.

So-called Voith Schneider propellers placed around the aerostat and the flight deck pod above the payload module provide both thrust and steering. Solar panels placed across the top of the aerostat and biodiesel engines power the aircraft.

As drawn up by its engineers, the SkyLifter should have an airspeed of about 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour, giving it a range of about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) in a day, an expected operational period. The dirigible could be set up for low, ground-swooping or for higher atmospheric flight.

The aerostat itself spans some 492 feet (150 meter) in diameter, or about twice the length of a double-decker, wide-body Airbus A380 airplane. Given this setup, SkyLifter's designers said it can carry more than seven times the payload of today's heavy cargo helicopters.

That rounds out to a payload of 165 tons (150 tonnes), enough to transport good-sized, prefabricated buildings, for example, into a rural area. In this way, the SkyLifter could serve as an airship for disaster relief, floating in tons of supplies, or a mobile hospital capable of airlifting out 1,200 people in a single run.

Regular, non-emergency construction purposes, of course, could also be well-met by such a craft, and recreational possibilities abound. (The company has already hinted at a luxury "SkyPalace" module that could stand in for oceanliners.)

For investor reasons, Skylifter is mum when it comes to costs, but the company plans to offer leasing and licensing for its vehicles similar to standard helicopter business agreements.

SkyLifter continues ramping up toward a full-scale production model. A miniature remote-controlled prototype dubbed Betty with 10 foot- (three meter-) diameter aerostat has carried a payload of a about one pound (500 grams) in the lab. A tethered outdoor version called Vikki with a saucer span of 60 feet (18 meter) is being put through its paces.

Next up is a 75 foot (23 meter) aerostat-craft – Nikki – that would leave its moorings for test flights, and in several years, a complete airship nicknamed Lucy might just usher in the era of the SkyLifter.

For more info check out: Sky Lifter

[Via Tech News Daily]

A more secure smart power grid

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is on the front lines of securing the emerging smart power grid against potential security threats.

Located in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the laboratory recently won about $7 million in Department of Energy solicitations to develop safeguarding systems against outages caused by nature or manmade threats such as computer hacking.

The smart grid -- a system in which home and municipal utility meters are run through a central hub and monitored and operated over the Internet -- has been a cause of some concern for security experts because of the large scale damage that could arise if it was corrupted.

"A stable electric grid is of huge importance now and will become even more important in the future as we move toward electrification of our transportation system," said Tom King of ORNL's Energy Efficiency and Electricity Technology program.

To that end, ORNL will put its money towards developing several security technologies, including a system for automated software vulnerability detection. Carnegie Mellon University and EnerNext Corp. are partners on that project.

ORNL will also pursue an advanced radio technology called the Next-Generation Secure, Scalable Communications Network. The radio is inherently secure, and will replace the current wireless technology used in smart grids. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Virginia Tech, and Kenexis and Opus Consulting will partner on that research.

[Source: Tech News Daily]

NASA Tells Us That Life As We Know It, Isn't

Image from Rosemary Bliss on Flickr

 

This post was written by contributing writer Noel F. Gayle

Above is one of the many pictures of Mono Lake in California that will be popping up across the internet in the next few days. It was here that Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geomicrobiologist and NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow and colleagues found the organism that would bear out their theories. The previously assumed six essential elements of life are Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulphur (CHNOPS). Phosphorus and Arsenic are back to back on the periodic table and are so close that Arsenic is able to piggy back on the systems that phosphorus uses, injecting itself into cells and leading to cell death. Wolfe-Simon believed them to be close enough that one should be able to be substituted for the other within the workings of the cell, despite Arsenic's extreme toxicity to living organisms.

Mono Lake is an Endorheic or closed basin, having no outlet or connection to the ocean and being the end of the line for water runoff in its local watershed. Any salts dissolved in the runoff end up there and stay there, leading to the very high levels of salinity present in the lake. All organisms living in and off of the lake are adapted to these conditions. It was here that Wolfe-Simon and colleagues came seeking her organism.

"Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues collected mud from the lake and added the samples to an artificial salt medium lacking phosphate but high in arsenate. They then performed a series of dilutions intended to wash out any phosphate remaining in the solution and replace it with arsenate. They found that one type of microbe in the mix seemed to grow faster than others."

This organism, designated GFAJ-1, apparently flourished despite its isolation from phosphate, an integral ingredient for energy transfer within an cell. Upon closer inspection, the arsenic was found to be present in all the areas they would have expected to see phosphorus, in similar amounts.

This has shaken up the scientific community, who now have to come to terms with the possibility that their belief that CHNOPS, the acronym of the six elements mentioned above, was at the basis of all life. Wolfe-Simon has hailed this development as essential to understanding "the essential flexibility of life." Phosphorus is an essential part of energy transference within a cell, as well as being the primary ingredient of the backbone of our DNA.

Many are skeptical about the announced findings, suggesting a range of theories to explain how arsenic could appear to be substituting itself  for phosphorus without actually doing so. Others suggest that the cells might only be using the Arsenic in specific places, not the widespread integration that the findings might suggest. Whatever the outcome of that debate, Wolfe-Simon herself acknowledges that there is a lot of work still to be done. "We still have 30 years of work ahead to figure out what's going on."

[Sources: Nature.com , Wired.com]

Destination Space for Virgin Galactic

UPHAM, N.M. — Virgin Galactic's Sir Richard Branson, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and prospective astronauts gathered in the southern New Mexico desert Friday to celebrate the completion of the runway at the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport.

Spaceport America is the world's first facility designed specifically to launch commercial spacecraft. The celebration of its nearly-two-mile-long runway comes less than two weeks after another major step for Virgin Galactic: the first solo glide flight of its space tourism rocket ship.

"Today is very personal as our dream becomes more real," Branson said. "People are beginning to believe now. I think the drop flight two weeks ago, which went beautifully, I think it made people sit up and realize this is really reality."

The British billionaire said the next is more rocket testing, and getting the vehicle called SpaceShipTwo into space. He said he expects flights for space tourists to begin in nine to 18 months, and he will be among the first passengers.

Stretching across a flat dusty plain 45 miles north of Las Cruces, the runway is designed to support almost every aircraft in the world, day-to-day space tourism and payload launch operations.
Virgin Galactic is the anchor tenant of the taxpayer-funded spaceport and plans to use the facility to take tourists on what will first be short hops into space. State officials want to add companies for other commercial space endeavors, such as research and payload delivery missions.

"Each flight we make, we'll learn more, we'll experience, we'll open up more opportunities that we cannot even conceive of today," Branson said. "This history, we're making it right now."
Virgin Galactic's White Knight Two — the special jet-powered mothership that will carry SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude — also made an appearance Friday, passing over the spaceport several times before landing on the new runway.

Tickets for suborbital space rides aboard SpaceShipTwo cost $200,000. The 2½-hour flights will include about five minutes of weightlessness. Some 380 customers have already made deposits totaling more than $50 million, Virgin Galactic officials said Friday.

Branson, the president of Virgin Group, which counts airlines, entertainment and mobile communications among its businesses, partnered with famed aviation designer Burt Rutan on the venture.

Until now, space travel has been limited to astronauts and a handful of wealthy people who have shelled out millions to ride Russian rockets to the international space station.

Some of the soon-to-be astronauts attended Friday's runway dedication, joined by Buzz Aldrin, who walked on the moon in 1969 as part of NASA's Apollo 11 mission.

While space tourism projects such as Virgin Galactic's venture receive plenty of publicity, the commercial space industry is seeing rapid developments with companies like SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., seeking to win NASA work to supply the International Space Station.

SpaceX has successfully placed a dummy payload into orbit and has contracts to lift satellites next. Other firms, including Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., and Armadillo Aerospace of Rockwell, Texas, are testing systems that would carry unmanned payloads to space.

