Blog Heap of Links for the day 8 May 2009
Threats
five months after becoming the first American face transplant patient, Connie Culp is taking advantage of the opportunity to tell her story and warn others that what happened to her could happen to them.. "If your husband threatens you in any way, it's going to get worse. Even if they say something to you, they tell you … Oh, you're ugly, you're stupid," said Culp, whose face was obliterated in 2004 by a gunshot from her husband. "But if somebody points something at you and they say they're going to do it, eventually they're going to do it."
Digital Threat
Hackers have broken into the air traffic control mission-support systems of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration several times in recent years.... compromised an FAA public-facing computer and used it to gain access to personally identifiable information, such as Social Security numbers, on 48,000 current and former FAA employees....
Nature vs Infrastructure
It's time for the sun to move into a busier period for sunspots, and while forecasters expect a relatively mild outbreak by historical standards, one major solar storm can cause havoc with satellites and electrical systems here....
Political Theater
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.
Violence
ALTUS, OK - A Fort Sill-based soldier from Texas has been arrested on a first-degree murder complaint in the shooting death of a bar owner near the southwest Oklahoma town of Eldorado.
Alcohol Was Involved
A new study out of the University of Pittsburgh suggests that a moderate dose of alcohol increases a person's mind wandering, while at the same time reducing the likelihood of noticing that one's mind has wandered. [Shock!]
Infrastructure Threat
Distributed and intermittent electricity generation, such as wind power, is rapidly expanding, new smart meters are giving consumers more control over their energy usage, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles may someday radically increase the overall demand for electricity. The evolution of America's energy needs has forced scientists and engineers to re-examine the operations, efficiency and security of the national power grid. The creation of a more secure and efficient national power grid requires significant innovations in the way we transmit electricity and monitor its use.
Swine Flu
Cancel plans for that "swine flu party": a top US health official says deliberately trying to get infected with the A(H1N1) flu virus as protection against a future more virulent strain is a bad idea.
Liberty and Justice
The Drew Peterson case continues to read like a black-comedy version of "The Silence of the Lambs" done by "Monty Python's Flying Circus," with the Keystone Cops standing in for the FBI.
Cosmology
the crusts of neutron stars are 10 billion times stronger than steel or any other of the earth's strongest metal alloys.
Whatever dark energy is, explanations for it have less wiggle room following a Hubble Space Telescope observation that has refined the measurement of the universe's present expansion rate to a precision where the error is smaller than five percent. ...
Bartlesville - prairie frontier town
upwards of $6,000 in damage to Sooner Park early this morning... damage throughout the park and a backhoe on-site was still warm to the touch ... damage to the Sooner Pool building, light poles, fences and the SunFest storage area ... cut one of the cables to the Bruce Goff designed tower ...
Vandals caused about $5,000 in damage to a city park in Bartlesville early Friday morning. City officials say the damage will also delay the opening of a city pool by a week.
Marriage Today
having a conscientious partner may actually be good for one's health. ... study, of adults over age 50, also found that women, but not men, get an added health benefit when paired with someone who is conscientious and neurotic....
It's All in Your Mind
several regions in the brain that continue to interact while a person is supposedly at rest ... ... Communications between brain regions seem to be localized in children, but over time, regional communication becomes distributed across the whole brain. Despite these differences, children's brains are still very efficient. As with the adults, the brains in the children were still organized like a 'small world.'
babies are a lot smarter than others may realize. ... The finding that infants can distinguish between solids and liquids at such an early age builds upon a growing body of research that strongly suggests that babies are not blank slates who primarily depend on others for acquiring knowledge. That's a common assumption of researchers in the not too distant past.
researchers who study how the brain makes decisions are uncovering the biological mechanisms behind the belief that a choice is likely to be correct. ... choice certainty is closely associated with reaction time and with decision accuracy.
Animal Culture
Periodical cicadas, insects best known for their 17-year long life cycle, are emerging four years early in several Atlantic states
The notion that a decline in pollinators may threaten the human food supply — producing a situation that has been referred to as a "pollination crisis" — can be considered a myth, at least where honey bees are concerned....
Animal Companions
A grieving pet owner says a Catoosa police officer cruelly killed her dog. The two-year-old Boxer was shot after police say she lunged at the officer [News video]
Anthropology
The fingernail-size shells, already known from 82,000-year-old Aterian deposits in the cave, have now been found in even earlier layers. While the team is still awaiting exact dates for these layers, they believe this discovery makes them arguably the earliest shell ornaments in prehistory. ... the Aterian in Morocco dates back to at least 110,000 years ago.
Energy
a technique that uses sensors and computational software to constantly monitor forces exerted on wind turbine blades, a step toward improving efficiency by adjusting for rapidly changing wind conditions.
UK researchers have published a new estimate... of how much crude oil we have extracted from the planet
Lost and Found
A Bartlesville man who had been missing for nearly seven years has been found alive and well and living in South Dakota. Now his wife is speaking out. ... says she also wants to talk with her husband. She has lots of questions and things she does not understand.... [And likely never will!]
Science Marches Onnnnnn
the world's smallest incandescent lamp ... to explore the boundary between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics
can traveling at warp speed ever become a reality? ... theorize that by manipulating the space-time dimensions around the spaceship with a massive amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could push the ship faster than the speed of light. To create this bubble, the Baylor physicists believe manipulating the 11-dimension would create dark energy. ... [Any day now...]
Now *That's* Funny!
[video]
Digital Tech
a method to integrate high-speed CMOS electronics and nanophotonic circuitry based on plasmonic effects. Metal-based nanophotonics (plasmonics) can squeeze light into nanoscale structures that are much smaller than conventional optic components.
first to create one of two basic types of semiconductors using an exotic, new, one-atom-thick material called graphene.... "There are still enormous challenges to really put it into products, but I think this really could play an important role...."
a unique robotic hand that can firmly hold objects as heavy as a can of food or as delicate as a raw egg, while dexterous enough to gesture for sign language.