NASA Satellite Falls On Car

NASA Satellite Falls On Car – YouTube.

Researchers Create Invisible Ink From Engineered Bacteria

By seeding sheets of what look like paper with encrypted patterns of bacteria engineered to glow in certain conditions, researchers have developed an invisible ink for the biotech age.Among the potential uses are secret, forgery-resistant bacterial barcodes and watermarks, though imagination soon arrives at more entertaining possibilities.“Obviously, the secret agent kind of application jumps out,” said chemist David Walt of Tufts University, who developed the system with fellow Tufts chemist Manuel Palacios. “Somebody embedded in an environment where they need to get a message out but don’t want to be caught.”The system, which Walt and Palacios named InfoBiology — individual messages are called SPAM, short for “Steganography by Printed Arrays of Microbes” — is described Sept. 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It builds on principles displayed in Walt’s earlier work on fuses that convey information as they burn, producing a simple form of chemistry-based communication. …

Walt’s group added fluorescence to antibiotic resistance genes, so the message only became apparent when the agar plate was dosed with ampicillin. Most any gene involved in responding to a stimuli — extreme cold or heat, for example, or other nutrients and compounds — could be used the same way, said Walt. It would also be possible to use E. coli engineered to lose their fluorescence properties over time.

“These mutants would add an inherent security measure by self-deleting the message as it develops,” wrote Walt’s team, “similar to the way the Mission Impossible recording self-destructed.

via Researchers Create Invisible Ink From Engineered Bacteria | Wired Science | Wired.com.

 

 

Satellite likely fell in Pacific; ‘we may never know’ – USATODAY.com

Where in the world is NASA’s crashed satellite?

On the ocean floor most likely, what’s left of it, but nobody seems to know for sure. The best bet is that the fiery breakup of NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), designed to study atmospheric chemistry, scattered debris across a 500-mile swath of the Pacific Ocean.

Coming decades after the nuclear era led to U.S. missile-warning radars being placed around the globe, the question remains: Why it wasn’t possible to pinpoint the exact areas where pieces of the NASA satellite fell to Earth?

“This is a completely different situation than an incoming ballistic missile,” says orbital debris expert Nicholas Johnson of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We may never know” exactly where the 6.2-ton spacecraft broke apart, he says.

The Defense Department’s Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California requires reports from three radar-tracking stations to officially declare a satellite downed. Since the stations are located so far apart, the satellite could cover about 30,000 miles before the last station could confirm it was no longer flying, Johnson says.

That is why NASA put the window for re-entry from 11:23 p.m. ET Friday to 1:09 a.m. ET Saturday. Best estimates place the re-entry at 12:16 a.m. ET, plus or minus 20 minutes, on Saturday at a point roughly 1,000 miles north of Honolulu.

“That suggests most of the debris fell into the Pacific,” Johnson says.

As of Monday, the space agency had no information on landing sites of any of the spacecraft’s 26 parts, such as its fuel tank or stainless steel gyroscope pieces, that were expected to survive the heat of re-entry. Observers looking for the meteor trail of the satellite saw no signs of the re-entry in Canada. …

via Satellite likely fell in Pacific; ‘we may never know’ – USATODAY.com.

Earthquakes in the Air

Geologists have long puzzled over anecdotal reports of strange atmospheric phenomena in the days before big earthquakes. But good data to back up these stories has been hard to come by.

In recent years, however, various teams have set up atmospheric monitoring stations in earthquake zones and a number of satellites are capable of sending back data about the state of the upper atmosphere and the ionosphere during an earthquake.

…Today, Dimitar Ouzounov at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland and a few buddies present the data from the Great Tohoku earthquake which devastated Japan on 11 March. Their results, although preliminary, are eye-opening.

They say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck.

At the same time, satellite observations showed a big increase in infrared emissions from above the epicentre, which peaked in the hours before the quake. In other words, the atmosphere was heating up.

via technologyreview via Earthquakes in the Air | TDG – Science, Magick, Myth and History.

Some people commenting on this story have noticed bright orange eerie sunsets or dense air before a quake, so I think some people can predict them.

Rey: There was a bright orange eerie sunset March 9th in Sendai when the 7.3 magnitude hit in the Pacific Ocean.  There was also another one April 3rd before the April 7th 7.4 magnitude earthquake at Sendai.  My first experience and just curiosity of these bright orange and yes darn eerie sunsets started when the 1989 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake happened.   I’ve been living in Sendai since 1995 and there have been many earthquakes in the Tohoku Region. In the beginning I would say there’s a glowing sunset again, but people ignored me so I keep to myself about these overly orange sunsets.

