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Panama Canal, Panama City at Risk of Large Earthquake, Says New Research


Science Daily
Sun, 19 Jun 2011 12:47 UTC
Panama Quake Zones
© Wikimedia
New data suggest that the Limon and Pedro Miguel faults in Central Panama have ruptured both independently and in unison over the past 1400 years, indicating a significant seismic risk for Panama City and the Panama Canal, according to research published November 18 by the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA).

The Panama Canal is undergoing expansion to allow for greater traffic of larger ships, scheduled for completion by 2014. As part of a seismic hazard characterization for the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) expansion project, Rockwell, et al., studied the geologic and geomorphic expression of the Pedro Miguel, Limon, and related faults, followed by an in-depth study into their earthquake and displacement history, critical factors in the design of the Panama Canal new locks and associated structures.

"The Pedro Miguel fault actually runs between the existing Pacific locks -- the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores locks -- and last ruptured in a large earthquake in 1621," said lead author Thomas K. Rockwell, professor of geology at San Diego State University. "That earthquake resulted in nearly 10 feet of displacement where the fault crosses the canal, and a similar amount of offset of the historical Camino de Cruces, the old Spanish cobblestone road that was used to haul South American gold across the isthmus. Another such earthquake today could have dramatic effects."
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Mysterious Changing Neutrinos could explain why we don't live in an Antimatter Universe

Alasdair Wilkins
io9.com
Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:32 UTC
Image
© Unknown
There's nothing in the laws of physics that actually requires matter to dominate antimatter, and yet all our observations of the universe suggest that that's the case. But some unexpected behavior by ghostly neutrino particles could solve the antimatter mystery.

The T2K project in Japan is one of the world's foremost neutrino detectors, and it appears to be on the verge of a crucial discovery. However, these experiments have been on hold since the earthquake in March, so the results have to remain provisional until the work can start back up again.
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Sun

Sun Has Giant Supersonic Waves Bigger Than Earth


Fox News
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
Image
© NASA/SDO/Astrophysical Journal LettersSurfer waves -- initiated in the sun, as they are in the water, by a process called a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability -- have been found in the sun's atmosphere.
Humongous waves of hot plasma roiling on the surface of the sun appear to be moving at speeds as high as 4.5 million miles per hour, a new study found. The waves are so huge it would take up to 16 Earths, end-to-end, to match them.

It's the first unambiguous evidence that the sun's lower atmosphere contains such superfast "magnetosonic waves," scientists said.

The fast waves have velocities of 2.3 million to 4.5 million mph (1,000 to 2,000 kilometers per second), periods in the range of 30 to 200 seconds, and wavelengths of 62,000 to 124,000 miles (100,000 to 200,000 kilometers), equivalent to stacking between eight to 16 Earths on top of one another.

Scientists discovered the waves with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), dedicated to observing the sun from orbit around Earth.
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Telescope

Electric Universe: Bubbling Plasma

Stephen Smith
thunderbolts.info
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:50 UTC
Comet-like jets
© NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteComet-like jets spew from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Enceladus joins other celestial objects that produce "magnetic bubbles."

In a recent Picture of the Day, the so-called "bubbles" of magnetism supposedly found by the Voyager spacecraft at the boundary where the Sun's heliosphere meets the ISM (interstellar medium) were explained as Langmuir sheaths, or electrically charged double layers in plasma. Since the bubbles are thought to be elongated, it was suggested that the electron flux variations detected by the twin Voyagers probably indicate filaments of electricity called Birkeland currents.

Similar electromagnetic structures are seen around Earth, on Venus, on the various gas giant planets, and within and surrounding galaxies. All of these phenomena share a common characteristic: they are all manifestations of electricity flowing through plasma.
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Bizarro Earth

Best of the Web: Lierre Keith on 'The Vegetarian Myth - Food, Justice and Sustainability'

P-Span
YouTube
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:11 UTC
We've been told that a vegetarian diet can feed the hungry, honor the animals, and save the planet. Lierre Keith believed in that plant-based diet and spent twenty years as a vegan. But in The Vegetarian Myth, she argues that we've been led astray--not by our longings for a just and sustainable world, but by our ignorance.

The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won't save us. In service to annual grains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil--the basis of life itself. Keith argues that if we are to save this planet, our food must be an act of profound and abiding repair: it must come from inside living communities, not be imposed across them.

Part memoir, part nutritional primer, and part political manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth will challenge everything you thought you knew about food politics.

Part 1

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Roses

Dangerous new plant disease linked to genetically engineered crops and pesticides


ABC.net.au
Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:51 UTC
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A US scientist is concerned GM crops and the pesticide glyphosate could be causing a dangerous plant disease.
US scientists claim to have discovered a dangerous new plant disease linked to genetically modified crops and the pesticides used on them.

The research, which is yet to be completed, suggests the pathogen could be the cause of recent widespread crop failure and miscarriages in livestock.

Emeritus Professor Don Huber from Perdue University says his research shows that animals fed on GM corn or soybeans may suffer serious health problems due to the pathogen.

"They're finding anywhere from 20 per cent to as much as 55 per cent of those [animals] will miscarriage or spontaneously abort," he said.

"It will kill a chicken embryo for instance in 24-48 hours."

