Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Magnetism common to all cosmic jets?

Dr. Emily Baldwin
Daily Atronomy/Astronomy Now
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:16 UTC
Radio jets emitted by the young star
© Carrasco-Gonzalez et al., Curran et al., Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF, NASA.Radio jets emitted by the young star are shown in yellow on a background infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The yellow bars show the orientation of the magnetic field in the jet as measured by the VLA. Green bars show magnetic-field orientation in the dusty envelope surrounding the young star. Two other young stars are seen at sides of the jet.

Astronomers have found the first evidence of a magnetic field in a jet of material ejected by a young star, offering insight into jet formation and the role of magnetic fields in star birth.

Jets of particles are already known to be associated with black holes, neutron stars that are feeding off companion stars, and young stars that are still growing. Until now, magnetic fields had been detected in the jets associated with black holes and neutron stars, but the association with jets in young stars had not been confirmed.
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Sun

MIT's Dan Nocera Creates Energy From Water & Sunlight


Forbidden Knowledge TV
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 15:55 UTC
MIT Professor Dan Nocera made this discovery 6 months ago and wants to share it with the world, although MIT owns the patent. He has published his breakthrough and made it "open-source." His students are already inventing machines applying this science and he says, "This is the way science works!"

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Sherlock

Sweden: Mystery Shipwreck Found in Central Stockholm


The Local
Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:46 UTC
Image
© Jens Linstrom/Maritime Museum
The vessel was built with an almost completely unknown technology, delighting archaeologists. The planks of the ship are not nailed down, but sewn together with rope.

The discovery was made by labourers close to the royal palace and in front of Stockholm's Grand Hotel during renovation works to a quay.

"The discovery of the wreck is extremely interesting given the place where it was made. There was a naval shipyard on this spot until the start of the 17th century," Maritime Museum director Hans-Lennarth Ohlsson said in a statement.

A couple of weeks ago, an excavator found something unusual in his bucket. Marine archaeologist Jim Hansson at the Maritime Museum was called to Strömkajen below the Grand Hotel, where he quickly realised the value of the sensational find.

"We were super-excited. It may sound a little strange when one finds little excavated pieces of parts of a ship, but I have never seen anything like it," he said.
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Bad Guys

Canada's Transgenic Enviropig is Stuck in a Genetic Modification Poke

Jessica Leeder & Wency Leung
The Globe and Mail
Thu, 25 Nov 2010 10:24 UTC
Enviropig
© The Globe and MailEnviropig

The small herd of pigs in a research barn in Guelph look like ordinary pigs.

They act like ordinary pigs, and presumably, they would even taste like ordinary pigs if anyone dared to break the law and sample one.

But these are Enviropigs. The transgenic creations of university researchers, they are the world's most controversial environmentally sensitive swine, and they're not legally fit to eat. At least, not yet.

Under development for more than a decade, the University of Guelph's 20 Enviropigs are close behind a Canadian-made supersized salmon in a race to become the first genetically modified animals allowed into the food system.

Starting with the discovery that an E.coli gene could produce a digestive enzyme that regular pigs lack, the Guelph scientists realized they could introduce genetic material from that bacterium into pigs to minimize the environmental impact of the animals' waste, reducing a major pollutant from large-scale production - and allowing pork producers to cut operation costs.

The market may soon need Enviropig. To feed the projected world population of nine billion in 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 per cent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Genetically engineered organisms will have to be part of the equation, according to the globe-spanning community of experts concerned with meeting those looming targets.

"You cannot feed the world at affordable prices without using the modern arsenal of inputs," said Marco Ferroni, head of the Syngenta Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit established by its namesake seed company to pursue sustainable improvements in farm yields.
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Info

Cassini Sniffs Oxygen on Saturnian Moon

Darren Osborne
ABC Science, Australia
Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:36 UTC
Rhea
© JPL/NASAOne cubic metre of Rhea's atmosphere contains approximately 0.00000001% the number of oxygen molecules found on Earth.

Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea, has a thin atmosphere of oxygen and carbon dioxide, according to a new study.

The finding provides new insights into the chemical processes that occur in the solar system, including the Earth 3.5 billion years ago.

Oxygen has been detected remotely in the atmospheres of moons such as Europa and Ganymede, but this is the first time it has been found 'in situ' and near the ringed planet.

Earlier this year, the Cassini spacecraft used a spectrometer to 'sniff' the atmosphere as it flew within 97 kilometres of the north pole of Rhea.

Dr Ben Teolis of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas and colleagues report on the findings today in the journal Science.

The researchers believe the oxygen is released by "irradiation from Saturn's magnetospheric plasma" and a large fraction of the oyxgen is still locked inside the moon's ice.
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Magnify

Chinese Villagers "Descended from Roman Soldiers"

Nick Squires
The Telegraph, UK
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:00 UTC
Image
© Natalie BehringCai Junnian's green eyes give a hint he may be a descendant of Roman mercenaries who allegedly fought the Han Chinese 2,000 years ago
Genetic testing of villagers in a remote part of China has shown that nearly two thirds of their DNA is of Caucasian origin, lending support to the theory that they may be descended from a 'lost legion' of Roman soldiers.

