Interesting Things Daily

Aliens pwn us!

2010-12-28T18:43:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, haven't been blogging in a while as I have been on a break! Now i am back so expect more daily!

In movies humans fight off alien occupation forces, explode alien ships, and mind-control aliens with the power of love. How on earth can we think that would happen?
In Falling Skies, Noah Wyle is all set to fight off an alien invasion with the power of being a gosh darn nuisance. It's actually one of the more realistic takes on a way to stop occupation. What's unrealistic is the idea that occupation would occur in the first place. They'd just destroy us, and although it wouldn't be a fun ride, it would make for an interesting few hours of television. Instead, we have to watch good, old-fashioned earthling spunkiness take care of a vastly superior force.
One of the primary ways we stop an alien invasion in movies and television is by finding the alien's one big weakness. There's some hinting at that in Falling Skies. "These things can be hit," a gruff man with a gun says, "And they can be hit hard." They have a vulnerability. In Skyline — spoiler alert — it was true love. The problem with every such One Big Weakness is the audience starts picking apart why the key was that one weakness and no other.
In Signs it was water, but did it have to be fresh water? Wasn't it raining anywhere? Snow? And what about the water in the human body? Even though most of the body's water is suspended in cells, there's a lot of moisture left over. What happened to the aliens whose victims cried like a baby and wet themselves - as I most certainly would if I were being attacked by a clawed chameleon alien. Did those aliens die?
And what about the other people in Skyline? Did they not love anyone enough to take over their brain-eating alien hosts? The One Big Weakness is a tiny crack that is meant to end the movie happily but instead bursts it to pieces.

Sure, we're all happy to suspend our disbelief - with a crane if we have to - because laser fights and big alien ships are cool and we like to watch them. But any alien force so advanced that it can cross vast reaches of outer space would make short work of us. Remember, we're not just talking about technological advancement here. Space travel comes with a whole host of chemical, physical and biological challenges that have to be met.
How does this alien race combat bone loss, exposure to cosmic rays, cramped quarters on a ship, and perfectly recycling its waste while on board a space craft? If its technology allows it to shorten the voyage, how does it keep all outside contaminants out, and can it use that technology against us? If its tech forces it to take long voyages across space, how does it keep its immune system — and those of its offspring — going strong, and could it use that against us? An alien-invasion film might simply be a film in which every human on the planet dies within 24 hours, and just as the last person's eyes are closing in death - they see an alien ship land and an alien creature step out of it to plant a flag in the dirt. We may all be dead before we even know they're here.
When it comes to actual technology, we don't even have to consider. Independence Day is and shall remain an object of ridicule for saying that alien ships can be given a virus via a laptop, and that alien ships which can survive a nuclear attack can't put a shield on the one area of their ships vulnerable to a crop-duster. Any way you slice it, they have interstellar travel and we have iPads. There's not even a contest.
The biggest problem with most alien films is the assumption that they'd want anything that might keep us alive for even a second. There's a possiblity they'd want slaves, pack animals or meat, but what are the chances we'd be any good to them at all? Life is a light dust of carbon between an nitrogen-oxygen vapor and an iron core. Our biosphere would probably be a nuisance to them. It's hard to match complex biology. It's easy and profitable to harvest elements, though, and if they came across space, that very well might be what they were looking for. Perhaps the best, most realistic, movie that could be made about alien contact is the two hellish hours a small band of survivors of the initial strike would last as they saw the planet ripped apart and broken down under them.
The point is, if they don't want us alive, we won't be. We can fight and we can hack and we can find weaknesses and we can band together. We can do whatever we'd like. We'd still all be killed.

I think this is quite interesting, I will see alien movies much differently now haha.

Obama watches mythbusters!

2010-12-07T21:11:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, got some cool Obama related mews today. Obama has requested the Mythbusters to bust a myth related to the olden days.

President Obama has a personal request -- to once again test the myth of Archimedes' solar death ray. As legend has it, using only mirrors and the power of the sun, Greek scientist Archimedes is said to have set fire to Roman ships during the siege of Syracuse.

The Mythbusters have busted the myth before, but could hardly refuse Obama's challenge. This time, instead of using stationary mirror tiles focused at wood, they took a different tack. "The big question was: could you have shields from soldiers polished to a mirror finish, and get them to set something on fire," Hyneman explains to NPR's Neal Conan. "That's a whole different thing."

Five hundred students from the school where Hyneman's wife teaches science stood in for soldiers, and they conducted the experiment on "the perfect shoreline" in Alameda, Calif., says Savage. They won't say whether the legend held up or not -- but you can find out for yourself on Wednesday night, when the episode airs on the Discovery Channel.

I have been a fan of the mythbusters and am very excited for this episode, it's kind of like a celebrity special haha.

Toxic gases good for you

2010-12-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, got some cool health news again!

When belched out of cars and factories at high levels, the noxious gasses nitric oxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide are deadly poisons. But scientists are finding that, in miniscule doses, those same gases can serve as medicines.

"There's been an explosion of work in the last decade looking at these molecules in terms of therapeutics," says Dr. Mark Gladwin, a lung specialist and researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

These unwholesome components of smog, automobile emissions and industrial exhaust also happen to be essential chemicals in the body, where they exist in minute amounts. Called "gaseotransmitters," they lower blood pressure, block inflammation and regulate oxygen use.

