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Talking and posting items about my interests and concerns. This includes but is not limited to Education, Art, History and Science.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Comet Lovejoy Survives Fiery Plunge Through Sun, NASA Says
By Mike Wall , SPACE.com Senior Writer Space.com | SPACE.com – 23 hrs ago
The sun-diving comet Lovejoy swings behind the sun in this still from a NASA vid …
A newfound comet defied long odds on Thursday (Dec. 15), surviving a suicidal dive through the sun's hellishly hot atmosphere, according to NASA scientists.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/comet-lovejoy-survives-fiery-plunge-sun-nasa-says-015706403.html
Comet Lovejoy plunged through the sun's corona at about 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT on Dec. 16), coming within 87,000 miles (140,000 kilometers) of our star's surface. Temperatures in the corona can reach 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius), so most researchers expected the icy wanderer to be completely destroyed.
But Lovejoy proved to be made of tough stuff. A video taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft showed the icy object emerging from behind the sun and zipping back off into space.
"Breaking News! Lovejoy lives! The comet Lovejoy has survived its journey around the sun to reemerge on the other side," SDO researchers tweeted.
SDO is one of many instruments that scientists — eager to record and study the comet's presumed demise — trained on Lovejoy as it streaked toward the sun.
"We have here an exceptionally rare opportunity to observe the complete vaporization of a relatively large comet, and we have approximately 18 instruments on five different satellites that are trying to do just that," Karl Battams, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., wrote on the Sungrazing Comets website, before Lovejoy's closest solar approach.
Battams runs the website, which is devoted to comets discovered by two different spacecraft: NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which is operated jointly by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Battams greeted news of Lovejoy's improbable escape with surprise and delight. [Photos of Death-Defying Comet Lovejoy]
"I expected a diffuse dust tail to survive (for several hours) before fading away but NOT any kind of nucleus!" he tweeted. "I've worked with sungrazers for 8yrs; today was the most amazing day I've ever had with them!"
Preparing for the endLovejoy has a core about 660 feet (200 meters) wide. It belongs to a class of comets known as Kreutz sungrazers, whose orbits bring them very close to the sun.
All Kreutz sungrazers are thought to be the remnants of a single giant comet that broke apart several centuries ago. They're named after the 19th-century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first showed that such comets are related.
Comets plunge into the sun on a regular basis, but they rarely give much advance notice of their suicidal intentions. That's why scientists were so excited about Lovejoy. Australian amateurastronomer Terry Lovejoy discovered the icy wanderer on Nov. 27, giving researchers plenty of time to map out their observation campaign.
And that campaign has been intense, involving five different spacecraft. In addition to SDO, SOHO and STEREO, scientists planned to use Japan's Hinode satellite and ESA's Proba spacecraft to track Lovejoy's movements, Battams wrote.
NASA also created a website providing updates about the comet's pass through the corona, as well as images of the event beamed down by SDO. It can be found here:http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/lovejoy.phpFor his part, Terry Lovejoy said he was happy to have made a contribution, and he marveled a bit at all the attention the comet has been getting.
"It's been tremendous," Lovejoy told SPACE.com. "Apparently it's all over Facebook, and I don't use Facebook. But there's a lot of interest. I think a lot of people like the name — the Lovejoy name seems to strike a chord with people."
A dramatic escapeLovejoy is quite large for a sungrazing comet, and experts expected it to die an impressive death. The website Spaceweather.com, for example, predicted Lovejoy would blaze as brightly as Jupiter or Venus in the sky as it neared the sun.
Battams also expected a good show, saying the comet might even be visible from the ground around sunset today in the Northern Hemisphere.
"I do think that it will put on a spectacular show for us and will be the brightest Kreutz-group comet that SOHO has ever observed," Battams wrote last week.
Though the early returns are still coming in, those forecasts appear to be on the money. Observations from various spacecraft do indeed show Lovejoy flaring up significantly as it neared our star.
Researchers will keep analyzing the images to better understand the comet's daring solar approach. And now skywatchers apparently have another shot to catch a glimpse of the resilient Lovejoy on Friday morning (Dec. 16).
