Science & TechnologyS


Attention

Extreme weather in U.S. has driven ten-fold increase in power outages over the last two decades

Jeff Spross
ThinkProgress
Fri, 11 Apr 2014 11:26 UTC
A new report from Climate Central has found that major power outages have increased ten times over since the early 1980s - and extreme weather is by far the biggest culprit.

The analysis defined a "major power outage" as a loss of electrical power for at least 50,000 people for at least an hour, or where the power supply interruption reached at least 300 megawatts, or where demand exceeded supply by at least 100 megawatts. It found the big upswing in such events occurred in the 2000s. Weather drove 80 percent of all outages between 2003 and 2012, and only three years in that time period saw non-weather related events account for more than 10 percent of all outages.
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Magnify

Researchers discover 500 million-year-old fossilized embryos

Jeff Sossamon
News Bureau MU
Thu, 10 Apr 2014 00:00 UTC
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© University of Missouri
The Cambrian Period is a time when most phyla of marine invertebrates first appeared in the fossil record. Also dubbed the "Cambrian explosion," fossilized records from this time provide glimpses into evolutionary biology when the world's ecosystems rapidly changed and diversified. Most fossils show the organisms' skeletal structure, which may or may not give researchers accurate pictures of these prehistoric organisms. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found rare, fossilized embryos they believe were undiscovered previously. Their methods of study may help with future interpretation of evolutionary history.

"Before the Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods, organisms were unicellular and simple," said James Schiffbauer, assistant professor of geological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. "The Cambrian Period, which occurred between 540 million and 485 million years ago, ushered in the advent of shells. Over time, shells and exoskeletons can be fossilized, giving scientists clues into how organisms existed millions of years ago. This adaptation provided protection and structural integrity for organisms. My work focuses on those harder-to-find, soft-tissue organisms that weren't preserved quite as easily and aren't quite as plentiful."
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Robot

Big data is a vague term for a massive phenomenon that has rapidly become an obsession with entrepreneurs, scientists, governments and the media

Tim Harford
Financial Times
Fri, 28 Mar 2014 11:38 UTC
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© Successfulworkplace.com
Big data is a vague term for a massive phenomenon that has rapidly become an obsession with entrepreneurs, scientists, governments and the media

Five years ago, a team of researchers from Google announced a remarkable achievement in one of the world's top scientific journals, Nature. Without needing the results of a single medical check-up, they were nevertheless able to track the spread of influenza across the US. What's more, they could do it more quickly than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Google's tracking had only a day's delay, compared with the week or more it took for the CDC to assemble a picture based on reports from doctors' surgeries. Google was faster because it was tracking the outbreak by finding a correlation between what people searched for online and whether they had flu symptoms.

Not only was "Google Flu Trends" quick, accurate and cheap, it was theory-free. Google's engineers didn't bother to develop a hypothesis about what search terms - "flu symptoms" or "pharmacies near me" - might be correlated with the spread of the disease itself. The Google team just took their top 50 million search terms and let the algorithms do the work.
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Stock Down

Russian investors poured an estimated $2 billion into U.S. tech firms including Facebook and Twitter

Martha Mendoza
AP
Sun, 13 Apr 2014 14:15 UTC
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© AP Photo/Marcio Jose SanchezDmitry Akhanov, president of the U.S. subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned venture fund RUSNANO, works in his office on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in Menlo Park, Calif. Entrepreneurs and investors say Silicon Valley’s fast growing ties with Russia’s tech sector are being slowed down by current political tensions between the White House and the Kremlin
Entrepreneurs and investors say Silicon Valley's fast-growing financial ties with Russia's tech sector are being slowed down by current political tensions between the White House and the Kremlin.

