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Latest Articles: Science-Technology
Meet 'Oumuamua! The 1st Interstellar Visitor Ever Seen Gets a Name
Post Date: 2017-11-21 13:57:55 by misterwhite
3 Comments
We now know what to call the mysterious object from interstellar space that zoomed past Earth last month. The interloper — the first known interstellar body observed within our own solar system — has been named 'Oumuamua, which means "a messenger from afar arriving first" in Hawaiian, representatives of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced yesterday (Nov. 14). The IAU also approved an official scientific designation for 'Oumuamua: 1I/2017 U1. This is a first-of-its-kind moniker; the "I" stands for "interstellar." Previously, small objects like 'Oumuamua have received standard comet or asteroid designations, which sport ...
Homemade Gunpowder, For Science!
Post Date: 2017-11-19 16:31:37 by A K A Stone
5 Comments
Cassettes are cool again: Surge in popularity for the retro device has led to the revival of magnetic tape manufacturing lines
Post Date: 2017-11-14 06:32:08 by Deckard
18 Comments
They were the must-have item of the 90s, and now, it seems cassettes are cool again.The surge in popularity for the device has led to a shortage of magnetic tape. National Audio, one of the only companies in the US that produces cassette tapes, says it has less than a year's supply left.Now, its co-owner and president Steve Stepp says he is planning to build the US' first high-grade tape manufacturing line in decades to help meet demand. Scroll down for video They were the must-have item of the 90s, but it seems that cassette tapes are now under threat. Experts have warned that the world is running out of cassette tape, and new production methods are requiredExperts ...
March of the sexbots: They talk, they make jokes, have 'customisable' breasts - the sex robot is no longer a weird fantasy but a troubling reality
Post Date: 2017-10-29 07:34:45 by cranky
6 Comments
The Mail on Sunday became the first newspaper to experience Harmony 2.1 Creator Matt McMullen has been working on the design since 2014They will go on sale to the public in January for between £7,600 to £15,200, depending on customisationThere is a barely audible click as her doe-like eyes framed by thick black lashes snap open: ‘Hello humans, my name is Harmony,’ she says in a gentle Scottish lilt. ‘My objective is to be a perfect companion.’ As she ‘speaks’, her mouth moves in an unnaturally jerky way. Her eyes ‘blink’ and it is – initially – chilling to see the ‘flexing’ of her silicone skin which is cold and clammy ...
Elon Musk to start hyperloop project in Maryland
Post Date: 2017-10-21 12:51:15 by Willie Green
2 Comments
Maryland has given transportation pioneer Elon Musk permission to dig tunnels for the high-speed, underground transit system known as a hyperloop that Musk wants to build between New York and Washington. Hogan administration officials said Thursday the state has issued a conditional utility permit to let Musk’s tunneling firm, The Boring Co., dig a 10.3-mile tunnel beneath the state-owned portion of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, between the Baltimore city line and Maryland 175 in Hanover. It would be the first portion of the underground system that Musk says could eventually ferry passengers from Washington to New York, with stops in Baltimore and Philadelphia, in just 29 ...
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie: It Helps Them Consolidate Memories
Post Date: 2017-10-20 17:04:30 by cranky
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Want to teach an old dog new tricks? Try letting your pet take a nap. New research finds that dogs consolidate new memories in sleep, just like humans do. The study used electroencephalography (EEG), a technique that measures electrical activity in the brain via the scalp, to track snoozing dogs' brain activity. Similar to humans, the dogs showed short bursts of activity, called sleep spindles, during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep. Also as in humans, the frequency of these sleep spindles was linked to how well a dog retained new information it had learned before its nap. "It's the first time that we can actually show this in a dog," said study co-author Ivaylo Iotchev, a ...
Break up the Google-Facebook-Amazon web monopoly
Post Date: 2017-10-19 16:01:10 by Tooconservative
27 Comments
Serious legislation is required to combat the countless abuses of power by 'The Web Trust.'Policy makers are beginning a long overdue reappraisal of the giant website and social media companies (“edge” providers) that dominate the Internet today — or as they might have been called a century ago, "The Web Trust." Facebook spread lies for money, grossly distorting our elections. Google has been hit with a whopping $2.7 billion dollar fine in Europe for biasing its search results towards pay-for-play favorites. Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods suggests its stranglehold on online shopping is targeting the brick and mortar ...