For observers in North America, the comet will rise approximately 5 to 10 minutes before dawn and will be situated to the upper right of the sun. If Lovejoy is still shining at least as brightly as Venus, it may be visible, experts say.
You could also try to spot Lovejoy after the sun comes up, if you're exceedingly careful. Block the rising sun behind a distant building and focus on the part of the sky 3 to 4 degrees above and to the right of the sun (your clenched fist held at arm's length is equal to roughly 10 degrees). CAUTION: Never point binoculars or a telescope at or near the sun, and never look directly at our star with the naked eye. Serious eye damage can result.
And don't get your hopes up, either. The comet may well be too faint to see, experts say.
Monday, December 12, 2011
This is Ridiculous
Florida county will throw parents of truant kids in jail | The Lookout - Yahoo! News:
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/florida-county-throw-parents-truant-kids-jail-165408463.html
A new truancy court in Palm Beach, Florida aims to cut down on the state's absentee rate for young children by punishing parents who don't take their kids to school.
Lenora Hummel was fined thousands of dollars for her daughter's truancy (AP)
Florida law says parents of children under 16 who let their kids miss 15 days of school within three months can be sent to jail for up to two months as punishment. The Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that Palm Beach prosecutors say the two-month jail sentence will be a last resort, after government and nonprofit workers try to fix whatever problem is keeping parents from getting their kids to school.About a dozen Baltimore parents were sent to prison for their kids' truancy in 2011, the Baltimore Sun reported in April. (In 2010, no Baltimore parents were jailed.) After California adopted a strict anti-truancy bill earlier this year, at least five parents in Orange County were sent to jail for the crime, according to the local CBS affiliate. Judges in Alabama, Texas, and North Carolina and other states have also used truancy laws to send offending parents to jail.Earlier this year, the NAACP sued a Pennsylvania school district for levying what it claimed were illegal fines of thousands of dollars on truant students and their parents. Lenora Hummel, above, was fined $8,000 after her son and daughter stopped going to school because they said they were bullied and harassed by other students.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/florida-county-throw-parents-truant-kids-jail-165408463.html
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Experts stumped by ancient Jerusalem markingsBy MATTI FRIEDMAN | AP – 4 hrs ago
In this photo taken on Dec. 1, 2011, Israel's Antiquities Authority archeologist …
This photo taken on Dec. 1, 2011, shows a view of the excavation site known as the …
JERUSALEM (AP) — Mysterious stone carvings made thousands of years ago and recently uncovered in an excavation underneathJerusalem have archaeologists stumped.Source of Article: http://news.yahoo.com/experts-stumped-ancient-jerusalem-markings-071348189.html
Israeli diggers who uncovered a complex of rooms carved into the bedrock in the oldest section of the city recently found the markings: Three "V'' shapes cut next to each other into the limestone floor of one of the rooms, about 2 inches (5 centimeters) deep and 20 inches (50 centimeters) long. There were no finds to offer any clues pointing to the identity of who made them or what purpose they served.
The archaeologists in charge of the dig know so little that they have been unable even to posit a theory about their nature, said Eli Shukron, one of the two directors of the dig.
"The markings are very strange, and very intriguing. I've never seen anything like them," Shukron said.
The shapes were found in a dig known as the City of David, a politically sensitive excavation conducted by Israeli government archaeologists and funded by a nationalist Jewish group under the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem. The rooms were unearthed as part of the excavation of fortifications around the ancient city's only natural water source, the Gihon spring.
It is possible, the dig's archaeologists say, that when the markings were made at least 2,800 years ago the shapes might have accommodated some kind of wooden structure that stood inside them, or they might have served some other purpose on their own. They might have had a ritual function or one that was entirely mundane. Archaeologists faced by a curious artifact can usually at least venture a guess about its nature, but in this case no one, including outside experts consulted by Shukron and the dig's co-director, archaeologists with decades of experience between them, has any idea.
There appears to be at least one other ancient marking of the same type at the site. A century-old map of an expedition led by the British explorer Montague Parker, who searched for the lost treasures of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem between 1909 and 1911, includes the shape of a "V'' drawn in an underground channel not far away. Modern archaeologists haven't excavated that area yet.
