Invasion of the giant rats in Bradford

The rodents, twice the size of common types, are plaguing an estate in Bradford, West Yorks, often appearing in kitchens and lounges.

It is feared some could be “super rats” from South America.

Pictured above is a monster 2½ft rat killed on the estate.

… “At night you can hear them chasing each other in the loft. They sound like drag racing cars as they screech across the rafters.”

Last night experts called the shot rat “extraordinary” and said the colony was worth investigating.

Laura Drake, of the Mammal Society, speculated it could be a coypu – a South American rodent often referred to as a “giant rat”.

Coypus were thought to have been eradicated in Britain in a cull 20 years ago. But Laura said it was “not impossible” there had been survivors.

Yorkshire Rat Club president Colin Arundel said rodents, like humans, could simply be getting bigger as food becomes more and more available.

The RSPCA said: “The most likely answer is the shot rat was from a non-indigenous species that was in captivity and got out.”

via Invasion of the giant rats in Bradford | The Sun |News.

This is like that giant snake photo.  The way it is photographed makes it look bigger than it is.

Extreme darkness: Carbon nanotube forest covers ultra-dark detector

Harnessing darkness for practical use, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laser power detector coated with the world’s darkest material — a forest of carbon nanotubes that reflects almost no light across the visible and part of the infrared spectrum.

NIST will use the new ultra-dark detector, described in a new paper in Nano Letters, to make precision laser power measurements for advanced technologies such as optical communications, laser-based manufacturing, solar energy conversion, and industrial and satellite-borne sensors.

Inspired by a 2008 paper by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) on “the darkest man-made material ever,” the NIST team used a sparse array of fine nanotubes as a coating for a thermal detector, a device used to measure laser power. A co-author at Stony Brook University in New York grew the nanotube coating. The coating absorbs laser light and converts it to heat, which is registered in pyroelectric material (lithium tantalate in this case). The rise in temperature generates a current, which is measured to determine the power of the laser. The blacker the coating, the more efficiently it absorbs light instead of reflecting it, and the more accurate the measurements.

The new NIST detector uniformly reflects less than 0.1 percent of light at wavelengths from deep violet at 400 nanometers (nm) to near infrared at 4 micrometers (μm) and less than 1 percent of light in the infrared spectrum from 4 to 14 μm. The results are similar to those reported for the RPI material and in a 2009 paper by a Japanese group. The NIST work is unique in that the nanotubes were grown on pyroelectric material, whereas the other groups grew them on silicon. NIST researchers plan to extend the calibrated operating range of their device to 50 or even 100 micrometer wavelengths, to perhaps provide a standard for terahertz radiation power. …

via Extreme darkness: Carbon nanotube forest covers ultra-dark detector.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals ‘incredible shrinking moon’

Newly discovered cliffs in the lunar crust indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today, according to a team analyzing new images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The results provide important clues to the moon’s recent geologic and tectonic evolution.

The moon formed in a chaotic environment of intense bombardment by asteroids and meteors. These collisions, along with the decay of radioactive elements, made the moon hot. The moon cooled off as it aged, and scientists have long thought the moon shrank over time as it cooled, especially in its early history. The new research reveals relatively recent tectonic activity connected to the long-lived cooling and associated contraction of the lunar interior.

“We estimate these cliffs, called lobate scarps, formed less than a billion years ago, and they could be as young as a hundred million years,” said Dr. Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Washington. While ancient in human terms, it is less than 25 percent of the moon’s current age of more than four billion years. “Based on the size of the scarps, we estimate the distance between the moon’s center and its surface shrank by about 300 feet,” said Watters, lead author of a paper on this research appearing in Science August 20.

via NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals ‘incredible shrinking moon’.

I think the earth is secretly eating the moon when no one is watching.

Wikileaks encryption use offers ‘legal challenge’

A novel use of encryption by whistle-blowing website Wikileaks could “challenge the legal system for years to come,” according to an influential observer of the hacking community.

Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of 2600 The Hacker Quarterly magazine, made his comments in reference to an encrypted file recently posted on the site.

Some suspect the file – as yet unopened – contains further sensitive material.