That makes researchers optimistic that these gasses can be put to widespread medical use. Drugs that use nitric oxide are already common. Carbon monoxide is poised to help transplanted organs settle into their new homes. And hydrogen sulfide produces a Sleeping Beauty-like state of suspended animation in animals that might be useful in keeping trauma patients alive until they reach a hospital.

The difference between deadly fumes and life-saving medicine comes down to dosing, says David Lefer, a cardiovascular physiologist at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. "The levels in the body are thousands-fold lower than the industrial toxic levels."

All three gasses function as chemical messengers, similar to hormones. After they enter a cell, they seek out and turn on proteins. These proteins, in turn, activate or deactivate others, allowing a message to move from protein to protein like a line of falling dominoes. The final result is a change in the amount of energy a cell produces or the genes it activates. Gaseotransmitters also open doorways in the cell's membrane, allowing energy-carrying molecules to pass through and alter the cell's metabolism.

Nitric oxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide share many functions. Lefer thinks nitric oxide may be the primary gaseotransmitter, with the other two serving as backup.

Nitric oxide (not to be confused with the laugh-inducing nitrous oxide at your dentist's office) is the best understood of these gases, and is already the basis for several medicines. Its main effect is to turn on chemical pathways that widen blood vessels, thus lowering blood pressure. Since 1999, doctors have used the gas to treat newborns who have high blood pressure in the lungs.

Other medicines are not made of nitric oxide but rely on it to work. Nitroglycerin, once inside the body, is metabolized into nitric oxide, which opens blood vessels and soothes angina. The most famous nitric oxide moderator is Viagra, which amplifies the effects of the body's own nitric oxide to increase blood flow and tumescence at the desired location.

Scientists are now studying possible nitric oxide therapies for sickle cell anemia, heart failure, wound healing and a host of other possibilities.

Carbon monoxide has many functions; among them, it appears to dampen inflammation. The gas binds to proteins that contain metals — such as hemoglobin — and changes their shape, leading to a cascade of changes that suppresses the body's inflammatory response.

Organ transplants are one area of great interest, since the immune system's natural instinct is to attack a new kidney, heart or liver, causing inflammation. Carbon monoxide appears to stifle that inflammation, says Leo Otterbein, a physiologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Researchers also are scrutinizing the gas' activity in conditions as varied as malaria, arthritis and cancer.

In a paper last month in the American Journal of Transplantation, Otterbein and colleagues reported on pigs that received kidney transplants with or without carbon monoxide treatment. Pigs that breathed plain air turned on more inflammation-related genes than animals that inhaled carbon monoxide.

Their new kidneys started working sooner too. When the scientists measured blood markers for kidney function, the gas-treated animals were back to normal within six days of their surgeries, when animals in the plain air group still had subnormal kidney function.

In an unpublished safety study, researchers recruited healthy people to inhale carbon monoxide at a dose of 3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per hour — far below the levels found in the environment. There were no severe side effects, and a clinical trial of carbon monoxide for kidney transplant patients is now underway at several hospitals around the country, Otterbein says.

The newest gaseotransmitter is stinky hydrogen sulfide, which slows the cell's energy-producing machinery, thus lowering metabolism. With metabolism running at hibernation-like levels, an animal can survive with very little oxygen.

This suspended animation works in worms and mice, but no one has succeeded in larger animals such as pigs, Lefer says, so he's doubtful it would work in people. But he believes it is possible to slow down individual organs, and he envisions a targeted hydrogen sulfide therapy to help people recover from heart attacks.

The idea is to dial down the heart's energy needs so the organ requires less blood to survive. Lefer and colleagues found that injections of sodium sulfide — which the body converts to hydrogen sulfide — protected cardiac muscle in mice who had heart attacks. The next day, the area of damage in treated mice was only one-quarter the size found in untreated mice. And when the researchers performed echocardiograms, they found that the hearts of sulfide-treated animals functioned better, according to a 2007 report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"That was really able to salvage the heart cells from death and improve the pump function of the heart," Lefer says. "The animals survived."

In another experiment, published this summer in the journal Circulation, he and colleagues found that daily sodium sulfide injections improved heart function in mice with heart failure.

Given the toxicity of gaseotransmitters, scientists are taking great care as they investigate new treatments. Companies such as Ikaria Inc. in Clinton, N.J., are working on equipment that will stringently regulate a person's intake of a gaseous medicine. Other drugs will likely be available as gas-releasing pills or injections, which would be more convenient for patients.

Because the potent gases travel and act throughout the body, side effects are also a concern. However, Gladwin adds, some of those side effects might turn out to be beneficial. A case in point: Viagra was discovered as an unexpected side effect of a drug designed to treat high blood pressure.

This is pretty cool, I have always thought that the carbon monoxide i was breathing in the garage was really bad for me!

Pandas are coming back!

2010-12-05T21:33:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, haven't been posting in a long time because I was busy all week. So, for all you panda lovers, this is some interesting news!

Conservationists say they have perfected the difficult task of reproducing pandas, having reached their target of successfully raising 300 of the bears in captivity.
The breakthrough, mainly by scientists at the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre, China, should lead to the first panda being reintroduced into the wild within 15 years.

Female pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year, and can only actually become pregnant during a 12 to 24 hour window during this time.