Ceramic shards found in the rooms indicate they were last used around 800 B.C., with Jerusalemunder the rule of Judean kings, the dig's archaeologists say. At around that time, the rooms appear to have been filled with rubble to support the construction of a defensive wall.
It is unclear, however, whether they were built in the time of those kings or centuries earlier by the Canaanite residents who predated them.
The purpose of the complex is part of the riddle. The straight lines of its walls and level floors are evidence of careful engineering, and it was located close to the most important site in the city, the spring, suggesting it might have had an important function.
A unique find in a room beside the one with the markings — a stone like a modern grave marker, which was left upright when the room was filled in — might offer a clue. Such stones were used in the ancient Middle East as a focal point for ritual or a memorial for dead ancestors, the archaeologists say, and it is likely a remnant of the pagan religions which the city's Israelite prophets tried to eradicate. It is the first such stone to be found intact in Jerusalem excavations.
But the ritual stone does not necessarily mean the whole complex was a temple. It might simply have marked a corner devoted to religious practice in a building whose purpose was commonplace.
With the experts unable to come up with a theory about the markings, the City of David dig posted a photo on its Facebook page and solicited suggestions. The results ranged from the thought-provoking — "a system for wood panels that held some other item," or molds into which molten metal would could have been poured — to the fanciful: ancient Hebrew or Egyptian characters, or a "symbol for water, particularly as it was near a spring."
The City of David dig, where the carvings were found, is the most high-profile and politically contentious excavation in the Holy Land. Named for the biblical monarch thought to have ruled from the spot 3,000 years ago, the dig is located in what today is east Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in 1967. Palestinians claim that part of the city as the capital of a future state.
The dig is funded by Elad, an organization affiliated with the Israeli settlement movement. The group also moves Jewish families into the neighborhood and elsewhere in east Jerusalem in an attempt to render impossible any division of the city in a future peace deal.
Palestinians and some Israeli archaeologists have criticized the dig for what they say is an excessive focus on Jewish remains. The dig's archaeologists, who work under the auspices of the government's Israel Antiquities Authority, deny that charge.
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Follow Matti Friedman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mattifriedman
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Friday, November 25, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Fresh And New Inventions In Cheating [Pic] | I Am Bored
Fresh And New Inventions In Cheating [Pic] | I Am Bored:
Source: http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=65116
Fresh And New Inventions In Cheating [Pic]. Who said American students aren`t inventive?
Source: http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=65116
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Obama tells students of plans to ease loan burden - Yahoo! News:
By Ian Simpson | Reuters – 8 hrs ago
Obama tells students of plans to ease loan burden
By Ian Simpson | Reuters – 8 hrs agoArticle found at: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-acts-ease-burden-student-loans-001017820.htmlDENVER (Reuters) - President Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday to take steps to ease the burden of student loans, potentially helping cash-strapped college graduates in a tough U.S. economy."I want America to have the most highly skilled workers doing the most advanced work. I want us to win the future," Obama told an audience of about 4,000 students at the University of Colorado-Denver."So that means we should be doing everything we can to put a college education within reach for every American."In line with an announcement on Tuesday, Obama said he planned to speed up a plan to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income, bringing it forward to start in 2012 instead of 2014.The White House estimates the loan changes could cut monthly payments for 1.6 million graduates.Americans owe more on student loans than on outstanding credit card debt, and total loans outstanding are slated to exceed $1 trillion this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.The rise in private student lending and growing debt defaults have also been highlighted by Occupy Wall Street protesters.Under the plan, student debt will also be forgiven after 20 years, compared with 25 years under current law.More than 36 million Americans have federal student loan debt, but only 450,000 have taken advantage of the existing income-based repayment program.Obama will also make changes to allow 6 million students to bundle together certain federal loans to allow a single monthly payment. The move would reduce the risk of default caused by juggling several debts.The option will be open from January. Those that take it up will also get a 0.5 percentage point cut in the interest rate on some of their loans, lowering monthly payments and potentially saving them hundreds of dollars in interest.