Juni0r: The morning of the Loma Prieta I was walking in San Jose and the air was very dense, warm and the hair on my arms would rise like after a balloon’s been rubbed.
I recall saying to my co-worker “earthquake weather” and sure enough…the rest is history.
I now live in Humboldt County. January 9, 2010 we had a 6.5 on a dry, unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon. The previous day I commented to my ECC(911)Battalion Chief that the air felt like “earthquake weather”. He laughed at me…go figure!! The following Monday we ran into each other in the parking lot and he told me he credited me for ‘predicting’ the event. Yippee…

Some say we even have weapons (HAARP, tunnel boring machines, etc.) that create deadly earthquakes. Why? One conspiracy theory is that some powerful group made sure there was plutonium (MOX fuel) in the Japanese reactors, that the reactors got the Stuxnet virus intended to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, and that the quake was intended to cause the release the deadly plutonium into the air and the sea, with the goal of reducing the overall human population by increasing cancer.  Then again, earthquakes have been happening in Japan for a very long time… the earliest I found was the year 684… definitely before HAARP.

‘First Irish case’ of death by spontaneous combustion

Dr McLoughlin said he had attempted to find an explanation

A man who burned to death in his home died as a result of spontaneous combustion, an Irish coroner has ruled.

West Galway coroner Dr Ciaran McLoughlin said it was the first time in 25 years of investigating deaths that he had recorded such a verdict.

Michael Faherty, 76, died at his home in Galway on 22 December 2010.

Deaths attributed by some to “spontaneous combustion” occur when a living human body is burned without an apparent external source of ignition.

Typically police or fire investigators find burned corpses but no burned furniture.

An inquest in Galway on Thursday heard how investigators had been baffled as to the cause of Mr Faherty’s death at his home at Clareview Park, Ballybane.

Forensic experts found that a fire in the fireplace of the sitting room where the badly burnt body was found, had not been the cause of the blaze that killed Mr Faherty.

The court was told that no trace of an accelerant had been found and there had been nothing to suggest foul play.

The court heard Mr Faherty had been found lying on his back with his head closest to an open fireplace.

The fire had been confined to the sitting room. The only damage was to the body, which was totally burnt, the ceiling above him and the floor underneath him.

Dr McLoughlin said he had consulted medical textbooks and carried out other research in an attempt to find an explanation.

He said Professor Bernard Knight, in his book on forensic pathology, had written about spontaneous combustion and noted that such reported cases were almost always near an open fireplace or chimney.

“This fire was thoroughly investigated and I’m left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation,” he said. …

via BBC News – ‘First Irish case’ of death by spontaneous combustion.

Protests Drive Out Egypt’s Antiquities Chief

Just 2 months after Zahi Hawass was removed as chief of Egypt’s antiquities, his successor has submitted his resignation. Mohammad Abdel Fatah, a former Cairo University professor, told ScienceInsider today that he wants to leave his job because of “instability” in the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), which oversees the country’s myriad ancient monuments as well as all archaeological work. “We are in such a difficult situation,” he added.

That situation, other Egyptian and foreign archaeologists say, includes strikes and demonstrations by SCA employees who want higher pay and an improved working environment. The upheavals in recent days led Fatah to call in military police to clear demonstrators who were trying to force their way into SCA headquarters in downtown Cairo, according to some reports. Fatah told Egypt’s official MENA news agency that he felt “powerless and overwhelmed,” adding that his organization is “paralyzed.”

His decision comes as the Egyptian government announced that tourist visits have dropped by more than one-third in this year’s second quarter compared with last year. The country’s ancient sites account for a substantial slice of that tourism, which is a vital sector of the economy.

It’s not clear whether Prime Minister Essam Sharaf’s cabinet will accept Fatah’s resignation. One Egyptian source said that the two men were expected to meet soon, although Fatah declined to discuss the status of his proffered resignation.

Fatah succeeded Hawass, a charismatic and controversial figure who resigned in March. Hawass soon returned to his job, however, only to be sacked during a cabinet reshuffle in July. Fatah, a restoration specialist, was an outspoken critic of Hawass, but many SCA employees opposed his appointment because he is not a trained archaeologist.

“Being head of the SCA is an enormously difficult and challenging job,” says Peter Lacovara, an Egyptologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “People clearly did not appreciate how adept Zahi Hawass was, and how much he accomplished under the most difficult of circumstances.”

