The Daily Science Nugget...

[D. Allan]

"The skin supports its own ecosystems of microorganisms, including yeasts and bacteria, which cannot be removed by any amount of cleaning. Estimates place the number of individual bacteria on the surface of one square inch of human skin at 50 million .... Oily surfaces, such as the face, may contain over 500 million bacteria per square inch."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin#Hygiene

[D. Allan]

A Holstein's spots are like a fingerprint or snowflake. No two cows have exactly the same pattern of spots.

[D. Allan]

An average Holstein cow in the United States produces about 22,000 pounds (10,000 kg) of milk per annum. This is roughly equivalent to 2650 U.S. gallons. [! can that be true? over 7 gal./day? !]

The Holstein breed has one of the biggest gene pools world-wide and thus genetic progress has been faster than in other dairy breeds. For this reason it is the breed of choice for most dairy farmers worldwide. Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation, a Holstein bull born in the United States in 1965, fathered over 70,000 offspring through artificial insemination. His descendants were selected for their conformity to the breed's standards and their ability to produce large quantities of milk. - wikipedia.com

[D. Allan]

Quote:

Dark energy is a mysterious repulsive force that causes the universe to expand at an increasing rate. Investigators used Hubble to find that dark energy was already boosting the expansion rate of the universe as long as nine billion years ago. This picture of dark energy is consistent with Albert Einstein's prediction of nearly a century ago that a repulsive form of gravity emanates from empty space. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/cosmology/2006/52/

"A repulsive form of gravity" is a completely novel idea to me. Can anyone explain this?

[Amelia]

It's extremely ugly.

[D. Allan]

:)

[D. Allan]

Metric: pH

Range: 0-14 (no units)

Measures: Degree of acidity or alkalinity. It is a logarithmic scale expressing the concentration of Hydrogen ions in solution.

pH = -log10 [H+]

A solution is “acidic” if pH is less than 7 (Hydrogen ion concentration is greater than 10−7 M), “neutral” if pH equals 7 (Hydrogen ion concentration equals 10−7 M), and “alkaline” if pH greater than 7 (Hydrogen ion concentration is less than 10−7 M). As was pointed out here, pH measures intensity and not capacity. This is similar to temperature, which is actually a measure of how hot something is and not the amount of heat carried by a given material.-

http://www.scq.ubc.ca/ph-a-science-creative-quarterly-pin-up-no-2/

[D. Allan]

For two right-handed parents the chance of having a left-hand child is about 9%; for two left-handed parents there is a 26% chance for a left-handed child.

Some famous left-handed people:

Ludwig van Beethoven

Leonardo da Vinci

Albert Einstein

Benjamin Franklin

Bill Gates

Helen Keller

Paul MCartney

Babe Ruth

Bart Simpson

Oprah Winfrey

- The Washington Post

[D. Allan]

Why are some of us left-handed? There are two theories I've read about.

1. High levels of testosterone before birth could slow development of the left side of the brain, leaving the right side more developed - and the right side controls the left half of the body, so that by the time the left brain catchs up with the right, left-handedness is already a habit.

2. Genetics: some say research suggests that our lefties lack a certian gene that makes most of us right-handed.

[D. Allan]

Today is WORLD MOSQUITO DAY !

There are from 2,700 - 3,200 species (including 174 in the USA)

It is the female of the family which wants to drink our blood.

Antartica is the only place on Earth free of mosquitos.

[D. Allan]

Pyramids of numbers and pyramid of biomass. The pyramid of numbers is a useful way of representing a food chain as it shows how the number of consumers at each level decreases, with plants being the most numerous at the base of the pyramid and top carnivores the smallest group. Where the plant being eaten is a tree, however, the pyramid no longer works as a useful model. This is rectified by the use of the pyramid of biomass, where it is the mass of the levels rather than numbers that are represented.

http://www.allrefer.com/pictures/s4/p0014531-pyramid-of-numbers

[D. Allan]

The magnetic equator, or the line at which the attraction of both magnetic poles is equal. Along the aclinic line, a compass needle swinging vertically will settle in a horizontal position.

[D. Allan]

How Chimps Avoid Temptation

By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

ScienceNOW Daily News

22 August 2007

Most children practice this mental trick: When asked to wait patiently for a promised treat--say, an hour of television--they occupy themselves with a toy or a book. Researchers have now shown that chimpanzees engage in similar self-distraction, a finding that further blurs the cognitive and behavioral boundary between humans and other primates.

- http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/822/2

[D. Allan]

Astronomers have discovered a huge hole in the universe!

"WASHINGTON - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's an expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, ...."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070824/ap_on_sc/universe_hole

[John317]

Do you know where this "empty space" is? What part of the sky? Is it anywhere near the Orion? I have read that there is a huge empty space or something like a corridor in the Orion.

[Guest charis]

Quote:

Retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran said of the discovery: "This is incredibly important for something where there is nothing to it."

