Battery improvements have been bouncing around quite a bit lately. I'm hopeful that there's a lot at the end of this tunnel. Kick ass batteries would completely change everything.

Another really cool link about a manned mission to Mars. Explaining how we'd get there, and potentially terraform it.

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/5305/51902992.jpg

There's too much to copy, so visit the link if you're interested:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithab...uclear-fusion/

That graphic is awesome.

As a potential applicant, the fact that this sentence fragment exists in the article is worrisome.

Ever wondered why rubbing alcohol burns?

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5...4491142438.jpg

Still need moar magnetic field

Cold welding. Weird shit happening in space...

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/4...1768059919.jpg

Cold welding is a bonding process where two items are combined into one through means of intense pressure that is applied by dies and rolls. As the name implies, this technique does not rely on heat to change the state of the items being bonded—these substances remain in a solid state throughout the procedure. Not all metals make ideal candidates for cold welding due to the oxygen content within their outer layers, and even after extended brushing and cleaning, the metals will not bond if one of them is not malleable. Likewise, if the two bonded pieces are later exposed to an oxygen-rich environment or certain other reactive compounds, the cold weld will fail. Due to these limitations, the process of cold welding is most suitable for objects that will be deployed outside of the earth’s atmosphere, such as satellites or spacecrafts.

Cold welding was initially discovered by modern societies in the early 1940s and thought of as a new phenomenon, but this process has actually been in existence for thousands of years. It was learned that two pieces of similar metals will bond together inside a vacuum as long as they possess clean, flattened surfaces and a strong initial force can be applied. During the process, deformities occur across 60 to 80% of the bonding surface, and this allows pure, clean metals to come in contact. Permanent bonding then takes place on the atomic level, with welds much stronger than what could be accomplished by other means. Another advantage is that there are absolutely no intermediary materials used as a type of solder, so as long as oxides are not allowed to reform across the metal’s surface, it should last for decades.

Since the initial discovery period, researchers have shown that cold welding can also be accomplished without excessive force. By applying less pressure over a longer period of time, similar results can be achieved. Another method is to increase the surface temperature of the two materials being bonded for a short period of time to accelerate the molecules.

Modern uses for cold welding are numerous, but it is still definitely considered a situational process due to the aforementioned limitations. The technique makes it possible, however, to work in many hostile environments that were previously impossible, like welding underground pipelines that carry flammable gasses. Another setback is that since the weld takes place quickly and is considered permanent, it is very difficult to verify the integrity of the weld, especially in thicker metals.

And, for those of you who might want to watch the awesome engineers and scientists of the future, one of the big gatherings/competitions is going on in St. Louis this week. You can watch live here, or head over to NASA TV too..

http://www.theredalliance.com/livefeeds.html

Sad that none of us will ever get to see it.

Says who? Aren't you going to cryo store your brain?

Today is National DNA day. Here's how to extract your own DNA.... you know.. if you're into that kind of thing...

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/1...1481131721.jpg

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/conte...raction/howto/

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How far away do you think the moon is? Chances are, you're wrong. I was.....

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http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/6...4972738020.jpg

Heh, no way I figured you could fit even one earth between Earth and the Moon. Looks like you can fit at least 25.

Want a free science class?

Yale, Stanford, MIT, Cornell, and many other universities around the world have introduced free open courses in subjects like physics, biology, and chemistry. In many cases, there is a semester’s worth of recorded lectures, along with exams to test your knowledge. If you have ever wanted an Ivy League science education, here’s your chance!

Complete list here: http://bit.ly/10OPhfE

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/3...7462576121.jpg

Encourage stem cell research in any manner you are able. So much potential. Look at that kid's smile. We can do this for every single kid with Leukemia if we collectively choose to.

Educate and Inform!


Using her own stem cells, doctors at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia were able to genetically engineer T-cells to combat Avery Walker’s leukemia. T-cells are part of the immune system that attack B-cells; the cells that turn into leukemia. Avery is the seventh patient to receive this therapy, and the fifth to go into remission.

http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/6...3456434525.jpg

The seventh child to receive an experimental leukemia therapy at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia got good news last week: It worked.