Last month, Congress approved legislation that affirms President Barack Obama's intent to use commercial carriers to lift humans into near-Earth space.

 

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[Source Virgin Galactic and AP]

Solar power plane takes flight

On September 21, 2010, Swiss company Solar Impulse  flew its first solar powered plane from Payerne to Geneva. André Borschberg, pilot and co-founder of Solar Impulse, notes the significance of this flight, saying, “the Swiss solar flights represent a major step forward for our team, taking us away from our customary airspace. We have learned to work together with international airports, merging in with the heavy Swiss air traffic.”The pioneering flight lasted about four hours and twenty minutes, with the plane’s speed averaging 50 km/h. The solar plane is powered by four electric motors that produce up to 10 hp, and by 12,000 solar cells, which charge the batteries enough for flights to be taken at nighttime, as well. The time has finally come; not only can we create cars and businesses that let out zero-emissions, but airplanes as well.

This plane is scheduled to fly internationally by 2011 and trans-Atlantic by 2012. The team–comprised of Bertrand Piccard, André Borschberg and Raymond Clerc, among others–is already in the process of creating a faster and more efficient plane, one they hope to fly around the globe by 2013. The company hopes to inspire the next generation of aviators and engineers. Bertrand Piccard believes that “using the solar plane as a symbol, our goal is to promote the pioneering spirit in young people, making them aware of the importance of renewable energy, energy saving and new technologies.”

 [Source:  Olive Branch]

Earth rivers in crisis according to latest study

 

Click here for larger image

The world's rivers are in crisis, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology and the City College of New York (CCNY) that is published in the Sept. 30, 2010 issue of the scientific journal Nature. The study, led by UW-Madison limnologist and professor of zoology Peter McIntyre and CCNY modeler Charles Vörösmarty, combines, for the first time, indices of water security and biodiversity for all of the world's rivers, many of which are severely degraded due to issues of pollution, water diversion and introduced species.

The world's rivers, the single largest renewable water resource for humans and a crucible of aquatic biodiversity, are in a crisis of ominous proportions, according to a new global analysis.

The report, published on Sept. 30 in the journal Nature, is the first to simultaneously account for the effects of such things as pollution, dam building, agricultural runoff, the conversion of wetlands and the introduction of exotic species on the health of the world's rivers.

The resulting portrait of the global riverine environment, according to the scientists who conducted the analysis, is grim. It reveals that nearly 80 percent of the world's human population lives in areas where river waters are highly threatened posing a major threat to human water security and resulting in aquatic environments where thousands of species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.

"Rivers around the world really are in a crisis state," says Peter B. McIntyre, a senior author of the new study and a professor of zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Limnology.

The Nature report was authored by an international team co-led by Charles J. Vörösmarty of the City University of New York, an expert on global water resources, and McIntyre, an expert on freshwater biodiversity.

Examining the influence of numerous types of threats to water quality and aquatic life across all of the world's river systems, the study is the first to explicitly assess both human water security and biodiversity in parallel. Fresh water is widely regarded as the world's most essential natural resource, underpinning human life and economic development as well as the existence of countless organisms ranging from microscopic life to fish, amphibians, birds and terrestrial animals of all kinds.

Over many millennia, humans have exerted an increasingly pervasive influence on fresh water resources. Rivers, in particular, have attracted humans and have been altered through damming, irrigation and other agricultural and engineering practices since the advent of civilization. In recent times, chemical pollution, burgeoning human populations, and the accidental as well as purposeful global redistribution of plants, fish, and other animal species have had far-reaching effects on rivers and their aquatic inhabitants.

"Flowing rivers represent the largest single renewable water resource for humans," notes Vörösmarty. "What we've discovered is that when you map out these many sources of threat, you see a fully global syndrome of river degradation."