The human brain tripled in size over the last 8 million years because we ventured further afield and NOT because our social groups got bigger
Post Date: 2017-10-18 08:23:58 by cranky
4 Comments
Previous studies were based on the 'social brain hypothesis'This is a theory that claims brains enlarged to help us managed bigger groupsIn the new study, researchers analysed more than 140 primate speciesFindings suggest human brains became bigger because of ecological factorsThis could explain why chimpanzee brains have not changed in size over time While previous studies have suggested that our brains evolved to become larger as our social group size got larger, a new study is calling this into question. The research indicates that instead, our brains enlarged because of ecological factors, such as expanding home range of diet. Researchers hope their findings will shed new ...
If a scientific conspiracy theory is funny, that doesn’t mean it’s a joke
Post Date: 2017-10-11 11:29:26 by Tooconservative
32 Comments
If you feel like flat Earth theory has gotten unaccountably popular recently, you’re right. According to Google Trends, search interest in the flat Earth conspiracy theory has already had several distinct peaks in the last year. (“The last year” was 2017, not 1519, just to be clear.) It’s funny, weird, and while it’s certainly not at the top of our list of problems as a society, it’s not entirely innocent either.Interest surged in February and March, then again in May, then again in August and September. These jumps are mostly tied to a couple of strange outbursts by celebrities, notably 2010’s favorite cheeseball rapper and Gossip Girl backing vocalist ...
LibertysFlame is now an Encrypted Web Site
Post Date: 2017-10-01 10:45:21 by Pinguinite
9 Comments
Libertysflame.com is now an encrypted web site. This was made possible by letsencrypt.org, a free certificate authority from the Linux Foundation. With this encryption, all communication between the web site and you should be encrypted. While normal articles and comments obviously continue to be available to the whole world as they are freely available to all visitors, passwords entered at login time and private mail should now be encrypted and secure from all systems that the data passes through between your web browser and the server. This is an excellent step toward encrypting everything on the net, which I am a strong advocate for. LetsEncypt.org has a very easy to use setup system ...
CanÂ’t Believe IÂ’m Saying This, But ItÂ’s Time for Big Government to Rein In Big Data
Post Date: 2017-09-21 21:31:25 by Tooconservative
3 Comments
Reports that Facebook helped spread fake news brewed in Russia raises the question of whether Big Data has gotten too big and unaccountable. According to the social network, the ads in question “appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum—touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights.” In other words, they featured hot-button issues that are ripping our social fabric apart at the seams. Whether this “mistake” was generated by profit motive, nefarious greed, or gross negligence, Facebook’s abdication of moral responsibility provides additional fodder for critics on ...
DEATH OF CABLE NEWS: Cord Cutting At Record Highs
Post Date: 2017-09-14 09:13:34 by Tooconservative
17 Comments
Cable news may soon get it's long awaited comeuppance for peddling leftist propaganda and pushing socialist agendas, because the revolution of cord cutting is upon us. According to research firm eMarketer, american consumers are cutting the cord at an even faster rate than expected. The research shows that 22.2 million adults will cut the cord in 2017 for satellite or telco TV services, a full 33% jump from 2016. At this time last year, eMarketer speculated the number of cord cutters would be somewhere around 15.4 million, but it appears their estimates were wildly off. Even more intriguing, the phenomenon of "cord-nevers” — people who have never subscribed to paid TV ...
AI gaydar can accurately determine sexuality from a photo
Post Date: 2017-09-08 11:12:03 by Deckard
3 Comments
Facial detection technology is usually used to identify individuals for the purposes of crime prevention, or as a biometric security method. But a paper published by Stanford University -- entitled simply "Deep neural networks are more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation from facial images" -- shows that it could also be used to determine people's sexuality. Using AI and deep neural networks, algorithms have been shown to have a far better gaydar than people. Working with a sample of more than 35,000 photographs, the system was able to correctly determine whether individuals were gay or straight with staggering accuracy -- 81 percent of men and 74 percent of ...
Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!
Post Date: 2017-08-25 11:26:09 by Deckard
7 Comments
Greek vs. Babylonian triangle workings-out Those of you who can remember trigonometry can feel free to forget it, because ancient Babylonian mathematicians had a better way of doing it – using base 60! That's the conclusion of a new paper, Plimpton 322 is Babylonian exact sexagesimal trigonometry, in the new issue of the journal Historia Mathematica. The “Plimpton 322” from the title is a clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform script. Discovered in the early 1900s, the tablet has been of interest to mathematicians for years because it describes Pythagoras' theorem, yet is thought to have been created around 1800BC, more than a thousand years before Pythagoras was born ...
That Al Gore climate change sequel is doing about as well as expected
Post Date: 2017-08-14 21:57:51 by Tooconservative
3 Comments
Say, did you know that Al Gore released a sequel to his Inconvenient Truth movie about climate change? If not, you’re not alone. It seems that most of the country wasn’t aware that it was in the theaters either. Showbiz 411 has posted the initial numbers for the new release and from the looks of things, that movie isn’t generating enough revenue to fuel up Gore’s private jet for the flight to accept his inevitable Oscar award. So “An Inconvenient Sequel” has been a box office dud so far. After 17 days in release, Gore’s follow up has made just $2 million at the box office. Compare that with $5 million for the original in the same time frame. The sequel ...
'Angel particle' discovery called milestone
Post Date: 2017-07-23 21:49:47 by Anthem
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A Chinese-American scientist and his team discovered a particle that can be both matter and antimatter, which can potentially lead to more advanced quantum computers. The particle, called Majorana fermion, is named after Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana, who first predicted its existence in 1937. Typically, when a particle — the basic building block of matter — and an antiparticle — its identical twin but with an opposite charge — collide, they will annihilate each other, releasing a burst of energy. The Majorana fermion, however, is a strange exception that can simultaneously exist both as a particle and as its own antiparticle. This hypothesis has ...
Things Get Hot for Michael Mann
Post Date: 2017-07-07 15:08:43 by Tooconservative
5 Comments
Michael Mann has stepped into a methane-emitting cowpile. Mann is the Penn State climatologist famous for inventing the "hockey stick" graph promoting the notion that planetary temperatures spiked in the 20th century after a Golden Age of stasis. This graph was misleading at a minimum, the product of what Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia termed "Mike's Nature trick" to "hide the decline." What Mann did was splice two separate data sets together to create the illusion of spiking temperatures; the graph spliced data sets together without differentiation, hiding the global temperature "decline" shown ...
Watch biggest explosion EVER on Moon as NASA warns we could be next
Post Date: 2017-07-07 14:57:15 by redleghunter
1 Comments
A METEOR with the explosive power of TEN cruise missiles has struck the Moon – sparking a massive explosion visible with the naked eye. And terrifyingly the 56,000 mph collision – captured by NASA scientists highlighting the catastrophic danger planet earth faces from similar meteors – was caused by a space rock weighing no more than 88 lbs (40 kilos). Despite the meteor’s tiny proportions – about the size of a small boulder and the weight of an average 10-year-old boy – the impact damage was colossal and the explosion shone with the brightness of a magnitude 4 star. A similar strike against a city on earth would create a crater 65feet (20m) deep and create a ...
Scientists explain ancient Rome's long-lasting concrete
Post Date: 2017-07-04 18:54:09 by Justified
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Researchers have unlocked the chemistry of Roman concrete which has resisted the elements for thousands of years. Ancient sea walls built by the Romans used a concrete made from lime and volcanic ash to bind with rocks. Now scientists have discovered that elements within the volcanic material reacted with sea water to strengthen the construction. They believe the discovery could lead to more environmentally friendly building materials. Unlike the modern concrete mixture which erodes over time, the Roman substance has long puzzled researchers. Rather than eroding, particularly in the presence of sea water, the material seems to gain strength from the exposure. In previous tests with ...