I'm not quite sure why, but I have an incredible urge to laugh at the above quote....

[D. Allan]

Do you know where this "empty space" is? What part of the sky? Is it anywhere near the Orion? I have read that there is a huge empty space or something like a corridor in the Orion.

You can read the whole paper at http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.0908v2.pdf

at the end of the paper are four images and two charts, beginning on page 11 pf the PDF document. let us know if you can understand where it is.

[D. Allan]

Quote:

Retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran said of the discovery: "This is incredibly important for something where there is nothing to it."

I'm not quite sure why, but I have an incredible urge to laugh at the above quote....

laughter - incredibly important for nothing where there is something to it - but credibly urgent for something with nothing to it ... huh? :)

[D. Allan]

Science Experts say 'artificial life' likely to be created in the next three to ten years.

the first link below shows a picture of artificial cell membranes - the first step in creating life

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2007/08/19/artificial_life_likely_in_3_to_10_years/?fromrss=1&rss_id=Boston.com+%2F+News

this next link is an interesting read

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=69070

[John317]

I think the huge hole is close to the constellation Eridanus, located between Orion in the North, Cetus in the West and Fomax in the South. It covers an incredible, mind-boggling 6 to 10 billion light years.

[Amelia]

The area Jesus is to return from is Orion, correct?

[John317]

"December 16, 1848, the Lord gave me a view of the shaking of the powers of the heavens...The powers of heaven will be shaken at the voice of God. Then the sun, moon, and starts will be moved out of their places. They will not pass away, but be shaken by the voice of God. Dark heavy clouds came up, and clashed against each other. The atmosphere parted and rolled back; then we could look up through the open space in Orion, whence came the voice of God. The holy city will come down through that open space..." Christian Experience and Teachings of Ellen White, p. 111.

[D. Allan]

from The New York Times

Julius Wess, 72, Theoretical Physicist, Is Dead

By KENNETH CHANG

Published: August 27, 2007

Julius Wess, a theoretical physicist who plumbed the universe for unseen symmetries, including those in a theory that led to a prediction of a new class of fundamental particles, died Aug. 8 in Hamburg, Germany. He was 72.

The cause of death was a stroke, said Bruno Zumino, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who collaborated with Dr. Wess.

In 1973, Dr. Wess and Dr. Zumino published a paper that extracted ideas from an obscure, abstract theory that regarded fundamental particles as vibrating strings and applied them to mainstream particle physics.

“They came up with quantities that you could measure and you could observe,” said Roman W. Jackiw, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Fundamental particles fall into one of two groups known as fermions and bosons. The familiar constituents of matter like electrons, quarks and neutrinos are all fermions, while the particles that carry the fundamental forces like photons, which are particles of light, are bosons.

In the Wess-Zumino model, one of a group of theories more broadly known as supersymmetry, the distinction between fermions and bosons is blurred, with every fermion having a boson “superpartner” and vice versa. None of the supersymmetric partners, which would be much heavier, have been discovered yet, but that is one of the key targets for the Large Hadron Collider, which will be the world’s most powerful accelerator when it starts operating next year at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland.

“Julius was very hopeful that something might be found there,” Dr. Zumino said.

The supersymmetric particles are a leading candidate for filling in the dark matter of the universe, a component of the universe five times as plentiful as ordinary matter yet still undiscovered. Supersymmetry has also provided a way to tie gravity together with other fundamental forces.

“It has become the standard extension of what we think particle physics should be,” said William A. Bardeen, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

Born in 1934 in Austria, Julius Wess received his Ph.D. in physics in 1957 at the University of Vienna. During his graduate studies, he met Dr. Zumino, who was a visiting scientist there, through Dr. Wess’s adviser, Walter Thirring. “Walter told me there was this very good student and could I take care of him,” Dr. Zumino said. “Thirring was right. He was a very good student.”

Dr. Wess worked at CERN, and later as an associate professor at the Courant Institute of New York University in 1966. Two years later, he became a professor at Karlsruhe University in Germany.

In 1990, he became director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich.

After retiring, he worked for DESY, a German particle physics research center in Hamburg.

Only two weeks before his death, Dr. Wess gave a talk at a supersymmetry conference at Karlsruhe, recounting the history of how he and Dr. Zumino introduced the idea of supersymmetry.

[D. Allan]

Beethoven Dead From Lead?

By Stephen Ornes

ScienceNOW Daily News

28 August 2007

In the days following the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, friends and admirers came to view his body—and clip his hair for keepsakes. Recent chemical analysis of one of those purloined locks has now led scientists to conclude that medical treatment might have hastened Beethoven's demise by worsening his lead poisoning.

You may read more at http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/828/1

[D. Allan]

A new study finds that the human brain reacts less strongly to emotionally negative stimuli as we age, in effect making us more responsive to all things positive and less responsive to the dark and dismal.

- http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/831/1