moonbuggy

How far do you think a car would fly if you stuck a couple of rockets on the back of it and launched it from a ramp?

Fair enough, I reckon. :)

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‘Be careful what you ask, because you may get just the opposite. New research shows that if a parent nags a son about cleaning up his room, the kid will probably dig in his heels and live in a pig pen even if he doesn’t realize mom is still on his case.

The same holds true for a spouse. Or some other significant other. And the more controlling that person seems to be, the more likely the individual will “automatically do the opposite of that which the significant other wishes,” the scientists report in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Psychologist Tanya Chartrand of Duke University, lead author of the report, says she conducted the study because she couldn’t get her husband to do what she wanted him to do.’

‘Mars’s southern polar ice cap contains enough water to cover the entire planet approximately 36 feet (11 meters) deep if melted, according to a new radar study.

It’s the most precise calculation yet for the thickness of the red planet’s ice, according to the international team of researchers responsible for the discovery.

Using an ice-penetrating radar to map the south pole’s underlying terrain, the scientists calculated that the ice is up to 2.2 miles (3,500 meters) thick in places, said the study’s leader, Jeffrey Plaut of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The radar, from the Mars Express orbiter, also revealed the surprising purity of the ice, Plaut added.’

‘The clouded leopard of Borneo — discovered to be an entirely new species — is the latest in a growing list of animals and plants unique to the Southeast Asian country’s rainforest and underscores the need to preserve the area, conservationists said Thursday.

Genetic tests by researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute revealed that the clouded leopard of Borneo and Sumatra islands is a unique cat species and not the same one found in mainland Southeast Asia as long believed, said a statement by WWF, the global conservation organization.’

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‘The best approach to CPR for a bystander who wants to save the life of a victim of sudden cardiac arrest is to pump the chest and skip the mouth-to-mouth, a Japanese study suggests. [..]

Ken Nagao of Surugadai Nihon University Hospital in Tokyo and colleagues compared how well more than 4,000 adults fared after receiving traditional CPR, the chest-compressions only approach, or no CPR at all until paramedics arrived.

Patients who received only chest compressions had less brain damage than those who got compressions and breaths, the team reported in Saturday’s issue of the medical journal The Lancet. Not surprisingly, patients who had no CPR had the poorest outcomes.’

‘A fossil unearthed in northeastern China has middle ear anatomy somewhere between more primitive and modern mammals, confirming for the first time transitional steps in the evolution of the important structure.

Scientists suspected the malleus or hammer, incus or anvil, and stapes or stirrup, split off from a location at the hinge of the lower jaw to become separate structures.

The new find, 125 million-year-old Yanoconodon allini, has middle ear bones that are partly separated from the jaw, but remain connected by a bridge of ossified cartilage. [..]

As Dr. Luo put it: “We have now a clear case documenting why a very elaborate and very delicate and very sophisticated ear structure came about and how it came about.”‘

‘A massive, mysterious whirlpool of cold water has developed off the coast of Sydney, forcing the sea surface to fall almost 1m and ocean currents to change course.

Dubbed a sea “monster” by CSIRO oceanographers, the huge body of water stretches almost 200km across and plunges 1000m towards the ocean floor. Its centre sits just 100km off the coast of Sydney and could stay there for months.

Scientists are baffled by the powerful cold-water eddy, which is invisible to the human eye but can be tracked through satellite images.

At its centre the sea level has dropped by 70cm, while the water 400m below the surface is 6C colder than normal at that depth.’

‘The Bush administration wants to eliminate federal support for geothermal power just as many U.S. states are looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and raise renewable power output.

The move has angered scientists who say there is enough hot water underground to meet all U.S. electricity needs without greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget,” said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. “Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development.”‘

‘A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine that we still need “proof” of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found that smoked marijuana was effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy.

It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis. [..]

As all marijuana research in the United States must be, the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.’

‘Though the Yellowstone system is active and expected to eventually blow its top, scientists don’t think it will erupt any time soon.
What’s in Store

Yet significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range, in a total surprise, is getting shorter.

The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research—Solid Earth, suggest that a slow and gradual movement of a volcano over time can shape a landscape more than a violent eruption.’

‘British medics warned that a lack of donated dead bodies was damaging the quality of training for new doctors and surgeons, and possibly putting patients at risk.

The Royal College of Surgeons said there was a serious national shortage of cadavers which are needed to teach anatomy to medical students.

“Visual demonstration is not enough,” said Dick Rainsbury, RCS education director, adding that he had doubts about whether those who learnt by observation could perform operations with “any degree of competence or confidence”.

“There has been a noticeable and serious decline in the general level of applied anatomical knowledge displayed by junior doctors,” he said. [..]

