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Earth

Nature: Global Temperatures Are a Falling Trend 786

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the romney-declares-drill-baby-drill dept.
New submitter sosume writes "An article in Nature shows that temperatures in Roman times were actually higher than current temperatures. A team lead by Dr. Esper of the University of Mainz has researched tree rings and concluded that over the past 2,000 years, the forcing is up to four times as large as the 1.6W/m^2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750 using evidence based on maximum latewood density data from northern Scandinavia, indicating that this cooling trend was stronger (0.31C per 1,000 years, ±0.03C) than previously reported, and demonstrated that this signature is missing in published tree-ring proxy records."

Comment Re:Britain/Northern Europe is Ocean regulated. (Score 1) 571

by endall (#34739548) Attached to: Our Lazy Solar Dynamo — Hello Dalton Minimum?

I'll try to be more clear and complete in presenting my point, because once again you didn't get it, or you ignored it.

Knowing who funds the site is useful and important information for the readers of Slashdot. It helps them understand that they will only get a very limited, and highly selective subset of the research there.

There are valid peer reviews papers at the website you refer to, but the web site only includes the bits and pieces of the research that support it's very specific Exxon friendly point of view. It tends to exclude peer reviewed papers that provide evidence that is not in Exxon's financial interests.

It wraps all of this in highly prejudicial language, branding all those who oppose the website's point of view as 'extremist' and 'alarmist'. The co2science website does this while pretending to be objective and attempting to hide the fact that it's funded by Exxon and the Mellon-Scaife fortunes.

I'm not attempting to address the validity of individual papers at the site. I have no doubt that some of them are good and contribute in part to the larger body of knowledge. Again, it's the context that slashdot readers need to be aware of, or they may be misled into believing that the website presents a balanced picture.

The SkepticalScience.com is a better source because it's honest about it's purpose, takes a broader view, and does not exclude references to valid peer reviewed studies based on the outcomes of the studies.
Businesses

Submission + - Chinese IP Acquisition Tactics Exposed (sina.com.cn)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: In an interview published in Sina.com.cn (here is the google translation,) Chinese rail engineers gave a detailed account of the history, motivation, technologies of Chinese high-speed rail system. More interestingly, they blatantly revealed the strategies and tactics used in acquiring high-speed rail techs from foreign companies. Here is the summary and paraphrase. At the beginning, China developed its own high-speed rail system known as the Chinese Star which achieved a test speed of 320km/h; but the system was considered not reliable or stable enough for operation. So China decided to import the technologies. The superior (leaders) instructed, "The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs." A key strategy employed is divide-and-conquer: by dividing up the technologies of the system and importing multiple different techs across different companies, it ensures no single country or company has total control. "What we do is to exchange market for technologies. The negotiation was led by the Ministry of Railway [against industry alliances of the exporting countries]. This uniform executive power gave China huge advantage in negotiations," said Wu Junrong, "If we don't give in, they have no choice. They all want a piece of our huge high speed rail project." For example, [Chinese locomotive train] CRH2 is based on Japanese tech, CRH3 on German tech, and CRH5 on French tech, all retrofit for Chinese rail standards. Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contains more and more Chinese made parts. "Some exporters were reluctant to transfer technologies. But we have explicitly requested such from the beginning. They cooperate eventually because they find profits in this huge project. This is business. There is no stealing [of technologies]." In conclusion, Wu boasted that now there are a dozen countries, including the US, are interested in Chinese high-speed rail techs, because they know more than any other single company and the Chinese version is cheaper too.

Comment Re:Britain/Northern Europe is Ocean regulated. (Score 1) 571

by endall (#34732072) Attached to: Our Lazy Solar Dynamo — Hello Dalton Minimum?

What a deliciously ironic reply!

Yes, the fact co2science is funded by the oil industry is very relevant to its credibility. Using the words you used toward Wikipedia, you should be wary of trusting Co2science about AGW.

This fact has no bearing on whether or not I understand how science works. Your personal attack on me is itself a case of "attacking the messenger", hence the delicious irony!

Comment Re:Britain/Northern Europe is Ocean regulated. (Score 1) 571

by endall (#34731264) Attached to: Our Lazy Solar Dynamo — Hello Dalton Minimum?

It's ironic that you cite co2science.org after raising doubts about using Wikipedia as a source. First, co2science evidently wants to hide who's behind them:
      http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/co2science.org

Second, the website is funded by Exxon/Mobil and by the Mellon oil fortune through the Sara Scaife foundation:
      http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=24
      http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/organization/Center_for_the_Study_of_Carbon_Dioxide_and_Global_Change/funders

Co2science's latest focus of obfuscation is the "medieval warm period". For better, and more honest context on that topic, see
      http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm
Science

First Acoustic Black Hole Created 165

Posted by Soulskill from the for-music-that-really-sucks dept.
KentuckyFC writes "One of the many curious properties of Bose Einstein Condensates (BECs) is that the flow of sound through them is governed by the same equations that describe how light is bent by a gravitational field. Now, a group of Israeli physicists have exploited this idea to create an acoustic black hole in a BEC. The team created a supersonic flow of atoms within the BEC, a flow that prevents any phonon caught in it from making headway. The region where the flow changes from subsonic to supersonic is an event horizon, because any phonon unlucky enough to stray into the supersonic region can never escape. The real prize is not the acoustic black hole itself but what it makes possible: the first observation of Hawking radiation. Quantum mechanics predicts that pairs of phonons with opposite momentum ought to be constantly springing in and out of existence in a BEC. Were one of the pair to stray across the event horizon into the supersonic region, it could never escape. However, the other would be free to go on its way. This stream of phononic radiation away from an acoustic black hole would be the first observation of Hawking radiation. The team hasn't gotten that far yet, but it can't be long now before either they or their numerous competitors make this leap."

