Pound 360

Wireless TVs in a year?

2008-07-22T23:10:00.001-07:00

"Electronics heavyweights" like Sony, Samsung, Motorola and Sharp are teaming up behind a uniform technology to send high-def video signals from transmitters to television screens, reports MSNBC.

Savvy consumers (super-nerds) can transmit video now using Wi-Fi technology, but it compresses (reduces the quality) of the picture. The new standard, called Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI), supported by the aforementioned "heavyweights" will use more powerful radio signals.

Does this mean your neighbors will be able to dial into your signals and check out what you're watching? Perhaps. But what if you don't want the neighbors to know ho much Entertainment Tonight and America's Funniest Home Videos that you watch? Pound360 bets some type of encryption is also in the works.

Pollution may be cause of mystery croc illness

2008-07-22T12:00:00.000-07:00

"Hardened, fatty deposits" are showing up in the tails of dead crocs along the Olifants River in South Africa's Kruger National Park, reports New Scientist. Researchers believe the condition makes it too difficult for the animals to swim, so they drown. Eating rancid fish may lead to the mysterious affliction, but it could be "exposure to pollutants." According to New Scientist, "the Olifants is the most polluted of all the [Kruger National Park's] rivers."

Water once "widespread" on Mars

2008-07-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has relayed new data showing Mars was once drenched with water, and for hundreds-of-thousands of years, reports the BBC.

Images from the Mars Orbiter show minerals on the "ancient highlands" that only form in water. The same type of minerals also appear in-and-around craters and on the slopes of dormant volcanoes (see image) suggesting evidence of a wet Mars has been hiding just below the surface. And the evidence runs deep, up to 5 kilometers down, suggesting there was a lot of water on the Red Planet.

Mars' wet period probably ran from 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago during the planet's "Noachian period."

(Image courtesy NASA)

Unexplained dolphin suicides reported in UK

2008-07-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Twenty six dolphins beached themselves at the southwestern tip of England this month, and experts don't know why, reports Discover Magazine. Beach goers dragged some of the dolphins back into the water, but they just beached themselves again.

Did Royal Navy depth charges spook the dolphins? Could they have been terrified by a killer whale? Perhaps a parasite "turned them into zombies."

Last fall, 152 dolphins beached themselves along the Iranian coast in a mass suicide that eludes explanation to this day.

How did Earth end up with so much water?

2008-07-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

The short answer is, nobody really knows. In the past, Pound360 explored this question when Japanese researchers suggested oxides in the Earths crust reacted with a "thick blanket of hydrogen" surrounding the early earth to create our oceans.

The problem with that is that water in our oceans has the same molecular makeup as water in asteroids (yes, asteroids, not comets). "Molecular makeup," you ask, "isn't water just H20, how can that vary?" Well, a hydrogen molecule can have extra protons and neutrons. In the case water on Earth, much of it has an extra neutron and proton. This type of hydrogen scientists refer to as "heavy hydrogen" or "deuterium."

Worth noting is, according to a Wikipedia entry, the Earth was formed within the Solar System's "snow line" (which exists about where the Asteroid Belt is). Within the snowline, you're close enough to the sun that water is vaporized. Outside of that line, it's cold enough that water is turned to ice. Of course, if water is vapor, it's tough for a small planet or moon to attract and keep it.

As the Earth formed, much of the water present (yes there was some) was "outgassed" and drifted away in the solar wind. It wasn't until the Earth got much larger that its gravity was capable or retaining the original water which continued to seep from the interior of the Earth via volcanic activity. But that would only account for some of the water we have today.

The Wikipedia entry also acknowledges extraterrestrial sources like asteroids and homemade sources like photosynthesis. Indeed, early life synthesizing hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2) would have released H20 (and some other stuff).

Another possibility according to the Wikipedia write-up, the massive object that (probably) collided with the Earth 4-point-some-billion-years-ago creating the Moon may have been an icy planetoid like Jupiter's moon Europa. But Pound360 wonders how that might have happened since this frozen wanderer would have had to drift from beyond the Solar System's "snow line," right? And that means it would have had to escape Jupiter's tremendous pull, which seems to us (in our pretty limited understanding of astrophysics) unlikely.

Astronomers Amazed as Moon Slowly Releases Secrets

2008-07-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

As Pound360 mentioned previously, researchers continue to learn from the 842 pounds of lunar rocks retrieved over the course of the Apollo missions that ended 40 years ago. Recently, the NY Times ran a feature on what we've learned and why we're still learning stuff today (the main reason is that research technologies and methods keep advancing).

