Clipmarks | pokkets's Comments

Call to encourage climate-friendly farms

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:00:03 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

News analysis Australian farmers could have a huge impact on greenhouse emissions and the government needs to start seriously encouraging them to sequester carbon in their soils, say some experts.

The comments come as the Garnaut Climate Change Review delivers a draft report, which acknowledges changing the way we farm can have a big impact on our greenhouse emissions.

Professor Peter Grace of the Queensland University of Technology, an expert on agriculture and greenhouse emissions, estimates that in an ideal situation, more than 900 Megatonnes of CO2 equivalents could be sequestered per annum through improved pasture management.

It's a very significant amount of carbon

even if only 10% of this amount was achieved it would result in a significant reduction in Australia's carbon emissions.

John Connor of the Climate Institute says the government should give some signal to encourage farmers to sequester carbon in its Green Paper on emissions trading, due out on 16 July.

Ice Shelf Collapses in Antarctica

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:54:50 GMT

clipped by: syncopath

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

June 16, 2008—Another large plate of ice has broken off the rapidly disintegrating Wilkins Ice Shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula, the above satellite images show.

While the ice shelf, located directly below South America, shrank significantly in previous months (see March images), this is the first documented occurrence of an ice shelf collapsing during the Southern Hemisphere's winter.

A trend of "extraordinary warming" over the past 50 years in Antarctica has caused the loss of several ice shelves

The researchers also warned that the last strip of ice on Wilkins would disappear soon.

"The remaining plate has an arched fracture at its narrowest position," they said, "making it very likely that the connection will break completely in the coming days."

Beliefs

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:21:49 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: xkcd.com

And now, The Michelangelo Code

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:05:01 GMT

clipped by: katknit
clipper's remarks: Really?

Clip Source: www.theweirdpost.com

Michelangelo ‘hid secret code in Sistine Chapel’

Michelangelo hid a secret code in the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel made up of mystical Jewish symbols and insults aimed at the pope, according to a new book.

Kill that screen saver

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:25:07 GMT

clipped by: katknit
clipper's remarks: find out why

Clip Source: green.yahoo.com

You don't still use a screen saver, do you?

Well, flat-screen LCD monitors don't burn in, so if you still have flying toasters or an endlessly looping slide show of your adorable niece and nephew, you're behind the times. When you're not sitting in front of your monitor it should be off off off.

Tags: technology

Einstein or Monroe

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:30:10 GMT

clipped by: katknit
clipper's remarks: Check out this picture - crazy!

Clip Source: www.zamoraa.com

Einstein or Monroe?

When you look at this picture in a
closer look you see its Albert Einstein.
But if you stand 15 feet away,

Planetary line up excites the sun

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:47:19 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: The equatorial region of the sun spins more rapidly than the poles, and this differential rotation winds up the magnetic field lines like a rubber band
sunspots typically appear wherever these magnetic field lines bubble to the surface.
They still have to do more testing, but it makes more sense than other theories such as tidal forces, or the movement of the sun around the solar system's center of gravity, which don't seem to have a significant enough effect.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Marilyn Head

Australian astronomers may have found a solution to how far-away Jupiter and Saturn drive the sun's solar cycle.

In a paper published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, astronomer Dr Ian Wilson and colleagues from the University of Southern Queensland, suggest Jupiter and Saturn affect the sun's movement and its rotation, and hence its sunspot activity.

Every 11 years the sun undergoes a period of intense solar activity, marked by flares, coronal mass ejections and sunspots. This period is known as the solar maximum and occurs twice each solar, or Hale, cycle.

the tiny gravitational tugs of Jupiter and Saturn speed up or slow down the sun's orbital motion about the centre-of-mass, when they are aligned or separated by an angular distance of 90 degrees.

when the sun's orbital motion changes, so too does its equatorial rotation rate

provides

circumstantial evidence

there is a spin-orbit coupling mechanism operating between Jupiter and Saturn and the sun

10 Important Differences Between Brains and Computers

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:34:22 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Although the brain-computer metaphor has served cognitive psychology well, research in cognitive neuroscience has revealed many important differences between brains and computers. Appreciating these differences may be crucial to understanding the mechanisms of neural information processing, and ultimately for the creation of artificial intelligence. Below, I review the most important of these differences (and the consequences to cognitive psychology of failing to recognize them): similar ground is covered in this excellent (though lengthy) lecture.

Difference # 1: Brains are analogue; computers are digital

Difference # 2: The brain uses content-addressable memory

Difference # 3: The brain is a massively parallel machine; computers are modular and serial

Difference # 4: Processing speed is not fixed in the brain; there is no system clock

Difference # 5 - Short-term memory is not like RAM

Difference # 6: No hardware/software distinction can be made with respect to the brain or mind

Tags: computers, brains, metaphors

Gene Editing Could Make Anyone Immune to AIDS

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:31:20 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

Some people have a mutation that makes them amazingly resistant to HIV -- and now, scientists may have found a way to give that immunity to anyone.

Viruses enter cells and take them over, but to get inside, they need a handhold. HIV pulls itself in by grabbing onto a protein called CCR5, which decorates the surface of T-cells, which are one of the two major types of white blood cells and play an important role in helping the body fight infections. Back in the 1990's, researchers took interest in a handful of promiscuous gay men who were able to engage in sexual relations with their HIV-positive partners with impunity. Most of them had a mutation that kept their cells from producing normal CCR5 protein.

