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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 71 declined, 19 accepted (90 total, 21.11% accepted)

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Australia

Submission + - Australian Prime Minister's spoof "apocalypse" speech goes viral in China (dailylife.com.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, recorded a spoof speech about the Mayan calendar apocalypse several days ago, for radio station "Triple J". Gillard said in part, "Whether the final blow comes from flesh eating zombies, demonic hell beasts or from the total triumph of K-pop, if you know one thing about me it is this: I will always fight for you to the very end."

The speech has been picked up in China on Sina Weibo (China's Twitter) and has achieved well over 23,000 repeats, without anyone picking up the irony.

This is just days after another Australian radio station, 2Day FM, created an international sensation with a prank (spoof) call to the hospital in London where Princess Catherine was undergoing treatment, and a nurse killed herself following the revelation of the prank."

Submission + - Pound dogs taught to drive a car (abc.net.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "As discussed in a Letterman "Top 10", a pair of highly trained dogs from New Zealand have passed their doggie driving test, guiding a modified car along a race track on live television. In a project aimed at increasing pet adoptions from animal shelters, a group of cross-breed, rescued dogs from Auckland were taught to drive a car — steering, pedals and all — to show the potential of unwanted canines. See video of Porter and Monty."

Submission + - Romey's rant to donors (abc.net.au) 1

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Romney has ranted to major donors in a conference call, saying that President Obama in effect bought votes by what he offered to the minorities (also read '47%'). "The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go out to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people." He said, "In each case they were very generous in what they gave to those groups," including mention of "free contraceptives".

Of the future, Romney said, "So now we're looking and saying, 'OK, what can we do going forward?'," he said. "But frankly we're still so troubled by the past, it's hard to put together our plans for the future.""

Submission + - The M22 globular cluster has a dark side (abc.net.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Astronomers using the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico have found two black holes in M22, a 12 billion year old globular cluster located only about 10,000 light-years from Earth. These are each several times the mass of our Sun, and are actively feeding from nearby companion stars, as confirmed by X-ray observations using the Chandra space telescope. The astronomers expect to find other black holes."

Submission + - 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Thirteen years ago, two teams of astronomers and physicists independently made the same stark discovery: Not only is the universe expanding like a vast inflating balloon, but its expansion is speeding up. And, the two teams are recognised with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Half of the prize will go to Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, who led the Supernova Cosmology Project. The other half will be shared by Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, who led the High-z Supernova Search Team, and Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, who worked on High-z.

In essence, they proved that Einstein's "biggest mistake" (the cosmological constant, to create a 'stable universe') was actually a clever theoretical prediction that there was something else happening — dark energy."
Australia

Submission + - Australian Aboriginal DNA - 70,000 year history (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Scientists have obtained a DNA genomic sequence from a 100 year old, voluntarily donated hair sample from a full-blood Australian Aboriginal man. This shows "Aboriginal Australians are descendants of an early human dispersal into eastern Asia, possibly 62,000 to 75,000 years ago. This dispersal is separate from the one that gave rise to modern Asians 25,000 to 38,000 years ago. [They] also [found] evidence of gene flow between populations of the two dispersal waves prior to the divergence of Native Americans from modern Asian ancestors. [Their] findings support the hypothesis that present-day Aboriginal Australians descend from the earliest humans to occupy Australia, likely representing one of the oldest continuous populations outside Africa." A news story gives more detail."
Science

Submission + - The Universe's 'missing mass' - found by undergrad (monash.edu.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Filaments attached to superclusters seems an obvious place to look for the 'missing' matter in the universe — now! An undergrad at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, working on a six-week paid astrophysics research internship over the holidays, has found what has eluded astrophysicists. A search through X-ray and 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey data showed Amelia Fraser-McKelvie that there was a significant mass of baryons (fundamental components of atoms) in the galactic filaments. The peer-reviewed paper has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society."
Japan

Submission + - Japan quake foretold by atmosphere/ionosphere (arxiv.org)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Scientists have correlated data from satellites and ionosonde stations to show a positive correlation (read: evidence) that there were prior indications of the 11 March 2011 M9 Tohoku earthquake for up to three days before, in the atmosphere and ionosphere (the part of the outer atmosphere that is effected by space weather). They drew together measurements of: 1. Outgoing Longwave Radiation (infra-red 10-13 um) measured at the top of the atmosphere; 2. GPS/Total Electron Content ionospheric variability; 3. Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellite ionospheric tomography; and, 4. Variations in ionosphere F2 layer at the critical foF2 frequency (the highest frequency at which the ionospheric is transparent) from four Japanese ionosonde stations."
Australia

Submission + - Australia's Federal Budget:science $ 'uninspiring' (abc.net.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Australia's 2011-12 Federal Budget was released Tuesday night. The Australian Academy of Science's Professor Bob Williamson has said Australia's research spending at 1.6 per cent of GDP is average compared to other OECD countries. Among other funding, the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council get similar funding (~A$850 / ~US$795) to distribute to researchers, that may reflect earlier and very public lobbying by the medical research community that was fearful of de-funding. Several specialised science promotion activities are de-funded, including a national school science curriculum initiative that needed only $5 million to $10 million over several years."
Apple

Submission + - iPad archaeology - the design was out there (reghardware.com)

Submitted by brindafella
brindafella writes: The Register has found the origin of the iPad, in the sci-fi children's TV show The Tomorrow People from UK TV in the early 1970s. The telepathic teens also use what appears to be an iPad-like portable computer. The Register notes that Apple's British-born stylist, Jonathan Ive, was a sub-teen and part of the show's target audience at the time of the series being aired. Enter, the future.

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