Guest Post – Page 869 – Shamskm: A site to exchange knowledge and solutions

What Do Sunsets Look Like From Other Planets?

By Guest PostJanuary 17, 2012ScienceAlien, aspen, astrophysicist, atmosphere, colorado, conference, exoclimes, exoclimes 2012, extrasolar planets, frederic pont, fundamental problems, Galaxy, gloomy orange, hd 189, hd 189733 b, hd 209, hd 209458 b, Hubble Space Telescope, modern astronomy, neutral sodium lines, osiris, planet forming discs, planetary atmospheres, planets, sodium street lighting, solar system, spectral, sun, sunset, sunset images, transmission spectrum, university of exeter, website

A University of Exeter astrophysicist has shown what sunsets look like on planets outside our solar system.

He has worked out the colour of sunsets on two planets: HD 209458 b and HD 189733 b, known as ‘extrasolar planets’ because they are outside our solar system.

Extrasolar planets orbit stars, in a similar way to the Earth orbiting the Sun. Professor Frédéric Pont of the University of Exeter has used the extrasolar planets’ ‘transmission spectrum’, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, to work out the colour of the ‘sunsets’ created by these stars.

Writing on the website ExoClimes.com, where he has posted the two sunset images he has produced, Professor Pont said: “Unlike its sister planet HD ’189, the planet HD ’209 (‘Osiris’) has a sunset that looks truly alien. The star is white outside the atmosphere, since its temperature is close to that of the Sun. It then acquires a bluish tinge as it sinks deeper, because the absorption by the broad wings of the neutral sodium lines (the spectral lines responsible for the gloomy orange of sodium street lighting) remove the red and orange from the star light. (more…)

The Naked Truth: Exclusive Survey from FITNESS Magazine & Yahoo! Shine Reveals How Men & Women Really Feel about Their Bodies

By Guest PostJanuary 17, 2012Health, Technologybody language, fitness magazine, naked photo, nude attitude, sexted, yahoo shine

57% of Women Polled Think They Look Fat Naked

Thighs ranked as #1 Most Hated Body Part; Cleavage ranked as #1 Body Part To Flaunt Among Women

However, 63% of adults admit to walking around their home naked

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & NEW YORK — It’s no wonder losing weight continues to dominate New Year’s resolutions—a new survey from FITNESS Magazine and Yahoo! Shine reveals that 57% of women polled think they look fat naked and 81% of adults have a body part they hate. The exclusive survey asked 1,500 women and men to bare it all about how they feel about being naked. (more…)

MSU Researchers Identify Path to Treat Parkinson’s Disease at Its Inception

By Guest PostJanuary 17, 2012Healthalpha synuclein proteins, cellular damage, folding, parkinsons disease

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Imagine if doctors could spot Parkinson’s disease at its inception and treat the protein that triggers it before the disease can sicken the patient. (more…)

Some Dating Websites Do Not Remove GPS Data From Photos, CU-Boulder Students Find

By Guest PostJanuary 17, 2012Culture, Technologyage of facebook, canadian company, catholicsingles, chips, dating websites, global positioning system, gps, gps coordinates, information, interactions, kai larsen, location data, match, metadata, pictures, plentyoffish, privacy, relationship, research project, successfulmatch, university of colorado boulder, users

While the majority of dating websites do a good job of managing the privacy of their users, a class research project at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business found that 21 of 90 dating websites the class examined did not properly remove location data from pictures uploaded by their users.

As a result of people taking more photographs with cameras and cell phones containing Global Positioning System chips, some dating website profile pictures contain GPS coordinates showing where a picture was taken, said Associate Professor Kai Larsen, who taught the class on Privacy in the Age of Facebook. When such information is not removed by the dating website, commonly available tools can be used to detect the location of a person’s residence or other locations frequented by the user. (more…)

Unlocking Cornwall’s Bronze Age past

By Guest PostJanuary 16, 2012Culturebronze age, bronze age boat, bronze age period, bronze axes, prehistoric boat, sewing technique, sewn plank boats

A modern day boat builder is being challenged to recreate the oldest boat ever found in western Europe, dating to around 2000 BC. (more…)

Scientists Prepare to Take First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole

By Guest PostJanuary 16, 2012Scienceabyss of space, albert einstein, alma, arizona, astrophysicists, atacama large millimeter array, atmosphere, black hole, black void, center of milky way, Chile, cosmic traffic jam, dan marrone, daniel stolte, dimitrios psaltis, earth, einstein, event horizon, event horizon telescope, extreme environment, field of gravity, game changer, general relativity, global array, hawaii, haystack observatory, maelstroms, mass, massachusetts institute of technology, mauna kea, mercury, Mexico, MIT, mt graham, nothingness, optical telescopes, plasma, radio telescopes, radio waves, shadow, sheperd doeleman, south pole, space and time, steward observatory, sun, supermassive black hole, theory of general relativity, tucson, ultra precise timing, universe, university of arizona, virtual telescope, water vapor, wavelengths

*The Event Horizon Telescope is an Earth-sized virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole will allow astrophysicists to put Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the test.*

Astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields across the world will convene in Tucson, Ariz. on Jan. 18 to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous.

The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, and Dan Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. (more…)

Predators Hunt for A Balanced Diet

By Guest PostJanuary 16, 2012Natureaarhus university, anchomenus dorsalis, ants, aphids, balance of nutrients, balanced diet, beetle larvae, butterfly larvae, calorie content, crickets, denmark, female beetles, food webs, fruit flies, garden insect, grasshoppers, ground beetle, kim jensen, massey university, moths, new zealand, nutritional value, offspring, omnivores, predators, predatory animals, slugs, university of exeter

Predators select their prey in order to eat a nutritionally balanced diet and give themselves the best chance of producing healthy offspring.

A University of Exeter and Oxford-led study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows for the first time that predatory animals choose their food on the basis of its nutritional value, rather than just overall calorie content.

An international team of scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford in the UK, University of Sydney (Australia), Aarhus University (Denmark) and Massey University (New Zealand) based their research on the ground beetle, Anchomenus dorsalis, a well-known garden insect that feasts on slugs, aphids, moths, beetle larvae and ants. (more…)

Four WHOI Scientists Contribute to Comprehensive Picture of the Fate of Oil from Deepwater Horizon Spill

By Guest PostJanuary 16, 2012Environment, Scienceairborne plume, autonomous underwater vehicle, benzene, christopher reddy, ctds, dan torres, deep-water, deepwater horizon, elizabeth kujawinski, environmental distribution, fluid, gas components, gulf of mexico, hydrocarbon flow rate, jeffrey seewald, macondo well, mass balance, methane, natural gas, noaa p 3 planes, oceanographic instrument, oil and gas, remotely operated vehicle, richard camilli, rov, sampling techniques, sentry, spill, spill rate, subsurface chemical data, tethys, thomas ryerson, well, whoi, woods hole oceanographic institution

A new study provides a composite picture of the environmental distribution of oil and gas from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It amasses a vast collection of available atmospheric, surface and subsurface chemical data to assemble a “mass balance” of how much oil and gas was released, where it went and the chemical makeup of the compounds that remained in the air, on the surface, and in the deep water.

The study, “Chemical data quantify Deepwater Horizon hydrocarbon flow rate and environmental distribution,” is published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. (more…)

Author Archives: Guest Post