If this is your first visit, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed. That way you'll be sure not to miss a thing!
A drop in solar activity has the potential to effect the climate on earth.
The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years. An entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being recorded.
This event is significant because many climatologists now believe that solar magnetic activity (which determines the number of sunspots) has an influence on the earth’s climate.
According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month passed without a spot. The last time this occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected and recorded since 1749.
When the sun is active it is common to see sunspot numbers of over 100 in a single month. Every 11 years the activity slows and numbers briefly drop to near zero. Then the sunspots return quickly as a new cycle begins.
This year, however, has been very long and quiet. The first seven months averaged a sunspot number of only 3. Then August followed with none at all.
In 2005, a pair of astronomers attempted to publish a paper after research on minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. They reached the conclusion that within 10 years sunspots would vanish altogether. Most of their peers laughed at their conclusion and their paper was rejected.
Similar events in the past 1000 years have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a “mini ice age”. Because our society is dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season would shorten, yields would drop, and the crop-destroying frosts would increase.
Anyone who is trying to make money online knows that the most very basic thing to start with is building your list. Without a list you really have no where to go with your online marketing plans.
Tellman Knudson and Shawn Casey have been making money and successfully promoting their online enterprises for years. The time has come to learn from the masters exactly how it’s done.
They have just created a site called The ListBuilding Club and this is a wealth of just the kind of information one needs to begin marketing and list building. This is a membership club that gives members everything they need to market their online business. With a paid membership of $97 per month, members get complete support and online business-building training that will help anyone get the information needed to launch or maintain a successful online business.
Listen to this offer. Within minutes of landing on their site, you can have instant access to some free videos as well as a full month of The ListBuilding Club completely free! It’s essentially a “test drive” that gives you an opportunity to try everything and see exactly how beneficial this system is and how well it will work for anyone who is trying to promote an online business.
I have been on Shawn Casey’s list for several months now and I will just say that I have learned a lot from listening to many of his webinars and I generally pay close attention when he is excited about something. Tellman and Shawn have got my attention on this one too!
The 2008 Perseid meteor shower peaks this week. It should be a great show for those that are fortunate to have clear skies. The meteor shower should average one meteor per minute at its peak in the early morning hours on Tuesday after the show begins on Monday night late in the evening.
Unfortunately, for youngsters who will be sleeping later, this year’s shower will be less than ideal during the earlier evening hours because of a late-setting waxing gibbous moon. The best time to view the Perseid meteor shower is around 1:30 a.m. and after.
The best way to view the shower is to get as far away from light pollution as possible. The darker it is on the ground the brighter everything is in the sky. No telescope is needed, just the naked eye. Just find a spot where you can lie on the ground and look up at the sky.
Small bioptic telescopes have been mounted on glasses to help people with vision impairments for about 60 years. This is allowed for driving by 39 states in the U.S. Unfortunately, most of them were either too heavy or too ugly to be very useful.
A Harvard research team has now developed a new kind of telescope that can be embedded in glasses lenses. One major advantage is the appearance of the glasses. They look almost like normal everyday glasses so they are much more user-friendly.
Above is an example of the next generation of the in-the-lens telescopic device. This is a conceptual simulation of what the in-the-lens Keplerian telescope lenses will look like.
Techniques have also been developed to help people with low vision better see and enjoy TV.
U.S. researchers recently developed a headset for cows which will enable them to ‘whisper wireless commands to cows to control their movements across a landscape — and even remotely gather them into a corral.’ It could also help farmers maintain cows behind virtual fences. The circuit board contains a processor, data storage, WiFi for remote communication, audio and electrical stimulation electronics, a GPS receiver, and sensors that record the body orientation and configuration of the animal.
This is a grazing cross-bred beef cow wearing a directional virtual fencing battery with a powered neck saddle device equipped with spring loaded electrodes for providing electrical stimulation and piezo speakers inside poly vinyl chloride pipe for audio stimulation. A global positioning system antenna is located in the middle of a panel of solar cells. This looks somewhat clumsy but performed very well during numerous field trials conducted between 2001 and 2005.
The Directional Virtual Fencing (DVF) gives cows ‘left’ and ‘right’ sensory signals to cause them to move away from an irritating suite of cues. The commands vary from familiar ‘gathering songs’ sung by cowboys during manual round-ups to irritating sounds such as sirens and even mild electric stimulation to get cows to move away from forbidden boundaries.
Virtual fencing is a way to control animals without actual fencing. The control is maintained by altering an animal’s behavior through sensory cues given to the animal when it tries to penetrate an electronically-generated boundary. This boundary can be any shape and is invisible but is detected by a computer system worn by the animal.