Tests found that the DNA of some villagers in Liqian, on the fringes of the Gobi Desert in north-western China, was 56 percent Caucasian in origin.

Many of the villagers have blue or green eyes, long noses and even fair hair, prompting speculation that they have European blood.

A local man, Cai Junnian, is nicknamed by his friends and relatives Cai Luoma, or Cai the Roman, and is one of many villagers convinced that he is descended from the lost legion.

Archeologists plan to conduct digs in the region, along the ancient Silk Route, to search for remains of forts or other structures built by the fabled army.

"We hope to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China's early contacts with the Roman Empire," Yuan Honggeng, the head of a newly-established Italian Studies Centre at Lanzhou University in Gansu province, told the China Daily newspaper.
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Magnify

The Real Thanksgiving


Daniel N. Paul: We Were Not Savages
Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00 UTC
Image
© I. Lutler
Quoted from: The Hidden History of Massachusetts:

Much of America's understanding of the early relationship between the Indian and the European is conveyed through the story of Thanksgiving. Proclaimed a holiday in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln, this fairy tale of a feast was allowed to exist in the American imagination pretty much untouched until 1970, the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. That is when Frank B. James, president of the Federated Eastern Indian League, prepared a speech for a Plymouth banquet that exposed the Pilgrims for having committed, among other crimes, the robbery of the graves of the Wampanoags. He wrote:
"We welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people."
But white Massachusetts officials told him he could not deliver such a speech and offered to write him another. Instead, James declined to speak, and on Thanksgiving Day hundreds of Indians from around the country came to protest. It was the first National Day of Mourning, a day to mark the losses Native Americans suffered as the early settlers prospered. This true story of "Thanksgiving" is what whites did not want Mr. James to tell.
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Magnify

Chinese Archaeologists Find 3,000-Year-Old Fruit Seeds


Xinhua
Sun, 21 Nov 2010 12:21 UTC
Chinese archeologists have found an ancient fruit cellar containing well-preserved apricot and melon seeds from more than 3,000 years ago in today's Shaanxi Province.

The cellar was a rectangular pit about 105 cm long, 80 cm wide and 205 cm deep, said Dr. Sun Zhouyong, a researcher with the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archeology.

Sun and his colleagues found the pit in 2002, about 70 cm underground the Zhouyuan site, ruins of Western Zhou dynasty (1046-771 BC) 100 km from Xi'an. After eight years of research, they concluded it was a cellar used to preserve fruits for aristocrats.

In each corner of the pit, Sun and his colleagues found a little round hole. "We assume the cellar had something like a shade that was fixed on the four holes but had decayed over the years."

Inside the cellar the researcher could see, even with naked eye, huge piles of nuts and seeds.
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Family

Why the Rich Are No Good at Empathy ... They Don't Need to Be


The Daily Mail, UK
Wed, 24 Nov 2010 05:45 UTC
woman with child
© Getty Images
People who are rich have trouble recognising the emotions of others, a new study claims.

The university research has found that those who are poorer are better at gauging how someone feels because they need to rely on other people more often.

Scientists speculated that the rich performed worse in tests because they can solve their problems without relying on others. In other words, because of their wealth they are not as dependent on the people around them.

Whereas people who cannot afford to buy support services - such as childcare - have to rely on neighbours or relatives to watch their children while they attend work or run errands.

One experiment used volunteers who worked at a university. Some had graduated from college while others had not. Researchers used educational level as a proxy for social class.

In the U.S, where the study was carried out, the term 'upper class' often equates to how rich someone is, rather than the more complex notions of class that exist in Britain.
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Rocket

'Phantom Ray' robot warjet to ride atop NASA shuttle-carrier 747

Lewis Page
The Register
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:01 UTC
jumboweaponjet
© The RegisterBoth of these planes might be out of work fairly soon.
Go west, young autonomous low-observable weapons system

The "Phantom Ray" robot Stealth combat jet under development by US aerospace mammoth Boeing is ready to begin trials, according to the company.

The machine will now be flown to the military test centre, Edwards airforce base in California, mounted atop one of NASA's space-shuttle-carrying jumbo jets.

Boeing has brought the Phantom Ray to completion with its own money, building on earlier work done with government funding to produce the X-45 demonstrator craft. The X-45 was axed due to lukewarm interest from the US Air Force and for some time nothing happened to it: but then Boeing decided that it would be fatal to be left behind in the race to produce a full-fat robot warplane (as opposed to less-capable propellor powered offerings such as the well-known Predator and Reaper).

Thus the massive company has now brought out the Phantom Ray to contend against such rivals as the X-47 being produced by Northrop for the US Navy or the Avenger from General Atomics. Having undergone basic taxi tests at Boeing's St Louis fighter factory, the robojet will now be fixed atop one of NASA's pair of Shuttle-hauling jumbos for the trip to California. Once at Edwards, there will be high-speed taxiing tests and then a first flight next year.
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