Mereja

Author: Serkadis

  • Caligraphy Cats: Elegant Simplicity

    CalligraphyCatPrints

    The simple brushstrokes of calligraphy are a perfect medium to capture the elegant beauty of a cat. These two images are some of my favorites. The sleeping catand crouching cat with flyare both available from AllPosters.com as framed or unframed prints starting at just $5.99. The perfect Asian touch for any modern interior.

  • MWC 10: A quick look at the Sony Ericsson Aspen

    Which.co.uk has published this brief look at the Sony Ericsson Aspen Windows Mobile 6.5.3 smartphone, which is apparently made from recycled plastic, but still looks quite spiffy despite this.

    Worryingly Sony Ericsson is targeting a Summer release for the smartphone which should really have been released months ago, but if they did not delay they would not be Sony Ericsson, would they?

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  • Dollar Finally Starts To Weaken, Stock Futures Pointing Higher

    After a series of really powerful moves last week, helped by uncertainty surrounding Europe, the dollar is finally giving it a little back.

    dollar

    Meanwhile, stock futures are higher.

    chart

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  • Google Turns A Blind Eye, Calls Apple a Valuable Partner

    Apple’s continuing success and Google’s increasing expansion into new markets is pitting the two close allies more and more against each other. So far the hostilities have been kept to a minimum and the two sides have engaged in more of a cold war, but things are heating up, especially on the Apple side as Steve Jobs has been quoted as be… (read more)

  • Germany: Greece Should Lose Its EU Membership Rights While It Is In “Receivership”

    greek basketball

    When the US bailed out its banks, it really didn’t impose any limits on them in terms of business practices or bonuses.

    It doesn’t sound as though the EU will be that soft on Greece if in fact a bailout is forthcoming.

    First of all — not surprisingly — Greece will be forced to impose a vicious austerity budget that will whack at least 4% off its GDP.

    But that’s not all.

    Kurt Lauk, the head of Angela Merkel’s business caucus, told Bloomberg that a bailout must come with a limitation of EU rights: “If a country is in receivership, I think we need to introduce a rule that they are not allowed to vote while they’re in receivership — in the council or on any other issue.”

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  • Where’s The Line In What Sorts Of Gov’t Communications Need To Be Recorded?

    With the rise of new forms of electronic communication, there have been growing problems in figuring out what sort of government communications need to be recorded and preserved. You may remember that there were concerns early on that President Obama wouldn’t be allowed to use his Blackberry. Some of those concerns were over security issues, but also there were fears about how every message would need to be recorded and available to the public at some point. This was the same reason that former presidents Bush (the younger) and Clinton did not use email while in office. Down in Florida, apparently, they’re going through a debate concerning the use of Blackberry devices, since Blackberries have a special “PIN to PIN” messaging system that works among Blackberries, where those messages aren’t recorded — and certainly, many politicians (and lobbyists) are making use of the system to communicate outside of the “official channels” to avoid having it recorded.

    While some are saying this is a reason why Blackberries shouldn’t be used at all by these politicians, that seems to miss the point. Yes, it may seem troubling that lobbyists and politicians can and do communicate without any record, but is getting rid of Blackberries really going to solve the issue? For the entire history of the country politicians and lobbyists (from before they were called that) were able to communicate without recording the details through the high tech method of speaking to each other face to face. Saying that all communication needs to be recorded and archived in some manner ignores that plenty of conversations take place by voice all the time that have no such recordings and no way to trace them back. So, yes, worry about corruption between lobbyists and politicians, but focus on the actual issue, not on trying to cut off one of many different ways they might communicate.