Among the most important findings from Moon rocks:

Meteors, not volcanoes, are primarily responsible for shaping the surface of the Moon.
An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. How can the Moon tell us that? "Terrestrial mineral and crystal deposits 65 million years old were similar to those found routinely in lunar ejecta."
The Moon is just about as old as the earth, solar system. One rock, what scientists refer to as the "genesis" rock, is almost 4.5 billion years old. The is about 4.54 billion years old. The solar system formed just 4.6 billion years ago. It must have been an amazing 200 million years.
Using what we know about the Moon's surface, we predict the age of surfaces on other Moons, planets in the solar system.

In addition to these accepted findings is a more controversial one that may shed light on how life evolved on . According to the Times, "some researchers have suggested" lunar impacts tapered off soon after the Moon formed (about 4.3 billion years ago), only to "resume with a vengeance" 400 million years later. The "cataclysm" would have affected Moon and Earth at a time "when life was just beginning."

Pound360 has some questions. Did the "cataclysm" spark life on this planet? Perhaps in the onslaught of asteroids, comets or whatever, one (or a few) of them carried genetic material (not an all together crazy idea) or bacteria (another crazy but not so ridiculous idea) at a time when the Earth was first receptive to life (after the planet cooled and oceans formed).

Also, where did the material that made up this cataclysmic shower of material come from? Was there another planet out there in the same space as Mars, and did the two of them collide? There is evidence that Mars was struck by the "largest impact in the solar system." Perhaps the two planets crashed, Mars survived, and the remnants of the other planet either showered the inner solar system with debris or continue to drift in the space between Mars and Jupiter we call the Asteroid Belt.

As this post developed, Pound360 dug into the origins of the Asteroid Belt and learned at Wikipedia that astronomers in the early nineteenth century postulated the Belt was formed by a shattered planet. (Pound360 figured that was about right, that we're about 200 years behind the science community.) Alas, there are two problems. One, material in the asteroid belt varies too widely in chemical composition to have come from a single planet. Two, the combined mass of the entire asteroid belt is "a small fraction of the mass of the Earth's Moon."

PoundRant: Skin care beverages? We smell a joke.

2008-07-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

So there's a drink out there called Borba. No, not boba, that drink with the great big gell-ball things in them. Borba. It's "skin balance water." On the bottle, it claims to "diminish skin's dryness, sensitivity and roughness" (at least that's what it says on the lychee-flavored bottle that Pound360 tested).

It's expensive, too. The bottle we got was on sale for $2.50 (which, we believe was 50 percent off). It tasted okay. Zero calories. But we didn't notice whether or not our skin was any less dry, sensitive or rough.

Now, we wouldn’t argue that this stuff is useless. We're pretty sure if you drink, say, 10 bottles of Borba a day, there would be an impact on skin health (it's tough to tell because it only says to drink Borba "daily" on the bottle -- but neglects to say how much daily -- to "enhance skin").

To make sure consumers know what they're getting into, the manufacturers of this stuff should be required to say exactly how many bottles a day are required to maintain the advertised results. Yes, a big black sticker that says, "It is required that you drink 10 bottles a day of this stuff to get the advertised result." That way a consumer understands it will take $50 per day (if it actually takes 10 bottles daily to get the result) or $1,500 per month to get the same result that, say, you could get from an $8 bottle of skin moisturizer.

Scientists Stunned by Activity in Ancient Galaxy

2008-07-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Using an all-star lineup of telescopes (Hubble, Spitzer, Keck and others), astronomers studying a very, very distant galaxy are making some surprising findings. First, it's the brightest starburst-class galaxy discovered.

Also, a NASA press release claims at 12.3 billion light-years away it's the most distant galaxy ever found (however, last year, Pound360 heard astronomers had found a galaxy 13 billion light years away… but what's a few hundred million light years at these distances, right?). Since the universe is only 13.7 billion years old, astronomers are observing activity just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang.

As if all that weren’t enough, this galaxy is cranking out stars like nothing scientists have ever seen: 4,000 per year. Our galaxy only makes 10 stars per year. At the rate of 4,000 stars per year, the distant galaxy would reach the size of "the most massive ones we see today" in just 50 million years (a blink on the cosmic timescale).

The rate of star formation forces us to rethink what we know about how galaxies form. Conventional wisdom suggested galaxies grow by absorbing other, smaller galaxies (or stealing parts of bigger ones). But if galaxies can grow at 4,000 stars per year, they don't need to absorb anything to reach the sizes we're observing out there.