The revelation comes after documentary makers were given unprecedented access to the research centre to film captive breeding activity over two years.
Just a few thousand wild pandas survive at best, and the species is classified as being Endangered.
In a bid to protect the animal, scientists have attempted to breed captive pandas since the first such cub was born in 1963.
But many obstacles stood in the way of achieving a stable captive panda population.
The first was the very short window of opportunity provided in the panda's natural reproductive cycle.

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Pioneering research has overcome the poor sexual performance of captive pandas
Female pandas are only on heat for 72 hours a year, and can only actually become pregnant during a 12 to 24 hour window during this time.
In order to correctly interpret the bears' breeding potential, caring for captive female pandas required close observation including daily urine samples to monitor hormone levels.
Understanding the giant panda's natural patterns of reproduction was only the start of the challenge.
'Turned off'
Despite conservationists' best efforts to encourage mating, pandas were seemingly "turned off" by captivity.
In Chengdu, the world's most successful panda breeding centre, researchers attempted to entice male pandas with the scent of suitable females on bamboo poles, mimicking wild scent-marking behaviour.
Rare interactions between aroused pairs often ended in disappointment, however.
Male pandas have proportionately short penises meaning pairs must adopt a very exact position in order to mate.
During their observations, researchers found that pandas demonstrated poor knowledge of this position.

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Breakthroughs in captive panda breeding herald new hopes for wild populations
Researchers then employed methods ranging from sex education videos to viagra in order to stimulate natural behaviour.
Most techniques failed, and many encounters between pandas turned aggressive and violent.
Scientists therefore had to rely upon artificial insemination, but their efforts were again subject to the pandas' peculiar reproductive cycle.
Panda pregnancies can last anything from 11 weeks to 11 months and can remain undetected until shortly before birth.
So researchers had to pay close attention to pandas following insemination procedures, ready to perform a crucial intervention whenever cubs were born.
Crucial intervention
The boon in panda numbers at the Chengdu centre has largely been attributed to the innovative "twin swapping" technique.

PICKY EATERS

Pandas feed exclusively on bamboo
It is so low in nutrients they need to eat 20kg per day
In the wild they spend at least 10 hours a day choosing the best bamboo

More than half of pandas give birth to two cubs at a time but only care for one.
It is assumed that as pandas cannot store fat, they lack the milk or energy to care for more than one cub at a time.
Whenever a cub was abandoned after birth, keepers at the Chengdu centre swiftly moved it to an incubator.
Panda mothers were tricked into caring for twins as staff stealthily rotated them between their mother and the incubators.
The survival rate of cubs rose to 98% through this combination of maternal care and artificial support.
By the end of last year, the Chengdu Panda Breeding Research Centre alone had raised 168 cubs since its inception in 1987.
Hopes of reintroduction
Conservationists now believe captive numbers are strong enough to seriously consider wild reintroduction programmes.
Using the profits made from loaning their pandas to zoos worldwide, pioneers have purchased precious panda habitat in the Sichuan mountains, southwestern China.
With the goal of 300 captive pandas achieved, construction has started on the country's first dedicated panda reintroduction facility.

This makes me happy to be Chinese again, although I hope they stop supporting North Korea. That is all, I hope you guys enjoyed reading, if you did at all!

Liquid in the beginning?

2010-11-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I have some more "questions of the universe" blogs for you guys. This is for all you physics nerds out there, like myself.

After colliding lead ions at close to the speed of light, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using the ALICE detector have discovered the Universe acted like a fluid in the moments immediately after the Big Bang. Also, the ATLAS and CMS detectors have observed a phenomenon known as "jet quenching" for the first time.
Until recently, the LHC only accelerated protons and collided them inside the particle accelerator mainly to search for the infamous Higgs boson and other exotic particles. But earlier this month, heavier lead ions were injected into the LHC. This is when the quantum party really got started.

SLIDE SHOW: Top 5 Misconceptions About The LHC
Smashing Lead
For three weeks, lead ions have raced around the accelerator ring at relativistic speeds, crashing head-on with other lead ions traveling in the opposite direction.
Lead ions are significantly bigger than protons, so they carry more energy. When they collide, they release so much energy that physicists often refer to the lead-lead collisions as "micro-Big Bangs."
Each ion collision can, quite literally, recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, some 13.75 billion years ago.
For a brief moment, these mini-Big Bangs flashed up to an estimated temperature of 10 trillion degrees Kelvin (that's more than 500,000 times hotter than the center of the sun), giving the ALICE detector a peek into how matter would have acted right at the Universe's superheated birth.
INTERVIEW: The Higgs Boson Hunter: Jonathan Butterworth
Quarks and Gluons, That's All
It is already known that high-energy collisions in particle accelerators can produce a strange, primordial state of matter. A "quark-gluon plasma" can be created if the collisions are energetic enough, a state of matter that existed during the high-energy conditions just after the Big Bang.
During this time, the Universe would have been so hot and energetic that the particles making up the elements we know today were unable to form, leaving the constituents to float "free" as a primordial soup.
Quarks and gluons were only able to condense into larger particles when universal energy conditions were low enough. Hadrons (i.e. particles made from quarks; including baryons like neutrons and protons) were only allowed to form 10^-6 seconds after the Big Bang.
But what was the nature of this quark-gluon primordial soup? Was it a gas or a liquid? What was the Universe actually like 10^-6 seconds after the Big Bang (apart from being really, really hot)?
The ALICE experiment has confirmed the quark-gluon plasma is a ultra-low viscosity liquid at these energies. From this finding, physicists now know the newborn Universe acted as a perfect fluid.
Although the U.S. Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory has already carried out similar experiments to arrive at similar conclusions, the LHC has done it at much higher energies.
This result has surprised many scientists who predicted the LHC would generate a plasma that acted more like a gas than a liquid, but the results recently published show strong interactions within this primordial soup that resemble a perfect fluid.
WIDE ANGLE: The Large Hadron Collider
The "Big Bang Machine"
Although it's only been three weeks, the lead-lead collision experiments in the LHC have already ruled out some theories about how the early Universe behaved.
"With nuclear collisions, the LHC has become a fantastic 'Big Bang' machine," said ALICE spokesperson Jürgen Schukraft. "In some respects, the quark-gluon matter looks familiar, still the ideal liquid seen at RHIC, but we’re also starting to see glimpses of something new."
Other observations in the CMS and ATLAS detectors have provided a fascinating look at how this primordial matter interacts with itself.
Immediately after lead ions collided, jets were created by the quarks and gluons blasting away from the micro-Big Bangs. By monitoring how these jets formed, physicists were able to see how the intensely chaotic turmoil evolved.
During proton-proton collisions, these jets are very basic and often form in pairs. In ion-ion collisions, many more particles are generated, producing a huge number of jets. As they tangle together, jets lose energy through interactions scientists are only just beginning to understand. This loss of energy is known as "jet quenching."
I think we are only just witnessing the tip of the iceberg insofar as LHC discoveries, but as we collide particles at higher and higher energies, we peel back the history of the Universe one microsecond at a time.

