I was browsing through the August 13 issue of Nature and it had a short news article warning the fast depletion of groundwater reserves in India. An excerpt:

Their research, published online in Nature this week (M. Rodell et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature08238; 2009), found gravity anomalies suggesting a net loss of 109 cubic kilometres of water — equivalent to a mass of 109 billion tonnes — from August 2002 to October 2008. The amount lost is double the capacity of India’s largest surface-water reservoir, the Upper Wainganga, and almost three times the capacity of Lake Mead in Nevada, the largest reservoir in the United States.

That one has to read something like this in Nature and not TOI/IE is equally disconcerting (but I may well have missed the news if it came out).

A second study using GRACE data, by scientists at the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, has found that the most intensively irrigated areas in northern India, eastern Pakistan and parts of Bangladesh are losing groundwater at an overall rate of 54 cubic kilometres per year, consistent with Rodell’s results (V. M. Tiwari et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. doi:10.1029/2009GL039401; in the press).

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S QUIZ: “If Quizzes are Quizzical, Are Tests Testicle?”
1. slightly lower
2. Elephantiasis
3. orchid
4. avocado
5. testify
6. Cat
7. Ram or goat
8. Clinton, Montana
9. eye lid
10. 20 and 34.

THIS WEEK’S QUIZ:  “Timeline History of Television”

Inventors in the 19th century speculated on the idea of instruments that would allow people to “see by electricity.” In 1881, an article in Nature magazine surmised that although the idea of transmitting images over great distances could one day be possible, it wondered if the idea deserved “further expense and trouble.”

Jump cut forward: While early television sets from the 1920s had blurry flickering images, technology showed steady signs of improving into the 1930s although the images were still fuzzy. World War II meant that TV was still a rarity for the American family until after 1945 when sales jumped 500% between then and 1948. Before we knew it, we were watching cable TV stations in the 1980s, and then 42% of TV stations were digital by June 2009.

Here’s a timeline history of some of television’s landmark events in programming and technology, with a sprinkling of fascinating facts and goofy quirks.

1. In the early 1920s scientists in the United States and United Kingdom demonstrated the ability to transmit still photos and moving silhouettes using what method?
Microwaves
Radio waves
Sonar
UV rays
X-rays

2. April 7, 1927: The first public broadcast on TV in the United States. Whose voice and image was broadcast?
Al Jolson
Calvin Coolidge
Charlie Chaplin
Charles Lindbergh
Herbert Hoover

3. In 1928, General Electric broadcast what might be considered the first TV drama using a spinning disk and bright lamp to create blurry, off-center images of actors smoking cigarettes while carousing around Europe. In truth, those actors were not in Europe but were instead where?
Boston, Massachusetts
Burbank, California
Hollywood, California
Schenectady, New York
West Orange, New Jersey

4. While regular nationwide TV broadcasts started around 1939, it was in 1947, when the very first TV couple to share a bed appeared on what television show? [The next couple to do so is thought by many to be the animated couple, the Flintstones in the 1960's.]
“Café Continental”
“Cash and Carry”
“Kraft Television Theater”
“Mary Kay and Johnny”
“The World In Your Home”

5. In 1950, which NBC TV show first made use of the laugh track?
“The Alan Dale Show”
“The Goldbergs”
“The Hank McCune Show”
“The Morey Amsterdam Show”
“Your Show of Shows”

6. The color television set first swept the country in 1954. By what year did color TV sales overtake Black and White sets?
1955
1960
1966
1972
1978

7. Initial versions of the TV remote control were still attached to the television set with a cable. It wasn’t until what year that the wireless remote control was invented?
*1955
1963
1970
1977
1985

8. By 1960, what percentage of households in the United States had a television set?
7%
27%
47%
67%
87%

9. In what year did the VCR replace the previous technology of open-reel home video systems?
1962
1967
1972
1977
1982

10. In 1983 what TV show aired the most-watched television series finale in history with almost 106 million Americans watching?
All in The Family
Dallas
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
M*A*S*H
Seinfeld

11. These days there are TV sets in about 110 million American households, and revenue from television broadcasting, cable, TV advertising, and TV-set sales totaled how much money in 2006?
$1.82 billion
$18.2 billion
$182 billion
$1.82 trillion
$18.2 trillion