"Avrey Walker is cancer free!!!! A total remission!" her father, Aaron, exulted on their Facebook page.

The 9-year-old from Redmond, Ore., was diagnosed at age 4 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a blood cancer that can be deadly within a few months if not treated.

Like other children in the study at Children's, Avrey had undergone years of intermittent chemotherapy, only to relapse each time the toxic treatments ended.

She was one of the minority of children who do not respond to conventional treatments. Today, with potent chemotherapies and radiation, about 80 percent of the 3,000 children diagnosed annually in the United States are cured. But the treatments are harsh, and when they fail, the options are increasingly grim.

Aaron Walker and his wife, Christal, turned to Children's after reading about Emily Whitehead of Philipsburg, Pa., the first child to receive the hospital's genetically engineered therapy, made using each patient's disease-fighting "T cells." Emily remains in remission, a year after treatment.

Avrey and her parents spent about 50 days in Philadelphia while her T cells were modified, multiplied, and, a month ago, returned to her bloodstream.

"I have heard of miracles like most of us have; however I have never witnessed one in person - until now," Walker said. "We are so thankful!"

The immunotherapy researchers, including Stephan Grupp at Children's and Carl H. June at the University of Pennsylvania, recoil from words like miracle. And they have published results from only the first two children.

Still, the T-cell therapy is showing startling effectiveness, judging from both scientific and parental accounts: Of the first seven children, five had a complete response - no evidence of cancer - although one of them later relapsed. One child did not respond, and one child's outcome has not been made public by parents or doctors.

The therapy involves transferring genes into T cells - the soldiers of the immune system - to make them recognize and attack B cells, the blood component that turns malignant in certain leukemias and lymphomas. There is also evidence that some of the designer T cells develop immune "memory," so they could reactivate and strike if cancer returns.

Recently, this immunotherapy technology has been successfully used in small numbers of patients in studies at Sloan-Kettering Memerial Cancer Center in New York and the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.

The toxicity of this new approach is not yet clear, and seems to vary. At one extreme, Emily Whitehead nearly died when the T cells threw her immune system into overdrive. Avrey's reaction, in contrast, was unusually mild.

"We were all waiting for the big storm," her father said. "She just felt a little groggy and had a low-grade fever" for about a day.

The durability of the therapeutic effect is also unclear. However, an adult leukemia patient treated at Penn remains cancer-free two and a half years after treatment.

Children like Avrey have never known such a lengthy respite from disease, disability, and dread. Now, her father said, she wants to go back to fourth grade, play softball, hang out with her big sister, Madison.

"We'll try to get back to a normal life," he said, "something we haven't had for 10 years."

There are TONS of really solid courses. My recommendations would depend on your level of basic fundamentals, such as the full complement of calculus classes, or at least 2 levels of chemistry.

If you are calculus educated, the entry level Physics class is an absolute MUST, as it's ALL on video. The professor has demonstrations, examples and anecdotes that really cement your understanding of the material, and you also get professor's notes, exams and other supplemental materials. But if you've never heard of a Pyonting vector a lot of it will be lost on you.

Others are varying levels of usefulness. Some just have a loose collection of notes, and you'd be just as well served finding a used textbook or even wikipedia.

I find the best ones are the fundamental ones. Statics, Dynamics, Electrical Circuits, Thermodynamics, and Basic and Intermediate Chemistry.

These can be found on

ocw.mit.edu and ItunesU as well.

We're pimping online classes on CP here.

Big Nasty and boogblaster both PM'd me and told me they've been watching the MIT ones regularly.

So.........we should expect more of them now!

This isn't Vatterott or UofPhoenix. It's a camera in the same class MIT engineering underclassmen have been taking for decades.

[QUOTE=Baby Lee;9648212]
Unfortunately, my last calculus course was Calculus III, and it was taken about 35 years ago. Thanks to some disastrous life choices, I haven't used it since.

BTW Baby Lee, what line of work are you in that you are so interested in physics courses? I was under the impression you were a barrister.

