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POPSNew spaceship force field makes Mars trip possible Now this has been confirmed in the laboratory in the UK using apparatus originally built to work on fusion. By recreating in miniature a tiny piece of the Solar Wind, scientists working in the laboratory were able to confirm that a small "hole" in the Solar Wind is all that would be needed to keep the astronauts safe on their journey to our nearest neighbours. Dr. Ruth Bamford, one of the lead researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said, "These initial experiments have shown promise and that it may be possible to shield astronauts from deadly space weather".
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POPSThe Promise and Power of RNA RNA interference, or RNAi, discovered only about 10 years ago, is attracting huge interest for its seeming ability to knock out disease-causing genes. There are already at least six RNAi drugs being tested in people, for illnesses including cancer and an eye disease. And while there are still huge challenges to surmount, that number could easily double in the coming year. “I’ve never found a gene that couldn’t be down-regulated by RNAi,” said Tod Woolf, president of RXi Pharmaceuticals, one of the many companies that have sprung up in the last few years to pursue RNA-based medicines. The two scientists credited with discovering the basic mechanism of RNA interference won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006, only eight years after publishing their seminal paper. And three scientists credited with discovering the closely related micro-RNA in the 1990s won Lasker Awards for medical research this year.
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POPSNewt protein makes legs grow back They've found the protein that causes immature cells, similar to stem cells, to multiply, and grow to reform the missing limbs in newts. It is hoped understanding of this process may lead to it's application as a regrowth factor in mammals.
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POPSNew Photos from Abu Ghraib Just another one of those days that I am sick to be an American. How can people do this? They are amassing so much bad karma for themselves. Very disturbing
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POPSOur Hackable Democracy Last month, Princeton researchers submitted a report based on their study of the machines' security, part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic against the state government aimed at decertifying Sequoia machines. The results of the study still aren’t known: A judge placed a gag order on the researchers that prevents them from publishing their work. "Any reasonably talented security researcher can compromise these machines" In fact, California's study of Sequoia's machines found that any poll worker with access to Sequoia's machines could quickly change the results of an election. In 2006, researchers at Princeton found that a Diebold machine could be hacked in less than a minute. There's a possibility their votes will be hacked, lost or miscounted. But that's no excuse not to vote, argues Smith. "You'll just have to take a chance," she says. "The only way to be sure your vote won't count is not to show up.
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POPSWomen Seeing Women 'Women Seeing Women: A Pictorial History of Women's Photography from Julia Margaret Cameron to Annie Leibovitz' (Haus Publishing, £30), edited by Lothar Schirmer, published on 30 November, is available from Telegraph Books.
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POPSWas Hitler an atheist as some Christians say he was? Was Hitler an atheist as some Christians say he was? Hitler's own words make this claim rather dubious. Scholars are still unsure whether or not Adolf Hitler was a believing Christian or just a politically cunning theist, but what is certain however is there is no evidence he was an atheist. This page documents some of his religious views, as he personally described them. Articles which examine the evidence in further detail can be found at the bottom of the page. Continue at http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_hitler.html
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POPSRight-wing military writer: We may have to kill war journalists According to Peters: "The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters." I would say the opposite. Victories in Imperial wars simply breed more Imperial was of conquest.
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POPSDeaf Jam Determined to bring the deaf and hard-of hearing community into the music world, D-PAN has further partnered with the University of Michigan's College of Engineering. The university is championing ways to apply new wireless technology that will aid the deaf and hard-of-hearing community in a live concert setting, and augment their capacity to "feel" the music. Forbes has his eyes on the hearing-centric music festivals. "I would love to see myself and other deaf artists going out performing on stage. Like at Lollapalooza. I think people would think it's cool to see deaf artists signing."
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POPSGlossarist Great resource for those times one cannot remember just the right word when writing or trying to communicate intelligently.
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POPSScan Uncovers Thousands of Copycat Scientific Articles The researchers set their own software tool, called eTBLAST, to identify pairs that were more than 45 percent identical, Errami says. The search turned up more than 70,000 hits, which the researchers and a team of three assistants have been manually checking. So far, Errami says they have gone through close to 3,000 pairs of abstracts or the full articles, if the duplicates have different authors. He notes that some matches were found to be innocent duplications, such as reprints or translations. But in 79 cases (and counting), duplicates with different authors had no obviously legitimate explanation. The group has set up a public Web site, Déjà vu, to document the findings.