12. The renewal of the contract for the show The Simpsons in 2009 meant that it would soon overtake which show as the longest-running prime-time scripted TV series?
ABC’s The Danny Thomas Show
CBS’s Gunsmoke
CBS’s Lassie
NBC’s Bonanza
NBC’s Law & Order

ANSWERS WILL APPEAR NEXT MONDAY. But if you really want to know the answers now, go to:  http://www.sploofus.com/triviaquiz/timeline_history_of_television.html

It’s a great trivia web site, and if you join up please mention my user name “billkozy” as a referral, so that I get lots of points worth no money whatsoever. Just bragging rights I guess.

Recent research indicates they might have identified a molecular switch that causes the development of brown adipose tissue.    This might lead to the ability to take obese patient’s cells into the lab and transplant those to create brown adipose tissue that burns off excess  energy.

Here is more on the story:

“When it’s activated — usually by cold — brown adipose tissue initiates a series of pathways that convert free fatty acids and glucose into heat, rather than storing them.   In humans, brown fat is usually found in infants, who are unable to maintain body heat by shivering. The tissue had been thought to vanish long before adulthood, until three studies earlier this year showed it can still be present and active in later life.

Infants generate brown fat to maintain body heat. It was thought that the tissue was not found in adults, but discoveries made earlier this year showed that adults do in fact generate brown fat. If scientists are able to find a way to produce more brown fat in adults, it could lead to better weight control treatments. Researchers say the discovery may lead to treatments that involve removing tissue from a patient, adding the proteins and returning it to the patient to generate brown fat.  Another possibility is developing a drug that can produce the effects of the protein switch.”

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary has offered the following definition of religion: “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith”.  The zealotry that some use to proselytize for the cause of “climate change” matches a religion.

It is undeniable that the Earth’s climate has gone through periods of significant climate changes.  However, the narcissistic manner in which some focus on the current climatic changes speaks to alternative motivations that go beyond rational scientific thought.

Let’s start with a brief scientific reality check from PBS’s website quoting Professor Kirk A. Maasch, a University of Maine Geological Scientist:

• During the past billion years, the Earth’s climate has fluctuated between warm periods – sometimes even completely ice-free – and cold periods.  Ice ages have occurred at widely spaced intervals of geologic time.  During the present ice age, glaciers have advanced and retreated over 20 times. [Emphasis added]
• Between 52 and 57 million years ago, tropical conditions extended into northern Spain and central United States, for example, and the difference in temperature between the equator and pole was much smaller than it is today. [Emphasis added]
• Between 5 and 3 million years ago, the sea was much warmer around North America and the Antarctic than it is today. [Emphasis added].
• We are still in the midst of the third major cooling period that began around 3 million years ago. [Emphasis added]
• Possible explanations for the 60 million years of cooling are; 1) Geographic distribution and continent sizes, 2) Geometry of ocean basins, and 3) Atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This science shows us that the earth’s climate changes have been occurring long before man interfered with the ecosystem.  It also significant that even with the benefit of history, scientist can only offer theories as to why previous changes occurred, of which one possibility is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  So I raise a question:  If scientist do not know what caused past global warming’s, how can they be sure of the cause of the next one?

In earlier  discussions, advocates called the problem “global warming”.  Since the Earth’s average temperature has flat-lined since 2001, this rallying call is no longer convenient.  So they have changed the name to “climate change”, which neatly covers any future changes.

I do not know whether the climate changes currently being discussed are the  result of increased carbon emissions or from some other cause.  However, I do know that this issue must be resolved by science, not wishful thinking.  Fortunately, there are signs that serious people throughout the world are demanding the same, as indicated in the following examples:

• Steve Fielding, a member of the Australian Senate, visited the United States recently and asked the Obama administration’s Mr. Joseph Aldy, special assistant to the president on energy and the environment, to supply the science behind the cause of current climate changes.  Mr. Fielding was unsatisfied and the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its county’s carbon-emission scheme.  Mr. Fielding indicated that he would not risk job loss on “unconvincing science”.
• The Polish Academy of Sciences in April, 2009, published a document challenging man-made global warming.
• 11 %of the Czech Republic believes humans play a role in global warming.
• France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy has tapped Claude Allegre to lead the country’s Ministry of Industry and Innovation.  While 20 years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to scream that global warming was created by man, this geochemist has since recanted.
• New Zealand last year suspended its cap and trade program.
• Joanne Simpson, the world’s first female Ph.D. in Meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement recently stating that she was finally free to speak “frankly” over her non-belief.
• Japanese environmental chemist, Dr. Kiminori Itoh, who contributed to the UN’s climate report, has dubbed man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history”.
• Ivar Giaever, of Norway, a Noble Prize winner for physics, decries global warming as the “new religion”.