Just a renaissance man, perhaps..

Scientifically Accurate Ninja Turtles!

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[QUOTE=mikey23545;9648327]Patent Attorney.

Its been told here many times before, so . . . Q, . . I guess

But it's what I always wanted to do. But I went to a liberal arts U that, while I got a great education, the advisors knew nothing about preparing me to be patent bar eligible one day [you need either, a 'hard science' degree, substantial [ie >20 hours] effort in one concerted hard science discipline, or passing the engineering fundamentals exam]. I sucked it up and went into litigation, but I kept getting sucked into Worker's Compensation because I know A LOT about it and its a reliable moneymaker. But it's also the Dilbert of the law. So I went back to get myself Patent Bar eligible. Closing in fast.

[QUOTE=Baby Lee;9648345]
I guess can respect a lawyer who is trying to claw his way out of the dark side.

:thumb:

Úp phụ nè................. nhớ úp lại nha pro, cám ơn hehehehehheeh.........

Ok I found this on "Today I learned" on reddit, but I thought this was kinda cool. It is showing how a flame can conduct electricity.

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[QUOTE=mikey23545;9648430]There isn't so much a dark or light side in WC, workers are going to be injured and employers are going to think they're either faking or malingering. That's not going away. It's not that I don't think it's important work, more that it's perfunctory work. Collect medical records, get an independent medical exam, depose the doctors, follow rehab, assemble exhibits, try for settlement based on a VAST history or what similar cases settle for.

Nothing innovative or legally vexing hardly ever arises. Really good claims adjusters could do 90% of it.

Honeypot ants. ****ed up evolution.....

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/6...neypotant1.jpg

http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/873/honeyant1.jpg

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http://www.thefeaturedcreature.com/2...-ants-for.html

Honeypot ants are the ultimate self-sacrificers. They give up their stunning physique for the good of the colony, which, to me, would be an extremely altruistic act.
What happens is some of the ants are used as living “storage units” full of nectar and honey by gorging themselves on the food until their abdomens become so distended with the substances, that their abdomens actually expand to the size of a grape! These ants, called repletes, will feed the other workers by regurgitating the yummy mixture into the worker’s mouths. Now doesn’t that sound appetizing?

This method of food storage developed because of the climate in which these ants are found. It’s terribly difficult to find vast quantities of food in the desert, and the ants came up with the brilliant solution to store it for when times are tough. Though, the method of storing it does seem a little extreme to me… but hey whatever works for ya.

The native people of Australia have long regarded Honeypot Ants as a welcomed dessert. Nothing like the engorged abdomens of ants for a treat!

Even David Attenborough gets in on the gooey goodness in this BBC clip. Be sure to watch him take a huge bite out of the honey-filled ant – unless you just ate or are about to, then I really wouldn’t recommend it.

Harsh...

Why Shark Embryos Eat Each Other Up in Utero

http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/8...0450448867.jpg

Shark embryos cannibalize their littermates in the womb, with the largest embryo eating all but one of its siblings.

Now, researchers know why: It's part of a struggle for paternity in utero, where babies of different fathers compete to be born.

The researchers, who detailed their findings today (April 30) in the journal Biology Letters, analyzed shark embryos found in sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) at various stages of gestation and found that the later in pregnancy, the more likely the remaining shark embryos had just one father.

That finding suggests the cannibalism seen in these embryos is a competitive strategy by which males try to ensure their paternity.

"In some species, the struggle for paternity continues beyond the point where the female [mates with] the male," said study co-author Demian Chapman, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University of New York.

Mini-cannibals

Full-grown sand tiger sharks are approximately 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) long, and mothers typically give birth to two baby sharks, each about 3.3 feet (1 m) long.

Since the 1980s, when detailed autopsies of sand tiger sharks revealed embryos in the stomachs of other embryos, researchers had known that the shark fetuses cannibalized each other in utero about five months into their nearly yearlong gestation. Legend has it that a shark embryo actually bit a researcher's hand during a dissection when the researcher reached into the uterus of the shark's mother, Chapman said.

