Archive for the 'Nature' Category
Faster-than-light neutrino claim bolstered
• September, 2011Representatives from the OPERA collaboration spoke in a seminar at CERN today, supporting their astonishing claim that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light. The result is conceptually simple: neutrinos travelling from a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland arrived 60 nanoseconds too early at a detector in the Gran Sasso cavern in Italy. And it relies on three conceptually simple measurements, explained Dario Autiero of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyon: the distance between the labs, the time the neutrinos left…
Magic mushroom’s positive effects
• June, 2011Magic mushroom’s positive effects lasting over a year according to researchers Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine claim to have determined the proper dose levels needed to create positive changes in attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, and behavior that persist for more than a year with the psychoactive substance in so-called “[wikipedia]magic mushrooms[/wikipedia].” The findings are the latest in a series of experiments done at Johns Hopkins to investigate psilocybin, a psychedelic substance contained in certain mushrooms. The findings were published online this…
Dr. Michio Kaku: “The World in 2030”
• May, 2011“The World in 2030: How Science will Affect Computers, Medicine, Jobs, Our Lifestyles and the Wealth of our Nations” Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist and the Henry Semat Professor at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he has taught for more than 30 years. He is a graduate of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earned his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Kaku…
Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with… thorium!
• March, 2011If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years. We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast. Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must…
Pavegen: Energy Generating Pavement Hits the Streets
• March, 2011Any one point on a busy street can receive up to 50,000 steps a day, so imagine if you could take all that foot traffic and turn it into something useful – like energy! A new product designed by Laurence Kemball-Cook, the director of Pavegen Systems Ltd., can do just that. With a minuscule flex of 5mm, the energy generating pavement is able to absorb the kinetic energy produced by every footstep, creating 2.1 watts of electricity per hour. Every time a rubber Pavegen stone…
Hempmade fashion show 2011 – PromoClip
• January, 2011Hempmade fashion show 2011 from Blub Video. For all those who are interested in a more eco-friendly/natural and cool way of promoting the hemp-clothing industry, do pass by on the 12th of February (Saturday) @ “Depot” – Leuven – Belgium. Also visit Blub Video and support this artist’s work everywhere/every-how you can!
Sun Pictures: A Full Year in a Single Frame – Analemmas
• January, 2011Sun’s Path in 2010 Can a single picture sum up all of 2010? In a way, yes. The above multiple-exposure photo shows the figure-eight path of the sun over the course of the entire year, known as an analemma. Analemma photographs are made by taking a picture of the sun from the same place at the same time of day once or twice a week, generating 30 to 50 frames. This picture, made in Veszprem, Hungary, combines 36 photos of the sun taken at 10…
Ancient rock art alive with bacteria
• January, 2011Researchers say the ancient ‘Bradshaw art’ rock in Western Australia has maintained its vivid colors because it is colonized by living bacteria and fungi. Studies conducted by Jack Pettigrew and his colleagues at the University of Queensland showed that the rock art has kept its colors after at least 40,000 years. The team studied 80 of Bradshaw rock artworks in 16 locations within Western Australia’s Kimberley region, concentrating on Tassel and Sash, two of the oldest known styles of Bradshaw art. Analyses showed that many…
Island of mud appears near Balochistan
• December, 2010KARACHI: A soft muddy island appeared a few kilometers from the seashore in Hingol area of Balochistan. According to Pakistan Fisher Folk (PFF), the island is 90 meters (m) high with a span of approximately three kilometers (km). PFF spokesman, Sami Memon told Dawn.com that the fishermen of Ibrahim Hyderi area described the occurrence after returning from Hingol. Fishermen observed white, slippery hot sand erupting from water, three km away from the beach. Before the upsurge of sludge, fishermen also observed high tides near the…
NASA’s Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy
• November, 2010NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way. The feature spans 50,000 light-years and may be the remnant of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the center of our galaxy. “What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center,” said Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who first recognized the feature. “We don’t fully understand their nature or origin.”…
U.N. urged to freeze climate geo-engineering projects
• November, 2010* Cloud whitening, solar reflectors, ocean seeding studied * Environmentalists say such schemes are unproven, risky * Advocates say projects could help fight global warming The United Nations should impose a moratorium on “geo-engineering” projects such as artificial volcanoes and vast cloud-seeding schemes to fight climate change, green groups say, fearing they could harm nature and mankind. The risks were too great because the impacts of manipulating nature on a vast scale were not fully known, the groups said at a major U.N. meeting in…
Comet impact did not cause mammoths to die out.
• November, 2010Comet impact did not cause mammoths to die out, scientists say A mass extinction that caused the death of giant species of mammal including mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers and giant beavers was not caused by a comet impact, scientists have concluded. Researchers have previously suggested that the last mass extinction of animals on Earth was triggered by a comet colliding with the planet and sparking a sudden drop in temperature around 13,000 years ago. This sudden change in climate, known as the Younger-Dryas climate reversal, saw…
Microbes May Consume Far More Oil-Spill Waste Than Earlier Thought
• October, 2010Microbes living at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico may consume far more of the gaseous waste from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill than previously thought, according to research carried out within 100 miles of the spill site. A paper on that research, conducted before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six months ago, will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Deep-Sea Research II. It describes the anaerobic oxidation of methane, a key component of the Gulf oil spill, by microbes living in…