Americans used more solar, nuclear, biomass and wind energy in 2008 than they did in 2007, according to energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and less coal and petroleum during the same time frame.

Natural gas consumption and geothermal energy use remained the same.

The estimated U.S. energy use in 2008 equaled 99.2 quadrillion BTUs ("quads"), down from 101.5 quadrillion BTUs in 2007.   A BTU, or British Thermal Unit, is a unit of measurement for energy, and is equivalent to about 1.055 kilojoules.

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #3


The Voynich manuscript, Beinebecke Library's MS 408 is a handwritten parchment codex of about 240 pages measuring 225 x 160 mm.   The manuscript is in an unreadable script.  Most of its pages are illustrated.  For nearly 100 years, not one person or group has managed to decode even a single word of it.

According to a recent poll by the National Sleep Foundation, 27 percent of Americans say economic concerns are keeping them awake at night.

But it may not be just stress.  According to the poll, 47 percent of the sleepless are very likely to use caffeinated beverages like coffee, tea and sodas during the day to compensate for their sleepiness and the use of artificial stimulants and insomnia are correlated. The majority of people who have difficulty sleeping report using those substances. 

“Stress and anxiety can definitely impact sleep,” says Sunil Mathews, M.D., medical director of the Sleep Center at Baylor Medical Center at Irving. “And unfortunately, insomnia can turn into a vicious cycle.”

One of the major obstacles in widespread use hydrogen as a clean energy alternative is hydrogen storage. Solid-state storage, using solid materials such as metals that absorb hydrogen and release it as needed, has safety and practicality advantages over storing hydrogen as a liquid or gas and several materials have been discovered that have met or exceeded the DOE gravimetric and/or volumetric performance targets.

Of those, however, the majority do not have the required thermodynamic and kinetic properties that allow them to release their hydrogen when needed, and be efficiently and economically reloaded with hydrogen when spent. 

It seems people still use the intelligence quotient (IQ) test even though minorities in America claim there is cultural bias that invalidates it as a measure of intelligence.

Researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health have gone even further than cultural bias; they say prenatal exposure to environmental pollutants called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can affect a child's IQ, according to their study of black and hispanic women living in New York City.

PAHs are chemicals released into the air from the burning of coal, diesel, oil and gas, or other organic substances such as tobacco. In urban areas motor vehicles are a major source of PAHs.

40 years ago,  July 20, 1969,  Apollo 11 Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon, making the U.S. last to start but first to finish in the 'space race' with the Soviet Union.   Armstrong's now famous words, "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," inspired a generation of scientists.

The new R&D enterprise it fostered, built to support America's geopolitical ambitions and based largely on federally-funded contracts and specifications rather than the private funding that had been the primary source of basic research before World War II, has had a remarkable effect on science and how advancements are made.

A study by the University of Barcelona (UB) has analysed which facial features our brain examines to identify faces. Our brain adapts in order to obtain the maximum amount of information possible from each face and according to the study the key data for identification come from, in the first place, the eyes and then the shape of the mouth and nose.

New research at the University of Liverpool says it is possible to develop an 'invisibility cloak' to protect buildings from earthquakes, using concentric rings of plastic which could be fitted to the Earth's surface in order to divert surface waves.

It's not coming to your building any time soon.   It's a theory and they're just beginning small-scale experiments.

The seismic waves produced by earthquakes include body waves which travel through the earth and surface waves which travel across it. The new technology controls the path of surface waves which are the most damaging and responsible for much of the destruction which follows earthquakes. 

British young men aren't regarded as all that even-tempered in the best of circumstances; England, Wales and Scotland are the top three most violent developed countries.   Among those, young men who stay at home with their parents are more violent than those who live independently, according to new research at Queen Mary, University of London.

The new study indicates that men still living at home in their early twenties have fewer responsibilities and more disposable income ... and they spend it on alcohol.  These young men make up only 4 percent of the UK's male population but they are responsible for 16 percent of all violent injuries in the last five years.

A team of astrophysicists has developed a new explanation for the early composition of our solar system - radioactive nuclei found in the earliest meteorites, dating back billions of years, could have been delivered by a nearby dying giant star of six times the mass of the sun. 

If their hypothesis holds water, it could change our current ideas on the origin of the solar system.