The loans initiative was the third such move by Obama in as many days, following action to aid homeowners and boost hiring of military veterans. The White House wants to show Obama is an activist president battling a "do-nothing" Congress.The loan changes do not require approval by Congress.Republican lawmakers blocked a $447 billion jobs plan put forward by Obama last month, citing among other reasons its increases in some taxes.Students helped push Obama into the White House in 2008. As he campaigns for re-election in 2012, Obama's public approval ratings have fallen near 40 percent, the low of his presidency, largely because of discontent with his economic stewardship.Obama was wrapping up a swing through western states that will be vital to his re-election campaign in 2012.(Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Kublai Khan’s 13th-century “lost fleet”
Archeologists believe shipwreck found off Japan belongs to Kublai Khan’s 13th-century “lost fleet” | The Envoy - Yahoo! News:
Archeologists believe shipwreck found off Japan belongs to Kublai Khan’s 13th-century “lost fleet”
Marine archeologists say that the ancient wreckage of a ship discovered in the seabed off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, belongs to the ancient "lost fleet" of ships belonging to China's 13th century Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, CNN reports.
(Via CNN)
Explorers found the 20-meter-long shipwreck by using ultra-sound equipment some 25 meters off the coast of Nagasaki. The team of researchers buried the ultra-sound sensors about a meter deep in the sandy earth beneath the sea. Archeologists believe the ship dates back to 1281, and was part of a 4,400-vessel fleet that China's Mongol rulers during the Yuan Dynasty had employed as an invasion force.The discovery of the ship's well preserved and mostly intact 12-meter-long keel "could go a long way to helping researchers identify all the characteristics of the 20-meter warship," CNN reported, citing the head of the research team that made the discovery."This discovery was of major importance for our research," Yoshifumi Ikeda, of Okinawa's University of the Ryukyus, said at a recent press conference in Nagasaki, according to the CNN report. "We are planning to expand search efforts and find further information that can help us restore the whole ship."According to Japanese legend, two typhoons--known as the Kamikaze--that occurred seven years apart in the 13th century twice saved Japan from Mongol invasion by "destroy[ing] two separate Mongol invasions fleets so large they were not eclipsed until the D-Day landings of World War II," CNN reported. China was not so spared, however, and was ruled by the Mongol Yuan Dynasty from 1271-1368."According to a contemporary account cited in the book Khubilai Khan's Lost fleet: In Search of a Legendary Armada," by maritime archaeologist James P. Delgado, the typhoon's destruction of the over 4,000-vessel Yuan Dynasty invasion fleet created such a vast quantity of material wreckage "that 'a person could walk across from one point of land to another on a mass of wreckage,'" CNN reported.The wooden-planked ship, originally believed to have been painted light gray, is among "more than 4,000 artifacts, including ceramic shards, bricks used for ballast, cannonballs and stone anchors [that] have been found in the vicinity of the wreck, linking it to the Yuan Dynasty invasion fleet," CNN reported.
California researcher cracks secret society’s cipher | The Lookout - Yahoo! News
California researcher cracks secret society’s cipher | The Lookout - Yahoo! News:
A computer scientist at the University of Southern California and two Swedish linguists have cracked a 75,000-character cipher from the 18th century that described the laws of a secret society.
The beginning of the cipher, uncoded (ACL)
The "Copiale Cipher" was neatly hand-written in Greek and Roman characters with some unknown symbols thrown into the mix. Researchers suspected that the original language was German, since the manuscript was found in Berlin, but they tried to match the manuscript with dozens of languages by running different "computer attacks" on the code, all to no avail.As they explain in their paper, the researchers' first theory was that the Roman letters contained the true message, with all the other characters serving as distractions, or "nulls." It turned out their hypothesis was completely wrong. After running the cipher through the computer program, the researchers realized that their assumption was backwards--that the Roman characters were, in fact, the nulls.Even after the code-breakers found and translated most of the unknown characters into letters, a handful of symbols remained mysterious. The researchers believe that these symbols stand for top-secret people in the society.The manuscript described how to initiate new members into the society and other rules.Computer scientist Kevin Knight of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering told Science Daily that the secret society members shared a fascination with eye surgery. Other possible affiliations shared among the code-sharing knowledge elite remain speculative, however. "Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out," Knight said. "And a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered."There's been a bit of a run lately in claims to break prominent and/or notorious ciphers. In July, an amateur code-breaker claimed to have cracked the messages of the "Zodiac Killer."
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