No, the science is not settled.  However, the new religion of climate change (NRCC) is trying to silence critics just as Galileo was attacked centuries ago.  For examples, both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the open letter submitted by Princeton University’s Will Happer and 54 noted physicists demanding that the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled on global warming.

Government is doing its part to also silence the critics of NRCC.  Mr. Allan Carlin, a nearly 30 year employee of the EPA and a colleague presented the EPA a 98-page paper arguing that the Agency should take another look at the issues.  Their study concluded that the science behind man-made global warming has  proven inconclusive at best.  Mr. Carling was told to “shut up”.

The masses that embrace the argument of climate change do so mainly out of fear.  They watched Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and see the water rising above their houses.  This same group in the 1970’s was sure that nuclear power was the most dangerous environmental hazard to man and stop all production of new plants in the United States, only to increase the carbon spewed by coal-fired power plants.

It is the leaders of the NRCC that are scary.  Their motivations are less noble than the masses as they seek power and money, the same as most special interest lobbies.  Just follow the money.  Al Gore made over $100 million being the father of the NRCC.  Should Cap & Trade be approved, firms like Goldman Sachs will make billions trading the carbon credits.  Large industrial companies like General Electric will also reap significant profits for selling “green” products.

My friends in the Left usually address the issue of climate change with rhetorical questions.  “Isn’t it better for everyone if we stop using imported oil from countries that don’t like us.”  Or; “You must agree that there the a possibility that excess carbon in the atmosphere is causing climatic changes, so why not reduce them?”  The answer to both of these questions is “ yes, but”.  Neither question addresses to appropriateness of the policies being implemented or the tentacles they will have throughout society.  I therefore respond with my own questions like.  “You must agree that the radical changes that would be implemented under the President’s Cap & Trade would significantly affect the economy and distribution of wealth, correct?”  And then I conclude: “If Cap & Trade causes the price of food to significantly increase and therefore also increases starvation in world, will you accept that responsibility?”  With that question I end this article.

By InsightAnalytical-GRL

According to the medical industry, mammograms are a must for early detection of breast cancer.  The benefits of early detection is well worth the risks of being irradiated on a regular basis.

What if there was a much simpler and safer way to test for this disease?

Well, a few days ago on Radio Australia I heard a segment on Australia’s “Smart 100 Awards.” In fact, the number one “smart idea” was a simple procedure to help in the discovery of breast cancer.

This isn’t a new story. In fact, 10 YEARS AGO, a retired professor of physics named Dr. Veronica James published an article on the subject in Nature magazine.  As reported on March 4, 1999 by ABC (Australia):

Pubic hair may reveal early breast cancer › News in Science (ABC Science).

C. Johnson, The Lab

---

A single pubic hair may provide all the information needed for early detection of breast cancer, preliminary studies by an Australian scientist suggest.Hair from breast cancer patients has a different molecular structure to hair from healthy subjects, Dr Veronica James and colleagues report in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Moreover, all hair samples from women who were healthy but carried the BRCA1 gene – which is associated with a high risk of breast cancer – showed the same structural anomaly, raising the possibility of an early diagnostic test.

SNIP

The changes in molecular structure showed up when hairs were bombarded with a beam of highly focused x-ray beams, generated in synchrotron facilities in Japan and the USA. A synchrotron is a device that accelerates protons or electrons in a magnetic field. When the accelerated protons or electrons are suddenly stopped, the energy is released as intense x-ray beams.

SNIP

Initially Dr James studied scalp hair only. When the data looked interesting she set about looking at a larger sample of hairs, but on that occasion the results were inconsistent.

