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Sunday, June 4, 2017

In an analysis published on Friday in Science, scientists announced data collected from the Curiosity Rover show that Mars’s Gale Crater was once a chemically stratified lake, meaning the aquatic environment differed markedly between deep and shallow water. According to the report, “all of the physical, chemical, and energetic conditions necessary to establish a habitable environment were present on Mars between ~3.8 billion and 3.1 billion years ago.”

Analysis shows the chemical index of alteration fluctuated over time in a way that suggested the lake varied between hot, wet periods and colder, drier periods. The shallow water would have been rich in oxidants brought in from the atmosphere and groundwater, and the deeper water would have been oxidant poor. Phosphates, carbon, nitrogen, iron and sulfur, indicating chemistry suitable for life, have also been found there in a variety of compounds.

Lead author Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University explained, “These were very different, co-existing environments in the same lake[…] This type of oxidant stratification is a common feature of lakes on Earth, and now we’ve found it on Mars. The diversity of environments in this Martian lake would have provided multiple opportunities for different types of microbes to survive.”

The scientists also evaluated the fineness of the sediment, meaning the sizes of individual particles of dirt, dust and sand. Curiosity found larger grains near the edges of the lake where sediments from incoming rivers and streams would have fed it, and smaller ones in what would have been the deep lakebed, which is consistent with particles dropping out of the water as the current slows down. “We could tell something was going on,” Hurowitz said in a statement. “What was causing iron minerals to be one flavor in one part of the lake and another flavor in another part of the lake? We had an ‘Aha!’ moment when we realized that the mineral information and the bedding-thickness information mapped perfectly onto each other in a way you would expect from a stratified lake with a chemical boundary between shallow water and deeper water.”

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota signed a bill into law on Thursday that requires the state to generate a significant amount of its energy needs from renewable sources.

The amount of power generated by wind turbines in the state stands now at 895 megawatts. An additional 5,000 megawatts of energy from renewable sources will need to be added to Minnesota’s electricity resources, which is roughly eight times more than the amount that currently comes from renewables.

The bill signed by the Governor requires energy companies to provide 25 percent of power from renewable sources by 2025.

Xcel Energy, which supplies approximately half of the electricity in the state, is required to provide 30 percent from renewable sources by 2020.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Australian Federal Police officers reportedly raided the home in Argenton, West of Newcastle, New South Wales of a man suspected of distibuting software to enable unauthorised access to pay TV services Foxtel and Austar.

A spokesperson for the Australian Federal Police said that officers seized computer equipment, including an “external hardware drive”. The spokesperson said police were assisted by Foxtel’s fraud invesigators and computer forensic experts from Ferrier Hodgson.

Debra Richards, Executive Director of the Australian Subscription Television Association, the organisation which represents the interests of Australian pay TV service providers, said, “Industry members are working cooperatively through ASTRA to address a problem that results in lost revenue and resources that would otherwise be used to grow the Australian television and production industries.”

“The real victims here are the consumers who are being hoodwinked into being involved in a criminal activity, often paying more than they would otherwise for a legitimate service,” she said.

Monday, October 30, 2017

On Friday Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a decree to change the country’s official script for the Kazakh language from Cyrillic script to Latin-based script. The president announced signing the decree on his official website.

Per the decree, “a gradual transition of the Kazakh alphabet to the Latin-based script” is expected through 2025. Kazakh is currently written in a derived version of Cyrillic script, with their alphabet consisting of 42 characters, of which 33 characters which can be found in the Russian language. The other nine characters are for sounds used in Kazakh. Asserting modernisation, the ministry of foreign affairs said, “[Latin] is used by approximately 70 percent of all countries, making it an essential part of communicating across the globe, especially in terms of technology, business, science and education”.

The language has been written in Cyrillic script for about 77 years, after it replaced Latin script in 1940, Back then, the modern-day Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union, and Latin script was used for Kazakh since 1929. Before that, Kazakh was written in Arabic.

Countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which also became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, had switched from Cyrillic characters to Latin characters after gaining independence. In April, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been in power since the Soviet collapse in 1991, said, “By the end of 2017, after consultation with academics and representatives of the public, a single standard for the new Kazakh alphabet and script should be developed”. He called using Cyrillic script “political”.

Cyrillic script is used to write the Russian language, the second official language of Kazakhstan. Russians form a large ethnic group in the country, and the 2009 census indicated about 85% of the Kazakh population were Russian-fluent, while about 62 percent of the population could speak and write in Kazakh fluently.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Solar Systems Pty Ltd, Hawthorn, Victoria, have announced an agreement with Boeing Australia Ltd for supply of Spectrolab solar cells. The agreement will result in the supply of 500,000 cells, capable of generating 11MW of electricity.

Spectrolab produces multi-junction solar cells, originally designed for powering satellites. The solar cells are three times more efficient than the cells used in typical domestic solar panels, and are capable of converting light energy to electrical energy with up to 34% efficiency according to NREL’s National Centre for Photovoltaics. Solar Systems utilise Spectrolab’s multi-junction solar cells to increase the output of their dish systems.

Solar Systems have already trialed the cells in one of their CS500 concentrating solar dishes installed at a solar power station in Hermannsburg, Central Australia, established to reduce the consumption of diesel in the remote community. Simply replacing the existing cells with the Spectrolab multi-junction solar cells increased output from 24kW to 34kW.

Solar Systems is planning to use the technology in a solar power station it will build in northern Victoria, with a capacity of 154MW.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

A medical center, once the site of intense controversy over abortion in the 1990s, which has been vacant for nearly 10 years, was imploded in Buffalo, New York at 6:00 a.m. [eastern time] today.

Several streets in about a 2 block radius were shut down until the implosion occurred and the dust settled. At least 200 people watched in nearby parking lots and on rooftops of buildings to get a good look at the implosion.

The ground and the walls of buildings shook as the dynamite detonated and a brief shock wave could be felt as far as 1 1/2 blocks away. Witnesses even reported small pieces of bricks and concrete falling out of some buildings, but no one was injured.

The building, owned by Kaleida Health, once housed several medical offices, including an abortion clinic. Hundreds of people protested about the abortions outside the center during the Spring of Life Movement in 1992, but other medical procedures and treatments were also part of the center’s services. It was built in 1965 and was 14 floors tall.

Kaleida Health had the building imploded so that the current Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus can be expanded. Several other major medical facilities are also in the same area including Roswell Cancer Institute and Buffalo General Hospital.

“This implosion of 50 High Street will continue the explosion of growth on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. This event will ensure future opportunity for investment, development and growth,” said the CEO and President of Kaleida Health in a statement on Thursday.

==Sources==

• Melinda Miller & Sharon Linstedt. “Onlookers watch from rooftops as 50 High St. implodes” — Buffalo News, May 26, 2007
• “50 High Street Gone in a Flash” — WGRZ, May 26, 2007
• “Medical campus building to go boom” — MSN Money, May 24, 2007