Science & TechnologyS


Meteor

Ulysses Reveals A Comet Biggie


Space Daily
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:42 UTC
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Using data from the completed ESA/NASA Ulysses mission, scientists have identified a new candidate for biggest comet. Results of these findings were presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow by Ulysses science team member Geriant Jones of University College, London.

The primary mission of the Ulysses spacecraft was to characterize the sun's heliosphere as a function of solar latitude. The heliosphere is the vast region of interplanetary space occupied by the sun's atmosphere and dominated by the outflow of the solar wind.

To study the heliosphere, Ulysses was placed into a six-year orbit around the sun that carried it out to Jupiter's orbit and back. Covering such a vast expanse of space provided unique and unexpected opportunities for the spacecraft. During its more than 17-year mission, Ulysses had three unplanned encounters with comet tails.
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Satellite

Building A Space Weather Forecasting System Using STEREO And ACE


Space Daily
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 07:40 UTC
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Scientists from the University of Leicester have used observations from NASA's STEREO and ACE satellites to come up with more accurate predictions of when blasts of solar wind will reach Earth, Venus and Mars. Anthony Williams presented the results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow.

Recently, we have recently been experiencing an unusually quiet and long-lasting solar minimum, and solar storms caused by Coronal Mass Ejections have been scarce. Despite this, high pressure pulses of solar wind, called Coronal Interaction Regions (CIRs) have been keeping the space weather unpredictable.

CIRs arise when fast moving solar wind particles gushing out of a coronal hole catch a slower flow ahead and the plasma becomes compressed.
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Eye 2

Therapy only furthers psychopaths' agendas

Steve Becker
lovefraud.com
Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:19 UTC
What can we say about the games sociopaths play in psychotherapy? We might start with: Sociopaths don't seek counseling, ever, from a genuine motive to make personal growth.

This isn't to say sociopaths don't end up in therapists' offices. They do, either because they've been mandated to attend therapy, or because they view counseling, somehow, as enabling their ulterior, manipulative agenda.

But never does the sociopath, on his own, awaken one day and say to himself, "I've got some personal issues I need to examine seriously, for which pursuing psychotherapy is probably imperative - otherwise my life and relationships are going down the drain."

I repeat, sociopaths will never, ever, seek counseling for purposes of genuinely confronting their damaged, and damaging, personalities. This is so reliable a principle that its converse equally applies - however antisocial his history may be or seem, the client who seeks counseling with a genuine motive to deal with a issue(s) disqualifies himself, perforce, as a sociopath.
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Magnify

Genetically Engineered Pigs


Urban Garden Magazine
Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:04 UTC
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The Mad Hatter world of industrial agriculture has announced another victory: the University of Guelph in Canada has genetically engineered pigs whose manure contains 30-70% less phosphorus than that of regular pigs.

If you're one of those crazy soil-gardeners who believe that manure is heavenly and should be revered, well ... clearly you don't manage an intensive hog operation. These factory farms are dealing with an environmental (not to mention ethical) crisis: phosphorus pollution of surface and groundwater, as a result of the massive manure lagoons and run-off.

Developed in 1999, and now on its way to commercial production and a place on grocery store shelves, the EnviropigTM is apparently the solution. Perhaps we should instead question the problem. Intensive hog "farms," cattle feedlots, and intensive egg production and poultry facilities are creating toxic wastelands, treating the animal inmates as nothing more than animated foodstuffs.
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Star

Source of zodiac glow identified

Maria Martinez
Southwest Research Institute
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:55 UTC
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© Southwest Research InstituteThe dust between the planets, that scatters sunlight our way, is not from the asteroid belt (depicted here in green), but from periodically disrupting comets that spend much of their time near the orbit of Jupiter, according to calculations by Nesvorny and Jenniskens.
The eerie glow that straddles the night time zodiac in the eastern sky is no longer a mystery. First explained by Joshua Childrey in 1661 as sunlight scattered in our direction by dust particles in the solar system, the source of that dust was long debated. In a paper to appear in the April 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, David Nesvorny and Peter Jenniskens put the stake in asteroids. More than 85 percent of the dust, they conclude, originated from Jupiter Family comets, not asteroids.

"This is the first fully dynamical model of the zodiacal cloud," says planetary scientist Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "We find that the dust of asteroids is not stirred up enough over its lifetime to make the zodiacal dust cloud as thick as observed. Only the dust of short-period comets is scattered enough by Jupiter to do so."
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Magnify

Deciphering the Indus script: challenges and some headway


The Hindu
Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:45 UTC
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© SHAJU JOHN ASKO PARPOLA: ‘The Indus script encodes a Dravidian language.'
Interview with Professor Asko Parpola.