This is quite amazing, how the LHC is discovering all this stuff.

Texas = Electric Cars?

2010-11-25T21:06:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, got some eco-friendly news for you today. If you live in Texas, this is affect you, unless you don't drive.

When power plant heavyweight NRG Energy announced yesterday that it would invest $10 million in the rollout of the nation’s first privately-finance electric vehicle charging network it also revealed that the city it would debut in would be … Houston, Texas.
Um, what?
Houston (pictured) is known as the nation’s oil capital, and as a resident, I can’t say I disagree with that assessment. It’s also in a state where oil is still cheap compared to other parts of the country, and the same is true for electricity costs. At nearly 15,000 square miles, it’s purported to be bigger than Maryland, and is known for bad traffic and long commutes. And despite its traffic and air pollution issues, Houston has been reluctant to adopt mass transit.
But NRG president and CEO David Crane tells me the company actually believes Texas is a better market for electric vehicles than it gets credit for, which I was skeptical about after test-driving the Ford Focus Electric in Dallas. In fact, Crane says they’ve been actively talking to Nissan about allocating more of its limited-supply, all-electric Leafs to Texas, which the automaker passed over when choosing its first-launch markets. (As part of the rollout, Nissan dealerships in Texas will sell NRG’s monthly charging packages to Leaf buyers).
Keep in mind that NRG is parent to Texas-based electricity retailers, Green Mountain Energy and Reliant Energy, so it has close Texas ties. Crane says he’s interested in pursuing and developing a similar network in California — after all, NRG is in the business of selling electricity, and more electric vehicles on the road means more electricity sales for power providers. All that aside, here’s Crane’s reasoning for why Texas makes sense for an electric car network:

This is could be the next step to saving the Earth, we will save a lot of oil.

Science changing Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, this is sort of a misleading title, I didn't know what else to call it. So, its Thanksgiving for most of you guys; us Canadians have already had Thanksgiving.

Since they were introduced 15 years ago, genetically modified foods have taken astonishing hold in North America. This time of year, the result is a Thanksgiving menu that may, on the surface, look much the same as the one your grandma cooked 20 years ago. But at the genetic level, it is very different, and it's a far cry from the fabled feast shared by the pilgrims and American Indians in the 17th century. In celebration of Thanksgiving, the most food-focused day of the year, here's a look at how biotechnology is changing the way we eat.
Before it reached the grocery store — even before it reached the farm — your turkey, turducken or tofurkey likely started out in a lab, with scientists in white coats peering at PCR data and tinkering with plant genomes to produce traits that nature never intended.
Let's start with your morning coffee. Unless you buy organic, your milk and half-and-half most likely comes from cows that have been administered synthetic hormones. The hormones rBST and rBGH let cows grow bigger faster, and allow them to produce more milk. Do you use soy milk instead? It's probably from GMO soybeans. How about sweetener? Fully 95 percent of the U.S. sugar beet crop is genetically modified, and half the nation’s sugar supply comes from beets. What about high fructose corn syrup? Of course. About 85 percent of American corn is genetically modified. Even sugarcane is genetically altered.
Starting with breakfast and ending with dessert, if you live in North America, you most likely eat transgenic foods every day.
Genetically modified crops usually contain genes from other plants to produce unique traits. In most cases, splices of bacterial genes are used to insert the new traits, like pest or disease resistance. Companies such as Monsanto and Bayer alter plants to resist their proprietary blends of weed killer, while other crops are modified to resist pests, fungi or bacteria; produce higher yields; or survive environmental conditions like drought or salty soil. GM food advocates say it’s essentially no different than selective breeding to obtain desirable qualities.
Consumer groups and natural-food advocates, on the other hand, say bacteria-enabled “Frankenfood” has no place in a healthy diet. They say genetically altered crops have not been sufficiently studied, and they worry that their effects on the environment and human health are unknown. Several court cases are progressing that seek to prevent future plantings of genetically modified crops, or at least subject them to stricter federal review.
Some groups maintain lists of non-GMO food sources; the Institute for Responsible Technology even has a non-GMO shopping guide iPhone app, or you can download the printable shopping list.
The easiest way to avoid genetically modified food is to buy organic — foods labeled organic cannot intentionally have biotech ingredients. But note the word intentionally. Seeds blow in the wind, so even fields used for organic farming may contain genetically altered crops. In a study this summer, GM canola was found growing in the wild throughout South Dakota.
Despite opposition, the vast majority of North American row crops are now grown from genetically modified seeds.

