Clipmarks | Newfman's 'science' clips

Message in a Bottle Found After 21 Years at Sea

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:27:29 GMT

clipped by: Newfman
clipper's remarks: Emily Hwaung, is now Emily Shih and is a 30-year-old accountant who still calls Seattle home.

The letter in the soda bottle traveled over 1,700 miles before being discovered. The message was sent during the 1986-87 school year and spent over 20 years in transit before its discovery late last year.

Clip Source: seattlest.com

Twenty-one years ago, a suburban Seattle elementary school science class signed type-written messages, put them in bottles, and dropped them in Puget Sound. Earlier this month, Merle Brandell, a bear hunter in Alaska found one of the soda bottles in the Bering Sea and was intrigued by the message. The letter read:

[This letter] is part of our science project to study oceans and learn about people in distant lands.Please send the date and location of the bottle with your address. I will send you my picture and tell you when and where the bottle was placed in the ocean. Your friend, Emily Hwaung.

Brandell, who discovered the message, did his part to try and contact the little girl who wrote the letter. However, his calls to the North City School, which was identified in the letter, went unanswered. So Brandell sent the school district a letter, and was surprised to discover the North City School was long closed and the little girl who had written the letter was now a woman.

The South Pole's first bar fight!

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 12:20:29 GMT

clipped by: Newfman
clipper's remarks: Canada's National Post said the antagonists were both employees of Raytheon International, the defense contractor that does the construction and maintenance work at the Amundsen-Scott station.

The injured man was flown on to a Christchurch, New Zealand hospital, at a cost of about $85,000. He was discharged Dec. 26 and was said to be recovering locally.

The other man got an early return to the U.S. — without his job.

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in December 1911.

Ninety-six years later, another achievement was reached — the South Pole's first bar fight.

Without releasing names, the National Science Foundation, which runs the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, confirmed that two men had to be evacuated from the base Christmas Day after what one person characterized as a "drunken Christmas punch-up."

A C-130 Hercules military transport plane had to be dispatched from McMurdo Station, the main U.S. research base far to the north on the Antarctic coast, after one of the men suffered a broken jaw.

"There was an altercation between two people," National Science Foundation spokesman Peter West told the New Zealand Herald. "There's no indication of the cause or of the background between the two folks."

But Britain's The Guardian reported alcohol had been involved, and its competitor The Telegraph said the fisticuffs were over a woman.

Prehistoric 'Sea Monster' Found on Arctic Island

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:17:16 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

OSLO, Norway — Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric "monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded by science, researchers said Tuesday.

Initial excavation of a site on the Svalbard Islands in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said Joern Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo.

"It seems the monster is a new species," he told The Associated Press.

The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year.

His team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet — "as long as a bus ... with teeth larger than cucumbers."

The short-necked plesiosaur, or pliosaur, was a voracious reptile often compared to the Tyrannosaurus rex of the oceans.

Tags: science

Billboard Uses Shadow Make A Climate Change Statement

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:56:59 GMT

clipped by: Newfman
clipper's remarks: Ingenious!

Clip Source: www.groovygreen.com

Tags: science

Men go for looks when choosing mate, study confirms

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:40:36 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.ctv.ca

Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.

And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.

In the study, participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness.

Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness.

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

Tags: science

Free Online Documentaries

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:50:42 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: best.online.docus.googlepages.com

Documentaries

Anthropology

Biographies

Business

Environment

Foreign

(Geo)Politics

Health

History

Lifestyle/Society

Mystery

Religion

Science

Technology/Future

Tags: educatiion

For the Cloud lovers...a shelf cloud!

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 01:05:25 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: photo.accuweather.com

Tags: science

Current World Population counter

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:12:27 GMT

clipped by: Newfman
clipper's remarks: Go to the site for the counter

Clip Source: populationpress.org

Tags: science

Technology may make power cords obsolete

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:57:02 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: business.newsfactor.com

Along with LPs, audio tape, and dial-up modems, children of the future might wonder what a "power cord" was. A team of researchers from MIT has demonstrated such a future, when they were recently able to light a 60-watt light bulb from an unconnected source about seven feet away.