"It's safe to say a lot of investors here are taking a step back to see how the situation will unfold," said Alexandra Johnson, who manages a $100 million venture fund called DFJ VTP Aurora, a Menlo Park, Calif., branch of Russian bank VTB.
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Binoculars

Drones that 'perch' on power lines to recharge, never have to land

Douglas Ernst
The Washington Times
Wed, 09 Apr 2014 16:51 UTC
Image
© AP/Eric Gay
Imagine a world where drones never have to touch the ground after takeoff. That's what MIT PhD. candidate Joseph Moore did, and now he's on the cusp of creating a drone that can "perch" on power lines just like birds to recharge its batteries.

Mr. Moore gave Business Insider a demonstration of the technology he's perfecting by using a glider as proof of concept.

In short, if a drone is equipped with the a magnetometer it should be possible to make the aircraft capable of identifying magnetic fields given off by power lines, home in on the signal they emit, and then maneuver in such a way that would allow the drone to perch until fully charged.
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Comet 2

New Comet: C/2014 G1 (PanSTARRS)

Seiichi Yoshida
Aerith Net
Sun, 13 Apr 2014 13:37 UTC
Discovery Date: April 5, 2014

Magnitude: 20.5 mag

Discoverer: Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala)

C/2014 G1 (PanSTARRS)
© Aerith NetMagnitudes Graph
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2014-G42.
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Comet

New Comet: C/2014 F2 (Tenagra)

Seiichi Yoshida
Aerith Net
Sun, 13 Apr 2014 13:34 UTC
Discovery Date: March 31, 2014

Magnitude: 19.8 mag

Discoverer: M. Schwartz and P. R. Holvorcem (Tenagra III, near Nogales, AZ, U.S.A.)

C/2014 F2 (Tenagra)
© Aerith NetMagnitudes Graph
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2014-G32.
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Bizarro Earth

Symbolic universe: World War II helmets, grenades and guns swallowed by tree trunks in Russia

Snejana Farberov
The Daily Mail
Sun, 13 Apr 2014 07:56 UTC
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Remember the fallen: According to some estimates, more than 14million Soviet solders and officers perished in the Great Patriotic War.
Long after the dust from the last battle has settled, the dead have been laid to rest and the confetti from the victory parade has been swept into the gutter, the nature continues to bear the scars of human conflicts.

A remarkable series of photos taken in a Russian forest have been making the rounds on social media sites, showing what happens over time to instruments of carnage discarded in the woods.

The striking images depict rifles, artillery shells, grenades and sapper shovels embedded in tree trunks - essentially swallowed up by the natural surroundings in a silent act of protest against human folly.
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Bulb

Brain '15-second delay' apparently shields us from hallucinogenic experience


RT
Sun, 13 Apr 2014 07:29 UTC
Scientists have revealed the human brain has a 15-second lag that helps stabilize incoming visual information, which we don't notice bombarding us in the course of our everyday lives.
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© Reuters / Eddie Keogh
Eyes tend to receive an enormous information load from dusk till dawn, and as one opens his or her eyes in the morning, the brain starts its intensive work, processing incoming pictures from the surroundings, including imagery from TV screens and computer monitors.

A team of vision scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) revealed this secret of the human brain: To save us from insanity induced by a constantly changing torrent of pictures, shapes and colors - both virtual and real world - the brain filters out information, failing in most cases to notice small changes in a 15-second period of time.
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Mars

'Mysterious light' on Mars causes wild speculation about aliens


RT
Wed, 09 Apr 2014 10:33 UTC
Image
© NASA
A new photograph from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover appears to showcase a strong artificial light emanating from the planet's surface, igniting speculation that the beacon suggests there is intelligent life on the Red Planet.

The photo in question was taken on April 3 by Curiosity's right-hand navigation camera, and shows what looks an awful lot like a bright, shining light off in the distance. NASA itself has not commented on the nature of the light, but UFO watchers have wasted no time suggesting it's not natural and, therefore, a sign of alien life.

"This could indicate there there is intelligent life below the ground and uses light as we do," Scott Waring wrote on his UFO Sightings Daily website. "This is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the photo process. Look closely at the bottom of the light. It has a very flat surface giving us 100% indication it is from the surface."
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