It has been reposted around the web and is available for anyone to download. So far, it has beeen downloaded 100,000 times.

“If you release it in encrypted form, nobody really knows if you’ve released it or not – or even what the material is,” Mr Goldstein told BBC News.

“Then, if something happens to you, all it takes is the revelation of a simple spoken phrase known by a select group of people and everyone who has this mystery file now has all of the secrets.”

‘Uncrackable file’

Wikileaks recently published 76,000 secret US military logs detailing military actions in Afghanistan; an act the US authorities described as highly irresponsible.

The website now says it will release 15,000 further sensitive documents, once it has completed a review aimed at minimising the risk that the release could put people’s lives in danger.

The site came under criticism after it released the first tranche for endangering the lives of informants or others named in the documents.

The release of the logs has led many to wonder what action the US might take against Wikileaks.

Now it seems the site may be using encryption as insurance against legal and other threats to the information it holds.

The insurance.aes256 file has been posted alongside the already published leaked war logs and can be downloaded by anyone.

From the file name, it is believed that it has been encrypted using the AES256 algorithm – described as “extremely strong” by Professor Whitfield Diffie, of the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway University, London.

Prof Diffie believes that AES256, which he says has been “extensively studied” could prove too tough even for US intelligence agencies to break.

While no-one knows what the insurance file contains, this has not prevented the contents becoming a matter of considerable speculation.

Some suspect that the file contains a further leaked US military video, others that it is another tranche of US military logs – perhaps this time from Iraq. Or it could just be an imaginative bluff.

Even the name of the directory in which it is held – “straw-glass-and-bottle” – has prompted discussion and debate online. ..

via BBC News – Wikileaks encryption use offers ‘legal challenge’.

‘Zombie’ Ants Taken Over by Ancient Parasitic Fungus

Scientists have discovered the earliest evidence — 48 million years old — of a fungus that takes over the bodies and minds of ants. “The fungus, which is alive and well in forests today, latches on to carpenter ants as they cross the forest floor before returning to their nests high in the canopy,” reports The Guardian.

Once inside, the fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, releases chemicals that cause the ants to leave the colony in search of leaves or fall from their high canopies onto leaves growing closer to the ground. A graphic description of the ensuing, gruesome death/zombification process follows:

In their last hours, infected ants move towards the underside of the leaf they are on and lock their mandibles in a ‘death grip’ around the central vein, immobilising themselves and locking the fungus in position. … The fungus cannot grow high up in the canopy or on the forest floor, but infected ants often die on leaves midway between the two, where the humidity and temperature suit the fungus. Once an ant has died, the fungus sprouts from its head and produces a pod of spores, which are fired at night on to the forest floor, where they can infect other ants.

And if that vivid prose isn’t enough for you, here’s a video, courtesy the BBC.

via ‘Zombie’ Ants Taken Over by Ancient Parasitic Fungus.

Yow. That’s disgusting. How much of our behavior is already controlled by microbes? Perhaps more than you think:

… the Human Microbiome Project points towards a possibility that human behavior may be controlled by the composition of the microbe population within a human body.^[1]

We may be compelled to do some things we do by interactions that feed the needs of microbes. This is not intelligent control, this is the result of small local interactions resulting in larger scale behavior.  Gut bacteria want sugar, for example, and have evolved to emit something that makes you crave sugar. That’s a simple case, but it could get way more complicated with multiple organisms, multiple steps resulting in some complex behavior.  Interesting thought, isn’t it?

Remember that X-files episode where Mulder and Scully are trapped by fungus and are hallucinating? The episode is called “field trip“. Art imitates life.

UFO-believing group in Cairngorms pilgrimage

A UFO-based religious sect are preparing for a pilgrimage to a Cairngorms peak in a bid to meet some higher beings.

Members of the Aetherius Society will trek to Creag-an-Leth-Chain this month to visit one of their “shrines”. They believe the mountain is charged with spiritual energy by a “Lord of Karma”.

The disciples of the sect, founded in 1955 by former London cabbie Dr George King, will then take their new found energy on the next stage of their pilgrimage – to Ben Macdhui.