“We saw all sorts of odd-bod changes. But it looked like some of the hair had had treatment. One sample was black, white and yellow.”

When she eliminated hair samples that had been permed less than three months before collection, the pattern was clear.

To avoid problems caused by hair treatment, she approached Professor John Kearsley, an oncologist at St George Hospital in Sydney, and asked if patients could supply pubic hair samples.

SNIP

If a reliable test proved possible, the cost could be as low as $20 a sample.

“You would just put a few hairs in an envelope. You wouldn’t need access to a mammography machine.”

MORE

Imagine that. No mammography machine. No pain, no radiation.  And the original testing was done on machines in Japan and here in the good old U.S. of A.

10 years later…

I wake up to hear the interview with Dr. Peter French, the Chief Scientist at Fermiscan, Ltd., who describes the whole process again. This is the NUMBER ONE innovation honored in  Australia this year.  And, there is actually a TEST now According to the Fermiscan website, the company has already completed a  “2,000 patient trial and has commenced a clinical study using the Fermiscan Test in conjunction with current screening to assess the use of the test by physicians in a clinical setting.”

Here’s the transcript of the interview:

8 June  2009

Hair Test to Detect Breast Cancer

How a strand of hair can test for breast tumours

Contact: Dr. Peter French, Chief Scientist Fermiscan Holdings Ltd Level 5, 48 Hunter Street, Sydney, NSW 2000 International Telephone: +61 2 9245 4460 Email: info@fermiscan.com.au Website: http://www.fermiscan.com.au

TRANSCRIPT:

DESLEY BLANCH : A revolutionary test that detects the first signs of breast cancer from a few strands of a woman’s hair was named as the most innovative product in Australia in the inaugural Smart 100 Awards. Here’s how it works. The Australian researchers report that hair from women with breast cancer can be distinguished from hair obtained from women without the disease — by exposing hair samples to high-powered X-rays from a synchrotron particle accelerator.

When hair is exposed to x-rays, the radiation is defracted in a distinctive pattern by the alpha-keratin that forms hair.

Fermiscan’s test is based on technology developed by Veronica James, a retired physics professor from the University of New South Wales in Sydney and from whom the company has acquired the patent rights.

Dr Peter French is chief scientist at Fermiscan Holdings. Here is part of an interview he gave me last year, where he explains X-ray defraction and how its pattern differs between normal hair and hair from women with breast cancer.

DR PETER FRENCH : X-ray diffraction is really sending X-ray particles through substances, often biological substances such as hair or crystals of proteins or DNA and, as they go through, some of those particles are deflected by the underlying structures of the substance that they hit. So in the case of hair, they’re deflected by as you said the alpha-keratin that makes up the hair fibre.

Most go straight through, but a few are deflected and after they’re deflected or they bounce off the underlying structures, they end up interfering with each other and causing a distinctive pattern of, mainly, arcs. So you see a picture of a circle in the middle with a whole lot of arcs around it and the arcs reflect the spacings of the underlying structures of the hair.

Now this has been a technique that has been used to look at hair structure for probably 50 years, so there’s nothing new in that. What was new was that the advent of the Synchrotron technology, which was really available from the late 90s enabled Dr James to show that in some cases, that women had an extra additional feature in the pattern, which wasn’t an arc it was actually a circle and this circle appeared in the hair from women who had breast cancer and she published this originally in “Nature” in 1999 and that was really how the work started.

DESLEY BLANCH : And, how early do you believe your test could detect this disease?

DR PETER FRENCH : We’re still working on that. So far though, we know that we can detect cancers that are at least 9 millimetres in size and probably smaller, and that’s certainly, usually below the level that a woman can feel the cancer with breast self-examination, for example.

DESLEY BLANCH : And where’s the hair cut from and how much hair is required for the test?

DR PETER FRENCH : We need about 20 strands or fibres of hair and it’s cut from the back of the head, usually behind the ear, which is the area of the hair which is usually less environmentally damaged. Some environmental damages which can cause us problems in the tests include dyeing and perming of the hair, and therefore we need about four weeks of regrowth post any dyes or perms so that we can get an accurate result with the test. So hair is simply cut from behind the head and we examine the part of the hair very close to the scalp.