Would Hawass, now retired but living in Cairo, be interested in making another comeback? He says no. “I even changed my phone number so I do not have to hear anything about the SCA,” Hawass said in a 23 September e-mail. …

via Protests Drive Out Egypt’s Antiquities Chief – ScienceInsider.

Red Light Camera License Plate Covers, PhotoBlocker Sprays, do they work?

The special formula Reflector™ helps prevent costly tickets. Made of a high quality plastic cover with light reflecting crystals, the Reflector™ overexposes photo radar and red light camera pictures by reflecting flash back to the camera.

Photo radar cameras often utilize a strong flash to photograph your license plate. The Reflector’s special crystals reflect the flash back to the camera. The result is an over-exposed and unreadable picture that prevents a costly ticket. …

via No More Red Light Camera Tickets.

After reading this, I wanted to know if it really works. Here’s what I found:

… Can drivers really beat Clive’s red-light cameras?

Police wanted to know, so NewsChannel 8 put their system to the test. … The products were tested under daylight and evening conditions. Even police weren’t sure what would happen. …

The reflected license plate cover product has embedded shiny particles designed to reflect flashes of light. In the tests, it didn’t work.Day and night, the license plate is clearly visible. The product fails the tests. With the PhotoBlocker spray, the camera clearly read the license plate during the daylight test. So it was a clear failure.But at night, it was a slightly different story. Brodersen saw that the plate is more reflective, and he has to verify whether one character is a B or an 8. It wouldn’t be enough, though, to get this car owner out of a ticket.”It creates a little extra work, but it’s about 15 seconds of extra work,” Brodersen said.So the spray failed the daytime test. Police said they think it failed the nighttime test, too.Lastly, the PhotoShield cover test results were reviewed. Police had a hard time making out the plate when they saw it with their own eyes from just a few feet away.The red-light camera had just as much trouble.”In this one, they would not be able to prosecute it,” Brodersen said.In both the day and night tests, the camera cannot clearly see the license plate. This product passes.Drivers could think it’s good news that with this product, the camera can’t see license plates. Here’s the bad news.Police said because they can’t see the license plate either, a driver using the cover is asking to get pulled over.If they catch a driver with the plate cover, even if he or she stopped at a red light, the driver faces a $63 ticket for obstructing the license plate.”I just don’t understand why people would even go to this extreme. It’s pretty simple. Just make a complete stop, and it’s safe and you don’t have the risk of a $75 citation or a $96 citation if an officer should spot you,” Brodersen said. …

Read more: kcci.com

Are the red light cameras and the police photo examiners intelligent enough to realize that there are times when you would get in an accident if you did not run the light? I don’t run red lights, but I’ve had someone stop in the middle of one of these photo trap intersections in front of me when it looked like I had plenty time to get through. In such a case, I would feel morally justified in using a blocker if they worked (and the investigation above says they don’t), because there are times when the only way to avoid the red light ticket is to forcibly ram the car in front of you so you can make it through the yellow light.

787 Dreamliner becomes reality three years behind schedule

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner after the model’s maiden test flight in 2009. All Nippon Airways has taken delivery of the first Dreamliner sold. Photograph: Paul Joseph Brown/AFP/Getty

Boeing has delivered its first 787 Dreamliner to Japanese customer All Nippon Airways (ANA).

Boeing says its carbon fibre design cuts fuel consumption by 20% and the plane gives passengers a more comfortable ride with better cabin air and large electronically dimmable windows.

The first $200m plane arrived three years behind schedule after persistent delays that cost Boeing billions of dollars.

The plane will enter service in October. Boeing has taken orders for 821 Dreamliners, which will compete with the Airbus A350, due in 2013.

ANA said the plane could go 52% further than the metal-framed Boeing 767 while using 20% less fuel for the distance flown.

Boeing’s use of composites has forced Airbus to turn its back on the aluminium airframe for its next generation of jets.

ANA has ordered 55 Dreamliners worth a total of $11bn at current prices. Forty of them are the 260-passenger 787-8 version. …

via 787 Dreamliner becomes reality three years behind schedule | Business | guardian.co.uk.

Cool. Peril sensitive windows.

Watch pumpkin grow from seed to super-size in amazing time-lapse

There have been warnings of a pumpkin shortage in the northeastern states of the U.S. after hundreds of patches were destroyed by Hurricane Irene.

And it could not have come at a worst time as the much-celebrated Halloween season approaches.

But one grower in Connecticut has produced a monster gourd that may just be big enough to go round the whole region.

via Carving up the record books: Watch Connecticut’s largest pumpkin grow from seed to super-size in amazing time-lapse | Mail Online.