What jumps out, say McIntyre and Vörösmarty, is that rivers in different parts of the world are subject to similar types of stresses, such things as agricultural intensification, industrial development, river habitat modification and other factors. Compounding the problem is that some of the negative influences on rivers arrive in indirect ways. Mercury pollution, for example, is a byproduct of electricity generation at coal-fired power plants and pollutes surface water via the atmosphere.

"We find a real stew of chemicals
flowing through our waterways," explains Vörösmarty, noting that the study represents a state-of-the-art summary, yet was unable to account for such things as threats from mining, the growing number of pharmaceuticals found in surface water and the synergistic effects of all the stresses affecting rivers.

"And what we're doing is treating the symptoms of a larger problem," Vörösmarty explains. "We know it is far more cost effective to protect these water systems in the first place. So the current emphasis on treating the symptoms rather than the underlying causes makes little sense from a water security standpoint or a biodiversity standpoint, or for that matter an economic standpoint."

Among the startling conclusions of the study is that rivers in the developed world, including much of the United States and Western Europe, are under severe threat despite decades of attention to pollution control and investments in environmental protection. Huge investments in water technology and treatment reduce threats to humans, but mainly in developed nations, and leave biodiversity in both developed and developing countries under high levels of threat, according to the new report.

"What made our jaws drop is that some of the highest threat levels in the world are in the United States and Europe," says McIntyre, who began work on the project as a Smith Fellow at the University of Michigan. "Americans tend to think water pollution problems are pretty well under control, but we still face enormous challenges."

The hard lessons learned by the developed world, says McIntyre, can help governments and planners in other parts of the world avoid making the same mistakes and experiment with new strategies for promoting water security and protecting biodiversity. Instead of investing billions of dollars in expensive remediation technologies, strategies such as protecting watersheds, for example, can reduce the costs of drinking water treatment, preserve floodplains for flood protection and enhance rural livelihoods.

Rivers of the world least at risk are those where human populations are smallest. Rivers in arctic regions and relatively inaccessible areas of the tropics appear to be in the best health.

The analysis used data sets on river stressors around the world. Built into state-of-the-art computer models, the data yield maps that integrate all of the individual stressors into aggregate indices of threat. The same strategy and data, say Vörösmarty and McIntyre, can be used by governments worldwide to assess river health and improve approaches to protecting human and biodiversity interests.

"We've created a systematic framework to look at the human water security and biodiversity domains on an equal footing," Vörösmarty says. "We can now begin presenting different options to decision makers to create environmental blueprints for the future."

[Source: Phys Org]

Mayan Calendar accuracy questioned

For nearly half a century, Maya scholars have relied on a fixed numerical value called the GMT constant as a means of correlating the dates on the ancient Maya calendar with those on the Gregorian - or modern - calendar.

Now, however, research conducted by Gerardo Aldana, associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara, suggests that the GMT constant - which has never actually been proved conclusively - could be inaccurate by 50 to 100 years, or more. Aldana’s findings challenge the accepted Gregorian dates of all Classic Mayan historical events, as well as the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it 2012 prophecies. His research is included in “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010), the second in a series edited by John Steele, associate professor of Egyptology and Ancient West Asian Studies at Brown University.

Aldana’s research, in general, focuses on reconstructing Mayan astronomical practices, which for the most part can be recovered from their applications. Most of the data found in the archeological record amount to ritual events timed by astronomical phenomena; architecture oriented to observable astronomical events; or numerology tying together science, history, and religion with hieroglyphic inscriptions carved in stone.

“One of the principal complications is that there are really so few scholars who know the astronomy, the epigraphy, and the archeology,” said Aldana. “Because there are so few people who are working on that, you get people who don’t see the full scope of the problem. And because they don’t see the full scope, they buy things they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s a fun problem.”

For this article, however, Aldana turned the lens away from just the archaeological record to include a critical attention to the methods used by modern scholars to access the astronomical events viewed by ancient astronomers.