Weird science: How today’s apple can become tomorrow’s ear
Post Date: 2017-06-29 10:21:44 by cranky
1 Comments
Canadian-based scientist Andrew Pelling speaks at the Institute of Food Technology Conference at the Venetian on Monday, June 26, 2017.Canadian scientist and entrepreneur Andrew Pelling has made a career of veering off in new directions and testing unconventional theories. Working his way up in traditional labs, Pelling quickly knew he didn’t readily fit in with his peers. After he devised various unusual research projects, other scientists asked him about the applications for the experiments. A lot of times he didn’t have one. “To me … it was a signal that knowledge and curiosity in and of itself had no value unless they could put a dollar sign behind it, or create ...
New form of carbon discovered that is harder than diamond but flexible as rubber
Post Date: 2017-06-24 20:10:03 by Justified
3 Comments
Scientists have found a way to make carbon both very hard and very stretchy by heating it under high pressure. This “compressed glassy carbon”, developed by researchers in China and the US, is also lightweight and could potentially be made in very large quantities. This means it might be a good fit for several sorts of applications, from bulletproof vests to new kinds of electronic devices. Carbon is a special element because of the way its atoms can form different types of bonds with each other and so form different structures. For example, carbon atoms joined entirely by “sp³” bonds produce diamond, and those joined entirely by “sp²” bonds produce ...
Researchers Developing Tech to Allow Dogs to Call 911 in Emergencies
Post Date: 2017-06-21 20:50:01 by cranky
2 Comments
Researchers are woking to develop technology to allow dogs to call 911 during an emergency by using items such as a “dog-friendly” touchscreen display. Melody Jackson, director of the animal-computer interaction lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, first thought of the idea after her grandmother suffered from a fall. “She had to wait for her neighbor to get home from work to get up,” Jackson explained to CNN. “The family obviously was terrified, so we bought her one of those necklaces, those alert necklaces… Well, she didn’t like wearing it.” The incident, which happened around twenty years ago, stuck in Jackson’s mind and prompted her ...
ASTEROID WARNING: NASA discovers TEN ‘potentially hazardous’ rocks close to Earth
Post Date: 2017-06-11 23:20:27 by redleghunter
5 Comments
The space agency has been working tirelessly to identify dangers that Earth face from space, and has said that it has found 10 new asteroids of meteors which it believes could harm life on Earth. The discovery was made by NASA’s asteroid detecting mission – Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or NEOWISE. Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said: “NEOWISE is not only discovering previously uncharted asteroids and comets, but it is providing excellent data on many of those already in our catalog. “It is also proving to be an invaluable tool in in the refining and perfecting of ...
New “Instantly Rechargeable” Battery Deals a Fatal Blow to Fossil Fuels
Post Date: 2017-06-08 14:57:58 by Anthem
9 Comments
In Brief Purdue researchers have developed a flow battery that would allow electric cars to be recharged instantly at stations like conventional cars are. The technology is clean, safe, and cheap. Go With The Flow Purdue researchers have developed technology for an “instantly rechargeable” battery that is affordable, environmentally friendly, and safe. Currently, electric vehicles need charging ports in convenient locations to be viable, but this battery technology would allow drivers of hybrid and electric vehicles to charge up much like drivers of conventional cars refill quickly and easily at gas stations. This breakthrough would not only speed the switch to electric ...
Scientific American: Marijuana Treatment Reduces Severe Epileptic Seizures
Post Date: 2017-06-05 15:53:46 by Operation 40
11 Comments
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: A rigorous study validates a cannabis-derived treatment for a rare, drug-resistant childhood epilepsy Medical researchers have confirmed what some desperate parents have been claiming for years—that a nonpsychoactive component of marijuana known as cannabidiol (CBD) can reduce epileptic seizures in some children. Published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the findings stem from a double-blind, placebo-controlled study—the most scientifically rigorous type of investigation possible. “This study clearly establishes cannabidiol as an effective anti-seizure drug for this disorder and this age group," says principal investigator Orrin Devinsky, ...
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