Sorry for the "boring" post, thanks for reading it anyways. Who here learned something like me? Finding out that genetically modified foods have been introduced 15 years ago.

North Korea starting World War 3?

2010-11-23T22:37:00.000-08:00

As most of you may know, North Korea attacked South Korea, well somewhat. The South Korean president says he will respond with more than just words and US president Barack Obama will back up South Korea.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged the United States would defend South Korea after what the White House branded an outrageous attack by North Korea on its neighbor. Yet with its options limited, the U.S. sought a diplomatic rather a military response to one of those most ominous clashes between the Koreas in decades.
"South Korea is our ally. It has been since the Korean War," Obama said in his first comments about the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island. "And we strongly affirm our commitment to defend South Korea as part of that alliance."
The president, speaking to ABC News, would not speculate when asked about military options. He was expected to telephone South Korean President Lee Myung-bak late Tuesday night, and he met into the evening with his top national security advisers to discuss next steps.

Could this be the start of World War 3?

North Korea Bombing USA?

2010-11-21T15:33:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, got some SCARY news for you guys. It's about more North Korea stuff and their nuclear shit.

The scientist, Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who previously directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in an interview that he had been “stunned” by the sophistication of the new plant, where he saw “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges that had just been installed in a recently gutted building that had housed an aging fuel fabrication center, and that were operated from what he called “an ultra-modern control room.” The North Koreans claimed 2,000 centrifuges were already installed and running, he said.
American officials know that the plant did not exist in April 2009, when the last Americans and international inspectors were thrown out of the country. The speed with which it was built strongly suggests that the impoverished, isolated country, which tested its first nuclear device in 2006, had foreign help and evaded strict new United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed to punish its rejection of international controls.
A delegation of American experts that included Dr. Hecker has already reported that it confirmed satellite photographic evidence of another new advance by the North — a light-water reactor being built on the site of a facility the country had dismantled as part of an agreement with the international community to end its nuclear weapons program.
Dr. Hecker did not initially mention the surprising discovery of the uranium enrichment operation as he left North Korea. He privately informed the White House a few days ago.
The White House is clearly eager to use the new information to show that North Korea, in violation of United Nations mandates, continues to make significant progress toward advancing its nuclear program, even though it remains under international sanctions for its past violations.
American officials were sent to China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, the other members in the moribund “six-party talks.” The Obama administration also hopes to persuade China, by far North Korea’s most important source of political and economic support, to put more pressure on the government of Kim Jong-il, which has shown signs of becoming more militaristic as it undergoes a leadership transition.
China has been hesitant to cut off trade or fuel to the North, and it appears determined to support its longtime, if difficult, ally during its succession process. But in the past China has taken modest steps to support a tougher line when North Korea has tested nuclear weapons or missiles, defying international commitments.
Dr. Hecker said he was forbidden from taking pictures during his tour of the uranium plant on Nov. 12, and was not allowed to verify North Korean claims that it was already beginning to produce low-enriched uranium. He also said he had doubts that North Korea would fulfill its promise to build a light-water reactor to utilize the fuel. “There are reasons to question whether that’s true,” he said.

Are you guys scared this might happen? I know I am, this will affect me even in snowy Vancouver.

Universe Before Big Bang?

2010-11-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, and physics nerds! I've got more "questions of the universe" blogs for you. Like the topic on the "Vacuum" from Fringe, this is about the start of the universe.

The Big Bang model holds that everything that now comprises the universe was once concentrated in a single point of near-infinite density. Before this singularity exploded and the universe began, there was absolutely nothing - indeed, it's not clear whether one can even use the term "before" in reference to a pre-Big-Bang cosmos, as time itself may not have existed yet. In the current model, the universe began with the Big Bang, underwent cosmic inflation for a fraction of a second, then settled into the much more gradual expansion that is still going on, and likely will end with the universe as an infinitely expanded, featureless cosmos.

Sir Roger Penrose, one of the most renowned physicists of the last fifty years, takes issue with this view. He points out that the universe was apparently born in a very low state of entropy, meaning a very high degree of order initially existed, and this is what made the complex matter we see all around us (and are composed of) possible in the first place. His objection is that the Big Bang model can't explain why such a low entropy state existed, and he believes he has a solution - that the universe is just one of many in a cyclical chain, with each Big Bang starting up a new universe in place of the one before.

How does this help? Well, Penrose posits the end of each universe will involve a return to low entropy. This is because black holes suck in all the matter, energy, and information they encounter, which works to remove entropy from our universe. (Where that entropy might go is another question entirely.) The universe's continued expansion into eventual nothingness causes the black holes themselves to evaporate, which ultimately leaves the universe in a highly ordered state once again, ready to contract into another singularity and set off the next Big Bang.