Armed with that knowledge, scientists have developed several tactics to block the production of CCR5 or perturb its shape so that the HIV virus can't grab onto it during the first step of its hijacking attempt

Tags: dna, hiv, immunity, viruses

“What is Life?” Evolution of Robots is Causing Scientists to Question

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:04:36 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “Robots are not human, but humans aren’t the only things that have emotions,” she said. “The question for robots is not, Will they ever have human emotions? Dogs don’t have human emotions, either, but we all agree they have genuine emotions. The question is, what are the emotions that are genuine for the robot?”

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

There is ongoing debate about what constitutes life. Synthetic bacteria for example, are created by man and yet also alive. Some go so far as to say that robot “emotions” may already have occurred—that current robots have not only displayed emotions, but in some ways have experienced them.

“We’re all machines,” says Rodney Brooks author of “Flesh and Machines,” and former director of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, “Robots are made of different sorts of components than we are — we are made of biomaterials; they are silicon and steel — but in principle, even human emotions are mechanistic.” A robot’s level of a feeling like sadness could be set as a number in computer code, he said. But isn’t a human’s level of sadness basically a number, too, just a number of the amounts of various neurochemicals circulating in the brain? Why should a robot’s numbers be any less authentic than a human’s?

Tags: robotics, intelligence, life

10 Futuristic materials

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:40:16 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: lifeboat.com

1. Aerogel

Aerogel protecting crayons from a blowtorch.

Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records, more than any other material. Sometimes called "frozen smoke", aerogel is made by the supercritical drying of liquid gels of alumina, chromia, tin oxide, or carbon. It's 99.8% empty space, which makes it look semi-transparent

2. Carbon nanotubes

long chains of carbon held together by the strongest bond in all chemistry, the sacred sp₂ bond, even stronger than the sp3 bonds that hold together diamond

3. Metamaterials

any material that gains its properties from structure rather than composition

used to create microwave invisibility cloaks, 2D invisibility cloaks, and materials with other unusual optical properties

4. Bulk diamond

5. Bulk fullerenes

Diamonds may be strong, but aggregated diamond nanorods (what I call amorphous fullerene) are stronger

6. Amorphous metal

7. Superalloys

8. Metal foam

9. Transparent alumina

three times stronger than steel and transparent

10. E-textiles

Tags: science, materials

Sci-Fi films in one sentence

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:24:10 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

2001: A Space Odyssey
A slab of onyx and a singing computer get two astronauts in hot water.

Alien
A feisty cat survives tense times onboard a spaceship.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Frail aliens visit Earth in search of clothing, music, friends and possibly gym equipment.

Starship Troopers
Valiant insects try to repel totalitarian invaders.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
A nerd from another planet goes bike riding and trick-or-treating.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Kirk, Spock and McCoy blend right in while visiting late 20th-century San Francisco.

Iron Man
An arms manufacturer finds himself neck-deep but gets a leg up and heads home.

The Matrix
A man discovers his true destiny.

Star Wars
An adolescent discovers his true destiny.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
A boy discovers his true destiny.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
A hobbit discovers his true destiny.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
A sad sack seeks a way to turn back time so he can live in the Dark Ages.

Tags: science fiction, films, humour, expelled, creationism

Extraterrestrial Life Confirmed

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:32:57 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: I always knew I was different.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

If you want to see the offspring of extraterrestrial interference in Earth evolution, you don't have to break into the X-files or start watching late night crazy-person public access. You could be looking at one in the mirror.

Early in Earth's history the surface suffered a heavy hail of meteorites. This is usually bad news for any lifeforms in the vicinity (if you don't believe me, just ask a velociraptor), but since even DNA was only a gleam in the ocean's eye at the time the space-rocks weren't a setback - in fact, they may have delivered vital ingredients to the rich pre-life soup on the surface.

A collaboration between various US and European institutes has proven the presence of vital nucleobases in the Murchison meteorite, an extraterrestrial rock fragment which impacted Earth in 1969.

These bases are unquestionably alien - for one, the rock-chemicals are equally left and right "handed"

the odds of life off-planet seem better than ever.

Extraterrestrial Climate Change - A Message for Earth?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:44:25 GMT

clipped by: vk2yoc
clipper's remarks: But will we heed the warnings!

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

“It seems that both and Venus started out much more like Earth," says David Grinspoon, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and one of the Venus Express interdisciplinary scientists. "They both hold priceless climate information for Earth."

The atmosphere of Venus is much thicker than Earth’s. Nevertheless, current climate models can reproduce its present temperature structure well. Now planetary scientists want to turn the clock back to understand why and how Venus changed from its former Earth-like conditions into the inferno of today.

Climate scientists believe that the planet experienced a runaway greenhouse effect as the Sun gradually heated up. Astronomers believe that the young Sun was dimmer than the present-day Sun by 30 percent. Over the last 4 thousand million years, it has gradually brightened. During this increase, Venus’s surface water evaporated and entered the atmosphere.

As Earth warms in response to man-made pollution, it risks the same fate

Scientist identify brain 'core' that could reveal secrets of thought

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:02:21 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

A "core" region of the brain has been identified by an international team which has produced the first complete high-resolution map of the human cerebral cortex, the wrinkly surface of the brain where awareness, thought and other features of high level thinking reside.

The team traced the connections between millions of brain cells and identified a highly connected single network core, or hub, that may be key to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain.

major step in understanding the most complicated and mysterious organ in the universe

The team hopes to use the information to build biologically realistic models in a computer which in turn will "help us understand processes that are difficult to observe, such as disease states and recovery processes to injuries

As for consciousness, that quest will have to wait until neuroscientists can agree on a precise definition of what they are talking about.