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  • Rambler, Another Russian Company Bidding for ICQ

    There seems to be a lot of activity from Russia lately when it comes to internet services and companies. The Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies has already made a name for itself with after the investments in Facebook and Zynga, but there are plenty of others who are looking to venture out of the home market. The latest looks to be… (read more)

  • HTC announced HTC HD mini

    htc_hd_mini

    Press Release: HTC Corporation today introduced the HTC HD mini, an HTC Sense-based Windows Phone focused on delivering the popular experience of the HTC HD2 in a more compact design. The HTC HD mini sports a high degree of usability along with its own unique and beautiful design. Precision fasteners used to assemble the phone are externally visible, displaying a high level of craftsmanship rarely found in mobile phones. And the strong design ethos continues under the battery cover where a bright yellow internal structure, offers an unexpected surprise when the phone is opened. HTC HD mini includes capacitive touch for viewing, zooming and resizing websites, Microsoft Office files, PDF documents and pictures with just a pinch of your fingers. Leveraging its 3G broadband connectivity, the HTC HD mini also offers personal Wi-Fi anywhere for your computer or other devices.

    The HTC HD mini utilizes HTC Sense, a user experience focused on putting people at the centre by making the phone work in a more simple and natural way. This experience revolves around three fundamental principles that were developed by observing and listening to how people live and communicate. These core tenets of Make It Mine, Stay Close and Discover the Unexpected continue to be the key to the new HTC Sense experience.

    Like the HTC HD2, the HTC HD mini continues the same focus on people-centric communication with complete Outlook integration. It helps you stay close to the important friends and colleagues in your life by providing a single contact view that displays individual communication snapshots of your conversations, regardless of whether it was a call, text, status update or email. HTC’s Windows-based Twitter application, HTC Peep, enables you to tweet and follow your twitter stream.

    The new HTC HD mini will be broadly available to customers across major European and Asian markets beginning in April.

    Via theunwired.net

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  • Goldman Isn’t Alone, John Paulson Has Joined The Greece Feeding Frenzy

    new john paulson picture

    Has the John Paulson-Goldman tag team joined forces once again, to making a killing off of a Greek crisis?

    Just remember, speculators don’t create bloated debt structures, politicians and blind taxpayers do:

    AlterNet:

    News of Paulson’s fund taking large positions against Greek debt has barely risen above rumor in the English-language press, despite this article in a Greek daily, which says that Paulson is “orchestrating the pressure on Greek government bonds and the Euro,” and reports that Paulson has a team of 20-30 traders focused on Greece.

    A research firm is now calling Paulson the George Soros of derivatives markets, where the bulk of speculation against European debt and the Euro is happening; the Telegraph says that so far “no hedge fund has put its head above the parapet in this destructive trade,” but the rumor is that Paulson is behind it.

    If Paulson is the hedge fund king behind the parapet, as rumored in English and reported in Greek, then it would seem fairly likely that Paulson and Goldman partnered — colluded? — to build profitable short positions against Greek debt. That Goldman was shepherding hedge fund client Paulson around Athens in recent weeks would seem to suggest that the bank and hedge fund are working together in Greece.

    Continue reading at AlterNet >

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  • in.fondo.al.mar: Revealing Suspicious Ship Sinkings in the Mediterranean

    under_the_sea.jpg
    Following visualization website is quite intriguing, if only because of the compelling story ‘behind’ the data it shows. in.fondo.al.mar (under the sea) [infondoalmar.info] is an online data visualization project about a series of sinkings in the Mediterranean Sea, involving ships which are suspected of having carried toxic and radioactive waste. The most shocking fact about these sinkings is that the ships would have been sunk deliberately to dispose of tons of toxic, chemical and radioactive waste.

    The visualization project aims to support the ongoing investigations about these suspicious incidents by centralizing and spreading all relevant information, so that a better factual understanding can be gained. The information shown was hidden in maritime registers and hard disks, and was scattered in tens of different dossiers. More precisely, in.fondo.al.mar employs data coming from official documents made available by the Lloyds’s of London, dossiers on the case by Legambiente and other ecological associations, newspaper clippings and background information gathered from specialist Internet sites.

    The visualizations consist of a geographical map of the sinkings, a chronology of the incidents, as well as general statistics and individual records about the incidents and the ships involved.