While 12 littermates may start out the journey, all but one is devoured by the biggest in the pack. That strategy allows sand tiger sharks to have much larger babies at birth than other shark species, making the little ones relatively safe from other predators, Chapman said.

But scientists didn't know why the sharks were cannibalizing each other. One possibility is that females were mating with multiple partners and that the cannibalization helped only one father's genes remain dominant.

To find out, Chapman and his colleagues studied genetic samples from 15 pregnant female sharks that had died in nets off the coast of South Africa. (The nets were put in place to protect swimmers from deadly bites from great white sharks and bull sharks, but the nets occasionally snare and kill sand tiger sharks.)

Paternity struggle

Of those 15 female sharks, 10 of the sharks carried just two embryos, while the remaining five were in an earlier stage of gestation and had five to seven embryos in utero.

The team then used DNA analysis to determine paternity.

"It's exactly the same sort of DNA testing that you might see on Maury Povich to figure out how many dads there are," Chapman told LiveScience.

Those litters with five to seven embryos had at least two fathers (embryos from other fathers may have already disappeared), while the litters with just two sharks more often had just one father.

That suggested one embryo -- possibly the one that grew biggest first -- tended to devour embryos from other fathers over its full siblings.

"Basically, that loser father ultimately provided food for a rival male," Chapman said.

Sexual selection

It's still a mystery exactly what makes one father successful over another, said James J. Gelsleichter, a marine biologist at the University of North Florida who was not involved in the study.

"Sexual selection is very much like an evolutionary arms race, and the males and females are basically one-upping each other," Gelsleichter told LiveScience.

A possibility is that embryos from the first male to fertilize the female simply get biggest first, devouring their littermates.

The strategy could also help females select good mates. Shark mating involves violent biting, so intrauterine cannibalism may allow females to avoid resisting and avoid being "too choosy" about mating, while still ensuring that a high-quality male sires her offspring, Gelsleicther said.

Holy ****.

That was pretty interesting.

I thought I knew everything an armchair shark expert could know about sharks.

Awesome.

Probably a repost, but still amazing:

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Q

Just kidding, don't know if repost, but good find.

It's at least 2 weeks old, and CP knows about a story before it occurs.


Anything that can bring more people outside to look at the night sky is good. People need to learn how to dream about the future again.

I know, right?

Oh, I totally get that one...

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/sla...l-original.jpg

A recent solar flare, compared to a blue dot which, of course, is the size of the earth.

Too much of a PITA to copy and paste from mobile. http://www.techwench.com/scientists-...out-breathing/

While huge it requires people smart enough to know CPR and keep the heart pumping...

I love seeing depicitions that show the scale of things.

:evil:

http://www.gifbin.com/981867

Give it time to unfold.

http://gifs.gifbin.com/1232024489_Th...of_planets.gif

JIMP

I don't know, they usually leave knowing I'm inadequate....

Just tell them," My penis is small............compared to VY Canis Majoris!!!!!!"

I grew up in the shadow of history, about 50 miles from Cape Canaveral, during the birth of the space program. I hung on every launch, every tiny step we took, as we clawed our way up and out of the cosmic gravity well that was the planet of our origin.

The day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin guided their spindly little craft down to the surface of the moon, I was overwhelmed with an emotion that to this day I still can't name. I was positive that it wouldn't be but another 10 or 20 years before I would go through the same feelings of awe and wonderment when another astronaut left another set of footprints on the surface of Mars.

I didn't realize at that time we would begin to turn our back on the universe to dwell on the fantasy of having utopia on earth before we could spend money on the ancient urge to explore. Fifty years and trillions of dollars later, we have the same percentage of poor as when we started, and our space program has learned to settle for playing in the same stagnant bathwater known as low earth orbit for decades.

And in those same decades I came to the realization that those first steps on the lunar surface that had left me so breathless was not man clawing his way up from his origins - it was man clawing his way back to them...

Jebus Mikey, this reads like poetry.

Wow, just fantastic.