The RCS said it estimated 1000 bodies a year were needed for medical teaching and that there was currently a 30 per cent shortfall, with particular problems in London.’

‘A new survey revealing more than a thousand supermassive black holes in one region of the sky calls into question a popular model of how the gravity monsters behave. [..]

Typically, a black hole is surrounded by a doughnut-shaped region, or torus, of gas. The view of the black hole’s immediate surroundings is blocked by this torus by different amounts, depending on the orientation whether we’re looking through it edge-on or looking down on the setup from above, the thinking goes. [..]

“Instead of finding a whole range, we found nearly all of the black holes are either naked or covered by a dense veil of gas,” said Ryan Hickox of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “Very few are in between, which makes us question how well we know the environment around these black holes.”‘

‘Weight loss surgery could lead to a condition which can result in memory loss, according to US research.

The syndrome – Wernicke encephalopathy – affects the nervous system and brain, and can lead to confusion and the inability to co-ordinate movement.

The study, published in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, says the syndrome is caused by a lack of vitamin B1, or thiamine.

Frequent vomiting after surgery can lead to the syndrome, the study found.’

‘Scientists who questioned mankind’s impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community.

They say the debate on global warming has been “hijacked” by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by email since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change.

One of the emails warned that, if he continued to speak out, he would not live to see further global warming.’

‘Within the last five years, pets have finally overtaken farm animals in the pharmaceutical marketplace, claiming 54 percent of spending for animal drugs, according to the trade group Animal Health Institute.

Keeping more than 130 million dogs and cats alone, Americans bought $2.9 billion worth of pet drugs in 2005. Though equal to only 1 percent of human drug sales, the market has grown by roughly half since the year 2000.

“As more and more drugs are being developed for people, more and more drugs are being developed for veterinary medicine. It’s really a parallel track,” says Dr. Gerald Post, founder of the nonprofit Animal Cancer Foundation.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved more than 40 new pet drugs over the past five years.’

‘The common view that nerves transmit impulses through electricity is wrong and they really transmit sound, according to a team of Danish scientists. [..]

The physicists say because the nerve membrane is made of a material similar to olive oil that can change from liquid to solid through temperature variations, they can freeze and propagate the solitons.

The scientists, whose work is in the Biophysical Society’s Biophysical Journal, suggested that anesthetics change the melting point of the membrane and make it impossible for their theorized sound pulses to propagate.’

‘Authorities in the United States have given preliminary approval to a plan to grow rice genetically modified to produce human proteins.

Rice plants including human genes involved in producing breast milk would be grown in the state of Kansas.

The company behind the proposal, Ventria Bioscience, says the plants could be developed into medicines for diarrhoea and dehydration in infants.

Critics say parts of the rice plants could enter the food chain.’

‘”Changes in climate are now affecting physical and biological systems on every continent,” the report says, in marked contrast to a 2001 report by the same international group that said the effects of global warming were coming. But that report only mentioned scattered regional effects.

“Things are happening and happening faster than we expected,” said Patricia Romero Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the many co-authors of the new report. [..]

The hardest-hit continents are likely to be Africa and Asia, with major harm also coming to small islands and some aspects of ecosystems near the poles. North America, Europe and Australia are predicted to suffer the fewest of the harmful effects.’

‘UK scientists have identified a way of using light to rapidly detect the presence of bacteria. [..]

The team have spent five years designing special large molecules, or polymers, which can bind to cells.

Once bound the polymer changes shape and emits a light signal.

This can either be a coloured light, such as a red glow, or a light that is naked to the visible eye but can be detected under a fluorescent lamp, depending on the type of polymer that is used.’

‘Illegal drugs can be “harmless” and should no longer be “demonised”, a wide-ranging two-year study concluded today.

The report said Britain’s drug laws were “not fit for purpose” and should be torn up in favour of a system which recognised that drinking and smoking could cause more harm.

The RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs ,set up in January 2005, also called for the main focus of drugs education to be shifted from secondary to primary schools and recommended the introduction of so-called “shooting galleries” – rooms where users can inject drugs. [..]

Current laws, the panel claimed, were been “driven by moral panic” with large amounts of money wasted on “futile” efforts to stop supply rather than going after the criminal networks behind the drugs on British streets.’

‘The Government’s financial support for tertiary students was among the most generous in the world and students should be more frugal, Education Minister Julie Bishop said today.

Her comments follow a study that found university students were regularly going without food because they could not afford to eat.

The Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee’s 2006 survey found one in eight students (12.5 per cent) regularly went without food or other necessities because they could not afford them.