As alternative theories go, it's not without its merits, but there's no evidence to support it...until now. He says he's found evidence for his ideas in the cosmic microwave background, the microwave radiation that permeates the universe and was thought to have formed 300,000 years after the Big Bang, providing a record of the universe at that far distant time. Penrose and his colleague Vahe Gurzadyan have discovered clear concentric circles within the data, which suggests regions of the radiation have much smaller temperature ranges than elsewhere.

So what does that mean? Penrose believes these circles are windows into the previous universe, spherical ripples left behind by the gravitational effects of colliding black holes in the previous universe. He also says these circles don't work well at all in the current inflationary model, which holds all temperature variations in the CMB should be truly random.

Here's where the fun begins. If the circles are really there and are really doing what Penrose says they're doing, then he's managed to overthrow the standard inflationary model. But there's a long way to go between where we are now and that point, assuming it ever happens.

The inflationary model has become the consensus for a good reason - it's the best explanation we've got for the universe we have now - and so cosmologists will examine any results that appear to disprove it very critically. There are also a couple key assumptions in Penrose's theory, particularly that all particles will lose their mass towards the end of the universe. Right now, we don't know whether that will actually happen - in particular, there's no proof that electrons ever decay.

Do you guys think this could be true, that there were universes before ours, before the Big Bang?

Cure to Prostate Cancer?

2010-11-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, more medical/bio news for all you bio nerds! So, they found that soybeans can help with prostate cancer. Here is the article

Researchers at Northwestern University have found that genistein, a natural chemical found in soy, inhibits prostate cancer cells from becoming metastatic and spreading to other parts of the body.
Advocates of holistic living have long championed the fact that food can be used to fight serious illnesses and diseases, including cancer. For the most part, traditional medicine has cautioned against these claims, but this new research might be proof that they can’t avoid.
The study examined 38 men that were diagnosed with localized prostate cancer. When administered once a day in pill form, one month prior to surgery, it was found that the soybean drug had beneficial effects on the prostate cancer cells.
When examined after surgery, researchers found that patients that received genistein enjoyed an increased expression of genes that suppress the invasion of cancer cells and decreased the expression of genes that enhance invasion.
Although the results are promising, scientists say that another phase of the study is needed to determine if the soybean drug can really prevent cancer cells from moving out of the prostate and into the rest of the body
If additional phases of the study are successful, it will be the first instance of a non-toxic drug that targets and inhibits cancer cell movement.
“If this drug can effectively stop prostate cancer from moving in the body, theoretically, a similar therapy could have the same effect on the cells of other cancers,” said Raymond Bergan, professor of hematology and oncology at Northwestern University.

This can mean a lot of people will be saved, and just like the technology to turn skin into blood, another way to keep humans alive longer!

iPad most wanted?

2010-11-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, since it is almost Christmas, I have a presenty blog today.

Two separate consumer surveys came to the same conclusion: the iPad is on top of everyone's gift wish list. 3D TVs? Not so much.

Fortunately, your chances of getting an iPad are pretty good -- as both of those studies also said that people plan to spend more on gifts this holiday season, mostly on consumer gadgets, compared to 2009.

Indeed, a report on planned holiday spending by Retrevo said that people are willing to give up their holiday travel so they can buy cool electronics. Of the 1,000-plus respondents, 16% said they will spend more on electronics while 28% will spend less on travel.

The No. 1 desire? A tablet -- and that means the iPad for most people. "Unless Android gets it together in the tablet department, Apple could have a very good holiday season. When the study asked what was on consumers' wish lists this year, the product on the top of most people's electronics wish lists was a tablet followed closely by a laptop, HDTV set, and smartphone. Netbooks and 3DTVs were lowest on the lists," the Retrevo report said.

The thing that Is most shocking for
me is that people want iPads the most. iPads aren't even that great, and it isn't even talking about the iPad 2. I don't see why people don't have the 3d tv as their top item on thir wishlist.

Uh oh Black Hole?

2010-11-17T17:48:00.000-08:00

I've got some scary news guys! Astronomers think they have seen a black hole.
X-ray observations suggest the supernova, called SN 1979C, is a black hole in the making, a team of U.S. and European astronomers said.
"If our interpretation is correct, this is the nearest example where the birth of a black hole has been observed," Daniel Patnaude of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, who helped lead the study, said in a statement.
Amateur astronomer Gus Johnson of Maryland spotted the supernova in 1979 at the edge of a galaxy called M100 and astronomers have been peering at it since. Light and X-rays from the collapse have taken 50 million years to travel to Earth at the speed of light -- 186,000 miles a second, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km) a year.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory have seen that it emits a steady source of bright X-rays.
Analysis of the X-rays support the idea that the object is a black hole and that it is either being fed by material falling back from an initial supernova, or perhaps from a twin star, the astronomers said.
Scientists believe black holes can be formed in a number of ways -- in this case by a star about 20 times the mass of our Sun going supernova and then collapsing into an object so dense that it sucks surrounding material into its core.

If this is true, then what if it kills all of us. And the coolest(or worst) part is that we won't even be able to see it because light gets sucked into black holes!

Wasting Food

2010-11-16T23:02:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I have an environmental post today!