Jesus Chirst those stars are massive. Every time I see this it just blows my mind.

http://i.imgur.com/UmpOi.gif

Thanks, dude.

I'm glad there is at least one poster who feels the same about this topic...Hopefully, more than just you.

I am pretty passionate about manned space exploration even though many argue against it, and rail against it because of the cost. They simply don't realize what a small portion of the national budget it has actually comprised.

I think it's worth every penny.

Me too!

Even seeing it like that it still isn't possible to wrap your head around it...

Today, 5/8/13, is a Fibonacci day!

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Is there a magic equation to the universe? A series of numbers capable of unraveling the most complicated organic properties or deciphering the plot of "Lost"? Probably not. But thanks to one medieval man's obsession with rabbits, we have a sequence of numbers that reflect various patterns found in nature.
In 1202, Italian mathematician Leonardo Pisano (also known as Fibonacci, meaning "son of Bonacci") pondered the question: Given optimal conditions, how many pairs of rabbits can be produced from a single pair of rabbits in one year? This thought experiment dictates that the female rabbits always give birth to pairs, and each pair consists of one male and one female.

Think about it -- two newborn rabbits are placed in a fenced-in yard and left to, well, breed like rabbits. Rabbits can't reproduce until they a*re at least one month old, so for the first month, only one pair remains. At the end of the second month, the female gives birth, leaving two pairs of rabbits. When month three rolls around, the original pair of rabbits produce yet another pair of newborns while their earlier offspring grow to adulthood. This leaves three pairs of rabbit, two of which will give birth to two more pairs the following month.

The order goes as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 and on to infinity. Each number is the sum of the previous two. This series of numbers is known as the Fibonacci numbers or the Fibonacci sequence. The ratio between the numbers (1.618034) is frequently called the golden ratio or golden number.
At first glance, Fibonacci's experiment might seem to offer little beyond the world of speculative rabbit breeding. But the sequence frequently appears in the natural world -- a fact that has intrigued scientists for centuries.
Want to see how these fascinating numbers are expressed in nature? No need to visit your local pet store; all you have to do is look around you.

You won't find Fibonacci numbers everywhere in the natural world -- many plants and animals express different number sequences. And just because a series of numbers can be applied to an object, that doesn't necessarily imply there's any correlation between figures and reality. As with numerological superstitions such as famous people dying in sets of three, sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.

But, Fibonacci numbers appear in nature often enough to prove that they reflect some naturally occurring patterns. You can commonly spot these by studying the manner in which various plants grow. Here are a few examples:

Seed heads, pinecones, fruits and vegetables: Look at the array of seeds in the center of a sunflower and you'll notice what looks like spiral patterns curving left and right. Amazingly, if you count these spirals, your total will be a Fibonacci number. Divide the spirals into those pointed left and right and you'll get two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. You can decipher spiral patterns in pinecones, pineapples and cauliflower that also reflect the Fibonacci sequence in this manner. *

Flowers and branches: Some plants express the Fibonacci sequence in their growth points, the places where tree branches form or split. One trunk grows until it produces a branch, resulting in two growth points. The main trunk then produces another branch, resulting in three growth points. Then the trunk and the first branch produce two more growth points, bringing the total to five. This pattern continues, following the Fibonacci numbers. Additionally, if you count the number of petals on a flower, you'll often find the total to be one of the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. For example, lilies and irises have three petals, buttercups and wild roses have five, delphiniums have eight petals and so on.

Honeybees: A honeybee colony consists of a queen, a few drones and lots of workers. The female bees (queens and workers) all have two parents, a drone and a queen. Drones, on the other hand, hatch from unfertilized eggs. This means they have only one parent. Therefore, Fibonacci numbers express a drone's family tree in that he has one parent, two grandparents, three great-grandparents and so forth.

The human body: Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. You'll notice that most of your body parts follow the numbers one, two, three and five. You have one nose, two eyes, three segments to each limb and five fingers on each hand. The proportions and measurements of the human body can also be divided up in terms of the golden ratio. DNA molecules follow this sequence, measuring 34 angstroms long and 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of the double helix [source: Jovonovic].