It also revealed university students were worse off financially last year than they were in 2000, with 70.6 per cent of full-time undergraduates working about 14.8 hours a week to make ends meet.’

‘Since October 2006, 35 per cent or more of the United States’ population of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera) – billions of individual bees – simply flew from their hive homes and disappeared.

[..] Across the 24 U.S. states affected by the mysterious phenomenon, losses have ranged up to 90 per cent. “I’ve had a couple of yards where I’ve had 200 hives and they’re down to 10 hives that are alive,” says David Bradshaw of Visalia, about 180 kilometres southeast of Los Banos along California’s Route 99.

What’s causing the carnage, however, is a total mystery; all that scientists have come up with so far is a new name for the phenomenon – Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) – and a list of symptoms.’

‘That morning latte or espresso may not be the pick-me-up people think it is, a study has revealed.

University of Bristol researchers say the caffeine eases withdrawal symptoms which build up overnight, but does not make people more alert than normal.

The work, presented to the British Nutrition Foundation conference, showed only people who have avoided coffee for a while will get a buzz from caffeine.

But the British Coffee Association said regular drinkers did feel more alert.’

‘More than half of American women are not getting enough sleep — with stay-at-home mothers suffering the most — which stops them eating healthily, spending time with friends, or having sex.

Nearly 70 percent of women say they frequently have a problem sleeping, with most of them stressed or anxious, and 60 percent only get a good night’s sleep a few nights a week, according to a poll by the National Sleep Foundation. [..]

“Women’s lack of sleep affects virtually every aspect of their time-pressed lives, leaving them late for work, stressed out, too tired for sex and little time for their friends.”‘

‘A majority of people believe that Israel and Iran have a mainly negative influence in the world, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

It shows that the two countries are closely followed by the United States and North Korea.

The poll asked 28,000 people in 27 countries to rate a dozen countries plus the EU in terms of whether they have a positive or negative influence.

Canada, Japan and the EU are viewed most positively in the survey.’

’10> As he was led to die in an arcane alien ritual, Tank McPhoton tried one last time to apologize. How was he to know that what he took to be an extended hand of friendship which he gripped firmly and shook vigorously was actually the Supreme Ruler’s private parts? [..]

7> I lived on the land, she lived in the water. It gave shore leave a whole new meaning. Or the same old meaning, except with bigger crabs. [..]

6> As one, the Spacemarines stood up, raised their spacerifles in salute, then marched out the spacedoors to the spacedock, where their spaceship was waiting to boldly take them where they’d all been before: Space!

5> You could tell it was a real UFO because there weren’t any wires holding it up and it smelled like outer space. [..]’

‘New research published in the March issue of Psychological Science may help elucidate the relationship between religious indoctrination and violence, a topic that has gained renewed notoriety in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. In the article, University of Michigan psychologist Brad Bushman and his colleagues suggest that scriptural violence sanctioned by God can increase aggression, especially in believers.

The authors set out to examine this interaction by conducting experiments with undergraduates at two religiously contrasting universities: Brigham Young University where 99% of students report believing in God and the Bible and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam where just 50% report believing in God and 27% believe in the bible. [..]

The research sheds light on the possible origins of violent religious fundamentalism and falls in line with theories proposed by scholars of religious terrorism, who hypothesize that exposure to violent scriptures may induce extremists to engage in aggressive actions.’

‘I met god the other day.

I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god?

Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.

Which is odd, because I’m still an atheist and we even agree on that!

It all started on the 8.20 back from Paddington. Got myself a nice window seat, no screaming brats or drunken hooligans within earshot. Not even a mobile phone in sight. Sat down, reading the paper and in he walks.’

‘Boffins at Britain’s University of Manchester have created a transistor out of an atom-thick sheet of carbon. The high-speed device is so small only one electron can pass through at once. Crucially, the transistor operates at room temperature making it potentially viable for future microprocessors.

Details of the breakthrough were announced in the science journal Nature this week. The team, led by Professor Andre Geim of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology, built the transistor from graphene, an allotrope of carbon that essentially fits all its constituent carbon atoms into a single plane. Discovered only three years ago, graphene is highly conductive.’

‘Two packages containing human body parts — including a liver and a partial head — that were intended for a lab were delivered to a home instead, and officials say more than two dozen similar packages could be dispersed across the United States.

The body parts, sent from China, were mistakenly dropped off at Franck and Ludivine Larmande’s home by a DHL driver who thought the bubble-wrapped items were pieces to a table.

“My husband started to unwrap one and said, ‘This is strange, it looks like a liver,'” Ludivine Larmande told The Grand Rapids Press. “He started the second one, but stopped as soon as we saw the ear.”

“Something wasn’t right. It was scary, and I’m glad I didn’t open them.”‘