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POPSLevitation in the Lab continues: Several years ago, acoustic levitation was introduced to keep a droplet separate from its surroundings but the equipment required for this is complex, big and expensive. Alternatively, the technique of bouncing droplets was introduced in 2005 but until now it could only be used on a specific range of droplets with high viscosity. The new technique which the physicists began work on three years ago, when one of the researchers noticed that certain bass notes emanating from his iPod speaker could make droplets 'roll' and appear to dance, works for a much larger range of viscosity fluids than previous techniques and also for a larger range of droplet size – making it much more useful for chemists, biologists and food scientists.
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POPSA Precious Gift for Lovers of Literature
The Paris Review Interview Archive "Since 1953, when the first issue of the magazine appeared with an interview of E. M. Forster, our Q&A encounters with the great writers of our times have come to be recognized as a sort of literary genre unto themselves: the Paris Review interview. More than fifty years—and more than three hundred interviews—later, the archive continues to grow with each new issue of the magazine. In November 2006, the first volume of a four-book set of The Paris Review Interviews was celebrated by reviewers across the English-speaking world. In tandem with this publishing project, we offer here online a complete index of every interview ever published, searchable by author and by date—as well as a substantial sampling of the archive’s finest interviews, posted in their entirety. Taken together, these conversations with novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, biographers, journalists, and critics constitute what Salman Rushdie calls “the finest available inqui
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POPSFuture's Brighter Than Ever- blogging Huffington also said bloggers' openness helps break through the media clutter to illuminate important issues, and is changing the way traditional journalism engages readers.
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POPSMuslim backlash We are so afraid of Muslims blowing us up that we are afraid to publish books about Islam.
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POPSVolcano Releases One Trillion Cow Farts Into Atmosphere
"It takes more than a volcano to stop our opposition to the threat presented by industrial production and free markets to the ideas of global government and central planning," said Mr. Pachauri. "If we don't act soon, my children may never be able to chair an intergovernmental panel, control the economy, and distribute production quotas. The hardest hit will be Third-World dictatorships that are contributing disproportionately more money to our members and their families.The stand against economic development and free enterprise has become an urgent global issue - a moral issue if you will - that affects the survival of all endangered intergovernmental agencies." A separate chapter calls for a volcano tax on the worst offenders starting with Chile - with a footnote explaining that if the Chileans hadn't disposed of the Marxist regime of Salvatore Allende in 1971, the whole issue could've been avoided because they wouldn't be anywhere near the list of developed nations today.
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POPSGod doesn't need Ole Anthony
Talented writer and editor for the New Yorker. He has written for Atlantic Monthly, Discover Magazine, New York Academy of Sciences ..etc. Check out his book on Southern Culture - " Noodling for Flatheads: Moonshine, Monster Catfish, and Other Southern Comforts." This article is a fun read. More: Their damning discoveries have led to prosecutions and to exposés on "PrimeTime Live," on "Dateline NBC." Trinity's admirers think of the foundation as the conscience of evangelical Christianity. Its targets call it a godless, penniless, and deeply annoying cult. "The televangelist I worked for feared Ole—he wanted to do him physical harm," one of Anthony's informants told me. "These guys think he's Satan incarnate." The opinion is not a new one. When Anthony was six years old, the family's Lutheran minister, in St. Peter, Minnesota, asked his mother not to bring him to catechism class anymore. "He told her I was an evil child," "I was disruptive and asked too many questions."
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POPSDept. of Defense Releases new War Strategy Manual Anyway, I learned today that more than 250,000 people have downloaded the manual in three weeks. Those are New York Times bestselling numbers. And it says something about how much people are looking at this manual. Some authors toil for years for such numbers. So the military is considering publishing the manual and selling it in bookstores, just as it did for 3-0. If you want to check it out, See above link and scroll down to last sentence.
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POPSMore unreleased Hendrix music to be released Janie Hendrix, president and CEO of Experience Hendrix and sister of the late guitarist, told Billboard.com that there remains “10 years of Hendrix music” in the vaults. She went on to say she’s currently in the studio transferring tapes of Band of Gypsy performances that have never been released. Janie Hendrix also assured Billboard.com that any new opportunities that arise with regard to her late brother will “uphold the standard of the music.”
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