(Image courtesy NASA. And we have no idea what it is. It was in the press release so we thought we'd toss it in.)

Govt. Calculation for Value of Life Falls… Again

2008-07-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

When considering regulations, the government assigns a value to individual human lives to weigh the costs (how much it will take to enforce a regulation) and benefits (the combined value of all the lives saved). The value of an individual is determined by the EPA, and it’s fallen steadily from around $8 million in 2001 to $6.9 million this year, reports MSNBC.

Pound360 personally feels like a million bucks. Usually does. So we were pretty thrilled to hear we were worth seven-times that! But that’s neither here-nor-there…

Talk about adding insult to injury. Thanks EPA. As if it weren’t bad enough that housing prices are crashing, the stock market is in free fall, gas prices are up and it costs more to buy a sack of groceries.

Could the falling value of an American have anything to do with the falling value of the dollar? Maybe it’s the president who’s been in office since 2000?

"Some environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of changing the value to avoid tougher rules,” reports MSNBC.

The EPA gets their number from economists that “calculate the value based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks, and on how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks.”

Here's Why Pears Rot Faster than Apples

2008-07-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

Pears and apples seem similar enough. Compared to an orange or banana, pears and apples have a similar texture, taste kind of the same, have the same kind of skin and so on.

So why do pears rot so much faster? The biggest difference between the two, at first glance, is the shape. But that has nothing to do with it. It's all about the microscopic structure the fruits use to move oxygen from skin to core, according to a report at the BBC.

Using a "giant X-ray machine able to resolve features down to and below a thousandth of a millimeter," researchers found pears use a smooth network of channels whereas apples have "irregular cavities" used to pass oxygen around. Apples have "much less water… to slow the penetration of gas," too.

Global Warming Plagues Ocean's Precious Coral

2008-07-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

As atmospheric CO2 levels skyrocket, ocean water is warmer (by almost two degrees) and more acidic (30 percent more), and that's killing coral, reports the Nightly News.

According to the report, "One third of corals face extinction by 2050."

So what? Twenty-five percent of ocean species rely on coral for their survival. And one billion people rely on fish as their "primary source of protein."

Check out the video…

Cheney Ordered Climate Testimony Papers Slashed

2008-07-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Let's say you're second in command of the world's most powerful country -- or any country -- and you're given information that greenhouse gas is endangering the health of your citizens. What do you do? Here are some options:: A) Take action to cut greenhouse gasses; B) Ignore the info; C) Have the info manipulated so it doesn't say greenhouse gasses are deadly

Most well-adjusted, normal human beings would select A. But if you're the second most powerful person in the world, and your name is Dick Cheney, you pick C.

Pound360 would like to enact a new law. Anyone that voted for Bush/Cheney must pay double taxes over the next five years. The extra taxes would go towards ~~discounting the taxes of everyone else in the country~~ cleaning up the environment. Anyone that voted for Bush/Cheney twice should pay double taxes for 10 years.

Back to this business of manipulating climate testimony. Former EPA official Jason K. Burnett recently revealed Cheney's office "was deeply involved" in cutting half of Center for Disease Control and Prevention testimony last fall demonstrating climate change is harmful to people's health, reports ABC News.

According to the CDC, "manmade pollution is warming the Earth" and will both increase the spread of disease and cause injuries from severe weather.

Burnett (a "lifelong Democrat") was told by Cheney's Office to "remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change."

New Soyuz Drama Unfolds at Space Station

2008-07-12T12:01:00.000-07:00

In April, reentry of a Russian-made Soyuz spacecraft carrying three astronauts back to Earth from the International Space Station went terribly wrong, and nearly turned catastrophic. "The situation was on a razor's edge," said one Russian official.

That was the second troubled reentry in a row for Soyuz capsules and the third in the previous five years. Why should we care about a Russian space capsule blowing up on reentry? Since NASA is mothballing the shuttle fleet in 2010, Soyuz capsules will be the only way to commute to the Station for anybody from any country until 2015.

Soyuz problems so far have revolved around malfunction explosive bolts, "pyrobolts," which are supposed to separate the Soyuz' "propulsion module" from the "descent capsule." So to get to the bottom of the problem, an "audacious spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday" during which Station commander Sergey Volkov will saw through insulation on a Soyuz and remove an explosive bolt for examination, reports the NY Times.

The pyrobolt, which packs enough charge to blow somebody's hand off (or a hole in a spacesuit, or perhaps the side of the Space Station), will be placed in a "steel canister strong enough to contain the blast" and taken inside for examination.