Why do so many natural patterns reflect the Fibonacci sequence? Scientists have pondered the question for centuries. In some cases, the correlation may just be coincidence. In other situations, the ratio exists because that particular growth pattern evolved as the most effective. In plants, this may mean maximum exposure for light-hungry leaves or maximum seed arrangement.

If we don't expand from a single planet, eventually we will die out. If we colonize a planet outside of our solar system, we will live forever as a species.

At some point humans will die out.

at least not in anyone we knows lifetimes.:harumph:

Self evident one would think.

http://news.yahoo.com/stunning-30-ye...161911528.html

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/dAP...er-retreat.gif

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Ii9...9b07_vegas.gif

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But but the earth is the center of everything and the only important spot in the universe. Somebody with a really old book told me so. We can't be a speck.

Jesus.

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Not that sciency, but interesting.

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Well written, rep

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Really interesting stuff.

I actually have a friend, Rainbow Jeremy who reject everything to do with science. He just chill at home, he smoke his own home grown and check this, he don't have a tele.

Sounds like a gay pRon name.

LMAO @ 7:40. That's some evil shit....

wow!

Imagine having an idea, that's incredibly advanced for its time. An idea that's completely different than anything currently known on the subject. A declaration of observable facts that still remains true hundreds of years after you're gone, amidst incredible scientific advancement..

Einstein's Gravity Theory Passes Toughest Test Yet

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/805...42250large.jpg

A strange stellar pair nearly 7,000 light-years from Earth has provided physicists with a unique cosmic laboratory for studying the nature of gravity. The extremely strong gravity of a massive neutron star in orbit with a companion white dwarf star puts competing theories of gravity to a test more stringent than any available before.

Once again, Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published in 1915, comes out on top.

At some point, however, scientists expect Einstein's model to be invalid under extreme conditions. General Relativity, for example, is incompatible with quantum theory. Physicists hope to find an alternate description of gravity that would eliminate that incompatibility.

A newly-discovered pulsar -- a spinning neutron star with twice the mass of the Sun -- and its white-dwarf companion, orbiting each other once every two and a half hours, has put gravitational theories to the most extreme test yet. Observations of the system, dubbed PSR J0348+0432, produced results consistent with the predictions of General Relativity.

The tightly-orbiting pair was discovered with the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT), and subsequently studied in visible light with the Apache Point telescope in New Mexico, the Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands. Extensive radio observations with the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico and the Effelsberg telescope in Germany yielded vital data on subtle changes in the pair's orbit.

In such a system, the orbits decay and gravitational waves are emitted, carrying energy from the system. By very precisely measuring the time of arrival of the pulsar's radio pulses over a long period of time, astronomers can determine the rate of decay and the amount of gravitational radiation emitted. The large mass of the neutron star in PSR J0348+0432, the closeness of its orbit with its companion, and the fact that the companion white dwarf is compact but not another neutron star, all make the system an unprecedented opportunity for testing alternative theories of gravity.

Under the extreme conditions of this system, some scientists thought that the equations of General Relativity might not accurately predict the amount of gravitational radiation emitted, and thus change the rate of orbital decay. Competing gravitational theories, they thought, might prove more accurate in this system.

"We thought this system might be extreme enough to show a breakdown in General Relativity, but instead, Einstein's predictions held up quite well," said Paulo Freire, of the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Germany.
That's good news, the scientists say, for researchers hoping to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves with advanced instruments. Researchers using such instruments hope to detect the gravitational waves emitted as such dense pairs as neutron stars and black holes spiral inward toward violent collisions.

Gravitational waves are extremely difficult to detect and even with the best instruments, physicists expect they will need to know the characteristics of the waves they seek, which will be buried in "noise" from their detectors. Knowing the characteristics of the waves they seek will allow them to extract the signal they seek from that noise.

"Our results indicate that the filtering techniques planned for these advanced instruments remain valid," said Ryan Lynch, of McGill University.
Freire and Lynch worked with a large international team of researchers. They reported their results in the journal Science.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Ali G rep, breh.

He was obviously an alien in disguise.

