Topic: Space - on July 19, 2016 at 4:20:00 PM CEST
The World's Most Powerful Telescope Just Discovered 1,230 New Galaxies
The MeerKAT First Light image of the sky, released today by Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, shows unambiguously that MeerKAT is already the best radio telescope of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Array Release 1 (AR1) being celebrated today provides 16 of an eventual 64 dishes integrated into a working telescope array. It is the first significant scientific milestone achieved by MeerKAT, the radio telescope under construction in the Karoo that will eventually be integrated into the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). In a small patch of sky covering less than 0.01 percent of the entire celestial sphere, the MeerKAT First Light image shows more than 1300 galaxies in the distant Universe, compared to 70 known in this location prior to MeerKAT. “Based on the results being shown today, we are confident that after all 64 dishes are in place, MeerKAT will be the world’s leading telescope of its kind until the advent of SKA,” according to Professor Justin Jonas, SKA South Africa Chief Technologist.
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Topic: Space - on July 19, 2016 at 4:17:00 PM CEST
Kepler Confirms 100+ New Exoplanets
Astronomers have confirmed another 100 of Kepler's more than 3,000 candidate exoplanets. Phys.org reports: "One of the most interesting set of planets discovered in this study is a system of four potentially rocky planets, between 20 and 50 percent larger than Earth, orbiting a star less than half the size and with less light output than the Sun. Their orbital periods range from five-and-a-half to 24 days, and two of them may experience radiation levels from their star comparable to those on Earth. Despite their tight orbits -- closer than Mercury's orbit around the sun -- the possibility that life could arise on a planet around such a star cannot be ruled out, according to Crossfield." Because the host star as well as many of these other confirmed exoplanets are red dwarf stars, the possibility of life is reduced because the star and its system is likely to have a less rich mix of elements compared to our yellow G-type Sun.
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Topic: Space - on July 19, 2016 at 4:16:00 PM CEST
How Do We Beam Pictures Back From Jupiter? It Takes A Village
Before Juno, the uncrewed spacecraft that NASA successfully inserted into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, there was Cassini, a similar multimillion-dollar amalgam of scaffolding, solar panels and scientific instruments that entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. Cassini’s success helped pave the way for Juno, but in 1992, a congressional budget cut nearly grounded that earlier mission before it even reached the launchpad. Tasked with the suddenly urgent job of making Cassini cheaper to build, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory took an ax to the bits that made the engineers nervous — the moving parts.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on July 19, 2016 at 4:14:00 PM CEST
Rätselhafter Riesendeal: Japanischer Milliardär kauft Chip-Designer ARM
Telekomkonzern Softbank übernimmt britische ARM Es ist ein Milliarden-Deal, der Rätsel aufwirft: Der japanische Konzern Softbank kauft sich den führenden Entwickler von Smartphone-Chips. Möglicherweise geht es um das zukünftige Geschäft mit unzähligen vernetzten Geräten im "Internet der Dinge". Die Firma, von der die Chip-Architektur in fast allen Smartphones und Tablets auf der Welt stammt, wird bald einem wagemutigen japanischen Milliardär gehören. Diese Vorstellung ist an sich schon denkwürdig, doch der am Montag angekündigte Deal birgt auch noch ein großes Rätsel: Was will Masayoshi Son überhaupt mit dem Chip-Designer ARM aus Großbritannien? Ins bisherige Kerngeschäft seines Tech-Konglomerats Softbank – Mobilfunk und Beteiligungen an Online-Diensten – lässt sich ARM jedenfalls nicht einfach so einbinden.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on July 19, 2016 at 4:11:00 PM CEST
ARM founder says Softbank deal is 'sad day' for UK tech
The founder of ARM Holdings has told the BBC he believes its imminent sale to Japanese technology giant Softbank is "a sad day for technology in Britain". Hermann Hauser said he was "very sad" at news of the £24bn ($32bn) takeover which was announced on Monday morning. The Cambridge-based firm designs microchips used in most smartphones, including Apple's and Samsung's. ARM, which was founded in 1990, employs more than 3,000 people. Mr Hauser called ARM Holdings his proudest achievement.
bbc.com The sell-off of British businesses like ARM must stop
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Topic: weiss nicht - on July 17, 2016 at 1:37:00 PM CEST
Dances of the Planets
The planets in the heavens move in exquisite orbital patterns, dancing to the Music of the Cosmos. There is more mathematical and geometric harmony than we realize. The idea for this article is from a book Larry Pesavento shared with me. The book, 'A Little Book of Coincidence' by John Martineau, illustrates the orbital patterns and several of their geometrical relationships. . Take the orbits of any two planets and draw a line between the two planet positions every few days. Because the inner planet orbits faster than the outer planet, interesting patterns evolve. Each planetary pairing has its own unique dance rhythm. For example, the Earth-Venus dance returns to the original starting position after eight Earth years. Eight Earth years equals thirteen Venus years. Note that 8 and 13 are members of the Fibonacci number series. Earth: 8 years * 365.256 days/year = 2,922.05 days Venus: 13 years * 224.701 days/year = 2,921.11 days (ie. 99.9%) Watching the Earth-Venus dance for eight years creates this beautiful five-petal flower with the Sun at the center. (5 is another Fibonacci number.)