These techniques will be useful for controlling a many different biological groups, including cows, bird flocking, insect swarming, and even human crowds. These tools would allow the monitoring of groups of people to alleviate foot traffic congestion or to identify certain behaviors.
Sources: USDA/Agricultural Research Service News, June 6, 2008
What would you say if I said that algae may be the solution to the energy problems facing America today?
Algae processed in a Closed-Loop Photo Bioreactor is a very real option for fuel production for our country. The goal is to produce the greatest amount of bio-mass from algae possible. So, they are growing the algae vertically. This means that the surface area is increased and thereby yields are increased. Closed loop means that the system resources (water, etc.) are continually recycled within the system.
Here is how it works. The algae starts in a tank and gets picked up by a pump. Then it goes into a reactor and gravity moves it through the reactor while it gets exposed to the necessary sunlight. The algae returns to the tank and the cycle is repeated again and again.
Algae is the fastest growing plant on earth and it sequesters the greatest amount of carbon dioxide. Carbon sequestration is the process by which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by “sinks”. Examples of natural sinks are oceans and plants. Algae also produces huge amounts of high quality vegetable oil (lipids). The right variety of algae will produce as much as 50% of its body weight as oil.
Choose your desired oil. The right algae species can be selected to produce the right carbon chains to manufacture jet fuel, for example. To make diesel fuel a different algae strain would be selected that will produce the required carbon chains necessary for this type of fuel.
To produce ethanol from corn, one acre of corn will produce approximately 18 gallons of oil per year. Algae will produce 20,000 gallons of oil per acre per year. Incidentally, this algae production figure is for what is called an “open pond system,” not an enclosed “bioreactor system.” The amount of fuel produced in a bioreactor system would be greater due to less evaporation.
If one-tenth of the state of New Mexico was used for algae production, for example, all of the energy demands for the entire US could be met.
So, two great benefits of algae: it sequesters carbon dioxide and will produce large amounts of fuel.
45 spellers advanced into semifinals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee Friday, thus earning a spot on national television. Ten year old Veronica Penny (right) looks like she is going to cry, but this is her method of thinking before spelling a word. She did this three times on stage and correctly spelled each word.
The 81st edition of the bee began with a record 288 spellers in the competition. ESPN will broadcast the semifinals and Friday’s two-hour finals will be aired live in prime time on ABC. Thursday began with the preliminary round and all the spellers who made it to Washington received their one guaranteed moment in the spotlight.
A New York town successfully repealed a ban on clotheslines this week. The ban had stood since 2002 and prevented homeowners from hanging clothes outside to dry (or they risked a possible $1,000 fine or six-month jail term). Obviously, hanging clothes outside instead of using a dryer will save electricity, which is a great way to cut down on expenses.
After the people and the pets were put out of harms way, approximately 6,000 tons of salmon were moved away from the threatening volcanic eruption in southern Chile. Approximately 600,000 salmon were being moved by boats from a fish farm eight miles from the Chaiten volcano. The volcano began erupting on May 2 and all 4,500 residents of the town of Chaiten have been evacuated. Then hundreds of pets were rescued eight days after the eruption and thousands of heads of livestock have been removed. Finally, the salmon were removed.
An ancient gold cup is expected to sell for close to a million dollars at auction after hiding for years in a shoe box under its current owner’s bed.
Owner John Webber says his grandfather gave him the mug to play with when he was a child in 1945.
He assumed the cup was made from brass. It is decorated with the heads of two women facing in opposite directions. Their foreheads are garlanded with two knotted snakes.
He decided to get it appraised when he was moving last year and was told then that it was a rare piece of ancient Persian treasure.
Experts said the method of manufacture and the composition of the gold was “consistent with Achaemenid gold and gold smithing” and date it back to the third or fourth century BC.
The Achaemenid empire was the first of the Persian empires to rule over significant portions of Greater Iran and was wiped out by Alexander the Great in 330 BC.
Auction house Duke’s will auction the cup on June 5 and it’s estimated it will sell for 500,000 pounds (630,000-euro, $988,000-dollars).
Five rare amur tiger cubs have been born at the Saint Louis Zoo. The zoo says the critically endangered Amur tigers (born within the last month) are not on display yet. They have shared this beautiful video though!
The Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra (made up of musicians who are Shia, Sunni, Armenian and Kurdish) recently played a concert in Baghdad to promote unity. This is their first significant performance in years.
It was broadcast live on Iraqi television and the performance was attended by 400 people.
Boston Red Sox pitcher and lymphoma survivor Jon Lester threw a no-hitter Tuesday night. This is the latest achievement in his career (once threatened by cancer). He was forced to end his 2006 season early and undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Rambler" title="Profile Image of 
Rambler" />
A drop in solar activity has the potential to effect the climate on earth.