You probably recycle, reuse bags, carpool, use energy efficient appliances and try to take the bus. One of the best ways of helping is to stop wasting food!

ll you need to do is minimize your food waste. If you buy it and bring it home, eat it. That alone is one of the easiest ways to aid the environment.
About 40% of the food produced in the United States isn't consumed. Every day Americans waste enough food to fill the Rose Bowl. And our national food waste habit is on the upswing: We waste 50% more food today than we did in 1974.
Squandering so much of what we grow doesn't just waste food; it also wastes the fossil fuel that went into growing, processing, transporting and refrigerating it. A recent study estimated conservatively that 2% of all U.S. energy consumption went to producing food that was never eaten. To give you a sense of perspective, every year, through uneaten food, we waste 70 times the amount of oil that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico during the three months of the Deepwater Horizon spill.
That waste of resources continues after we throw away food. There is the energy required to haul the discarded food to the landfill. And once there, food decomposes and creates methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent a heat trapper than carbon dioxide. Landfills are the second-largest human-related source of methane emissions, and rotting food causes the majority of methane there. It's climate change coming directly from your kitchen.
Not only will cutting your food waste help the planet, but it also will make you a slightly more ethical person. The number of hungry people, in Los Angeles and the state, is steadily increasing. From 2005 to 2009, the amount of Los Angeles County residents receiving food assistance swelled by 46%. Meanwhile, Angelenos throw away about 18 million pounds of food every day. At supermarkets, restaurants and, of course, our homes, we're discarding a potential solution for our neighbors' needs.

With those stats, we might want to rethink about wasting food.

More double down news

2010-11-15T21:54:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I have bad news for all you Vancouverians. I am dissappointed because now I will never try another double down.

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - After selling more than one million of the bun-less sandwiches, KFC has pulled the Double Down off menus. It featured two pieces of chicken, two pieces of bacon, cheese, and the Colonel's savoury, secret sauce and was available here for less than a month.

Yes, you read right. This slobbering piece of meat, basically death solidified, is now removed from Vancouver!! I am very sad, maybe I can get it when I go Seattle or other cities...

China limits dogs

2010-11-14T18:53:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, been really busy so I didn't post yesterday. Today I have some pretty cool news about China!

Thirty years after China imposed a one-child policy to limit population growth, authorities are turning their attention to overcrowding by man’s best friend.

The residents of Shanghai are facing a new limit over the size of their household, Authorities are now considering the one-dog policy.

The law would allow one dog per family and require owners to register their pets at a cost of about $45 a year. Residents would also be required to neuter or spay their dogs, and give puppies up for adoption by the time they’re 3 months old. If passed, the measure would go into effect next year.

But as with many policies in China, it was not clear how officials would be able to enforce their new policy. Many Chinese simply do not bother to pay the licence fee for their dogs even though it is technically a crime to do so.

Supporters say it’s necessary because of limited dog-walking space in the congested, densely populated city. Nearly 20 million people live in Shanghai, alongside nearly 1 million dogs. An average of at least 100,000 dog attacks are reported each year, and 2009 had nearly 140,000 cases of dog-inflicted wounds, spurring local authorities to propose the new law, China Daily reported.

But some pet lovers are conscerned that the new policy could lead to more strays and end up harming the animals.

I don't own a dog but my relatives in China do, and some have more than 1. I wonder what they are going to do. What do you guys think about this?

More Fringe!

2010-11-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

Hey guys. So, yesterday, I was watching the new episode of Fringe "6955 kHz". The frequency part of the episode was not the thing that intrigued me though. It was the talk about the Vacuum. People believed that before the time of the dinosaurs, humans lived in advanced ways we could not even imagine in the 21st century. The civilizations from ancient times had this device, called the Vacuum. The people of our time believed that this device created everything and can destroy everything, sort of like the big bang and the big crunch theory. The characters Fringe believed that the Vacuum destroyed everything, and that's why the civilization disappeared, and the cavemen came. In the episode of Fringe, the frequency part of the show, it talked about number radios. It broadcasted hidden numbers and was later discovered that the numbers represented areas around the world. At these areas, parts of the Vacuum are buried really deep under the land. I wonder if this theory was true, that there were extremely advanced civilizations before us, before the time of the dinosaurs.

Skin to Blood

2010-11-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

Hey, bio nerds. I have some interesting news for you today! Researchers from Ontario, Canada may be able to turn human skin into blood cells. What does this mean? It means that doing operations like blood transfusions will be infinitely easier because of this technology.

Canadian researchers at the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University in Ontario have made the major step of reprogramming human skin cells into blood cells. Their research was published in the most recent issue of Nature. Up until now, scientists have been focusing research on the conversion of embryonic stem cells into blood. But those efforts have been problematic, both because it's difficult to turn the stem cells into mature cells that can be transplanted into adults and because of the controversy over the use of embryonic stem cells in research as well as their finite availability.

The research team in Canada, however, has found a way to bypass all these concerns by using growth factors that can reprogram skin cells into blood cells, allowing for the development of adult blood cells for immediate transplant. They successfully changed skin cells into blood cells several times over the course of two years, using human skin from old as well as young patients.

This is exciting for everybody, especially the bio nerds. Breakthroughs like this in science will help us live better and longer.

Steak!

2010-11-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, found something interesting about steaks today.

Women who want to calm down their husbands after a stressful day at the office should serve him a big steak, scientists said today.
Contrary to popular opinion that a hunk of red meat may make men aggressive, experts said it actually has a calming affect.
Psychologists said they were shocked by research findings which show that far from bringing out the 'caveman instinct' in modern men, seeing meat lowers any aggressive tendencies because it reminds males of friends and family at meal time.