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Topic: AUSTRIA - on July 17, 2016 at 1:35:00 PM CEST
"Krone": "Mann von einer Ex-Grünen ließ Hunde verenden"
Natürlich hätte die Story mehr hergegeben, wenn es sich nicht um den Mann und nicht um eine Ex-Grüne gehandelt hätte Wo immer das Böse sein scheußliches Haupt erhebt, können wir gelassen bleiben, wacht doch die heilig-heimische Dreifaltigkeit von "Krone", FPÖ und Polizei darüber, dass es nicht triumphiere. Dass dabei nicht immer mit Samthandschuhen gekämpft werden kann, muss jeder und jedem klar sein, dem das Gute noch etwas bedeutet. Um es zu pflegen, griff die "Krone" am Mittwoch zu dem schweren Geschütz nicht der einfachen, nein, gleich der doppelten Sippenhaftung. FPÖ-Abgeordnete empört: "Mann von einer Ex-Grünen ließ Hunde im Auto verenden."
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Topic: DRUGS - on July 17, 2016 at 1:30:00 PM CEST
One striking chart shows why pharma companies are fighting legal marijuana
There's a body of research showing that painkiller abuse and overdose are lower in states with medical marijuana laws. These studies have generally assumed that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. But that's always been just an assumption. Now a new study, released in the journal Health Affairs, validates these findings by providing clear evidence of a missing link in the causal chain running from medical marijuana to falling overdoses. Ashley and W. David Bradford, a daughter-father pair of researchers at the University of Georgia, scoured the database of all prescription drugs paid for under Medicare Part D from 2010 to 2013.
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Topic: ART - on July 16, 2016 at 6:25:00 PM CEST
Ulysses and the Lie of Technological Progress
How a broken Twitter adaption of James Joyce’s novel reveals the secret of Bloomsday. Today is Bloomsday, a folk holiday adopted to celebrate the life and work of the Irish writer James Joyce, in particular his 1922 novel Ulysses. The name derives from the book’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom, one of the Dubliners the book follows through the day of June 16, 1904. First celebrated mere years after the novel’s publication, Bloomsday festivities have been enjoyed for decades. Today, Bloomsday is marked globally in various ways, but especially in Dublin, where it has taken on the character of a citywide festival and as a pilgrimage for aspiring high modernists worldwide. In our age of fast-obsolescing smartphones and apps, it’s hard to find fault in a makeshift holiday that celebrates a book nearly a century old. But nevertheless, it’s also troublesome to observe Bloomsday as a rote paean to Joyce and Ulysses.
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Topic: STRANGE - on July 16, 2016 at 6:13:00 PM CEST
For 90 years, lightbulbs were designed to burn out. Now that's coming to LED bulbs.
In 1924, representatives of the world's leading lightbulb manufacturers formed Phoebus, a cartel that fixed the average life of an incandescent bulb at 1,000 hours, ensuring that people would have to regularly buy bulbs and keep the manufacturers in business. But hardware store LED bulbs have a typical duty-cycle of 25,000 hours -- meaning that the average American household will only have to buy new bulbs ever 42 years or so.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on July 16, 2016 at 6:10:00 PM CEST
The Curious Case of the Bog Bodies
One Saturday in the spring of 1950, brothers Viggo and Emil Højgaard from the small village of Tollund, in Denmark, were cutting peat in a local bog when they uncovered a dead man. He looked as though he had only just passed away. His eyelashes, chin stubble, and the wrinkles in his skin were visible; his leather cap was intact. Suspecting murder, the brothers called the police in nearby Silkeborg, but the body wasn’t what it seemed. Cracking the case required a special breed of forensic analysis. Famed Danish archaeologist Peter V. Glob, from the University of Aarhus, arranged for the body, along with its bed of peat, to be excavated and transferred to the Silkeborg Museum in a giant wooden box. An examination of the contents of the dead man’s stomach suggested—and radiocarbon dating later confirmed—that he had lived during the third century B.C., in the pre-Roman Iron Age. For more than 2,000 years, Tollund Man, as the corpse became known, had lain at the bottom of the bog, nearly untouched by time, as all of recorded history marched forward over his head.
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Topic: Phone - on July 16, 2016 at 6:08:00 PM CEST
Are We All Becoming Pavlov’s Dogs?
Blame your smartphone (and Steve Jobs).
Scenario 1: Your smartphone buzzes. Without a moment’s hesitation you grab it out of your pocket and check the alert: Was it an email? A test? A Facebook notification? Or just a phantom vibration? Scenario 2: You looked at your phone a few minutes ago, but now you're standing in line at the market and grab it to check for messages even though your phone has not beeped, vibrated, or flashed. Scenario 3: You posted on Facebook a few minutes ago and although you have not been notified of any responses, likes, or whatever, you tap the icon and scroll through the newest posts. You see that your best friend from high school just posted a photo of her trip to Maui, and you smile when you become the first to “like” it. Scenario 4: You are at dinner with a group of friends and you have all agreed to put your phones on silent and stash them away. After the appetizer, you get up to go to the restroom (even though you really don’t need to go) and upon opening the restroom door, you grab your phone and check the sports scores, your email, or whatever. Looking around you notice that every other person in the restroom is doing the same.
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