To piss off petroleum providers – Urine-powered cars, homes and personal electronic devices could be available in six months. No, you won’t be pee into a battery: urine will be collected from cattle, just as it was collected from pregnant mares when hormone replacement therapy was being prescribed for post-menopausal women. Soon we’ll use cows for more than milk: just one of them can provide enough energy to supply hot water for 19 houses.
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Astronomers observed a huge scar on Jupiter on July 20, thought to be caused by a comet or asteroid impact. Now a similar scar has appeared on Venus. Because Venus is an inner planet, it is less likely that this scar was caused by an incoming object. However, if it is volcanic in origin, it would have been the result of an extraordinary eruption. It is also possible that it was caused by a wave of charged particles from the sun, but this is unlikely because no such wave was recorded on earth. If it is the result of a strike by space rock, it could mean that a significant number of undetected large objects are presently entering our solar system, and are reaching the inner planets.read more
than our politicians – Humans aren’t always rational, but ants almost always are. Maybe we have something to learn from them. If we go extinct, insects may end up being the next dominant species here on earth.
This is not the case of humans being “stupider” than ants. Humans and animals simply often make irrational choices when faced with very challenging decisions. Researcher Stephen Pratt says, “This paradoxical outcome is based on apparent constraint: most individual ants know of only a single option, and the colony’s collective choice self-organizes from interactions among many poorly-informed ants.”
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Stressed? Most of us are at one time or another, and the last thing we need is for our immune systems to let us down during busy times. But if you’re under stress, you’ll get sick more often. And if you get Swine Flu, you may have to deal with the military: the Defense Dept. wants to establish regional teams of soldiers to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall.
On the CNN website, Barbara Starr reports on a plan to have the military work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Since by “military,” we assume they mean the National Guard, the question is: can they spare them from the wars we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?
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