A rocket designed to replace the aging space shuttle is set for its first test-flight, despite questions over the future of the programme. If there are clear skies, the 100m-long Ares I-X will blast off from Nasa's Kennedy Space Center on 27 October. The two-minute flight will allow Nasa to test technology crucial for the development of the manned Ares I craft. A high-profile report has cast doubt on the future of the Ares rocket, which is intended to enter service in 2015.
If there are clear skies, the 100m-long Ares I-X will blast off from Nasa's Kennedy Space Center on 27 October.
The two-minute flight will allow Nasa to test technology crucial for the development of the manned Ares I craft.
A high-profile report has cast doubt on the future of the Ares rocket, which is intended to enter service in 2015.
HAWTHORNE, Calif. -- Asked what bugs them most about NASA outsourcing the job of flying crews to the international space station, some astronauts roll their eyes and say: "Dragon." That's the name of the capsule being built by SpaceX, the aerospace startup founded by Internet tycoon Elon Musk. It's a vehicle that's designed to be fully automated. .... f SpaceX and other companies can persuade the White House to allow them to launch humans into space, Dragon could be the next U.S. spacecraft to take astronauts to the space station after the shuttle is retired. A presidential panel examining NASA's plans said that the agency needs to find cheaper ways to get people into space. Using companies like SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the station, the panel said, could free NASA to pursue more-ambitious goals, such as building larger spaceships capable of exploring the solar system. .... A model of Dragon - which will initially be used to haul cargo - has already been put on a test stand and pushed and pulled and shaken. And it has been pressure- and noise-tested as safe for people. NASA makes no secret that it needs SpaceX after the shuttle is retired. Though humans can continue to ride to the station aboard Russianbuilt Soyuz rockets, about 88,000 pounds of supplies need to be hauled aloft between 2010 and 2015. .... In 2006, NASA signed a $278 million agreement with SpaceX to demonstrate it could fly cargo to the station. The company has met 14 of the contract's 22 milestones and has drawn all but $44 million of the funding. Last year, it was awarded 12 cargo-resupply missions for approximately $1.6 billion. But it's the company's desire to haul people that has grabbed attention and concern.
....
f SpaceX and other companies can persuade the White House to allow them to launch humans into space, Dragon could be the next U.S. spacecraft to take astronauts to the space station after the shuttle is retired. A presidential panel examining NASA's plans said that the agency needs to find cheaper ways to get people into space. Using companies like SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the station, the panel said, could free NASA to pursue more-ambitious goals, such as building larger spaceships capable of exploring the solar system.
A model of Dragon - which will initially be used to haul cargo - has already been put on a test stand and pushed and pulled and shaken. And it has been pressure- and noise-tested as safe for people. NASA makes no secret that it needs SpaceX after the shuttle is retired. Though humans can continue to ride to the station aboard Russianbuilt Soyuz rockets, about 88,000 pounds of supplies need to be hauled aloft between 2010 and 2015.
In 2006, NASA signed a $278 million agreement with SpaceX to demonstrate it could fly cargo to the station. The company has met 14 of the contract's 22 milestones and has drawn all but $44 million of the funding. Last year, it was awarded 12 cargo-resupply missions for approximately $1.6 billion. But it's the company's desire to haul people that has grabbed attention and concern.
Of course, Ares isn't a French word at all, but is Greek for the god of blood-lust.
Just sayin' Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
The German Finance Minister who has a hard line on tax havens is especially unpopular the Swiss, and he is not alone. His compatriots who have chosen to live in Switzerland are often criticized for being too loud, too pushy, and too arrogant. A new "integration course" in Zürich is aiming to change all that. The Germans are coming. They enter the room smiling a bit bashfully, and speaking softly. They don't fit the stereotype now. No one is talking too loudly. Perhaps they figure, our reputation is marred enough as it is. After all, they are foreigners and immigrants who want to be accepted as members of Swiss society. It's a little before 7pm in Zürich. Welcome to the "Integration Evening for Germans in Switzerland." Surprisingly, the first page in the batch of handouts lying on the table reads "Grüezi ('hello') Rubber-Necks. Why the Germans sometimes tick us off." Rubber-necks? The epithet refers to German medical interns who are always nodding vigorously when engaged in conversation with chief physicians. But in a more general context, it denotes the opportunistic manner of the Germans, at least in the eyes of the Swiss. Christiana Baldauf greets the guests. We came to the conclusion that a course like this was needed, begins the head of the Zürich Office for Cross-Cultural Issues, because Switzerland isn't just another German state, as some immigrants seem to think, but a real foreign country.
