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United States

Top ten literate US cities

Submitted by
sm62704 (mcgrew)
sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "I saw at the St Louis Post Dispatch that my home town is number six in the nation as far as literacy goes. A Google search finds the list in USA Today. The ten most literate US Cities are:
  1. Minneapolis
  2. Seattle
  3. St. Paul
  4. Denver
  5. Washington
  6. St. Louis
  7. San Francisco
  8. Atlanta
  9. Pittsburgh
  10. Boston
"
Christmas Cheer

Angels dancing on the head of a pin

Submitted by
sm62704 (mcgrew)
sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "The BBC is reporting that Israeli researchers have put the 300,000 word Hebrew Bible on a chip that is smaller than a pinhead.

The 0.5sq-mm (0.01sq-in) nano-Bible was written on a silicon surface covered with a thin layer of gold (20nanometres thick — 0.0002mm).

It was written using a device called Focused Ion Beam (Fib).

"When we send the particle beam toward a point on the surface, the gold atoms bounce off of this point, thus exposing the silicon layer underneath," Ohad Zohar, one of the project's managers at Technion, said.
"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" has been a rhetorical question for centuries, but has finally been answered. The answer is, of course, "all of them". At least all the ones in the Hebrew version."
Biotech

Nerds steroids for the Brain

Submitted by
sm62704 (mcgrew)
sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "Several papers, including the Chicago Tribune (bugmenot required) and LA Times are running stories about brain-enhansing drugs like adderal and Provigil. From the Times:

Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions.

"There isn't any question about it — they made me a much better player," said Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than $2.3 million as a poker player.
My opinion on geek enhansing drugs is the same as jock enhansing drugs. I have no problem. They say Babe Ruth did it on babes and beer, but cocaine was legal then and there wre no drug tests. Give me a million bucks and I'll take damned near anything.

What's your take on it? Should these drugs be sanctioned, outlawed, or ignored?"
Space

Earth and moon are the same age

Submitted by
sm62704
sm62704 writes "A New Scientist story says that new research suggests that the moon is 30 million years younger than previously thought, and that the Mars sized object slamming into the earth was that last event in the earth's formation.

The revised timing of the impact implies the terrestrial planets, such as the Earth and Mars, took longer to build up from the collision of smaller 'planetesimals' than previously thought. "The age of the Moon is also the age of Earth because the Moon-forming giant impact was the last major event in Earth's formation," says Touboul.

Alan Brandon, a scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, US, agrees. "It may mean that Earth and Mars took at least 50 million years, and possibly hundreds of millions of years, to reach their final mass," he comments.

The researchers also found that the composition of the Moon appears identical to that of the Earth's rocky mantle, "such that a major portion of the Moon must have been from proto-Earth", Brandon told New Scientist.
"
Space

Cosmic explosion detonates in empty space

Submitted by
sm62704 (mcgrew)
sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "New Scientist reports that

Six spacecraft around Earth and Mars detected a powerful volley of gamma rays lasting about a minute on 25 January 2007. Such explosions, called long gamma-ray bursts, are thought to be caused when massive stars explode and their cores collapse into black holes.

But follow-up observations by some of the world's most powerful telescopes failed to turn up any sign of a 'host' galaxy for the dying star. Spectral observations did show, however, that the burst, called GRB 070125, had exploded within a small pocket of dense gas.
"
Space

Intergfalactic particle beam spotted

Submitted by sm62704 (mcgrew)
sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "New scientist lightheartedly reports:

A new weapon of intergalactic war has been found. A jet of hot gas and high-energy particles is shooting out from the core of a galaxy called 3C321 and hitting a neighbour, a new study reveals.

Galaxies have been known to ram into each other, but this is the first known example of attack by particle beam
It goes on with less jocularity to explain this phenomena. And before any of you quip 'that was no moon', actually it was a black hole."
Space

Group plans to bring Martian sample to earth

Submitted by
sm62704 (mcgrew)
sm62704 (mcgrew) writes "New Scientist has a story about IMARS (the International Mars Architecture for Return Samples) planning to bring samples of Martian siol to earth.

The robotic mission would be a needed precursor to manned trips to the red planet. Also, international cooperation is necessary since the US has already nixed bankrolling manned Mars missions."
Patents

Lincoln's Tomb to be powered by georthermal energy

Submitted by
sm62704 (magrew)
sm62704 (magrew) writes "The Springfield State Journal-Register is reporting that Lincoln's Tomb will be partly powered by geothermal energy, the first public historic site in the US to do so. ""We're not aware of this being tried in a public historic site like this before, so we really don't have anything to compare it to," David Blanchette, spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency said.

Lincoln's legacy includes presiding over our only civil war and freeing the US's slaves. His visage appears on a five dollar bill, as well as on both sides of a penny. I never knew Lincoln was a nerd, but according to the SJ-R, Lincoln was the only US President to ever hold a patent.

The geothermal project at the Oak Ridge Cemetary is slated to be finished before Lincoln's 200th birthday in 2008. Let the global warming jokes begin..."

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. -- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

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