Posts tagged ecology

A 1935 map of the never-was invasion of America

Jul 26th

Posted by stim37 in News

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This 1935 map from Fortune magazine depicts “The Great Invasion of 19??”, a three-pronged invasion from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Note the 25,000 Japanese saboteurs in California and the distinction of an Anglo-Japanese alliance as the most dangerous.

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A 1935 map of the never-was invasion of America

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The World’s 18 Strangest Bathrooms

Jul 25th

Posted by hellokitty in News

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Bathrooms, whether public or private, encounter plenty of abuse. The constant inflow and outflow of water paired with limited space and high demands on hygiene and efficiency make it one of the most difficult rooms to design.

…’s Unique: Because the entire system relies on air, creating a tight seal between the user and the toilet bowl is essential. Foot straps and pivoting bars anchor the astronauts to the ground, and an intricate network of tubes, pipes and ducts handles the waste. Far removed from water treatment plants, the ISS must treat waste on its own and actually converts a large percentage into potable water. A hose-suction option is also available in lieu of the main toilet bowl.”,
“credit”:”NASA”,
“height”:”500″,
“width”:”375″,
“caption”: “Location /// International Space…

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The World’s 18 Strangest Bathrooms

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Sex Makes You Smarter- Can ‘Virtual Sex’ Do The Same?

Jul 23rd

Posted by nimbyx in News

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It has been known for quite some time that exercise promotes neurogenesis, but now a study claims that the most intimate form of exercise - sexual activity - can produce the same effects. And better yet- having multiple, repeated sexual experiences results in a greater positive effect than a single experience alone.

…Count me in for that research as well.
To be fair, though, sex does not make you more intelligent. It does simulate neural growth, but it is not neural growth in respect to your understanding quantum mechanics, economic theory or an understanding of the universe in general. It stimulates neural growth in respect to that person, the specific experience and the related experiences. It works to ingratiate the person to your mind and encourages future socializing with that person, perhaps, even socialization in general. Not that the temporary increase in neural function cannot be used toward more “substantial” memories, but how often does someone pick up a book and start reading after really great sex? Or how often does a person leave the bed, kitchen counter, the alley behind some random bar or the top of a washing machine at some 24 hr laundry mat and put that person they were just with, intimately, out of mind and begin to think about the behavior of strings or sociopolitical ramifications of the downfall of…

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Sex Makes You Smarter- Can ‘Virtual Sex’ Do The Same?

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Obama’s Lincoln Moment

Jul 9th

Posted by scott fagan in News

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The administration, stalled on two major fronts, might learn from history….What divides us now, blue states and red states, the recovering cities and the never-going-to-rebound cities, is nothing, of course, compared to that 1860s war over America’s original sin.

…have fled to a lawless region of Pakistan.
Majid Saeedi/Getty Images Gen. David H. Petraeus at a ceremony in Kabul on July 4, 2010.
If Petraeus is to become Obama’s Ulysses S. Grant, he needs something to fight, something visible and full-dimensional. There is no standing army among the cave-dwelling and night-moving Taliban.
Obama has set a deadline, subject to much debate, to begin withdrawing troops by July of next year. But a mere passing of calendar months cannot do for the people of Afghanistan what they will not do for themselves. A transplant of motivation must take place, something even a highly regarded American general and his army cannot do.
The other big stall, the economic Army of the Potomac, will not respond to deadlines or firing generals. The Republican governing philosophy of a criminal deregulatory environment drove the economy into a ditch. And when they put more than a trillion dollars worth of wars on the credit card, they left future administrations with few options.
The Democratic…

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Obama’s Lincoln Moment

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NASA’s New Horizons probe is halfway to Pluto

Jun 25th

Posted by kendra19 in News

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Zipping through space at nearly a million miles per day, NASA’s New Horizons probe is halfway to Pluto and just woke up for the first time in months to look around.

…”Our spacecraft is way out in exotic territory, in the middle of nowhere,” says Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “And we have a lot to do.”
It’s the perfect opportunity to test New Horizon’s instruments before the probe reaches Pluto in 2015. “We don’t want to miss a single breathtaking moment during the Pluto encounter,” he says. “So we’re checking everything out now to make sure we’re ship-shape and ready to go.”
The 9 weeks of testing commenced on May 25th. Mission controllers plan a thorough checkout and recalibration of all seven science instruments onboard.
First up is LORRI, the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager, one of the largest interplanetary telescopes ever flown.
“On July 14, 2015, the date of closest approach, we’ll be able to distinguish objects on Pluto as small as a football field,” says Weaver. “That’s about 300 times better resolution than anything we have now.”
LORRI will be working together with “Ralph,” a spectrometer designed to probe the…

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NASA’s New Horizons probe is halfway to Pluto

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Faster-than-light electric currents could explain pulsars

Jun 19th

Posted by Gagekeemn in News

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Researchers have built a sort of wire in which an electric pulse can outpace light. They get away with it because the pulse is not a causal process. It does not ripple down the line because charged particles are bumping into each other, a process that is subject to Einstein’s speed limit.