Dubbed "WiTricity," as in "wireless electricity," the research has been published in the June 7 issue of Science Express, an online publication of the esteemed journal, Science.

Team leader Professor Marin Soljacic describes the "eureka" moment as one he experienced in his pajamas a few years ago. He was looking at his cell phone on the kitchen counter. "It was probably the sixth time that month that I was awakened by my cell phone beeping to let me know that I had forgotten to charge it," he said in a statement. "It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging."

Tags: science

Tower of London turning yellow!

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 03:15:08 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

A moat and fortified walls have protected the Tower of London from vandals for almost 800 years, but against the ravages of pollution, the iconic royal palace doesn’t stand a chance. The entire complex is turning yellow from the exhaust of cars and trucks, according to a new study.

The discoloration is most noticeable at the complex’s White Tower, the original square fortress built by William the Conqueror in 1078. “When we question visitors, they say the color is cream,” said study co-author Peter Brimblecombe, an atmospheric chemist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. The results are detailed in this month’s issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

In the next 20 years, Brimblecombe said, the famous tower will turn a more brownish yellow. “You might imagine how angry people are going to get about paying a large sum of money to see a yellow tower that’s supposed to be white,” he said.

Tags: science

Is Your Brain Plastic?

Sat, 26 May 2007 02:45:15 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.brainready.com

We're talking about brain plasticity, more formally known in science circles as neuroplasticity, and it's perhaps the single most exciting area of brain-related research in recent years

So what is brain plasticity and why is it relevant to me? At its most basic definition, neuroplasticity is the lifelong ability of our brains to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences. In the area of learning, for example, we acquire new knowledge and skills through instruction or experience; in order to learn or memorize a fact or skill, our brains make new, persistent functional changes within our brains that represent this new learned knowledge. So the ability of the brain to change with learning is an example of neuroplasticity.

But in just the two decades, an enormous amount of research has revealed that our brains NEVER stop adjusting or lose their plasticity, even into very old age,

Tags: science

Smithsonian Accused of Altering Climate Exhibit

Sat, 26 May 2007 02:36:53 GMT

clipped by: Newfman

Clip Source: www.redorbit.com

The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum.

Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year's exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Also, officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered "to show that global warming could go either way," Sullivan said.

"It just became tooth-pulling to get solid science out without toning it down," said Sullivan, who resigned last fall after 16 years at the museum. He said he left after higher-ups tried to reassign him.

Tags: science

Lightning photos

Sat, 26 May 2007 02:32:13 GMT

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Clip Source: bizprodirectory.info

Tags: science

Most amazing space images

Sun, 06 May 2007 12:59:45 GMT

clipped by: Newfman
clipper's remarks: Go to the site to vote for your favorite.

Clip Source: www.space.com

Tags: science

Undead viruses! Killer foxes! Soldiers who never sleep!

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:43:31 GMT

clipped by: Newfman
clipper's remarks: Go to the link for the scariest ideas in Science

Clip Source: www.popsci.com

Maybe we saw The Andromeda Strain a few too many times in our formative years, but we can’t help shivering when we hear about microbiologists reanimating long-dormant lethal viruses. And those biologists working to make human limbs grow back: Haven’t we seen that film? Don’t the guys in lab coats all die in the first reel? They may sound cinematic, but the incredible research projects on the following pages are not imaginary. They’re real, funded ventures by respected scientists. They have perfectly rational goals. They also happen to creep us out.

Tags: science

Clipmarks | Newfman's 'science' clips

Message in a Bottle Found After 21 Years at Sea

The South Pole's first bar fight!

Prehistoric 'Sea Monster' Found on Arctic Island

Billboard Uses Shadow Make A Climate Change Statement

Men go for looks when choosing mate, study confirms

Free Online Documentaries

For the Cloud lovers...a shelf cloud!

Current World Population counter

Current World Population:

Productive Land:

Technology may make power cords obsolete

Tower of London turning yellow!

Is Your Brain Plastic?

Smithsonian Accused of Altering Climate Exhibit

Lightning photos

Most amazing space images

Undead viruses! Killer foxes! Soldiers who never sleep!