DESLEY BLANCH : And what does breast cancer do to the hair structure?

DR PETER FRENCH : Well, this is still an area that we’re trying to understand. The mechanism would be something along the lines we propose that the breast cancer itself secretes a range of cytokines, growth factors and other proteins that can cause a change in the way that the hair follicle works and it does this by secreting these proteins and other molecules into the blood stream. The blood stream contacts the hair follicle and we believe that some of these molecules can cause a change in the way the follicle works and the way that it puts out the highly ordered normal strands of hair.

DESLEY BLANCH : And do we understand the reason for the ring pattern?

DR PETER FRENCH : Again, this is an area that we’re investigating. The ring usually means that there’s a disordering of an ordered crystalline-like pattern and so what we believe is that it’s likely that the normal highly ordered arrays of alpha-keratin filaments that are present in the hair are disrupted in some way by the presence of the cancer secreting these molecules into the blood stream.

DESLEY BLANCH : Fermiscan Holdings’ Chief Scientist Dr. Peter French describing their breast cancer test which was voted in at Number One in Australia’s Smart 100 Awards.

So the question becomes: when does this great idea make it’s way over here? And, if there ARE trials one of these days, how long with the FDA drag its feet in approving such a test? Or will this major breakthrough die overseas at the behest of our wonderful, profit-oriented “health care system”?  It will be ironic if women here are deprived of this test, considering that the initial research by Dr. James was run on machines in Japan and HERE, in the U.S.

Go visit the Fermiscan website and read the details of the trial and look at the simple charts. It seems that for women under 70, the sensitivity of the test is about 74%.  This is only 4% lower than mammography and ultrasound combined.  (Ultrasound and mammograms alone are only about 50%.  Sensitivity refers to the ability to actually CORRECTLY detect cancer.

Sounds pretty darned good to me for a test which involves snipping a few hairs…

Technology has come far. There are days when people only used to capture memories in their hearts and not on paper. But now, thanks to technology we are only at this time of our lives, but people like the art images that can make many things happen. First came the regular SLR camera where the film rolls and have limited function. But as days passed the digital camera into the face photography. Help the digital camera to the people who do not have the art of the image that has become expert in this art. This is possible because the user friendliness. Lovers of photography but not to worry. They can also get a whole lot of new things from the digital camera. One of the best features of digital cameras is the quality of a digital camera. This course is very good. The advantage of digital camera that consists of the LCD to help you delete unwanted pictures, giving the freedom to explore your photos with full capability.

The point of interest is true photography lover lens provided by a digital camera. This makes the best digital camera for both beginners and also the best of this art. Set the lens provided by various companies such as Canon, Nikon, Kodak and others. Canon fish eye lens, for example, USM lens, tilt shift lens and more. All lenses have a range of functions and provide different results with different photographers. But the main point is a photographer, he had to know exactly what you want from the photos. Such as fish eye lens will give you special effects images that most preferred by everyone. This is similar to what the 12or 13 mm lens will give you. They also have a lens called Sigma Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG lens Ex. This special lens focus while expanding.

This issue:
*Editorials
 *NASA should work immediately to replace the lost Orbiting Carbon Observatory.
*The Obama administration should ensure that science informs the US strategy on nuclear waste.
*Research Highlights

Nature has an article entitled Tunable delay of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen entanglement.  (Unfortunately, a subscription is required to go any deeper than the summary). Now, before your eyes roll completely into the back of your head, I’ll try and summarize what this is, and why this could be important.  “Entanglement” is the weird quantum property that when one of two “entangled” particles are observed, both particles reveal their observed property.  It doesn’t matter if the two particles are separated by light-years or a nanometer.  This begets the whole “quantum teleportation” idea, where information instantly, at faster than light speed, “jumps” from one place to another.  There are many different ways to entangle particles so that useful computations can be performed with them, and this constitutes part of the emerging field of Quantum Computers.  The paper describes a complex way of tuning temporal delays into already-entangled light, which can be used to assist the processing of images. 

There are a couple of ways this blows my mind, but here’s the punchline, in short:

“The ability to delay entangled images makes it possible to extend the intrinsic parallelism of image processing to the quantum regime.” 

