Category: Science
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Free trade may have finished off Neanderthals
This one for all the free-market lovers out there: Modern humans may have driven Neanderthals to extinction 30,000 years ago because Homo sapiens unlocked the secrets of free trade, say a group of US and Dutch economists. The theory could shed new light on the mysterious and sudden demise of the Neanderthals after over 260,000…
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Astronomers capture photo of extrasolar planet
John has helpfully pointed out that news has emerged of the ‘First directly imaged and confirmed companion to a sun-like star’. Exciting times, and only a matter of time before the technology of telescopes will improve so we can see the planets in much greater detail.
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Dress down to save Japan, PM says
I have to hand it to them, it is a good idea. Japan’s prime minister plans to dress down this summer, and wants millions of Japanese office workers to do the same. Junichiro Koizumi is asking workers to cast off their collars and ties in a national effort to use less energy on air conditioning.…
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An assignment from the Heritage Foundation
Kevin Drum has been given a curious assignment…in relation to an impending debate on an apparently growing number of scientists around the world who no longer believe that natural selection or chemistry, alone, can explain the origins of life. …please prepare suitably relevant definitions for the following words and phrases: *”Growing number” *”Scientists” *”Believe” *”Theory”…
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Study highlights global decline
This is all over the Internet, the BBC do a good job of rounding it up. The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth’s ability to sustain future generations. The report says the way society obtains its resources has caused irreversible changes that are degrading…
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NASA's Spitzer Marks Beginning of New Age of Planetary Science
And so it begins. For the first time light has been captured from two known planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. Within the next decade we will likely see new arrays of space telescopes built, that will not only be able to identify extra solar planets, but will be able to photograph and catalogue…
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13 things that do not make sense
Here is some interesting reading for a Sunday evening, the top 13 things in science that don’t really make sense. For example the Belfast homeopathy results. MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen’s University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where…
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Ocean heat store makes climate change inevitable
Some more fuel to the climate change debate: Meehl and his colleagues used two sophisticated computer models of global climate to predict what would happen under various scenarios for greenhouse gas emission controls, taking into account the oceanic time lag. Their most optimistic scenario – in which atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are capped at…
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What made an Airbus rudder snap in mid-air?
This story has been doing the rounds, including Caoimhe and Insta. I have watched several documentaries on American Airlines flight 587, people may remember it as the first crash in the US after September 11. It apparently was all down to pilot’s training, or being trained incorrectly. Over-using peddles in the cockpit, pilots were inadvertently…
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Titan Wars
The above photograph was taken by the first Earthlings to visit Titan after the recent catastrophic nuclear war. As we now know there were no survivors of the horrific conflict. The age old and proud Titan civilization is no more. At centre left can be seen the ground zero impact point, this had such a…