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Can Giant Airships Accelerate To Orbit (JP Aerospace's Idea)?

Can Giant Airships Accelerate To Orbit (JP Aerospace's Idea)?

May 03 2017 | comment(s)

JP Aerospace is an interesting company - in the city of Rancho Cordova, CA., California, JP Aerospace, America's OTHER Space Program. Their aim is to develop ways to send airships up into the stratosphere - and more controversially, all the way to orbit with their "Orbital Airships" vision. The airships would accelerate very slowly, at a rate of perhaps a few centimeters per second increase in speed every second, over several days, until they reach orbital velocity. Can they, or can't they, or how far can they go?

Ideology Of Climate Change: How Activist Journalism At Columbia Led To A Partisan Lawsuit

Ideology Of Climate Change: How Activist Journalism At Columbia Led To A Partisan Lawsuit

May 01 2017 | comment(s)

The court case over whether ExxonMobil may have deliberately downplayed the potential dangers of global warming is heating up. Eleven attorney generals have filed a brief in US District Court in Manhattan supporting a lawsuit by Exxon to halt a probe by their peers in New York and Massachusetts.

Paper Links Common Antibiotics To Increased Risk Of Miscarriage

Paper Links Common Antibiotics To Increased Risk Of Miscarriage

May 01 2017 | comment(s)

It's manna from heaven for sue-and-settle law firms; a new paper links common antibiotics, such as macrolides, quinolones, tetracyclines, sulfonamides and metronidazole, to an increased risk of miscarriage in early pregnancy.

The association was weak, but juries won't know that, because Dr. Anick Bérard, Faculty of Pharmacy, Université de Montréal, declared, "our investigation shows that certain types of antibiotics are increasing the risk of spontaneous abortion, with a 60% to two-fold increased risk." That's important, since baseline risk of spontaneous abortion is 30 percent, but the women who miscarried in this study were more likely to be older, living alone and to have multiple health issues and infections. 
Depression As Harbinger Of Other Disorders

Depression As Harbinger Of Other Disorders

May 01 2017 | comment(s)

Does the reality of mental disorders also cause depression, or is depression a harbinger of other disorders, a gateway as it were?
Economic crisis, bank failures and plague in the Middle Ages.

Economic crisis, bank failures and plague in the Middle Ages.

Apr 29 2017 | comment(s)

A.D. 1200 has been called the golden age, as characterized by a booming economy combined with widespread prosperity. Europe's population had reached the height of its growth, reaching about 70 million people, beyond which, according to historians, it would have been incompatible to resupply of food products, with the technologies of the time. The hot weather was optimal for harvesting in the fields, flourishing agriculture.

Rocket salad, enantiomers, and nomenclature

Rocket salad, enantiomers, and nomenclature

Apr 29 2017 | comment(s)

Yet another article in the Telegraph: this time Supermarket rocket salad healthier than homegrown. featuring the vegetable kingdom this time:

Sensible And Pragmatic Proposal For Implementing The EC's Criteria For Identifying Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals

Sensible And Pragmatic Proposal For Implementing The EC's Criteria For Identifying Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals

Apr 28 2017 | comment(s)


A Visit To GSI

A Visit To GSI

Apr 27 2017 | comment(s)

GSI, the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, is a laboratory located near the town of Darmstadt, in central Germany, just a few miles away from the Frankfurt airport. The centre was founded in 1969, and has since then been a very active facility where heavy elements are studied (six rare heavy ones were in fact discovered there, including the one they named Darmstadtium!), and where a wide research plan of nuclear physics is carried out.

Pig Study Shows Dairy 'Excellent' Source Of Protein For Human Kids Too

Pig Study Shows Dairy 'Excellent' Source Of Protein For Human Kids Too

Apr 27 2017 | comment(s)

In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations propose using animals like pigs to study the best way of evaluating protein quality in foods eaten by children.

The researchers behind a new study calculated protein scores for eight sources of protein, derived from both plants and animals. Protein scores compare the amount of digestible amino acids in a food with a "reference protein," a theoretical protein which contains fully digestible amino acids in the proportions required for human nutrition at a particular stage of life.
Thiamethoxam: Study Claims Neonicotinoid Causes Erratic Bee Flight

Thiamethoxam: Study Claims Neonicotinoid Causes Erratic Bee Flight

Apr 26 2017 | comment(s)

Thiamethoxam is a compound in the class of targeted pesticides known as "neonicotinoids", because they are chemically similar to nicotine, which has natural insect repellent properties.

Neonicotinoids are used in crops such as corn, soybeans and cotton and have been controversial because of environmental campaigns claiming a "colony collapse disorder" was caused by them. Yet bee numbers have not declined so concern has migrated to wild bee populations and sub-lethal effects - bees not killed but changed. These two arguments are easier to maintain because there is no way to count wild bees, only a few species even have hives, and therefore one guess is as good as another. Sub-lethal effects could also mean anything - like the ability to fly.
The Pollution In Toronto's Subways

The Pollution In Toronto's Subways

Apr 25 2017 | comment(s)

Though subways reduce overall pollution emissions in cities, what is good for society may not be good for the poor people who ride mass transportation. A new study finds that Canadian subways personal exposure to certain pollutants, and that Toronto has the highest levels in Canada.