…the wire is the white arc on the right, and the controllers are the circuit boards on the left.
This method of breaching the speed barrier might seem like cheating — after all, no material object is breaching the barrier. But electromagnetically it doesn’t matter. Whatever the origin of the pulse in a wire, it involves the motion of electric charge and emits electromagnetic radiation. The radiation propagates outward at the speed of light, but is forever shaped by the speed of whatever generated it. When Singleton, Schmidt, and the rest of their team generate slower-than-light pulses using their technique, the resulting radiation looks just like the radiation created by ordinary causal pulses. For faster-than-light pulses, the radiation looks just like the radiation that would be created if charged particles really could exceed the speed of light.
Which is to say, it looks pretty weird. Not only is the radiation tightly focused in space, it is tightly focused in time — a pulse that originally takes, say,…

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Faster-than-light electric currents could explain pulsars

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Doctor Hoo: All 11 Doctors Imagined as Owls [pic]

Jun 17th

Posted by nimbyx in News

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This piece by DeviantArt user pu-sama imagines the Doctors if they were owls. Who = hoo…get it? [Bleeding Cool]

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Doctor Hoo: All 11 Doctors Imagined as Owls [pic]

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A Drug That Could Make You Live 30 Percent Longer

Jun 17th

Posted by jos in General

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Want to live into your hundreds? If you’re young and fertile, you have to decide now whether you want to take a drug that will extend your life by a few decades.

…immortal’ part of an organism. In that context, the body is just the mortal envelope.

She and a team of scientists discovered that roundworms lived longer if they blocked the action of several different genes, most notably a gene called Ash-2. This gene is special because it regulates how other genes get expressed - it’s a kind of master-switch gene. When Ash-2 is silenced, several genes related to the germline - cells used for reproduction - remain silent too. And somehow this extends life.
Bunet added:

We still don’t know exactly how this works mechanistically, but we’ve shown that the presence of the germline is absolutely essential for this longevity extension to happen.

In other words: As long as you’re still fertile, with a functioning germline, shutting down Ash-2 might help you live longer. If you’re a worm. But there is enough overlap between human and worm DNA that this could provide a key to tinkering with human lifespans too.
via Stanford - full paper at Nature…

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A Drug That Could Make You Live 30 Percent Longer

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Fact or Fiction: The Days and Nights Are Getting Longer

Jun 15th

Posted by sammy3 in News

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Fossilized corals, lasers beamed at a receding moon, Chinese artifacts, and other evidence have revealed that over the ages the length of time it takes Earth to spin once on its axis has increased significantly.

…The summer solstice that falls this year on June 21 marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, sunlight-wise. Almost imperceptibly, however, Earth’s day night cycle one rotation on its axis is growing longer year by year, and has been for most of the planet’s history.
Forces from afar conspire to put the brakes on our spinning world ocean tides generated by both the moon and sun’s gravity add 1.7 milliseconds to the length of a day each century, although that figure changes on geologic timescales. The moon is slowly spiraling away from Earth as it drives day-stretching tides, a phenomenon recorded in rocks and fossils that provides clues to the satellite’s origin and ultimate fate. “You’re putting energy into the moon’s orbit and taking it out of the Earth’s spin,” says James Williams, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The moon’s gravity generates tides by pulling hardest on the side of Earth facing it. This attraction causes the planet…

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Fact or Fiction: The Days and Nights Are Getting Longer

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The case for a new Star Trek series

Jun 14th

Posted by sammy3 in News

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Do we need a new Star Trek TV series? Yes — with the present vacuum of big-ticket scifi and adventure shows, a new, Federation-centric Trek series could rule the ratings.

…who can bring in big ratings? I asked some of my peers that exact question.
A new series would need to address timely, relevant questions. How does the Utopia-esque Federation of Planets incorporate its globes and colonies? How do you balance innate cultures with the Federation’s lofty ideals? “Star Trek is all about finding new cultures and, when possible, adding them to the Federation,” wondered my friend Teelin. “In the stories it always is a good thing, but in reality whenever that happens we force religion and bring smallpox.” The Federation would become the European Union of a fictionalized future.
Another pal, Ben agreed on this possible plot, but did us one better. “Yeah, your direction is kind of interesting,” he said, “but it could even be broadened to have a sort of Law and Order type plot. The ship goes out to bring new worlds into the Federation, and/or addresses interstellar crime and punishment.” The crew and viewer are then forced to address a moral, possibly even serialized, dilemma…

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The case for a new Star Trek series

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