The German Finance Minister who has a hard line on tax havens is especially unpopular the Swiss, and he is not alone. His compatriots who have chosen to live in Switzerland are often criticized for being too loud, too pushy, and too arrogant. A new "integration course" in Zürich is aiming to change all that.
The Germans are coming. They enter the room smiling a bit bashfully, and speaking softly. They don't fit the stereotype now. No one is talking too loudly. Perhaps they figure, our reputation is marred enough as it is. After all, they are foreigners and immigrants who want to be accepted as members of Swiss society.
It's a little before 7pm in Zürich. Welcome to the "Integration Evening for Germans in Switzerland." Surprisingly, the first page in the batch of handouts lying on the table reads "Grüezi ('hello') Rubber-Necks. Why the Germans sometimes tick us off." Rubber-necks? The epithet refers to German medical interns who are always nodding vigorously when engaged in conversation with chief physicians. But in a more general context, it denotes the opportunistic manner of the Germans, at least in the eyes of the Swiss.
Christiana Baldauf greets the guests. We came to the conclusion that a course like this was needed, begins the head of the Zürich Office for Cross-Cultural Issues, because Switzerland isn't just another German state, as some immigrants seem to think, but a real foreign country.
A growing number of people are taking LSD and other psychedelic drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy to help them cope with a variety of conditions including anorexia nervosa, cluster headaches and chronic anxiety attacks. The emergence of a community that passes the drugs between users on the basis of friendship, support and need - with money rarely involved - comes amid a resurgence of research into the possible therapeutic benefits of psychedelics. This is leading to a growing optimism among those using the drugs that soon they may be able to obtain medicines based on psychedelics from their doctor, rather than risk jail for taking illicit drugs. Among those in Britain already using the drugs and hoping for a change in the way they are viewed is Anna Jones (not her real name), a 35-year-old university lecturer, who takes LSD once or twice a year. She fears that without an occasional dose she will go back to the drinking problem she left behind 14 years ago with the help of the banned drug. LSD, the drug synonymous with the 1960s counter-culture, changed her life, she says. "For me it was the catalyst to give up destructive behaviour - heavy drinking and smoking. As a student I used to drink two or three bottles of wine, two or three days a week, because I didn't have many friends and didn't feel comfortable in my own skin.
The emergence of a community that passes the drugs between users on the basis of friendship, support and need - with money rarely involved - comes amid a resurgence of research into the possible therapeutic benefits of psychedelics. This is leading to a growing optimism among those using the drugs that soon they may be able to obtain medicines based on psychedelics from their doctor, rather than risk jail for taking illicit drugs.
Among those in Britain already using the drugs and hoping for a change in the way they are viewed is Anna Jones (not her real name), a 35-year-old university lecturer, who takes LSD once or twice a year. She fears that without an occasional dose she will go back to the drinking problem she left behind 14 years ago with the help of the banned drug.
LSD, the drug synonymous with the 1960s counter-culture, changed her life, she says. "For me it was the catalyst to give up destructive behaviour - heavy drinking and smoking. As a student I used to drink two or three bottles of wine, two or three days a week, because I didn't have many friends and didn't feel comfortable in my own skin.
While the Well-we-get-to-come-back-and=try-again part of me says "What the heck", the Gee-this-has-a-lot-of-potential-for-a-lot-o-hurt-and-lost-potential part of me shudders.