The GMT constant, which is based in part on astronomical events, is named for early Mayanists Joseph Goodman, Juan Martinez-Hernandez, and J. Eric S. Thompson. Each contributed to its calculation. “Goodman worked at the turn of the 20th century, and Martinez shortly thereafter,” said Aldana. “Neither of them found much of a following because at the time, the work of Sylvanus Morley and Herbert Spinden was considered the strongest.”

According to Aldana, the early work of Goodman, Martinez, Morley, and Spinden put heavy emphasis on the dates recovered from colonial documents written in Mayan languages and recorded in the Latin alphabet. “Thompson did a much more thorough job of addressing as much data as possible,” Aldana said.

Aldana’s article centers, for the most part, on the work of Floyd Lounsbury, an American linguist, anthropologist, and Mayanist scholar and epigrapher. Lounsbury examined the problem of the GMT constant by focusing on the data in the Dresden Codex Venus Table, a combination calendar and almanac that charts specific dates related to the movements of Venus.

“Astronomy had been considered in the past, but none had put the emphasis on the Venus Table as much as Lounsbury did,” explained Aldana. “As I demonstrate in the article, he took the position that his work removed the last obstacle to fully accepting the GMT constant. Others took his work even further, suggesting that he had proven the GMT constant to be correct. Because of its convenience for specific types of research, et cetera, the acceptance of the GMT in scholarly circles today is very close to unanimous.”

However, Aldana’s review of Lounsbury’s conclusions demonstrates that they are far from irrefutable. “This may not seem to be much, but what it does is destabilize the entire argument,” he said. “If the Venus Table cannot be used to prove the GMT as Lounsbury suggests, its acceptance depends on the reliability of the corroborating data. The rest of the article historically unpacks each element of corroborating data to show that they are even less stable and/or persuasive than the Venus data. And the overall argument behind the GMT constant falls like a stack of cards.”

Although he identifies the problems of the GMT constant, Aldana, who is not the first to question the calendar correlation, offers neither a solution nor a replacement. In line with the volume, his goal is simply to study the soundness of the arguments presented in support of - and in opposition to - the GMT constant and attempts others have made at identifying a solution. “A few scholars have stood up and said, ‘No, the GMT is wrong,’” said Aldana. “But in my opinion, what they’ve done is try to provide alternatives without looking at why the GMT is wrong in the first place.”

A sound demonstration of the incorrectness of the GMT is a necessary first step in deriving a sound replacement, he said.

[Source: Independent]

Stretchable electronic skin by Nokia

Nokia has started work on a kind of stretchable electronic skin which are flexible, relying on evaporated gold as a conductor to deliver an electronic touchpad which can be stretched like a rubber band without sacrificing functionality.

The team at Nokia Research Center, based in Cambridge have been able to create a stretchable electronic touchpad, able to stretch by up to 20 per cent of its original length without affecting performance.




From Nokia site:

The potential application: This research has at its heart new form factors for devices of the future. The possibilities might sound hard to believe, but working technology which can be twisted and distorted like a rubber band could enable a unique range of wearable devices or even enable technology to feasibly become part of our clothing. After we’d seen it, the talk from the group was of us having completely different ways of us interacting with technology in the future. What is solid and known to us right now, could be flexible and entirely different in the future.

 

[Source Nokia Conversations]

Can new planet be Earth 2?

An Earth-size planet has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold — comfortable enough for life to exist, researchers announced on September 29.
If confirmed, the exoplanet, named Gliese 581g,  would be the first Earth-like world found residing in a star's habitable zone — a region where a planet's temperature could sustain liquid water on its surface.

And the planet's discoverers are optimistic about the prospects for finding life there.

"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent," said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. "I have almost no doubt about it."

His colleague, Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Washington, D.C., wasn't willing to put a number on the odds of life, though he admitted he's optimistic.

"It's both an incremental and monumental discovery," Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told SPACE.com. Incremental because the method used to find Gliese 581g already has found several planets most of the known planets, both super-Earths, more massive than our own world outside their stars' habitable zone, along with non-Earth-like planets within the habitable zone.