So we’re basically talking about “Quantum GPU computing”– three words I thought I would never string together in reaction to an article for another 20 years.  What sort of image processing applications could use the benefit of quantum calculations?   Quite a few, as it turns out – but that will be subject of another post.

Orange-legged rain frog (copyright Getty)

When we hear great news like the discovery of ten new species of amphibians in Colombia, reported earlier this month, it’s truly a moment for hope in the struggle to prevent the largest mass extinction since the dinosaurs. The scientific director of Conservation International Colombia, Jose Vicente Rodriguez-Mahecha, told the London Telegraph: “Without a doubt, this region is a true Noah’s Ark.” One of the new species is pictured above.

Yet the frog killer fungus, chytrid, is present in Colombia, but thankfully, and according to last March’s chytrid map in Nature magazine, it’s not causing mortalities there (but it does in neighboring Venezuela and Brazil). Remember that chytrid is toxic to the vast majority of amphibian species, but not all. The species in Colombia that are not susceptible to chytrid offer further hope that an antidote for mass application can be found.

Godzilla has nothing on a newly discovered snake species that existed 60 million years ago. The nearly 50 foot-long, one and a half ton snake is the largest ever discovered and would dwarf even today’s biggest anacondas. But its size isn’t the only thing impressing scientists. The remains of this constrictor-like snake contain clues about climate and environment that existed during prehistoric times, a link that could also help researchers understand the effects of climate change on today’s ecosystems.

Jonathan Bloch, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Florida, and Carlos Jaramillo, with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, led the expedition into the previously inaccessible Colombian forest. Based on the link between snake body-size and temperature, Jason Head, a University of Toronto Mississauga paleonotologist, and his team were able to deduce the ancient climate down to the degree Celsius. What they found was an equatorial forest environment that was about 6 degrees warmer than today’s annual temperatures.

“The key thing about this discovery is that we can use it as a launching point to develop very precise climatic reconstructions,” said Head in a press release. “It will help us to look at how ecosystems respond to climate change and specifically, what happens when temperatures increase or decrease.” 

You can read more about this colossal herpetology/paleontology/climate discovery in the Feb. 5, 2009 issue of Nature.

More and more evidence mounts that the idea of man-made global warming is nothing more than hype for the sake of hype. Not only that, but there are political implications here where governments (particularly those controlled by leftist socialists) are using the fear-mongering angle of the issue as an excuse for grabbing more power.

Writing for the Houston Chronicle, Robert L. Bradley shines some light on the issue and looks at the temperature trends of the past 100 years, the prediciations that pseudo-scientists have made concerning global warming and how those predictions fared against reality.

From his column:

I remember the predictions from the 1980’s that said Canada and Russia would be the world’s leading food producers by now and the mid-West of the North American continent would be a desert. Instead, we are having record cold temperatures, record snow falls and Artic sea-ice now extends out further than it did in 1979.

More:

That’s right. Cold air from the arctic below and warm air from the tropics above. When they meet, they cause storms. The greater the temperature difference between the two, the more violent the storms. The National Oceanic & Atomospheric Administration (NOAA) actually tracked the number of tornadoes in the American mid-West during the past fifty years and found that when the temperature differential was greater (i.e. a cooler arctic region), more tornadoes formed. This runs counter to the global warming theory that warmer weather leads to more storms. The scientific data suggests that a warmer climate means fewer and less severe storms.

Bradley goes on:

Rememeber the claims that barrier islands such as the Outer Banks of North Carolina would be underwater by now? Well, the barrier islands are still there.

Evidence continues to mount that global warming alrmists have pulled a huge multi-billion dollar hoax. That money could have been better spent elsewhere.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Climate-Change Alarmism Runs Into A Reality Check
Robert L. Bradley
Houston Chronicle
January 8, 2009

A song from the ‘good old days’  can completely change your mood

Try it..  it  worked an absolute treat for me recently.  Go to you tube , search for clips of your favourie singers from the wild days of your youth, turn the volume up real loud and sing your little heart out!!!! (trust me you will still know all the words)   

The clip above is one of my favs from my wild wild childhood days of living in the Central Australian desert, the heart of Australia’s cowboy country.  Cows, horses, hats, large buckles, RM Williams boots, bottles of bundaberg rum,  bachelor and spinster balls and the great country music legends  as our hero’s.