Eventually, I believe, we'll all find the logic of the spirit. But I would rather find a way to get those with too much turmoil a quiet place to settle down in, instead of handing them sledge hammers and hand grenades. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Modern Homo sapiens is still evolving. Despite the long-held view that natural selection has ceased to affect humans because almost everybody now lives long enough to have children, a new study of a contemporary Massachusetts population offers evidence of evolution still in action. A team of scientists led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns suggests that if the natural selection of fitter traits is no longer driven by survival, perhaps it owes to differences in women's fertility. "Variations in reproductive success still exist among humans, and therefore some traits related to fertility continue to be shaped by natural selection," Stearns says. That is, women who have more children are more likely to pass on certain traits to their progeny. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2008.)... Douglas Ewbank, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania who undertook the statistical analysis for the study, which was published Oct. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says that because cultural factors tend to have a much more prominent impact than natural selection in the shaping of future generations, people tend to write off the effect of evolution. "Those changes we predict for 2409 could be wiped out by something as simple as a new school-lunch program. But whatever happens, it's likely that in 2409, Framingham women will be 2 cm shorter and 1 kg heavier than they would have been without natural selection. Evolution is a very slow process. We don't see it if we look at our grandparents, but it's there." Other recent genetic research has backed up that notion. One study, published in PNAS in 2007 and led by John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that some 1,800 human gene variations had become widespread in recent generations because of their modern-day evolutionary benefits. Among those genetic changes, discovered by examining more than 3 million DNA variants in 269 individuals: mutations that allow people to digest milk or resist malaria and others that govern brain development. (Watch TIME's video "Darwin and Lincoln: Birthdays and Evolution.") But not all evolutionary changes make inherent sense. Since the Industrial Revolution, modern humans have grown taller and stronger, so it's easy to assume that evolution is making humans fitter. But according to anthropologist Peter McAllister, author of Manthropology: the Science of Inadequate Modern Man, the contemporary male has evolved, at least physically, into "the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet." Thanks to genetic differences, an average Neanderthal woman, McAllister notes, could have whupped Arnold Schwarzenegger at his muscular peak in an arm-wrestling match. And prehistoric Australian Aborigines, who typically built up great strength in their joints and muscles through childhood and adolescence, could have easily beat Usain Bolt in a 100-m dash.
A team of scientists led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns suggests that if the natural selection of fitter traits is no longer driven by survival, perhaps it owes to differences in women's fertility. "Variations in reproductive success still exist among humans, and therefore some traits related to fertility continue to be shaped by natural selection," Stearns says. That is, women who have more children are more likely to pass on certain traits to their progeny. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2008.)...
Douglas Ewbank, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania who undertook the statistical analysis for the study, which was published Oct. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says that because cultural factors tend to have a much more prominent impact than natural selection in the shaping of future generations, people tend to write off the effect of evolution. "Those changes we predict for 2409 could be wiped out by something as simple as a new school-lunch program. But whatever happens, it's likely that in 2409, Framingham women will be 2 cm shorter and 1 kg heavier than they would have been without natural selection. Evolution is a very slow process. We don't see it if we look at our grandparents, but it's there."
Other recent genetic research has backed up that notion. One study, published in PNAS in 2007 and led by John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that some 1,800 human gene variations had become widespread in recent generations because of their modern-day evolutionary benefits. Among those genetic changes, discovered by examining more than 3 million DNA variants in 269 individuals: mutations that allow people to digest milk or resist malaria and others that govern brain development. (Watch TIME's video "Darwin and Lincoln: Birthdays and Evolution.")
But not all evolutionary changes make inherent sense. Since the Industrial Revolution, modern humans have grown taller and stronger, so it's easy to assume that evolution is making humans fitter. But according to anthropologist Peter McAllister, author of Manthropology: the Science of Inadequate Modern Man, the contemporary male has evolved, at least physically, into "the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet." Thanks to genetic differences, an average Neanderthal woman, McAllister notes, could have whupped Arnold Schwarzenegger at his muscular peak in an arm-wrestling match. And prehistoric Australian Aborigines, who typically built up great strength in their joints and muscles through childhood and adolescence, could have easily beat Usain Bolt in a 100-m dash.
Possibly related um:
Modern Man Had Sex with Neanderthals What You Think of Prince Andrew Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
er, isn't it "'Is' humans still evolvinv?"
