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New Lola-Drayson electric race car (17 hits)
30 storey hotel constructed in 360 hours (13 hits)
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Newly developed prosthetic foot (57 hits)
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Richard Dawkins
Volcanoes Indicted for Europe's Long, Big Chill - Richard A. Kerr - Science - AAAS (No click) - Sat, 04 Feb 2012
For years scientists have debated what could have plunged Europe into the half-millennium-long cold spell that ended only a century ago. Was it the temporarily spotless and therefore faint sun, or did a burst of volcanic eruptions loft debris that shaded out a normal sun? Or were the sun and volcanoes in cahoots? Researchers analyzing plants killed in the Little Ice Age's opening years are now pinning the blame on volcanoes alone.
Solving this climatic whodunit has been hampered by the uncertain timing of the Little Ice Age's onset. So geologist Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his colleagues went to the best climate record they could find: intact plants emerging from beneath the retreating ice cap on Canada's Baffin Island. Carbon dating showed that most of the plants died between 1275 and 1300 as Arctic ice suddenly expanded across once-green terrain. The same signal of sudden cooling turned up in sediment from the late 1200s deposited in a glacier-fed lake in Iceland.
Both high-latitude cooling signals coincide with an exceptional burst of activity from four tropical volcanoes. Each of them tossed more than a million tons of sulfurous debris into the stratosphere, according to ice core records, where it could block sunlight and cool the surface. Gifford and his colleagues take the coincidence of the Little Ice Age's onset and massive eruptions as evidence that the one caused the other.
MLK Jr. on Prayer in Schools - Ed Brayton - Dispatches from the Culture Wars (No click) - Sat, 04 Feb 2012
There has been a furious effort by the Christian right in recent years to turn Martin Luther King, Jr. into one of them, in the same manner that they have tried so hard to make the Founding Fathers into mirror images of themselves. But as Rob Boston points out (No click), King did not join them in condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling on mandatory prayer in schools:
King supported the Supreme Court’s decisions striking down government-sponsored prayer in public schools. In a January 1965 interview with Playboy magazine, King was asked about one of those rulings. He not only backed what the court did, he noted that his frequent nemesis, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, stood on the other side.
. . .
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Closely Watched Study Fails to Find Arsenic in Microbial DNA - Elizabeth Pennisi - AAAS - Science Insider (No click) - Sat, 04 Feb 2012
The debate over whether a bacterium can incorporate arsenic into its DNA just flared up again, with the posting (No click) yesterday of a paper refuting the idea on ArXiv, an electronic preprint archive primarily used by astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists. The controversy began in December 2010, when NASA astrobiology fellow Felisa Wolfe-Simon (No click) and colleagues described (One hit) online in Science a microbe called GFAJ-1, which grew, albeit slowly, in the presence of arsenic, leading the authors to conclude the bacterium had taken up the toxic element and incorporated it into its cellular components. The report, amplified by a NASA press conference, quickly lit up the blogosphere and Twitter and led to the unprecedented publication (No click) of eight critical technical comments alongside the print version of the paper.
Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues agreed to make samples of GFAJ-1 available and now one vocal critic, Rosemary Redfield (No click), a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in Canada, has grown the bacterium in the presence of arsenic and found no evidence of its uptake in the microbe's genetic material. "The data they have supports the conclusion there is no arsenic in the DNA," comments Michael Bartlett (No click), a chemist at the University of Georgia, Athens, who is an expert in mass spectrometry of DNA, RNA, and related molecules.
Redfield, who chronicled every twist and turn of her experiments on her blog, and is back on the authors," she says. "They are going to have to provide some better data than they did in their paper."
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Bath Christian group's 'God can heal' adverts banned - -- - BBC News (One hit) - Sat, 04 Feb 2012
A Christian group has been banned from claiming that God can heal illnesses on its website and in leaflets.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it had concluded that the adverts by Healing on the Streets (HOTS) - Bath, were misleading.
It said a leaflet available to download from the group's website said: "Need Healing? God can heal today!"
The group, based in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, said it was disappointed with the decision and would appeal.
HOTS Bath said its vision was to promote Christian healing "as a daily lifestyle for every believer".
'False hope'
The ASA said the leaflet read: "Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction ... Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?
"We'd love to pray for your healing right now!
"We're Christian from churches in Bath and we pray in the name of Jesus. We believe that God loves you and can heal you from any sickness."
The ASA said it had been alerted to the adverts by a complainant, and concluded that they could encourage false hope and were irresponsible.
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Something from nothing? A conversation with Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins - ASU Origins Project - RDFRS (One hit) - Sat, 04 Feb 2012
The ASU Origins Project and the Richard Dawkins Foundation are pleased to present:
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING? A conversation with Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Tickets Now On Sale! 7pm | Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012 | ASU Gammage Auditorium BOOK SIGNING FOLLOWING EVENT
Join critically-acclaimed author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and world-renowned theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss as they discuss biology, cosmology, religion, and a host of other topics. A book signing will follow the discussion.
Read more at the ASU Origins Website (One hit)
Lawrence Kruass explains a "Universe From Nothing" in his talk at that AAI covention in 2009 where he was introduced by Richard Dawkins
This video has had over 1,000,000 views.
Read the afterword by Richard Dawkins from Lawrence' new bookA Universe From Nothing here. (2 hits)
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