At the peak they believe they will come face to face with members of “The Spiritual Hierarchy of Earth – once human beings who have cheated death by reaching a higher state of being.

Dr King founded the group in 1955 after he claimed to have been visited by aliens from Venus and Mars. He then relayed this energy to 19 mountains of religious significance around the world, including Creag-an-Leth-Chain.

World peace

David Trimble, 71, will be leading the exhibition on August 28 and has welcomed any followers from the local community to join them when they pray for the end of global warming and world peace.

He said: “”When we get up to the top we will be using a service called the 12 blessings.

It is an extension of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which the cosmic beings delivered through Dr King’s voicebox as he was in a higher yogic trance.

“We use this process and when we are on top of Creag-an-Leth-Chain we are able to tap into an incredible amount of energy.”

Mr Trimble then hopes the ascend to the next peak will be repaid with a meeting with the higher beings. …

via UFO-believing group in Cairngorms pilgrimage | Scotland | STV News.

Finding beings higher might be difficult, but I read a story about some bears today …

Father saves three-year-old from bear in German zoo

A father has saved his three-year-old daughter from an Asian black bear after the girl climbed into the animal’s enclosure in a German zoo, police say.

Both father and child were injured after the girl climbed over a fence in a private zoo in Luenebach, western Germany.

The bear hit the girl on the forehead before her father was able to snatch her away, police said.

The 34-year-old Dutch man was also attacked and his leg injured.

The girl climbed the 1m (3ft) high fence while her parents were not watching and fell into a moat in the enclosure, a police spokeswoman said.

Her father then climbed after her and was also struck by the animal.

Other visitors called an ambulance and the girl was flown to hospital by helicopter. Her father was also hospitalised. …

via BBC News – Father saves three-year-old from bear in German zoo.

This is turning out to be the day of non-lethal bear stories. Definitely a hero of a dad.

Fate of Universe revealed by galactic lens

A “galactic lens” has revealed that the Universe will probably expand forever.

Astronomers used the way that light from distant stars was distorted by a huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 to work out the amount of dark energy in the cosmos.

Dark energy is a mysterious force that speeds up the expansion of the Universe.

Understanding the distribution of this force revealed that the likely fate of the Universe was to keep on expanding.

It will eventually become a cold, dead wasteland, researchers say.

The study, conducted by an international team led by Professor Eric Jullo of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, is published in the journal Science.

Dark energy makes up three-quarters of our Universe but is totally invisible. We only know it exists because of its effect on the expansion of the Universe.

To work out how dark energy is spread through space, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the way that light from distant stars was distorted around Abell 1689, a nearby cluster of galaxies.

Abell 1689, found in the constellation of Virgo, is one of the biggest galactic clusters known to science.

Because of its huge mass, the cluster acts as a cosmic magnifying glass, causing light to bend around it.

The way in which light is distorted by this cosmic lens depends on three factors: how far away the distant object is; the mass of Abell 1689; and the distribution of dark energy.

The astronomers were able to measure the first two variables using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, enabling them to calculate this crucial third factor. …

via BBC News – Fate of Universe revealed by galactic lens.

If our understanding of time is incorrect, then I think this would be a wrong conclusion.

Neptune Finally Makes First Orbit Around the Sun Since Discovery In 1846

The planet Neptune will be in opposition — when the sun, Earth, and a planet fall in a straight line on Aug. 20. The planet will be exactly opposite the sun in the sky, being highest in the sky at local midnight. Usually this is also the point where the planet is closest to the Earth.

This opposition is special because Neptune will be returning close to the spot where it was discovered in 1846, marking its first complete trip around the sun since its discovery.

Coincidentally opposition in 1846 also fell on Aug. 20, although the planet wasn’t actually spotted until over a month later, on Sept. 23.

This Neptune sky map shoes where to find the planet as it completes its first orbit since astronomers first discovered it.

Strange path to discovery

The discovery of Neptune has an interesting prehistory.

The planet Uranus was discovered more or less by accident in 1781 by Sir William Herschel, in the course of his search for deep sky objects. As time went by, Uranus’ position wasn’t quite what astronomer’s predicted, and mathematical astronomers began to suspect that there was another planet out there whose gravity was influencing Uranus’ motion.

