Clipmarks | farrider's clips

'Milky seas' detected from space

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:07:39 GMT

clipped by: farrider

The "milk sea" in a composite satellite image, and the region of the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia where it was spotted by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Credit: Steven Miller, NRL

Tags: oceans, science

Japan plans massive floating generators which generate power and provide food

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:39:46 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.newlaunches.com

Japan realizing its massive future energy needs has decided to build ECO rigs that are generators which measure 1.2 miles by 0.5 miles that ground various alternate energy collectors like solar arrays, wind turbines and other green sources. Each of these Eco Rigs could produce around 300 megawatt hours of power, scientists even estimate that strapping three such Rigs could produce enough energy as a standard Nuclear power station.

Tags: energy

Engineers Prove Graphene is the Strongest Material

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:46:08 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Research scientists at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science have achieved a breakthrough by proving that the carbon material graphene is the strongest material ever measured.

“Our research establishes graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel,” Hone said. “It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.”

Tags: science, graphene, engineering

Humans may sense light through skin

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:01:53 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.rsc.org

A team of researchers from Europe and the US has shown that a type of protein molecule found in many different human tissues can respond to light. The finding raises the intriguing possibility that humans might be able to detect light through skin as well as the eye.

Margaret Ahmad from the University of Paris VI, France, and her colleagues focused on a class of photoreceptor proteins called cryptochromes, which are activated by light in plants and trigger a number of physiological responses, such as maturation of seeds and unfurling of leaves. Cryptochromes are also found in insects and mammals, including humans. But until now no-one has known whether human cryptochromes react to light.

Tags: science

70+ Nice and Beautiful Firefox Wallpapers

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:49:14 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.hongkiat.com

Tags: wallpaper

Record-Breaking Chameleons Live Only a Few Months

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:32:19 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Labord's chameleons (such as this adult male from Madagascar) live for only three to five months, a new study says.

Tags: science, biology

Sacsayhuaman walls - Cusco

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:39:41 GMT

clipped by: farrider
clipper's remarks: There are no other walls like these. They are different from Stonehenge, different from the Pyramids of the Egyptians and the Maya, different from any of the other ancient monolithic stone-works. The stones fit so perfectly that no blade of grass or steel can slide between them. There is no mortar. They often join in complex and irregular surfaces that would appear to be a nightmare for the stonemason. Scientists speculate that the masonry process might have worked like this: after carving the desired shape out of the first boulder and fitting it in place, the masons would somehow suspend the second boulder on scaffolding next to the first one. They would then have to trace out a pattern on the second boulder in order to plan the appropriate jigsaw shape that would fit the two together. In order to make a precise copy of the first boulder's edges, the masons might have used a straight stick with a hanging plum- bob to trace its edges and mark off exact points for carving on the second

Clip Source: www.flickr.com

View Byrd on a Wire's map

Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)

The outline of the fortress walls is supposedly shaped in the form of a puma (cougar or jaguar). There are even marks on some of the rocks delineating its paws or claws.

Captured at Sacsayhuaman fortress just outside of Cusco, Peru. The Inca walls are made up of extra large boulders quarried nearby. The rocks weigh 90-125 tons. When first built it was impossible to access unless one went through the only three doors into the complex.

Tags: archaeology, photography

Most complex crop circle ever discovered in British fields

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:02:54 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

The most complex, "mind-boggling" crop circle ever to be seen in Britain has been discovered in a barley field in Wiltshire.

The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi.

It is has appeared in a field near Barbury Castle, an iron-age hill fort above Wroughton, Wilts, and has been described by astrophysicists as "mind-boggling".

Jeff Dean on Google Infrastructure

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 08:20:12 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: perspectives.mvdirona.com

More detail on the typical failures during the first year of a cluster from Jeff:

· ~0.5 overheating (power down most machines in <5 mins, ~1-2 days to recover)

· ~1 PDU failure (~500-1000 machines suddenly disappear, ~6 hours to come back)

· ~1 rack-move (plenty of warning, ~500-1000 machines powered down, ~6 hours)

· ~1 network rewiring (rolling ~5% of machines down over 2-day span)

· ~20 rack failures (40-80 machines instantly disappear, 1-6 hours to get back)

· ~5 racks go wonky (40-80 machines see 50% packetloss)

· ~8 network maintenances (4 might cause ~30-minute random connectivity losses)

· ~12 router reloads (takes out DNS and external vips for a couple minutes)

· ~3 router failures (have to immediately pull traffic for an hour)

· ~dozens of minor 30-second blips for dns

· ~1000 individual machine failures

· ~thousands of hard drive failures

LILYPAD: Floating City for Climate Change Refugees

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:25:23 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.inhabitat.com

Tags: cities, ecology

Mind Reading Progress

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:40:51 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.neurosciencemarketing.com

Reading a person’s thoughts may still be science fiction, but researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University are making surprising progress in specific types of “mind reading.” The team, led by computer scientist Tom Mitchell and cognitive neuroscientist Marcel Just, has demonstrated that they can correctly determine the concrete noun subjects are thinking three out of four times:

Tags: psychology, science

Palm resurrected from 2,000-year-old seed

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:25:36 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

Scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated.

The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders.

Tags: lpants, biology, science

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:58:50 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: news.cnet.com

We really don't want to think like Google. We don't want to speak like Twitter. We don't want to converse like e-mail. And yet we increasingly do, as the Internet reshapes the world in its image. Carr writes:

The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition...The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It's becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is recreated in the Net's image. It injects the medium's content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we're glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper's site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

Tags: google, internet

Loyal to Its Roots

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:41:49 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The sea rocket, researchers report, can distinguish between plants that are related to it and those that are not. And not only does this plant recognize its kin, but it also gives them preferential treatment.

Tags: science, biology, plants

Incredible pictures of one of Earth's last uncontacted tribes firing bows and arrows

Sat, 31 May 2008 13:06:37 GMT

clipped by: farrider

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Painted: In a thick rainforest along the Brazilian-Peruvian border, these tribespeople are thought never to have had any contact with the outside world

Mystery: The tribespeople are likely to think the plane that took this photograph is a spirit or large bird

Human nature: One man points at the plane. Others ready their weapons

Hidden homes: The tribe's tent-shaped dwellings deep in the rainforest

Stay away: The anthropologists saw evidence of gardens, but exactly what they eat, how they build their huts and why they paint their bodies remains unknown