This makes me happy, knowing that steak will make me feel better.

Twinkies good for you?

2010-11-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

A nutrition professor lost 27 pounds by eating Twinkies for 60 days.

Kansas State University nutrition professor Mark Haub has been making headlines lately for his two-month Twinkie stunt. For 60 days straight, Haub ate a snack cake for every meal, with Doritos, Oreos and sugar-soaked cereals for snacks between meals.
The crazy part? He lost 27 pounds, and his cholesterol dropped.
Those results are so dang counterintuitive, the questions flood to your head—like a sugar rush.

In short, Haub's theory about caloric intake held up. He burned more calories than he ate, and that caused him to shed pounds. As for the other health improvements, like lowering his "bad" cholesterol and upping his "good" cholesterol? "When you lose weight, regardless of how you're doing it—even if it's with packaged foods, generally you will see these markers improve when weight loss has improved," explained Dawn Jackson Blatner, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.

I think this explains why I am still skinny from eating so many Oreos.

Business in Africa

2010-11-08T23:06:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, found something interesting today.

BOSTON — Is there money to be made in Africa? You bet.
Just ask Walmart, which is offering more than $4 billion to buy a South African retail chain as its foothold into the fast-growing African market.
And Coca-Cola has announced it will spend $12 billion over the next 10 years to improve its production and sales network across the continent. KFC and Subway are already selling their meals to Africans. Top European and Chinese banks are competing for business in Africa, too.
This new scramble for business in Africa has made Wall Street take notice: Africa can be profitable.

The interesting thing about this is that it is a very good thing for Africa. It will help the economy and will help Africa better than donations. Now Africans can enjoy some Subway and WalMart like we do in North America, all while helping their economy.

Donnie Yen

2010-11-07T19:41:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, going to talk about my favourite actor, Donnie Yen. Known for his famous role in Ip Man and Ip Man 2, he is one of the most famous actors in Hong Kong.

Basic bio: Donnie Yen (born 27 July 1963) is a Hong Kong actor, martial artist, film director, action choreographer and film producer.

He has worked with other famous Chinese stars like Jackie Chan and Jet Li, which makes him even cooler than he already is. This guy is also badass like Bruce Lee. This dude will kick your ass for the slightest disturbance you bring upon him. In Ip Man, he fought 10 guys at once and broke all their bones. That wasn't acting, he actually did.

LHC

2010-11-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

Hey science nerds, I've got more Large Hadron Collider News for you.

The Large Hadron Collider has been busy destroying protons by the billions. But now it's set to do something completely different: generate miniature Big Bangs.
Scientists and researchers at CERN in Geneva are gearing up to launch experiments that attempt to recreate, as accurately as possible, the conditions immediately after the Big Bang, Discovery News reports. That could shed light on a state of matter that hasn't existed in the known Universe for over 13.7 billion years.
Specifically, scientists are planning to begin shooting lead ions around the 17-mile-long LHC beginning later this month. The theory goes that when accelerated to relativistic speeds, and then collided head-on with protons in the other direction, the resulting energy explosion will cause the production of brand new particles, the report said. Call it E=mc squared in its purest form.

Science nerds like me are excited, more pieces of the universe puzzle are going to be solved but there is one thing I am worried about. When the real big bang occured, the entire universe experienced Planck temperatures for fractions of a second. What if the LHC creates near Planck temperatures? Everything on Earth will incinerate instantly and everybody will die.

Using Coupons

2010-11-05T23:52:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, I learned about coupons in money management and I'm going to share with you some tips.

Effective Coupon Usage:
   First of all, keep a 3 months’ supply of non-perishable food and condiments. If you do this, you only need to buy things when you have a coupon for it or if it's on sale instead of being forced to buy them because you need it. Make sure that the coupon will save you more money than what it would cost to buy generic(no name) brands.
Exercise coupon stacking. That is when you have a manufacturer’s coupon for an item and the store has it’s own coupon for that same item. You can get manufacturer's coupons at places like their sites, newspapers or even in the mail.

Extra Tips
   Never buy for convenience. You are paying for your convenience and that price is not worth it.

   Don't buy convenience foods like chopped up carrots, buy the whole carrot and chop it up yourself. It will save you a lot of money

Transhumanism

2010-11-05T19:52:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, was watching the tv show Fringe last night and it got me thinking. In the theme song it talked about transhumanism and I was curious.

Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of science and technology to improve human mental and physical characteristics and capacities. The movement regards aspects of the human condition, such as disability, suffering, disease, aging, and involuntary death as unnecessary and undesirable. Transhumanists look to biotechnologies and other emerging technologies for these purposes. Dangers, as well as benefits, are also of concern to the transhumanist movement.[1]

Basically, transhumanism is to enhance ourselves. Transhumanism is going to be a big thing in the future. In Fringe, there is an alternate universe that is slightly more advanced in some areas, but also less advanced is others. In their universe, they have technolgy that is like transhumanism, where they repair themselves perfectly and rapidly, even after getting caught in an explosion.

Some theorists, such as Raymond Kurzweil, think that the pace of technological innovation is accelerating and that the next 50 years may yield not only radical technological advances but possibly a technological singularity, which may fundamentally change the nature of human beings

Question of the day: How amazing do you guys think transhumanism will be in the future?