Despite the risk, Space Station program officials on Earth said "We are confident that this is a very safe operation."

UPDATE: They got it! Safely.

Methane Hydrate: The Incredible Frozen Fuel

2008-07-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Japan is at the forefront of efforts to mine a frozen form of natural gas called methane hydrate reports CBS News. What’s bizarre is that the frozen stuff actually burns when it’s in ice form. Never mind that it could be a homegrown energy source for a country that’s been desperate for one for centuries. A few months ago, Pound360 blogged on this, but you have to see this…

Life may have emerged surprisingly soon after earth formed

2008-07-11T07:33:00.000-07:00

The best evidence we have right now is that life started on earth 3.5 billion years ago. But a new finding suggests it may have started as early as 4.2 billion years ago according to a report at ScienceDaily.

This is pretty surprising to Pound360 considering our best guess is that the earth is only 4.54 billion years old.

Scientists studying a 4.2 million-year-old diamond discovered in Australia noticed high concentrations of carbon 12, "a feature usually associated with organic life."

Strange Discovery Casts Moon's Accepted Origins in Doubt

2008-07-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom holds the moon was created when an object the size of Mars collided with the earth more than 4 billion years ago. Material ejected from the impact, the theory goes, would have eventually coalesced into the moon we see today.

(Interesting side note: a recent theory suggests the moon was accompanied by two mini-moons for a time after the collision.)

However, a new finding "throws at least a little water on the currently favored hypothesis concerning the moon's origin."

According to analysis of tiny pebbles retrieved during the Apollo 15 and 17 missions (yes, they're still pulling findings out of those missions!), the moon's crust contained 260 to 745 parts per million of water, the same amount as the Earth's upper mantle.

So what? Well, any water that may have ended up in the moon should have been vaporized in the collision that formed it. But Pound360 wonders if comets crashing into the primordial moon couldn't have done the trick. Well, that would be a lot of comets, eh? Before you laugh too hard, remember there are at least 1,500 comets still flying around our solar system.

Shasta home to last growing glaciers in U.S.

2008-07-10T12:00:00.001-07:00

Thanks to global warming, almost every glacier in the United States is in retreat. Every glacier, that is, except for the ones on Mt. Shasta in Northern California, reports CNN.

The reason: a warming Pacific Ocean has generated more precipitation at Shasta. The increased snowfall has outpaced glacier losses from a 1.8 degree rise in temps at the mountain. But Shasta is alone. The 498 glaciers and ice fields in the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains have been slashed by 50 percent over the last century. In fact, all U.S. glaciers have been shrinking.

How much longer can Shasta hold out? It's going to be difficult. The mountain needs an additional 20 percent bump in precipitation to keep up with the next 1.8 degree increase in temperatures.

If the glaciers hold out for another 50 to 75 years, they'll have another, more serious, issue to worry about. Shasta is almost due for an eruption. For the past 4,000 years, Shasta has erupted once every 250 to 300. The most recent eruption was 200 years ago.

Terrorism Paranoia Reportedly Kills 1,600 After 9/11

2008-07-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

According to a (unfortunately) short piece at Discover Magazine, 1,600 people died as a result of terrorism paranoia during 2002. According to the piece…

"In the aftermath of 9/11, many Americans were so afraid of flying that they chose to drive instead. That decision, based on the perceived threat of another airliner hijacking, led to 1,600 casualties in the following year."

This excerpt is part of, what appears to be, a super-short review of Daniel Gardner's book, "The Science of Fear."

What they don't explain is where that 1,600 number comes from. Is that the increase in traffic fatalities? Is that the number of fatalities that came out of the increased traffic on the highway?

Pound360 supposes you have to read the book to find out. What, is Discover Magazine publishing it? Why spare the details? Tell us more! Pound360 ain't book people.

First Ringed Moon Discovered

2008-07-09T12:00:00.002-07:00

NASA's Cassini mission to the Saturn system has uncovered another amazing find: rings around one of the gas giant's moons, reports Discover Magazine.

The moon, Rhea, has puzzled scientists. Not only should a moon not have the gravity needed to sustain rings, but Saturn's gravity should have pulled them away. That is, unless the rings formed recently. "It may be that the debris was kicked off recently enough that Saturn has not yet had a chance to destabilize it."

Cassini has already moved on, but it will be back to gather more data from Rhea in 2010.