Dr. Asko Parpola, the Indologist from Finland, is Professor Emeritus of Indology, Institute of World Cultures, University of Helsinki, and one of the leading authorities on the Indus Civilisation and its script. On the basis of sustained work on the Indus script, he has concluded that the script - which is yet to be deciphered - encodes a Dravidian language. As a Sanskritist, his fields of specialisation include the Sama Veda and Vedic rituals. Excerpts from replies that Professor Parpola gave over e-mail to a set of questions sent to him by T.S. Subramanian in the context of his being chosen for the Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi Classical Tamil Award, 2009. The award, comprising Rs. 10 lakh and a citation, will be presented during the World Classical Tamil Conference to be held in Coimbatore from June 23 to 27, 2010. The award announcement said Professor Parpola was chosen for his work on the Dravidian hypothesis in interpreting the Indus script because the Dravidian, as described by him, was close to old Tamil. The award, administered by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai, was instituted out of a donation of Rs. 1 crore made by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi:
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Arrow Down

Behind the Anger Over Obama's New NASA Plans

Dolores M. Bernal
News Junkie Post
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:58 UTC
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© NASAAstronaut Neil Armstrong
President Barack Obama's cancellation of a key space program at NASA has angered not only space-enthusiasts and legendary astronauts, but leading the pack is also Lockheed Martin.

Obama has increased NASA's budget by $6 billion so that more funding can go to research and to improve operations of the International Space Station for the next 3 years. But the President ordered the cancellation of the Constellation Program - a human space-flight program revived by President George W. Bush with the goals of replacing the Space Shuttle and send astronauts to Mars. The program's price tag is $97 billion for operations until 2020.

The announcement that the Constellation Program will cease operations early next year angered astronauts like Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Eugene Cernan. These legendary space figures sent a letter to the White House urging Obama to not cancel the human space-flight program.
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Syringe

Genetic breakthrough could produce 'babies with three parents'

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:04 UTC
zygote
Researchers in the UK have developed a method of curing a class of genetic disorders by transplanting parts of embryonic cells from one mother to another, creating the possibility of babies with three biological parents.

Researchers at Newcastle University have transferred material from a healthy fertilized human egg into an unhealthy one, repairing the egg's genetic flaws, Nature magazine reported Wednesday.

The procedure is meant to fix problems with faulty mitochondria -- the "cellular batteries" that power human cells. By transferring the mitochondria from a female donor to another embryo, the researchers were able to turn a flawed egg into a healthy embryo.

"As mitochondria contain DNA, a child conceived this way would inherit genetic material from three parents," reports the Times of London. "The mother and father would supply 99.8 per cent of its DNA, but a small amount would come from a second woman, the mitochondrial donor."

That possibility has "profound medical and ethical implications," reports Brandon Kleim at Wired.com. "One issue involves the nature of parenthood: Would a mitochondrial donor be a parent?"
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Info

Mummified Baboons in British Museum May Reveal Location of the Land of Punt


Hertiage Key
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:18 UTC
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Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Yemen are all possible locations of the Land of Punt.
Throughout their history the ancient Egyptians recorded making voyages to a place called the 'Land of Punt'. To the Egyptians it was a far-off source of exotic animals and valuable goods.

From there they brought back perfumes, panther skins, electrum, and, yes, live baboons to keep as pets. The voyages started as early as the Old Kingdom, ca. 4,500 years ago, and continued until just after the collapse of the New Kingdom 3,000 years ago.
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Magnify

Classic Maya history is embedded in commoners' homes

Diana Yates
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:09 UTC
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© Lisa J. LuceroThe researchers excavated two modest homes in a small Maya center called Saturday Creek, in central Belize. Numerous artifacts, including vessels, stones and human remains, were found in the floors of each dwelling.
They were illiterate farmers, builders and servants, but Maya commoners found a way to record their own history - by burying it within their homes. A new study of the objects embedded in the floors of homes occupied more than 1,000 years ago in central Belize begins to decode their story.

The study, from University of Illinois anthropology professor Lisa J. Lucero, appears in the Journal of Social Archaeology.

Maya in the Classic period (A.D. 250-900) regularly "terminated" their homes, razing the walls, burning the floors and placing artifacts and (sometimes) human remains on top before burning them again.

Evidence suggests these rituals occurred every 40 or 50 years and likely marked important dates in the Maya calendar. After termination, the family built a new home on the old foundation, using broken and whole vessels, colorful fragments, animal bones and rocks to mark important areas and to provide ballast for a new plaster floor.
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