This is a different one than the link above, this one is from 2007, still fun:

I drank raw milk and lived. Is Raw Milk Safe? Healthy?

My new nutritionist is a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation which promotes nutrient-dense foods, traditional fats, lacto-fermentation, nontoxic farming, truth in labeling, and community supported agriculture, among other things.  I spent this weekend learning from her. We saw the movie Farmageddon and I met and spoke to the film maker, Kristin Canty. This inspired me twice to drink some fresh raw milk.

Results of my weekend raw milk experiment: The taste was good. No upset stomach afterward. I did have a slight cough that came back and I snored more loudly than ever in my life that night, but I do not think either of these are related to drinking the raw milk. (I believe the snoring is the result of my teeth moving from braces which is causing me to have a narrower nasal passage. The cough seems to have been from yelling a bit too loud during some excitement.)

Is raw milk safe? I believe now that it can be not only safe, but beneficial, if it comes from clean healthy cows.  Our ancestors (before pasteurization) all drank raw milk, so we are living proof that raw milk is not often deadly. Some dirty contaminated milk caused people to get sick and pasteurization was the solution, at the time.

What’s wrong with killing bad bacteria in milk?

Pasteurizing milk destroys beneficial bacteria along with the bad ones and destroys enzymes essential for nutrient absorption. Pasteurizing milk destroys all its phosphatase; this is essential for the absorption of calcium, and calcium works with Vitamin D, not only available through sunshine but is an essential nutrient in raw cream. Nature packaged a superb design for human sustenance in milk as it comes from the cow with all original essential nutrients — so long as it is not pasteurized. Heating any raw food destroys the active enzymes, so lipase (an enzyme unique to milk and needed to complete digestion of fats) is blasted along with many other essential nutrients that pasteurization destroys. – wewantorganicfood

I still have some research to do to examine these claims to my own satisfaction, but they sound quite possible. Is the following article from Maureen O’Hagan  writing for the Seattle Times a fair and balanced review of the raw milk situation? She writes:

Unpasteurized milk is a curious thing. It costs up to $13 a gallon. It says right on the carton: “WARNING: This product … may contain harmful bacteria.” Yet people are passionate about it. Almost evangelistic. So in early December, when the state announced that raw milk from Dungeness Valley Creamery in Sequim was linked with three E. coli cases, the reaction was, well … emotional.

“Lies,” more than one raw-milk drinker posted on the Dungeness dairy’s Web site, in response to the state’s announcement.

“Trickery,” another supporter wrote.

“Despicable,” wrote a third.

Never mind that health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Mayo Clinic say you shouldn’t drink the stuff. To some, the bad news is evidence of a conspiracy. It involves Big Ag trying to stamp out the little guy, Big Government pushing its way into our kitchens, sleazy lawyers trying to make a buck, and scientists who malign a key to good health.

Now, Whole Foods Markets has become a target. The company recently halted raw-milk sales nationwide, saying it needed a “rigorous companywide standard.” It was another sign, one pro-raw-milk blogger wrote, of the “ever more sinister campaign against food rights.” There are calls for a boycott of the company.

Raw milk’s supporters are at once modern-day rebels and throwbacks to an older, simpler time. They are health-food aficionados who dismiss the health authorities. …

People who like raw milk really like raw milk.

They say it fights everything from allergies to asthma, digestive problems to learning disabilities. It eases arthritis pain and improves cholesterol, boosts immunity and clears cataracts.

When you pasteurize milk, they say, it kills key nutrients and leads to things like heart disease.

The FDA says none of this is scientifically proven. After finding “raw milk, no matter how carefully produced, may be unsafe,” the agency banned its interstate sale in 1987. Washington is one of seven states that allows its retail sale. Most states permit limited sales, such as on the farm. It’s illegal in 10 states. In states with limited availability, people drive hundreds of miles to get their raw-milk fix. They break laws and stage protests. They have long maintained they’re being picked on. …

All cows — actually, all warm-blooded animals — have E. coli in their guts. Some strains of it are harmless. Others are not. They’re called Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, and “cows are the main source where these organisms live,” said J. Kathryn MacDonald, a state epidemiologist.

The Shiga toxin doesn’t hurt the cows, but it can make humans very, very sick — as in kidney failure, coma, stroke, prolonged hospitalization. Even death.

We get E. coli illness by swallowing the bug.

Actually, by swallowing tiny bits of manure containing the bacteria. “This happens more often than we would like to think,” the CDC said on its Web site.