Some of Pound360's past coverage of the Cassini mission:
‘Earth-Like’ Moon May Have Underground Ocean
Researchers Describe 'Chaotic' Saturn System
Space Probe Makes Daring Maneuver in Search of Life
Malfunction 'Undermines' Cassini's Bold Maneuver

Next-gen Toyota Prius outfitted with solar panels

2008-07-09T08:23:00.000-07:00

You might expect a car company with a successful car line to keep making the same thing over-and-over-and-over until sales crash and magazine headlines ask in bold, red letters, "What went wrong!?" At least, that's what you'd expect from a U.S. car company.

Over in Japan, car maker Toyota, however, is adding something cool to the 2009 Prius: solar panels, reports CNET's Crave blog (check out a pic of the car at that link, too).

No, the car's wheels won't be powered by the panels (it's not that cool), but the AC will be. Oh, the car will be able to park itself, too. Helps fight global warming. Draws power from the sun. AND parks itself? What a car.

Air Conditioning Vs. Rolled-Down Windows

2008-07-08T12:00:00.001-07:00

Slate's Green Lantern confronts the question, "Does it really save gas to roll down your windows instead of flipping on the AC?" The answer is yes.

But the savings are so small, so only the cheapest of cheapskates will roll forgo air conditioning to save money.

Then again, there's the environmental perspective. If everyone shut off the AC and rolled down their windows, the miniscule individual savings would add up to big aggregate savings.

According to Slate, "AC can cut fuel economy by anywhere from 3 percent to 10 percent." When it's really hot outside, the cut can run as deep as 20 percent. In the end, they suggest, "you should save a few gallons of gas over the course of the summer."

If you're interested in conserving, they offer a good rule of thumb: "Keep the windows down while on city streets, then resort to air conditioning when you hit the highway."

Note that, as your speed increases, the drag from open windows makes your engine work harder.

Dried vs. Fresh Fruit

2008-07-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

Basically, fresh fruit wins. Of course. Yes, dried fruit packs more fiber and nutrients into a smaller package (the same package, basically, without the water), but a number of nutrients (like iron and vitamin C) are lost in the drying process, reports the NY Times. For example, drying apricots wipes out 75 percent of their iron and 95 percent of their vitamin C.

100 Years Later, Mysterious Tunguska Event Continues to Amaze

2008-07-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

What annihilated 830 square miles of forest in Siberia 100 years ago? On the centennial anniversary, there's a bunch of coverage out there of the event: from the NY Times' rambling, boring coverage to Discover magazine's more succinct and fascinating piece and everything in between (here's a piece from Scientific American with lots of pics).

Here are some pretty amazing details from the Discover Magazine piece:

The explosion likely occurred four to six miles above the Earth's surface
The culprit was probably a meteor less than 100 feet across
Moving at 21,000 mph, the rock unleashed a blast 1000-times more powerful than an atom bomb (somewhere between 10 and 15 megatons of TNT)
Light from the event was visible as far away as London. And it was more than just a flash. "Londoners could still read their newspapers by the mysterious light in the night sky a day or so later."
No extraterrestrial material was ever recovered from the blast zone
Some speculate the explosion was caused by "an enormous upwelling of methane gas from beneath the Earth's crust."

Coffee Aroma Reduces Stress in Lab Tests

2008-07-07T12:00:00.000-07:00

Pound360 is a bit skeptical of this story since is smacks of new age pseudo-science. But researchers have found the aroma of coffee has a stress-relieving affect on sleep-deprived lab rats, reports WebMD (via CBS).

These are real affects, too. In the rats' brains, activity in 17 genes and protein changes were detected.

We suppose it makes some sense. When you smell something, your nose is picking up particles from the air. So it's possible those particles could make their way into your blood stream and affect the body's chemistry. But if it's that simple, what are the hundreds (thousands?) of other smells we experience over the course of a day doing to our bodies?

Human Waste? Global Warming? China has an Olympic-Size Problem.

2008-07-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

A blanket of fluorescent-green algae, two-feet thick in some places, is plaguing part of the Chinese coast where Olympic events are to take place in just six weeks, reports the NBC Nightly News.

The slime is covering about 5,000 square miles, including a third of the Olympic boating race course.

According to the report, this type of algae bloom is "often the result of the discharge of untreated sewage." But of course, the Chinese government has another perspective. "Warmer ocean temperatures," they suggest, "are the cause of this mess."

China has "mobilized" 20,000 people to clean up this mess. By hand. Or sometimes with a rake. Do they get Olympic medals for that?

Check out the report below. You need to see this to fully comprehend it.