Comment Re:Stupid, Stupid, Stupid (Score 1) 293

by endall (#27932097) Attached to: Funding For Automotive Fuel Cells Cut

Water alone is not a source of energy. You suggest solar and wind electricity to separate the hydrogen.

The process of using electricity to separate hydrogen from oxygen, storing hydrogen, then burning it for power it is less efficient than simply using batteries and running cars directly from electricity.

Comment Re:I'm sceptical.... (Score 2, Informative) 210

by endall (#27699193) Attached to: Using Light's Handedness To Find Alien Life

According to this article (http://asunews.asu.edu/20080229_pizzarello), an un-contaminated meteorite was was found to have amino acids with mixed chirality, but with a bias towards the left-handed (up to 15%), not the 50%-50% suggested in the article linked in the submission. So to some extent, this supports what you said.

Even so, the technique described in the submitted article could work. It's all about signal to noise. If some feature of a planet reflects vastly more chiral bias than a rocky moon or asteroid in the same system, that could indicate that it harbors life.
Space

The Underappreciated Risks of Severe Space Weather 361

Posted by kdawson from the my-kingdom-for-a-horse dept.
circletimessquare notes a New Scientist piece calling attention to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, which attempts to raise awareness of the dangers of severe solar electromagnetic storms. "In 1859, amateur astronomer Richard Carrington noticed 'two patches of intensely bright and white light' near some sunspots. At the same time, Victorian era magnetometers went off the charts, stunning auroras were being viewed at the equator, and telegraph networks were disrupted — sparks flew from terminals and ignited telegraph paper on fire. It became known as the Carrington event, and the National Academy of Sciences worries about the impact of another such event today and the lack of awareness among officials. It would induce un-designed-for voltages in all high-voltage, long-distance power lines, and destroy transformers, as Quebec learned in 1989. Without electricity, water would stop flowing from the tap, gasoline would stop being pumped, and health care would cease after the emergency generators gave up the ghost after 72 hours. Replacing all of the transformers would take months, if not years. The paradox would be that underdeveloped countries would fare better than developed ones. Our only warning system is a satellite called the Advanced Composition Explorer, in solar orbit between the Sun and the Earth. It is 11 years old and past its planned lifespan. It might give us as much as 15 minutes of warning, and transformers might be able to be disconnected in time. But currently no country has such a contingency plan."
Science

Fermilab Discovers Untheorized Particle 217

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the surprise-particles dept.
alevy writes to mention that scientists at Fermilab have detected a new, completely untheorized particle. Seems like Fermi has been a hotbed of activity lately with the discovery of a new single top quark and narrowing the gap twice on the Higgs Boson particle. "The Y(4140) particle is the newest member of a family of particles of similar unusual characteristics observed in the last several years by experimenters at Fermilab's Tevatron as well as at KEK and the SLAC lab, which operates at Stanford through a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy. 'We congratulate CDF on the first evidence for a new unexpected Y state that decays to J/psi and phi,' said Japanese physicist Masanori Yamauchi, a KEK spokesperson. 'This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data.'"
Science

Higgs Territory Continues To Shrink 118

Posted by kdawson from the hoggamus-higgamus dept.
PhysicsDavid writes "Announced this morning by Fermilab, the possible territory for the Higgs boson has shrunk even further. Combined results from the CDF and DZero experiments at the Tevatron have ruled out the existence of the Higgs with a mass between 160 and 170 GeV/c^2 with 95% confidence. At 90% confidence the Higgs is ruled out between about 157 and 185 GeV/c^2. Here is Fermilab's press release. If the Higgs is to be found at the lighter end of the currently allowed range of 114 GeV/c^2 to 185 GeV/c^2, its detection will be harder than at the heavier end due to the kinds of signals that the Large Hadron Collider and the Tevatron will see. Some physicists think that a lighter Higgs will be easier to spot at the Tevatron as the background processes which obscure the faint signal are not as prevalent in those experiments."
Biotech

Submission + - A Universal Flu Vaccine May Be On The Way 1

Submitted by Plasmoid
Plasmoid writes: TechReview reports that scientists have starting developing what could turn out to be a "universal flu vaccine". They created antibody proteins that can neutralize different strains of the influenza virus, including the deadly H5N1 bird flu, the virus behind the 1918 epidemic, and common seasonal strains. These new antibodies target part of the virus that is shared between different strains and thus appears to be broadly effective. However, some experts question whether a universal vaccine of this kind is even possible, since the human body has been unable to come up with an antibody solution. A Nature paper describing the work can also be found here.

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