Remember that X-Files episode, where Mulder and Scully encountered that massive underground fungus entity, that paralyzed them and did all kinds of crazy shit to subdue them underground?

Well... turns out it might be true... Kind of....

Fungus network 'plays role in plant communication'

Plants can communicate the onset of an attack from aphids by making use of an underground network of fungi, researchers have found.

Instances of plant communication through the air have been documented, in which chemicals emitted by a damaged plant can be picked up by a neighbour.

But below ground, most land plants are connected by fungi called mycorrhizae.

The new study, published in Ecology Letters, is the first to demonstrate these fungi also aid in communication.

Researchers from the University of Aberdeen, the James Hutton Institute and Rothamsted Research, all in the UK, devised a clever experiment to isolate the effects of these thread-like networks of mycorrhizae.

The team concerned themselves with aphids, tiny insects that feed on and damage plants.

Many plants have a chemical armoury that they deploy when aphids attack, with chemicals that both repel the aphids and attract parasitic wasps that are aphids' natural predators.

The team grew sets of five broad bean plants, allowing three in each group to develop mycorrhizal networks, and preventing the networks' growth in the other two.

To prevent any through-the-air chemical communication, the plants were covered with bags.

As the researchers allowed single plants in the sets to be infested with aphids, they found that if the infested plant was connected to another by the mycorrhizae, the un-infested plant began to mount its chemical defence.

Those unconnected by the networks appeared not to receive the signal of attack, and showed no chemical response.

"Mycorrhizal fungi need to get [products of photosynthesis] from the plant, and they have to do something for the plant," explained John Pickett of Rothamsted Research.

"In the past, we thought of them making nutrients available from the [roots and soil], but now we see another evolutionary role for them in which they pay the plant back by transmitting the signal efficiently," he told BBC News.

Prof Pickett expressed his "abject surprise that it was just so powerful - just such a fantastic signalling system".

The finding could be put to use in many crops that suffer aphid damage, by arranging for a particular, "sacrificial" plant to be more susceptible to aphid infestation, so that when aphids threaten, the network can provide advance notice for the rest of the crop.

"Now we've got a chance in a really robust manner of switching on the defence when it is needed - not straining the plant to do it all the time - and to reduce the development of resistance (of the aphids to the plants' defences)," Prof Pickett said.

Quantum computing! Well... kind of....

Nasa buys into 'quantum' computer

A $15m computer that uses "quantum physics" effects to boost its speed is to be installed at a Nasa facility.

It will be shared by Google, Nasa, and other scientists, providing access to a machine said to be up to 3,600 times faster than conventional computers.

Unlike standard machines, the D-Wave Two processor appears to make use of an effect called quantum tunnelling.

This allows it to reach solutions to certain types of mathematical problems in fractions of a second.

Effectively, it can try all possible solutions at the same time and then select the best.

Google wants to use the facility at Nasa's Ames Research Center in California to find out how quantum computing might advance techniques of machine learning and artificial intelligence, including voice recognition.

University researchers will also get 20% of the time on the machine via the Universities Space Research Agency (USRA).

Nasa will likely use the commercially available machine for scheduling problems and planning.

Canadian company D-Wave Systems, which makes the machine, has drawn scepticism over the years from quantum computing experts around the world.

Until research outlined earlier this year, some even suggested its machines showed no evidence of using specifically quantum effects.

Quantum computing is based around exploiting the strange behaviour of matter at quantum scales.

Most work on this type of computing has focused on building quantum logic gates similar to the gate devices at the basis of conventional computing.

But physicists have repeatedly found that the problem with a gate-based approach is keeping the quantum bits, or qubits (the basic units of quantum information), in their quantum state.

"You get drop out… decoherence, where the qubits lapse into being simple 1s and 0s instead of the entangled quantum states you need. Errors creep in," says Prof Alan Woodward of Surrey University.

One gate opens...
Instead, D-Wave Systems has been focused on building machines that exploit a technique called quantum annealing - a way of distilling the optimal mathematical solutions from all the possibilities.