They were fabulous days, days I haven’t thought about for many years.  After finishing school I left the desert, first travelling around the coast of Australia and then out to expore the globe. I forgot completely about my love of country music.  As the years passed by, my taste in music changed. First rock music swept me off my feet, then a few years later, without mercy electronic music stole my heart. 

Watching this clip took me on such beautiful journey to the good old days of my youth and the fun we had singing and dancing to the country legends.  It changed my mood completely.. I felt light and happy and over flowing with good energies.

Change your mood, take a trip down memory lane…

• Gay Life
• Voice Of An Angel
• Top 10 Travel Videos
• Annual Meditation Festivals
• City Break Everyone’s Raving About
• Doing Vs Being Whats the difference
• Ivf at 41
• How to teach peace to children
• Change Your Life

… are you ready for your close-up?

From the link:

Providing a glimpse into the infinitesimal, physicists have found a novel way of spying on some of the universe’s tiniest building blocks.Their “camera,” described this week in the journal Nature, consists of a special “flaw” in diamonds that can be manipulated into sensitively monitoring magnetic signals from individual electrons and atomic nuclei placed nearby.

The new work represents a dramatic sharpening of the basic approach used in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which ascertain chemical structures and image inside human bodies by scanning the magnetic activity of billions of individual nuclei. The new diamond-based magnetic sensor could enable novel forms of imaging, marrying NMR’s noninvasive nature with atomic-scale spatial resolution, potentially benefiting fields ranging from materials science, spintronics, and quantum information to structural biology, neuroscience, and biomedicine.

Not that I challenge myself too much to be on-topic with every post, but since there is some science behind our search engine, I figured I’m allowed to show you this excellent ad placement in a recent edition of Nature magazine.

Amazing foresight to someone if this ad buy was intentional.

The latest issue of Nature magazine features an article about the pending election (why?  what does Nature have to do with politics??) and our two candidates are on the cover – Obama on the left and McCain on the right, of course.  

Wholly unremarkable, until you compare the cover photograph to the advertisement they chose to run on the back cover:

Is it me or do the dogs look more sincere?  They do look like they are listening, rather than just waiting to speak, which is something our politicians could take a lesson in. 

You can read about the uncanny ad placement here.  The magazine apologizes for the match-up, but I don’t think they have any reason to be sorry.  The ad isn’t derogatory in any way.  It’s just a fun fact about dogs.  Everyone loves dogs.  Unless you are a commie, then you have bigger issues regarding this election other than comparing our candidates to canines.

From KurzweilAI.net — I’ve blogged on 3D cloaking devices before, very likely the previous KurzweilAI.net linked blog post from mid-May is an earlier report of this project. Both stories originate from UC Berkeley.

At any rate, here’s 3D cloaking part two:

Practical Cloaking Devices On The Horizon?

PhysOrg.com, Aug. 10, 2008University of California, Berkeley scientists have created a multilayered, “fishnet” metamaterial that unambiguously exhibits negative refractive index, allowing for invisibility in three dimensions for the first time, Nature magazine plans to report this week.   Read Original Article>>

 

Update — Here’s another take on this story, once again from PhysOrg. This time with pictures!

From the link:

Two breakthroughs in the development of metamaterials – composite materials with extraordinary capabilities to bend electromagnetic waves – are reported separately this week in the Aug. 13 advanced online issue of Nature, and in the Aug. 15 issue of Science.

Applications for a metamaterial entail altering how light normally behaves. In the case of invisibility cloaks or shields, the material would need to curve light waves completely around the object like a river flowing around a rock. For optical microscopes to discern individual, living viruses or DNA molecules, the resolution of the microscope must be smaller than the wavelength of light.

The common thread in such metamaterials is negative refraction. In contrast, all materials found in nature have a positive refractive index, a measure of how much electromagnetic waves are bent when moving from one medium to another.

In a classic illustration of how refraction works, the submerged part of a pole inserted into water will appear as if it is bent up towards the water’s surface. If water exhibited negative refraction, the submerged portion of the pole would instead appear to jut out from the water’s surface. Or, to give another example, a fish swimming underwater would instead appear to be moving in the air above the water’s surface

And here’s the image: