Religion and Superstition stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

Today, 71% of people say they believe in a literal heaven, which is an actual place.
What's the history of this bizarre, escapist, and dangerous superstition?
http://johannhari.com/2012/05/31/imagine-theres-no-heaven-2/

Ugh - the disgusting things that Religion makes people do!
http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2012/05/girls-schools-closing-in-afghanistan-as-attacks-on-pupils-continue/

Fish oil for mental illness? Don't bother
http://www.margaretmccartney.com/blog/?p=1427

Ridiculous, superstitious fear-mongering... to the max!!!
What a joke!
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/modern-medical-zombies/

More news of the Religious obsession with protecting perpetrators from their victims' advocates
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9494-head-of-catholic-bishops-paid-pedophiles-to-disappear

Politics stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

They've reversed their tax on hot food, thereby giving up a small proportion of £75m, but seem perfectly fine with their rebate to cult organisations for doing up their residences. But then, we expect hypocrisy of conservatives, don't we.
http://www.accountancylive.com/croner/jsp/Editorial.do?contentId=2163542&BV_UseBVCookie=yes&channelId=-601047

In Florida, where 'felons' don't get a vote, the Republicans have been scrubbing non-Republican voters from the voter rolls by falsely listing them as criminals
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9464-rachel-maddow-floridas-governor-purges-voter-rolls-again

"We don't give Holocaust deniers equal time to vent their noxious views, so why offer it to the climate change deniers?"
The only reason nothing has been done about fossil-fuel-combustion-caused climatic change is the doubt that has been fabricated by fossil fuel industry advocates
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9445-who-is-behind-the-conspiracy-against-climate-change-science

Report reveals shocking statistics of harassment in London, the UK
http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2012/05/research-reveals-shocking-harassment-statistics-in-london/

Misognyny comes just as easily to women as it does to men:
http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2012/05/australian-politician-tells-women-just-to-ignore-discrimination-at-work/

Private sector companies and the Conservatives have been colluding to exploit the Department of Work and Pensions for their own selfish profiteering.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/06/01/are-welfare-to-work-schemes-getting-away-with-fraud/

The Conservative smear campaign against Sonia Purnell, on the behalf of Boris Johnson
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2012/05/30/the-boris-campaign-to-smear-the-author-sonia-purnell/

Can the US healthcare system get any worse? My imagination didn't extend even this far!
Private healthcare does not work.
In my learned opinion, the private sector should be barred from public services entirely - the selfishness of the profit motive should play no part in public services
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-medicare-auction-severe-difficulties.html

Physics stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

In about 4 billion years, the Milky Way (the galaxy we're part of) will collide with the Andromeda galaxy (currently 2.2 million light years away)
Despite the hundred of millions of stars involved, the vast distances mean this solar system is unlikely to collide with a star in Andromeda
http://youtu.be/2WEI8WBJkKk
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-hubble-milky-destined-head-on-collision.html

An update for the solar-powered plane:
They've had to delay their second leg because of... wait for it... too much wind! (Not a lack of sun)
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-sun-powered-plane.html
http://tapejarascience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/physics-and-maths-stuff-from-week-21.html

Solar power output in Germany reaches 22 Gigawatts - the equivalent of 20 power plants - and half Germany's power demand
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-germany-weekend-solar-power.html

Last week, we read about blazars - black holes heating up surrounding dust with gamma rays. This article's about the Milky Way's supermassive black hole's past as an active gamma ray producer
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-ghostly-gamma-ray-blast-milky-center.html

[audio] [video] There's a whole load of mass out there, in the universe, but we don't know where all of it is.
We've found some, but it's not dark matter - it's atomic hydrogen gas. And there's a whole echidnaworth of it... apparently.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-star-stuff-dark.html

Another win for Relativity:
As matter descends toward black holes, it emits x-rays (called Hawking radiation), which travels outward, and excites the accretion disk surrounding the black hole.
But due to the black holes immense mass, as predicted by General Relativity, the subsequent signal is distorted.
Astronomers used K-line emissions, from iron atoms, to compare what was observed to non-relativistic observations of K-line emissions here on Earth.
This has enabled them to predict what they have dubbed relativistic reverberations
[video] http://phys.org/news/2012-05-x-ray-echoes-supermassive-black-hole.html

A beautiful video of aurorae, taken from the International Space Station
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/time-lapse-airglow-auroras/

Added to the long list of ways Russia/CCCP beat the USA in the space race, is their discovery of water on the moon, two decades before the USA did:
- First rocket into outer space
- First probe into outer space
- First satellite into outer space
- First animal into outer space
- First man into outer space
- First woman into outer space
- First discovery of water on the moon
When's the US going to admit the Commies whooped their asses, eh??
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-soviet-moon-1970s-west.html

Medicine stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

GM anti-virals have been used to pinpoint the weaknesses of influenza
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-genes-flu-virus.html

Scientists at an Israeli company have modified cannabis so that it doesn't get you high!
THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is the active ingredient that causes cognitive distortion (being high), and the munchies.
With the THC out, the medical benefits can be had, without these major drawbacks.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-israelis-cannabis-high.html

People with ear infections sometimes develop a film of bacteria behind their ear drums, which is similar to plaque on teeth, and can now be identified using a new technique - optical coherence tomography (OCT).
Biofilms resist antibiotics, so use of OCT will enable physicians to avoid dangerous overuse of them, and employ efficacious treatments instead.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-device-bacteria-eardrum.html

Spinal anaesthetics, injected directly into the spine, tend to drift off-site under gravity. Mixing the anesthetic with ferromagnetic fluids gives anaesthetists control over its flow, so they can keep it where its needed, and away from areas where it does damage, for example around the heart.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-magnets-rare-complication-spinal-anesthesia.html

Bad news for depression sufferers, like me - it pretty much has a holistic effect in increasing mortality
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-depression-death-diabetes.html

Anxiety in children is usually missed, a study in Denmark has found
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-anxiety-disorders-children-due.html

Entertainment stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

Queen Extravaganza, a band hand-picked by Brian May and Roger Taylor, performing March Of The Black Queen and Dragon Attack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP1yD9LOoOQ

The Darkness' 2nd new song from their upcoming 3rd album 'Hot Cakes' - Every Inch Of You
http://youtu.be/wAQhHSw6KFk
Plus the full tracklisting for their upcoming 3rd album 'Hot Cakes'
http://www.justinhawkinsrocks.co.uk/index.php?subaction=showcomments&id=1338413441&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&

This is Charlie McDonnell.. if you didn't already know
http://youtu.be/PWWRD-tkvSg

If there's something to know, Science will find it!
The reason bubbles in Guinness beer seem to 'float' downwards is due to the shape of the glass.
The bubbles are still trying to rise, but the fluid in which they rise is falling faster than they rise through it. This results in a net downward movement.
Any nitrogen bubbles in a similarly viscous fluid should do the same thing, in a glass where the top is thinner than the bottom
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-irish-mathematicians-guinness-video.html

"I never touched a drop, officer!"
Cedar Waxwings have been caught flying while under the influence. I'm not joking - read the article...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21850-drunk-birds-had-onetoomany-berries-to-blame.html

Pharyngula's friday cephalopod - the jewel squid
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/06/01/friday-cephalopod-i-was-going-to-bring-back-some-jewelry-for-my-wife/

Some salt with your watermelon, sir?
And would you like that as a drink?
http://www.neatorama.com/2012/05/28/drink-your-watermelon-with-some-salt-this-year/

Humidity does not play a part in helping to swing a cricket ball, when bowled
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-cricket-theory.html

A woman, probably drunk, erm... well, read it...
http://jalopnik.com/5914926/drivers-stop-to-watch-this-florida-woman-masturbate-on-highway

Climate stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

Ectothermic (cold-blooded) land and sea species differ in their responses to warming temperatures.
Because they rely on solar energy to reach operating temperature, ectothermic animals are limited by the coldest temperatures regions experience. Because all regions are warming, regions closer to the poles are becoming viable for previously-more-equatorial species.
But, terrestrial animals are migrating faster from the equator, because they are more seriously affected by lack of water than their aquatic counterparts.
This is why the two regions of the tropics are most abundantly biodiverse, and so these regions of biological abundance can be expected to be migrate toward the poles.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-sea-species-differ-climate-response.html
To compound this problem, herbivorous animals also suffer more from the poisons that plants produce in order to discourage their ingestion.
Warmer temperatures mean lower ability to process the poinsons, meaning they have to eat less of it. Also, the poisons seem to have a greater effect at higher temperatures!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428675.300-climate-change-will-create-a-toxic-brew-for-herbivores.html

Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that climatic change undermined the Indus' economy, resulting in a collapse of their society. Failure to adapt will result in a similar consequence for us, globally
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-climate-collapse-ancient-indus-civilization.html

Melting of Greenland's terrestrial ice currently contributes 0.7 of the 3 mm that sea levels rise by every year, but the rate Greenland contributes is increasing by 0.07 millimetres.
This means Greenland (assuming linearity, so these estimates will be on the low side) will contribute as much as the entire rest of the world by 2050.
And that isn't including the increase in melt from terrestrial Antarctic ice!
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-greenland-current-loss-ice-mass.html
And more news of Greenland. This time of its glaciers, which appear to be highly responsive to their environs.
Between the 30s and the 00s, sulphur pollution cooled the Arctic, halting glacier melt. Now that the pollution has cleared, the glaciers are melting again.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-aerial-photos-knowledge-glaciers-greenland.html

CO2eq emissions have reached a record high, as capitalists insist on perpetual economic growth, causing exponentially increasing emissions from fossil-fuelled energy sources.
Want to know how to reverse this trend? Buy less stuff!
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-carbon-dioxide-emissions-high.html

The climate in western North America is changing so fast that the glacier lily is blooming earlier and earlier, and the broad-tailed hummingbirds that depend on them are not adapting fast enough. Eventually, the hummingbirds will go foodless, and starve to extinction
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-hummingbirds.html

Atmospheric CO2eq concentrations have reached 400ppm (parts per million) already, which means there is an immense amount of damage coming our way, due to the lag time of its impact. The time to act was decades ago. We have so much work to do - adaptation is too slow to deal with what's coming
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-greenhouse-gas-milestone.html

Every year, ~1330 Americans die from heat-related events. That figures expected to rise to 4600 by the end of the century, meaning ~150,000 lives will be attributable to temperature itself.
In case you think this is hypothetical, bear in mind that the European heatwave in 2003 killed 35,000 people!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428674.100-extra-heatwaves-could-kill-150000-americans-by-2099.html

Australian conservationists fear they'll lose the Great Barrier Reef to pollution and climatic change if plans for fossil gas stations, mining, and tourist exploits are not mediated or halted.
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-great-barrier-reef-danger-unesco.html

Chemistry stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

Ununquadium and ununhexium are no more - Livermorium and Flovelium are now official!
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-livermorium-flerovium-periodic-table-elements.html
 

[video] Olympicene - a five-ringed carbon structure - is the smallest atomic structure known to man
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-stunning-image-smallest-five-ringed.html

An IndiumGalliumArsenide solar cell has been demonstrated to work at 43.5% efficiency!
In comparison, fuel in the tank of a car is converted to motion at an efficiency in the 20s.
Unlike the graphene cells mentioned last week, however, Indium Gallium and Arsenic are not abundant enough for these to ever be dirt cheap
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-sharp-solar-cell-worlds-highest.html

Sociology and environment stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

Individuals who enjoy more involvement in the running of businesses feel better from the engagement, but feel worse when they perceive their effort to not be appreciated.
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-engagement-loyal-employees-jaded.html

Despite sentencing guidelines, cultural prejudice causes women to receive shorter sentences than men for the same crimes
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-female-sex-criminal-justice.html

I, for one, would rue being classified as a Windsorian or Elizabethan. As a social kind of guy, i am sternly against any authoritarianism, and therefore also monarchies of any kind.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-tudor-england-myth.html
Child abandonment - the concealed consequence of non-contraception/abortion?
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-child-abandonment-europe-neglected-issue.html

For a remote tribe in Papua New Guinea, spatial representation of time is not the future-forward/past-backward construction that it is to us - the future is uphill, and the past is downhill
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428675.400-time-flows-uphill-for-remote-papua-new-guinea-tribe.html

You don't need poisonous weed-killers to get rid of weeds - boiling water, steam, or fire will work - you just have to be thorough
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-blanch-weeds.html



56 years of US tornado tracks:
Brightness is proportional to damage done
(Tornadoes don't really move in straight lines, though)
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-stunning-visualization-years-tornadoes.html

The Great Smog of London is often upheld as a time when pollution reached appalling levels: over a four-day period in December 1952, the capital came to a standstill, cars were abandoned, airports closed and over 4,000 people died due to respiratory or cardiovascular problems. But what might come as some surprise is that roughly the same number of people died as a result of pollution in London in 2008
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-pollution.html
The current rate is 43 deaths per day, across a population that has actually fallen. I count that as an urgent problem to sort!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London

Pharmaceutical pollution
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-environment-pharmaceuticals-personal-products-big.html

Ben Fogle's preparing for a 3000 mile swim across the Atlantic!
As part of the expedition, he will become a human research vessel, carrying micro-sensors on his body, to monitor temperatures, dissolved gases, and algae in the thin surface layer of the ocean, as he swims.
http://www.thegreatatlanticswim.com/science/
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/2107/

Well - here are some prizes i'd never heard of before - the Kavli Prizes - $1,000,000 each, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science with the Kavli Foundation and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research
The prizes go to:
David Jewitt and Michael Brown (Astrophysics) for discovering and describing the Kuiper belt
Cornelia Bargmann, Winfried Denk and Ann Graybiel (Neuroscience) for elucidating the way brains process stimuli to make decisions
Mildred Dresselhaus (Nanoscience) for providing insight into how energy flows around nano-scale environments
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-scientists-million-prizes.html

A US survey's found that car drivers there care more about fuel efficiency than any other factor in the purchase of a new car:
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-fuel-efficiency-tops-new-car-buyers.html
However, for all the increases in efficiency that have already happened, the total mass of the vehicles have negated any overall reduction in emissions
http://phys.org/news/2012-01-case-gas-mileage.html

A French court has said yes to YouTube being a safe harbour for broadcasters, and no to profiteering interests
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-french-court-youtube-obligated-content.html

Biology stuff from the week 28/5 - 3/6/12

Come with me, 3 billion years into the past, where eukaroytes such as you or i are billions of years away into the future, and abiogenesis is just about getting under way.
Oxygen is sparse, and the precursor of DNA - RNA (ribonucleic acid) - is gradually transforming in the warm environments of the early Earth.
Here, as will be the case for billions of years into the future, chemical folding is an intrinsic element of what will later be called 'life'.
This folding process is now catalysed (accelerated) by iron, in our unoxygenated environment, but will be displaced by magnesium, as oxygen becomes more abundant.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-early-earth-iron-magnesium-rna.html

"There is an ancient circuitry that appears to be involved in social behavior across all vertebrates.
On a basic level, this tells us something about where we came from. A lot of the neural circuits that our brain uses for social behavior are actually quite old."
"The biologists analyzed 12 regions of the brain responsible for social behavior and decision-making in 88 species of vertebrates including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish."
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-vertebrates-ancient-neural-circuitry-complex.html

This is an area of research that has not, as far as i'm aware, received the attention that laryngeal analysis has.
The process of speech, and of learning how to do it, is one that involves not just the larynx or the face in isolation - when human babies learn to speak, they have to learn how to co-ordinate their bodies, in order to form the sounds we recognise as language.
This involves use of the diaphragm, chest, larynx, tongue, jaw, and lips, as well as facial expressions and gesticulations, to aid communication.
Much like matching the phonemes and concepts behind the semantics of language itself, this process requires years of study, leading to an eventual blooming as the skills are brought together.
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-monkey-lip-smacks-insights-evolution.html
Humans are aided in their efforts to produce phonemes, by the position of the larynx in their throats:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2789/27895201.jpg

A plant gene, called NRT2.4, becomes activated in severely nitrogen-depleted environments, and enables the plant to survive.
If this gene could be made to work in non-severe conditions, billions of tonnes of fertilizer could be saved, and, maybe more importantly, nitrate pollution could be prevented
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-genetic-alternative-fertilizer.html

As populations shrink, they become more and more fragile. Fishing is an example of an industry that could bring about its own doom, by culling fish to below a threshold of population size from which they can never recover.
"...in populations of yeast subject to increasingly stressful conditions, populations became less and less resilient to new disturbances until they reached a tipping point at which any small disruption could wipe out a population."
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-yeast-populations-collapse.html

Wishbones give insight into prehistoric flight
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-wishbones-insight-prehistoric-flight.html