Science & TechnologyS


Blackbox

Can oil from tar sands be cleaned up?

Bob Holmes
New Scientist
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:42 UTC
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© Norm Betts / Rex FeaturesThe Suncor Energy Inc. oil sands facility in Alberta, Canada refines the tarry bitumen dug up from gigantic open pit mines
In the Canadian province of Alberta the ground is skinned and gutted. Rising oil prices and dwindling reserves have pushed oil companies to exploit what was once considered unexploitable: tar sands, the dirtiest oil on Earth and the most expensive to extract.

This strip-mined landscape is bad enough, but another method of extracting the oil is on the rise, and it is even more damaging to the environment. Yet new technologies offer hope that tar sands could one day be transformed into one of the cleanest fossil fuels.

The Canadian tar sands contain an estimated 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil, second only to Saudi Arabia's reserves. As the name suggests, the fuel must be separated from sand. Today, most operations dig up the tarry bitumen in gigantic open pit mines, then separate and refine it. The process destroys habitat and creates vast lakes of toxic residues. Worst of all, processing it requires large amounts of energy. The Canadian government estimates that oil from tar sands takes three to five times as much energy to produce as conventional oil.
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Light Saber

Navy Takes Next Step Towards Laser 'Holy Grail'

Nathan Hodge and Noah Shachtman
Wired
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:35 UTC
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© Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
U.S. Navy ships could one day knock down incoming missiles with energy weapons that never run out of shots, and tune themselves to slice through the ocean air.

On Monday, the Office of Naval Research awarded contracts to both Raytheon and Boeing worth an initial $6.9 million each for preliminary design work on a new free electron laser, or FEL. This model would be about seven times strong than any similar laser -- reaching up to 100 kilowatts, or weapons-grade. Eventually, that could pave the way for a directed-energy weapon that can replace the Navy's current system for close-in ship defense, the radar-guided Phalanx gun.

The Phalanx system -- which also protects against rocket and mortar attacks on land -- is limited by the range and magazine capacity of its 20mm autocannon. In theory, a laser-based system would offer greater range, and a potentially unlimited number of shots. Plus, it might be fast enough to defend against "new, challenging threats, such as hyper-velocity cruise missiles," as Boeing puts it. Directed energy is also an appealing option for countering rocket and mortar fire, because it could theoretically be used to defend populated areas.
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Pharoah

Long-lost tomb of Cleopatra 'discovered'


Press TV
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:38 UTC
Cleopatra
© Unknown
Archeologists believe that they have finally found the final resting place of 'Cleopatra' -- the celebrated queen of ancient Egypt.

Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt's Superior Council for Antiquities, said Wednesday that a radar survey of the Tabusiris Magna temple has found a complex tunnel system that may contain the tombs of Cleopatra VII and celebrated Roman general, Mark Antony.

Teams from Egypt and the Dominican Republic will next week begin excavating the sites, which lie some 17 miles from the city of Alexandria.
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Saturn

KISSing Galactic Cousins Break the Mold

Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW
Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:52 UTC
young giant galaxies
© NASA/SpitzerProdigies? Astronomers have found a group of galaxies that are too big for their apparent ages
Researchers conducting a routine sky survey have spotted a group of galaxies that breaks the known rules of cosmic evolution. They are too big to be as young as they seem. These unusual specimens could help improve the understanding of how giant galaxies such as the Milky Way arose.

Astronomers think they've got a pretty good handle on how today's galaxies formed. About 13 billion years ago, enormous clouds of dust and gas produced by the big bang began coalescing around central cores of dark matter. Fairly quickly these clouds further condensed and differentiated into millions of stars, many of which were far larger than our sun. Then two more things happened: The large stars burned up their nuclear fuel very quickly and exploded into supernovae. And the primordial galaxies collided and merged to form bigger and bigger versions of themselves, in the process triggering more star formation and more supernovae.
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Magic Wand

Rare Magic Inscription on Human Skull

Dan Levene
The BAS Library
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:57 UTC
jewish skull
© Ardon Bar HamaOnly five skulls inscribed with Jewish Aramaic magic incantation texts have come to light, none from professional excavations. Like the others before it, this skull, acquired by collector Shlomo Moussaieff, raises more questions than it answers. Its relationship to the more common genre of incantation bowls and its use in a rite of magic seem clear enough. But until more information emerges, basic questions—how this skull was used, for whom, by whom and for what reason—remain unanswered.

Not long ago, the well-known collector Shlomo Moussaieff acquired two earthenware bowls, the open ends of which were adjoined to form a kind of case - inside the case was an ancient human skull. A magic incantation, written in Aramaic, was inscribed on the skull.