:>) ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
Brilliant CBS Investigation Gets BURIED by Media I just published a major swine flu update on Saturday about how CBS News investigative journalists exposed how misleading statistics are being used to panic the public into complying with the huge H1N1 swine flu vaccination program. Last week, CBS News published the results from a three-month long investigation into the swine flu. One would think this would have received MASSIVE media exposure since their findings are in direct conflict with what the government is publicly stating. Of major interest, as you can see on the video on the Saturday article, CBC investigative journalists went to the CDC to seek their help in clarifying the situation and answering outstanding questions but CDC officials refused. They would not cooperate and CBS had to do their own investigation. Even worse, after CBS compiled the data, the CDC refused to comment on it. What's this all about??? It can only make you wonder if the CDC is really interested in authentically serving the public good, or if, perhaps, it has been heavily influenced by outside corporate interests. This is not good. The only way that we can have an effective response to the reported H1N1 influenza outbreak is if the government is transparent with the data. We have simply not seen ANY evidence that government health agencies are willing to be transparent. In fact, all evidence points to the contrary. The CBS investigative report included state-by-state test results that revealed some VERY different facts from what the US Centers for Disease Control has been telling the American public. The CBS report found that H1N1 flu cases are NOT AT ALL as prevalent as feared. A CBS article even states: "If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn't have H1N1 flu.
Brilliant CBS Investigation Gets BURIED by Media
I just published a major swine flu update on Saturday about how CBS News investigative journalists exposed how misleading statistics are being used to panic the public into complying with the huge H1N1 swine flu vaccination program. Last week, CBS News published the results from a three-month long investigation into the swine flu. One would think this would have received MASSIVE media exposure since their findings are in direct conflict with what the government is publicly stating. Of major interest, as you can see on the video on the Saturday article, CBC investigative journalists went to the CDC to seek their help in clarifying the situation and answering outstanding questions but CDC officials refused. They would not cooperate and CBS had to do their own investigation. Even worse, after CBS compiled the data, the CDC refused to comment on it. What's this all about??? It can only make you wonder if the CDC is really interested in authentically serving the public good, or if, perhaps, it has been heavily influenced by outside corporate interests. This is not good. The only way that we can have an effective response to the reported H1N1 influenza outbreak is if the government is transparent with the data. We have simply not seen ANY evidence that government health agencies are willing to be transparent. In fact, all evidence points to the contrary. The CBS investigative report included state-by-state test results that revealed some VERY different facts from what the US Centers for Disease Control has been telling the American public. The CBS report found that H1N1 flu cases are NOT AT ALL as prevalent as feared. A CBS article even states: "If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn't have H1N1 flu.
I just published a major swine flu update on Saturday about how CBS News investigative journalists exposed how misleading statistics are being used to panic the public into complying with the huge H1N1 swine flu vaccination program.
Last week, CBS News published the results from a three-month long investigation into the swine flu. One would think this would have received MASSIVE media exposure since their findings are in direct conflict with what the government is publicly stating.
Of major interest, as you can see on the video on the Saturday article, CBC investigative journalists went to the CDC to seek their help in clarifying the situation and answering outstanding questions but CDC officials refused. They would not cooperate and CBS had to do their own investigation. Even worse, after CBS compiled the data, the CDC refused to comment on it.
What's this all about???
It can only make you wonder if the CDC is really interested in authentically serving the public good, or if, perhaps, it has been heavily influenced by outside corporate interests.
This is not good. The only way that we can have an effective response to the reported H1N1 influenza outbreak is if the government is transparent with the data. We have simply not seen ANY evidence that government health agencies are willing to be transparent. In fact, all evidence points to the contrary.
The CBS investigative report included state-by-state test results that revealed some VERY different facts from what the US Centers for Disease Control has been telling the American public. The CBS report found that H1N1 flu cases are NOT AT ALL as prevalent as feared. A CBS article even states:
"If you've been diagnosed "probable" or "presumed" 2009 H1N1 or "swine flu" in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn't have H1N1 flu.