Annealing is made possible by physics effect known as quantum tunnelling, which can endow each qubit with an awareness of every other one.

"The gate model... is the single worst thing that ever happened to quantum computing", Geordie Rose, chief technology officer for D-Wave, told BBC Radio 4's Material World programme.

"And when we look back 20 years from now, at the history of this field, we'll wonder why anyone ever thought that was a good idea."

Dr Rose's approach entails a completely different way of posing your question, and it only works for certain questions.

But according to a paper presented this week (the result of benchmarking tests required by Nasa and Google), it is very fast indeed at finding the optimal solution to a problem that potentially has many different combinations of answers.

In one case it took less than half a second to do something that took conventional software 30 minutes.

A classic example of one of these "combinatorial optimisation" problems is that of the travelling sales rep, who needs to visit several cities in one day, and wants to know the shortest path that connects them all together in order to minimise their mileage.

The D-Wave Two chip can compare all the possible itineraries at once, rather than having to work through each in turn.

Reportedly costing up to $15m, housed in a garden shed-sized box that cools the chip to near absolute zero, it should be installed at Nasa and available for research by autumn 2013.

US giant Lockheed Martin earlier this year upgraded its own D-Wave machine to the 512 qubit D-Wave Two.

WTF?

I didn't hear anything about this!

http://news.yahoo.com/huge-rock-cras...152049489.html

Huge Rock Crashes Into Moon, Sparks Giant Explosion

By Clara Moskowitz

The moon has a new hole on its surface thanks to a boulder that slammed into it in March, creating the biggest explosion scientists have seen on the moon since they started monitoring it.

The meteorite crashed on March 17, slamming into the lunar surface at a mind-boggling 56,000 mph (90,000 kph) and creating a new crater 65 feet wide (20 meters). The crash sparked a bright flash of light that would have been visible to anyone looking at the moon at the time with the naked eye, NASA scientists say.

"On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium," Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office said in a statement. "It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before." [The Greatest Lunar Crashes Ever]

NASA astronomers have been monitoring the moon for lunar meteor impacts for the past eight years, and haven't seen anything this powerful before.

Scientists didn't see the impact occur in real time. It was only when Ron Suggs, an analyst at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., reviewed a video of the bright moon crash recorded by one of the moon monitoring program's 14-inch telescopes that the event was discovered.

"It jumped right out at me, it was so bright," Suggs said.

Scientists deduced the rock had been roughly 1-foot-wide (between 0.3 to 0.4 meters) and weighted about 88 lbs (40 kg).The explosion it created was as powerful as 5 tons of TNT, NASA scientists said.

When researchers looked back at their records from March, they found that the moon meteor might not have been an isolated event.

"On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth," Cooke said. "These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt."



http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Ki...9533edae7f1b19


Though Earth's atmosphere protected our planet's surface from being hit by these meteors, the moon has no such luck. Its lack of an atmosphere exposes it to all incoming space rocks, and the NASA monitoring program has spotted more than 300 meteor strikes that reached its surface since 2005.

Part of the motivation for the program is NASA's eventual intent to send astronauts back to the moon. When they arrive, they'll need to know how often meteors impact the surface, and whether certain parts of the year, coinciding with the moon's passage through crowded bits of the solar system, pose special dangers.

"We'll be keeping an eye out for signs of a repeat performance next year when the Earth-Moon system passes through the same region of space," Cooke said. "Meanwhile, our analysis of the March 17th event continues."

The scientists also hope to use NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to photograph the impact site to learn more about how the crash occurred.

This guy's pretty impressive.

http://www.wimp.com/germansuperbrain/

Penis fencing! aka Raiders fan brohugs...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5fx-YgcP8Gg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9470/...7370155117.jpg

Does it look like these flatworms are dancing? Well, not quite. They're actually penis fencing.

This species is hermaphroditic and all individuals have working penises, testes and ovaries. Typically, being a mother is more time consuming and "costly" for the flatworm - eggs are larger and require more energy to form than sperm do. So, neither wants to be the mom. They fight with their penises, and the loser is inseminated by the winner.