In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
A new infrared imaging system that automatically counts the number of people in cars could offer a cost effective solution to help lower congestion and carbon emissions - or it could be a handy government monitoring system.
Carpool lanes are not popular. In Britain 20% of the road capacity is used by multi-occupancy vehicles. In a state like California that percentage is even less, around 7%, yet every highway has 'carpool' lanes.
A workshop organized by European Action on Global Life Sciences (EAGLES ) issued a report on the Chinese consumption and production of meat and it states that meat consumption in China is expected to reach 73 kilo per person per year in 2020 compared with just over 26 kg in 2004. Nearly triple.
This increase in meat consumption means that the environmental impact of the Chinese population will skyrocket if the rapid growth continues.
In yacht racing, a one percent difference in boat resistance leads to a gain or loss of more than 30 seconds in a match race.
Computational fluid dynamics research done by the winning Swiss Alinghi America's Cup syndicate led to gains of 2-5 percent in drag reduction on appendages like the keel, bulb and winglets, absolutely essential gains when you take into consideration that opponent Emirates Team New Zealand won two of the first three races but lost when the wind was more difficult.
Advanced numerical methods have come a long way, it seems.
The 2007 America's Cup was the first time every major contender used applied mathematics and computer simulation. As competition gets more fierce, the optimization of every part becomes more important.
By fomenting dissent against genetic engineering, opponents are furthering the cause of democracy, says Dr. Franz Seifert, who did a recent study for the Austrian Science Fund FWF project.
What does that mean? What Science 2.0 has said all along. Science decisions need to influence policy, so if you want to make the most informed decisions, get all of the facts first.
Obviously there's a controversy regarding genetic engineering. Unlike most science sites, here you can find arguments for it and against it, both backed by science data. Seifert did his study in the EU where some decisions are made on the continental level but most debates take place at the local and national level. It then requires those local decisions to filter up to the bureaucracy.
There's a war happening in science but you may not know about it, and it's stranger than most because it is pitting some people with HIV and their loved ones against the scientists and medical community trying to cure it. In other words, it's a war that makes even less sense than most wars.
Did you know there was even a debate about whether or not HIV causes AIDS? I didn't. You might as well have walked up and told me puppies and free money don't cause happiness - I was that shocked - but a debate there is and I learned about it when I read an editorial in PLoS ( Public Library of Science) Medicine titled HIV Denial in the Internet Era.
Research can often be a thankless job for the researcher - logically even more so if you make your data available to the community at large. Someone in the peer community will challenge it, bloggers will pick it apart, newspapers will misinterpret it and someone, somewhere, will find a way to use it to bolster their favorite political argument.
The benefits of open science to the science community receiving the data are obvious. They get results without effort or money or time. Is there any benefit to the researcher and, if not, why would anyone do it?
Called by some the Blue Eye of Siberia and by others the Sacred Sea, Lake Baikal, at more than 5,000 feet ( 1,620 meters ), is the world’s deepest lake. The lake has many other interesting features also. For example, more than 330 rivers flow in but only the Angara flows out.
Even the potential for oil-related environmental disaster along the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean pipeline was enough to get that project moved farther away from one one of UNESCO's world heritage objects.
What do you do when Mother Nature herself starts leaking the oil?
Image by geology.com using NASA Landsat data
Is something better than nothing while society adjusts to the impact of pollution and climate change? Or is a "band-aid" approach just making people feel better and wasting time? It depends on which environmental group you ask.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds issued a withering attack on the British government, calling its policy on tackling climate change too myopic to be effective after the publication of another Westminster report detailing additional restrictions that should be in place.
The report, by the Joint Scrutiny Committee, said aviation must be included in climate change planning.
Every 62 million years there is a mass extinction on Earth. No one is sure why but, since the solar motion through the Milky Way has been computed for the past 600 million years, we know it is too long a cycle for it to be a product of our solar system. A new paper theorizes this is because the earth begins to ... wobble ... due to solar oscillations and that wobbling happens on a predictable timetable.
They call it galactic shock due to cosmic ray modulation and its presence at those times impacts biological diversity - that means extinction and origination. The physicists, Mikhail V. Medvedev and Adrian L. Melott of the University of Kansas, say this has happened for the last half billion years. How much impact? As much as 10% of life on earth.
Why a wobble?
A recent UN study, Livestock's Long Shadow, basically says you can help the environment more by driving than walking.
A long-held belief in theories of human behavior is that people want to feel good and avoid feeling bad.
Nothing in that principle explains why people enjoy horror movies or, additionally, why they pay for the privilege of being scared.
Investigators generally use one of two theories to explain why people like horror movies:
1. It's excitement, not fear. People aren't actually afraid, they get a surge from the action and suspense.
2. Terror now brings euphoria later. Think you had a bad day at the office? Imagine being chased by zombies. It always feels better to know someone else is being chased by zombies.
It's fun to be scared, as long as there's a TV between you and him.
You don't need a big brain, or a high IQ, to have a comfortable life and a good family.
Witness the case of this French civil servant, written about by Dr. Lionel Fuillet in The Lancet. At age six months he was treated for hydrocephalus (water on the brain) with a shunt in his head to drain away the fluid. At age 14 he complained of unsteadiness and left leg weakness, which cleared up after the shunt was adjusted. Beyond that his neurological development and medical history were normal.
At age 44 the leg weakness returned and he was treated by Dr. Feuillet and colleagues of the Hôpital de la Timone and Faculté de Médecine, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France.