Professor Huber says it isn't clear yet whether it is the GM crops or the use of the pesticide glyphosate that causes the pathogen. But he says his research shows both the pesticide and the GM crops also reduce the ability of plants to absorb nutrients from the soil that are necessary for animal health.

"If you have the [GM] gene present there is a reduced efficiency for the plant to use those nutrients.

"When you put the glyphosate out then you have an additional factor to reduce the nutrient availability to the crop," he said.
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Info

New Video Released of Mars' Mystery Moon, Phobos


The Daily Galaxy
Sat, 18 Jun 2011 22:27 UTC

Earlier this month, ESA's Mars Express performed a special manoeuvre to observe an unusual alignment of Jupiter and the martian moon Phobos. The impressive images have now been processed into a movie of this rare event. The origin of Phobos (which means "fear" in ancient Greek), is a mystery, but three theories are considered plausible.

The first is that the moon is a captured asteroid; the second is that it formed in-situ as Mars formed below it, and the third is that Phobos formed later than Mars, from debris flung into martian orbit when a massive meteorite struck the Red Planet. A fourth, far more radical and controversial (although thoroughly intriguing) theory is one that has been kicking around for decades: that Phobos is a artificial object in Mars orbit -in short, a 1.5-mile-long, extremely ancient spacecraft.

In a new development, scientists say they have uncovered firm evidence that Mars's largest moon, the mysterious Phobos, is made from rocks blasted off the Martian surface in a catastrophic event, solving a long-standing puzzle. It has been suggested that both Phobos and Deimos could be asteroids that formed in the main asteroid belt and were then "captured" by Mars's gravity.

An alternative theory suggests that Phobos could have been formed from the remnants of an earlier moon destroyed by Mars's gravitational forces. However, this moon might itself have originated from material thrown into orbit from the Martian surface.
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Laptop

Spam epidemic has reached ebooks, shocking no one

Katherine Gray
tecca.com
Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:47 UTC
Image
© kodomut

There are a lot of truly excellent books available on e-readers. From current best sellers to the classics, you can broaden your intellectual horizons, learn new things, enjoy brilliant literature... and slog through that bane of our online existence: spam. Yes, spam has come to ebooks, in particular Amazon's Kindle e-reader. It was inevitable, really, especially given that the companies behind e-readers have gone out of their way to make the platforms accessible to independent authors and self-publishers.

Using what's known as Private Label Rights or PLR, the literary infiltrators take cheap information and reformat it into something vaguely resembling a book. There are even kits you can buy that let you create "books" without actually writing a single word, which perpetuate the ebook spam. Other even less-scrupulous ebook creators are simply copying and pasting text from someone else's book and selling it as their own.

Amazon is aware of the issue, but has yet to come up with a good way to keep the spammers off the Kindle. Interestingly, Barnes and Noble's Nook e-reader doesn't seem to have nearly as big a problem with spammers, presumably because their audience isn't quite as large and their system not quite as friendly to self-publishers.

It should be noted that not all independent authors and publishers are creating this ebook spam; far from it. There are thousands of very well-written and produced independent books out there, and the industry should be applauded for enabling that functionality. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of dross that must be sifted through to find the gold.
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Star

Star Shooting Intense Water Jets Into Space Spotted By Herschel Telescope


The Huffington Post
Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:33 UTC
Image
© NASA
A star shooting water is almost an oxymoron.

But a young sun-like star seems to have been spotted 750 light-years from Earth doing just that, as researchers have apparently discovered, according to PopSci. Their findings indicate that the proto-star is shoot water from its poles at about 124,000 miles per hour.

Essentially, it's creating water bullets that it shoots deep into interstellar space, according to National Geographic. This star is no more than 100,000 years old, and is located in the northern constellation Perseus.

The star was found by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory, which was able to see through a dense layer of gas that surrounded it. According to PopSci, the telescope picked up the light signature of both hydrogen and oxygen which are coming together as liquid water before vaporizing near the massive jets of gas that spew from the the star's poles.
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Meteor

Asteroid Vesta: Surface of Huge Asteroid Has Mysterious Dark Spot


Space.com
Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:00 UTC
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© NASA/ReutersAsteroid Vesta in front of a background of stars, as seen on May 11. Vesta is 330 miles in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. A mysterious dark spot has been found on its surface, but the asteroid is not yet in focus.
Asteroid Vesta has been coming into focus as NASA's Dawn probe comes in for close-up photos, but a mysterious dark spot has scientists scratching their heads.

A NASA spacecraft has captured new video of the huge asteroid Vesta ahead of a planned rendezvous with the space rock in July, revealing an odd, dark spot that has astronomers buzzing.

NASA's Dawn probe will arrive in orbit around Vesta, the second-largest asteroid in the solar system, on July 16. The spacecraft has been taking photos of Vesta with its framing camera since May to help prepare for the close encounter.

The new video is actually a series of 20 photographs taken during a 30-minute period on June 1, when Dawn was about 300,000 miles (483,000 kilometers) from the giant space rock. The images, which capture about 10 percent of a full rotation, reveal several intriguing features on the 330-mile-wide (530-km) Vesta. [Watch the new asteroid Vesta video]
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