"It really is monumental if you accept this as the first Earth-like planet ever found in the star's habitable zone," said Seager, who was not directly involved in the discovery.

Vogt, Butler and their colleagues will detail the planet finding in the Astrophysical Journal.

The newfound planet joins more than 400 other alien worlds known to date. Most are huge gas giants, though several are just a few times the mass of Earth.

Stellar tugs

Gliese 581g is one of two new worlds the team discovered orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581, bumping that nearby star's family of planets to six. The other newfound planet, Gliese 581f, is outside the habitable zone, researchers said.

The star is located 20 light-years from Earth in the constellation Libra. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km).

Red dwarf stars are about 50 times dimmer than our sun. Since these stars are so much cooler, their planets can orbit much closer to them and still remain in the habitable zone.

Estimates suggest Gliese 581g is 0.15 astronomical units from its star, close enough to its star to be able to complete an orbit in just under 37 days. One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and sun, which is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km).

The Gliese 581 planet system now vaguely resembles our own, with six worlds orbiting their star in nearly circular paths.

With support from the National Science Foundation and NASA, the scientists — members of the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey — collected 11 years of radial velocity data on the star. This method looks at a star's tiny movements due to the gravitational tug from orbiting bodies.

The subtle tugs let researchers estimate the planet's mass and orbital period, how long it takes to circle its star.

Gliese 581g has a mass three to four times Earth's, the researchers estimated. From the mass and estimated size, they said the world is probably a rocky planet with enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere.

The planet is tidally locked to its star, so that one side basks in perpetual daylight, while the other side remains in darkness. This locked configuration helps to stabilize the planet's surface climate, Vogt said.

"Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude," Vogt said, suggesting that life forms that like it hot would just scoot toward the light side of that line while forms with polar-bear-like preferences would move toward the dark side.

Between blazing heat on the star-facing side and freezing cold on the dark side, the average  surface temperature may range from 24 degrees below zero to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 to minus 12 degrees Celsius), the researchers said.

Are you sure?

Supposedly habitable worlds have been found and later discredited, so what makes this one such a breakthrough?

There's still a chance that further observations will dismiss this planet, also. But over the years, the radial velocity method has become more precise, the researchers point out in their journal article.

In addition, the researchers didn't make some of the unrealistic assumptions made in the past, Seager said.

For instance, another planet orbiting Gliese 581 (the planet Gliese 581c) also had been considered to have temperatures suitable for life, but in making those calculations, the researchers had come up with an "unrealistic" estimate for the amount of energy the planet reflected, Seager pointed out. That type of estimate wasn't made for this discovery.

"We're looking at this one as basically the tip of the iceberg, and we're expecting more to be found," Seager said.

One way to make this a reality, according to study researchers, would be "to build dedicated 6- to 8-meter-class Automated Planet Finder telescopes, one in each hemisphere," they wrote.

The telescopes — or "light buckets" as Seager referred to them —  would be dedicated to spying on the nearby stars thought to potentially host Earth-like planets in their habitable zones. The result would be inexpensive and probably would reveal many other nearby potentially habitable planets, the researchers wrote.

Beyond the roughly 100 nearest stars to Earth, there are billions upon billions of stars in the Milky Way, and with that in mind, the researchers suggest tens of billions of potentially habitable planets may exist, waiting to be found.

Planets like Gliese 581g that are tidally locked and orbit the habitable zone of red dwarfs have a high probability of harboring life, the researchers suggest.

Earth once supported harsh conditions, the researchers point out. And since red dwarfs are relatively "immortal" living hundreds of billions of years (many times the current age of the universe), combined with the fact that conditions stay so stable on a tidally locked planet, there's a good chance that if life were to get a toe-hold it would be able to adapt to those conditions and possibly take off, Butler said.

[Source: Space.com]