Sounds awful for city dwellers, right? Breathe easy, the pollutant they measured has yet to be linked to any harm, and no acute deaths, outside government claims when they want to restrict businesses. 
Emotional Feeding Leads To Emotional Eating

Emotional Feeding Leads To Emotional Eating

Apr 25 2017 | comment(s)

If you hand food to a child when they are sad, or angry, or anything else, they will begin to associate food with those feelings. As adults, this emotional eating will be a tough habit to break. In youth, it will be even more difficult because kids aren't always aware that good things can be bad for you in excess.
Government: There Is More To Science Than Government-Funded Jobs

Government: There Is More To Science Than Government-Funded Jobs

Apr 19 2017 | comment(s)

For the better part of this century, the federal government has promoted the notion that only government-funded science is real science, and the private sector is the icky kind that, let's face it, the kind of people who overwhelmingly prefer to stay in academia dislike. (1)
Wonky Rockets? Wonky Theory!

Wonky Rockets? Wonky Theory!

Apr 19 2017 | comment(s)

Wonky Rockets? Wonky Theory!


The British tabloids Express, Metro, Daily Star, Sun and others seem to think that some or all of the rockets displayed in North Korea recently are bogus.  The "proof" is the wonky nosecones shown in a BBC video.

It's not the Rockets that were wonky.  Rather, the "news" reports demonstrate wonky thinking. Media reports about wonky rockets prove only that some reporters tend to write stories based on their own lack of knowledge.  Due diligence is obviously not a term with which these scribblers are familiar.
Can IARC Be Salvaged?

Can IARC Be Salvaged?

Apr 19 2017 | comment(s)

The IARC monograph program on Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks must be reformed and brought into the 21st century – or it should be abolished

The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph program is an outmoded cancer classification scheme that has remained fundamentally unchanged since the monograph program was established in the early 1970s. In the intervening 45 years, scientific understanding of cancer causation has deepened and provided decision makers with an evolving appreciation of how effects seen in laboratory animals should be used to protect human health.

LHCb Measures Unity, Finds 0.6

LHCb Measures Unity, Finds 0.6

Apr 18 2017 | comment(s)

With a slightly anti-climatic timing if we consider the just ended orgy of new results presented at winter conferences in particle physics (which I touched on here), the LHCb collaboration outed today the results of a measurement of unity, drawing attention on the fact that unity was found to be not equal to 1.0.
Predicting Methane Rise, Using A Hydroxyl Radical Estimate

Predicting Methane Rise, Using A Hydroxyl Radical Estimate

Apr 17 2017 | comment(s)

In the late 2000s, after natural gas uptake caused American carbon dioxide emissions to plummet, panicked environmentalists began to scramble for new ways to campaign on ending so-called fossil fuels. Methane, with 23X the warming power of CO2, was ideal, but they had just spent a decade insisting methane could explain increased warming, because it did not persist long enough.

And it would have started long before then, if the methane were linked to global warming by frozen tundra melting and releasing its methane. But it wasn't detected.
Kuphus Polythalamia: Giant Sulfur-Powered Shipworm Is The Stuff Of Science Fiction

Kuphus Polythalamia: Giant Sulfur-Powered Shipworm Is The Stuff Of Science Fiction

Apr 17 2017 | comment(s)

A newly named species, a giant, black, mud dwelling, worm-like animal, doesn't seem to eat much, instead it gets its energy from a form of sulfur. 

The public is often confused what 'discovery' means in science. It means it is being identified as a new species, not never seen before. The three- to five-foot long, tusk-like shells that encase the animal were first documented in the 1700s and are fairly common, it's the living animal inside that is being identified as a new species.  
Bee Science Could Help Dismantle Terrorist Networks

Bee Science Could Help Dismantle Terrorist Networks

Apr 17 2017 | comment(s)

A new bio-inspired algorithm seems to use the social behavior of bee colonies, which allows them to attack in an optimal way, could help dismantle social networks linked to organized crime, jihadist terrorism, or facilitate the design of vaccination strategies capable of containing the spread of a pandemic.

The tool automatically detects and identifies the most dangerous actors or nodes within a given social network and the density of the interconnected relationships between them, which may help law enforcement authorities make their decisions and act in the most efficient way possible.
Starbursts In Virgo

Starbursts In Virgo

Apr 16 2017 | comment(s)

Starburst galaxies are where stars are forming at such a breakneck rate that the galaxy is eating up its gas supply faster than it can be replenished. There are several different factors that can lead to such an ideal environment in which stars can form at such a rapid rate. Crucially, there has to be a sufficiently massive supply of gas. This might be acquired in a number of ways -- for example by passing very close to another galaxy, in a full-blown galactic collision, or as a result of some event that forces lots of gas into a relatively small space.