In the mid-1840s an Englishman named John Couch Adams and a Frenchman named Urbain Le Verrier independently calculated where this new planet would have to be located to have the observed effect on Uranus, but both had trouble getting observational astronomers interested in looking for it.

Finally the German astronomer Johann Galle actually looked at the predicted location and discovered the tiny blue-green disk of the planet that eventually came to be known as Neptune. The date was Sept. 23, 1846. This led to a drawn out battle between French and English astronomers as to who pointed to Neptune first; in the end, a three-way tie was declared and Adams, Le Verrier, and Galle share the honor of discovering Neptune.

Ironically, Galle was not the first person to observe Neptune. That honor goes to none other than Galileo Galilei, who twice observed Neptune but mistook it for a star, on December 28, 1612, and January 27, 1613. Galileo had two strikes against him: first, the small size and poor quality of his telescopes, and secondly he happened to observe Neptune when it was stationary, as happens to all planets from time to time because of the relative motions of the planet and Earth.

For nearly a century Neptune was the planet farthest from the sun, only losing that honor when tiny Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. Now that the International Astronomical Union has downgraded Pluto’s status, Neptune is once again the farthest known planet from the sun — at least in our solar system.

Because of its great distance from the sun, 30 astronomical units out (1 AU is the distance from the sun to Earth), and its relatively small diameter (30,800 miles/49,500 km), Neptune is a dim and tiny object in amateur telescopes. While Uranus can just be glimpsed with the naked eye under perfect dark sky conditions, Neptune requires binoculars or a small telescope to be seen. …

via SPACE.com — Neptune Finally Makes First Orbit Around the Sun Since Discovery In 1846.

Xenophilia named in a possible future defamation lawsuit

This blog has been named as a defendant in a draft of a complaint that may become a lawsuit in the future. I was contacted by email yesterday by the firm of Stevenson & Smith in Ogden UT. I have been asked to reveal contact information and IP addresses for specific comments and to remove defamatory comments regarding my post here. I do have to comply with the WordPress.com terms of service which prevents defamatory remarks.

I wrote to people at the addresses used when making the comments. One person replied, but that person had posted a different (critical but not defamatory) comment.

After I had no response from several different email addresses all of which come from the same IP address (seems like an iPhone), I’ve decided to remove the posts.

 Debbie C        2010/03/18 at 7:17 pm
 Anne Waldon    2010/03/29 at 9:11 pm
 DWE            2010/04/13 at 8:23 pm
 EddieBauer     2010/04/16 at 8:38 pm
 Eduard         2010/05/05 at 9:03 pm
 KNC            2010/05/05 at 9:06 pm
 MarkS          2010/05/31 at 6:02 pm
 Candy          2010/06/22 at 11:30 pm
 CandyJS        2010/06/24 at 10:26 pm.

For other people’s future education with regard to defamation claims, WordPress.com points to the EFF web site which has the following guidelines.

The elements that must be proved to establish defamation are:

1. a publication to one other than the person defamed;
2. a false statement of fact;
3. that is understood as
   • a. being of and concerning the plaintiff; and
   • b. tending to harm the reputation of plaintiff.
4. If the plaintiff is a public figure, he or she must also prove actual malice.

What was missing in the case of the comments on my blog was any evidence to show that the supposed fact was factual.

So it does seem like a valid defamation case. I’ve removed those comments (possibly from one person pretending to be multiple people) which claimed as fact that James Smith was having an affair, let the lawyers know, and have copied the WordPress Help department so they are in the loop.

I do not intend at this time to release the IP address unless compelled by law. Would I go to jail to avoid releasing it? Possibly. I still regard your privacy on this blog as something I will fight to preserve.

From now on, I’ll have to be sure that people who post potentially defamatory remarks are also posting their evidence that the facts they post are factual?  Even the “factual” defense may be falling away if there is malice according to a past post I just found on my own blog.

Google faced this kind of lawsuit and lost. Google has had to reveal the IP of anonymous bloggers. See this and this. If Google caved, I think the owners of WordPress–Automattic, Inc.–would too. I think they have the same records I do regarding this blog, but I can’t be certain.