BAR readers already know about the more than two thousand magic incantation bowls that have survived from third - seventh-century C.E. Jewish communities in Babylonia.a The incantation bowls were made at the same time and in the very communities that produced the most intricate, complex and revered accomplishment of rabbinic Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud. Although some have deemed the incantation literature to be inconsistent with the spirit of the Talmud, recent research has shown it to be, rather, complementary and representative of aspects of life reflected within the Talmud.
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Cult

Jews used human skulls in Talmudic era


Press TV
Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:24 UTC
babylon
© presstvBabylon, present day Iraq
Archaeologists have found evidence suggesting that ancient Jews used human skulls in ceremonies, despite their religious beliefs.

Although there is a strict Halakhic prohibition on touching human remains, recently published findings suggest that ancient Jews might have ignored the rules.

Southampton University researchers said that human skulls were found in present-day Iraq (formerly Babylonia) that are believed to have been used during the Talmudic era.

According to researcher Dan Levene, some of the skulls bear Aramaic inscriptions and at least one of them seems to belong to a woman.
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Health

Flying blind: The Economist reports on health care and technology


The Economist
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:01 UTC
Digital medicine will improve medical care - and possibly revive drug discovery too

Andy Grove thinks health-care experts should study the chip business. The former boss of Intel, a pioneering microprocessor firm, has spent a lot of time in hospitals of late because he has been battling with prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease. His experience with uneven care, medical errors and slow innovation has convinced him that the health industry needs to do much better.

Dr Grove acknowledges that health care is much more complex than chip manufacturing, but argues that the learning process in medicine is needlessly slow. In his business, firms always reserve a small portion of each newly designed chip for testing. This reduces the part available for commercial use, but it allows firms to learn quickly from failures. By contrast, health care often lacks real-time information systems and data feedback loops are sluggish. Learning comes in batches, like slow and infrequent trains, not like continuous Federal Express deliveries.

Comment: A rather one-sided report on promoting the technological 'revolution' in Medicine.

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Propaganda

Ridiculous comparison: Spam 'produces 17m tons of CO2'


BBC News
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:08 UTC
A study into spam has blamed it for the production of more than 33bn kilowatt-hours of energy every year, enough to power more than 2.4m homes.

The Carbon Footprint of e-mail Spam report estimated that 62 trillion spam emails are sent globally every year.

This amounted to emissions of more than 17 million tons of CO2, the research by climate consultants ICF International and anti-virus firm McAfee found.

Searching for legitimate e-mails and deleting spam used some 80% of energy.

The study found that the average business user generates 131kg of CO2 every year, of which 22% is related to spam.

Comment: Yes Spam is a nuisance but to directly give it a carbon footprint is ridiculous. By taking the faulty global warming science without question, articles such as this just increase the global warming propaganda.

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Satellite

China launches 2nd satellite in alternative GPS system


Associated Press
Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:59 UTC
China fired into orbit Wednesday its second satellite in a program to build an alternative to the global positioning system based on U.S. satellites.

The geostationary satellite is one of a series being slung into space to form the Beidou, or "Compass," navigation system, the official Xinhua News Agency said, calling the system a "crucial part of the country's space infrastructure."

The system is touted by China as an alternative to the U.S. satellite GPS network, the dominant positioning system, although it isn't clear how far China has progressed in bringing the project to fruition.
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Blackbox

Does gravity change with the seasons?

Marcus Chown
New Scientist
Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:51 UTC
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© Tau'olunga, Wikimedia CommonsAs the Earth orbits the sun, the strength of its gravity could vary because of interactions with an undiscovered force, nicknamed the "X-field".
Everyone has heard of Newton's apple. He watched it drop to the ground in the autumn of 1666, prompting him to ask a series of questions. "Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground?" Newton wondered. "Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the Earth's centre?"

One question Newton didn't ask is whether apples or oranges fall differently. Or whether an apple would fall differently in the spring. They might seem peculiar concerns, but Alan Kostelecký, a physicist based at Indiana University in Bloomington, thinks they are important. He and his graduate student Jay Tasson have found that such flagrant violations of our best theory of gravity could easily have evaded detection for centuries.

What's more, in a paper published in Physical Review Letters (vol 102, p 10402), the pair have shown that investigating such unlikely-seeming possibilities could help us work out what makes the universe tick. "We have made a surprising and delightful discovery," Kostelecký says. "We might just catch a glimpse of the ultimate theory that underpins our universe."
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