Experts say hamburger is a big culprit. The good news is, heat kills E. coli and other pathogens. That’s why food-safety experts say to cook hamburger thoroughly. It’s called a “kill step.”

For milk, pasteurization is the kill step. Without it, there’s nothing between you and any bugs that might be swimming around. The chance there’s a deadly pathogen in a particular glass of milk may be small, but it’s a risk no one has to take.

James E. McWilliams, author of a book questioning the locavore movement, puts it bluntly:

“To me, it’s Russian roulette,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The whole of human history is about humans being taken down by diseases transferred from animals to people. Pasteurization was perhaps the most significant advance ever made in reducing the transmission.” …

Using data from the CDC, [one]  group found that raw milk accounts for 80 percent of milk-related food-borne-illness outbreaks nationally, yet it’s only a fraction of total milk sales. The CDC said there have been at least two deaths nationally connected with raw milk between 1993 and 2006.

Proponents like to point out there are E. coli outbreaks associated with vegetables and fruits, too. So why focus on milk? It’s because E. coli isn’t inherent to vegetables like it is to cows. The bug has to be introduced somehow, like through irrigation water. The key point: When you hear about food-borne illness, think manure.

Trying to keep clean

Cows create a lot of waste. They do it in the barn and in the fields. They do it while they’re being milked. It’s liquid and it splatters. It’s on their legs and tails and udders. Preventing waste from getting in the milk is all-important.

Every morning and every evening, Brown ushers his herd into the milking parlor, eight at a time. He dips each cow’s teats in an iodine solution, which helps reduce, but not eliminate, bacteria. Then he wipes them with a cloth. He gets a fresh cloth after four cows.

It’s easy to see potential problems. He doesn’t exactly study the udders to make sure he’s cleaned every last inch. And it’s messy. On a recent visit, one cow, who was sore, fussed as Brown started the milking device. She pooped, splattering Brown’s face, but he didn’t seem to notice. She fussed so much that the device fell to the floor, and the cow stepped on it. When Brown finally got her off it, he sprayed it with a hose. Then he put it on the next cow.

“When they get upset, this is the result,” he said later, wiping his face and arms. Then he was ready for the next group of eight. …

- link

Raw milk can occasionally transmit tuberculosis. (See this, this and this.) If you are concerned about TB, get tested. Other risks include illness from contamination with Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria.

If conditions used to obtain the raw milk are clean, and manure is kept out, there are some exciting positive benefits. I find this one interesting: A study in 1938 showed that there is something in both human and cow’s milk that kills the bacteria that causes cavities:

Human or cow milk added to an equal volume of agar did not support the growth or allowed only slight growth of B. diphtheriae Staph. aureus, B. coli, B. prodigiosus, B. pyocyaneus, B. anthracis, streptococci, and unidentified wild yeast. The factors in human milk inhibiting bacterial growth (‘inhibins’) were inactivated by heating at 56 degrees C. (pasteurization temperatures of 60-70 degrees C.) for thirty minutes or by standing twelve to twenty-four days at 5 degrees C., but not by repeated freezing and thawing. The ‘inhibins’ in cow’s milk were not inactivated by heating at 80 degrees C. for seven minutes but were destroyed by heating at 85 degrees C. for seven minutes. Attempts have not been made to identify the natural antiseptics.

—Dold, H., Wizaman, E., and Kleiner, C., Z. Hyt. Inf., “Antiseptic in milk,” The Drug and Cosmetic Industry, 43,1:109, July, 1938.

Another potential benefit: In 2001 the Lancet also reported that “children who drank raw milk have fewer alergic skin problems and far less asthma than children who drink pasteurized milk” .

I’m not personally convinced that adult humans need to drink any milk at all. I typically drink water and get my calcium from other sources, but I do greatly enjoy cheese(!), so the raw milk/cheese issue is still in play for me.  The question seems to be one of trust. Do you trust the little guy to be clean? Do you trust the big guy not to publish slanted information intended to support big business at the expense of consumer health? I spun the wheel and lived.

We also went to Oakland’s Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square where I consumed my first red meat hamburger from grass fed beef…. which was “my first red meat in 8 years” according to my memory.  I don’t intend to eat red meat regularly, since I still have moral and environmental issues with eating red meat. You can feed more people with the same amount of land, for example, if you grow plants instead of cattle…but I am now more interested in eating healthier meats. I’m aiming for animals with smaller brains than cows and pigs, such as those small brained free range organic chickens.