  • Please excuse me, but I’m paid to just write crap

    If he can wink, he might be a match for Palin

    Apparently, in between Broder columns and Palin Op-Eds the Washington Post has just given up trying to live in our reality and moved in with much of the New Republic.

    For example,Charles Lane, on Evan Bayh’s departure from the Senate:

    Quitting the Senate was a no-lose move for the presidentially ambitious Bayh, since he can now crawl away from the political wreckage for a couple of years, plausibly alleging that he tried to steer the party in a different direction — and then be perfectly positioned to mount a centrist primary challenge to Obama in 2012, depending on circumstances.

    Yeah, right Charles, a Democratic primary challenge to Obama from “the right” — “depending on the circumstances” — probably the same kind of “circumstances” that could deliver you a Pulitzer Prize.

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  • SPB Mobile Shell 5 demoed

    SPB has recently announced their new version of Mobile Shell, but unfortunately did not release any video to go along with it, which is unfortunate for such a visual product.

    LearnBeMobile has however managed to catch them on the show floor and captured this video of an interface which appears to be getting increasingly sophisticated.

    Of course we have not seen a full review yet, and feel that to really become more than eye candy the user interface needs to move beyond being a simple launcher to engaging active applications, such as HTC did with its twitter client built into Sense.

    Read SPB’s press release after the break.

    February 15th, 2010 – SPB Software, a leading mobile applications and games developer announces the release of SPB Mobile Shell 5.0, a major upgrade to the world’s bestselling mobile application, popular among both end-users and OEMs. Unlike all the previous versions of SPB Mobile Shell available exclusively for Windows Mobile smartphones with touchscreens, version 5.0 is to be released for Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Thanks to the new portable SPB UI Engine, SPB Mobile Shell is planned to be spread to more mobile platforms.

    Major updates to the new version include a new 3D engine and an improved social networking integration. The former means support for new types of eye candy effects such as 3D Media Player, 3D Photo Viewer, 3D Weather, dynamic 3D widgets and more, while the latter involves message, contacts, photo and status sync with popular services, namely Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

    One important innovation in SPB Mobile Shell 5.0 is the Natural Interaction Engine which includes support for G-sensor and multitouch, a dedicated Feedback Engine providing realistic visual and haptic responses, and a Physics Engine responsible for the real-world behaviour of all objects.

    SPB Mobile Shell has been publicly recognized as the best-selling mobile application across all smartphone platforms for three consecutive years: 2007, 2008 and 2009. At the same time SPB Mobile Shell enjoys popularity among mobile carriers and OEMs. It’s been shipped to over 15 device manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and O2. To make implementation process even smoother, we have added SPB UI Builder 2.0 – a tool-chain for easy customization of SPB Mobile Shell and other products that are built using the SPB UI Engine. It includes APIs for pluggable components, the skin builder and a set of plug-ins for integration with industry strength design products such as 3DMAX and Microsoft Expression Blend.

    *** What’s new in SPB Mobile Shell 5.0: ***

    – New 3D engine

    – Natural Interaction Engine

    – 3D widgets

    – Tight integration with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks

    – SPB UI Builder 2.0

    – Multi-platform support: Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian

    Via Pocketnow.com

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  • Goldman: Actually, Betting On America Has Been A Huge Winner For Stocks

    According to Goldman Sachs, stocks with sales exposure to the U.S. have outperformed stocks with exposure to other regions of the world since the beginning of 2008. Don’t count the U.S. out, else you could underperform:

    Chart

    BRICs-and-emerging markets-exposed stocks underperformed massively during the height of the financial crisis, even though America was the focal point of the crisis. Since then, emerging markets-exposed stocks have come back relative to U.S.-exposed stocks. But keep in mind that this was during 2009, a year when emerging markets stocks were loved by the average American investor based on fund flows, while U.S. stocks were shunned.

    If fund flows simply normalize, U.S. stocks could start outperforming their emerging markets peers again.

    Europe-exposed stocks meanwhile, have a long way to catch up.

    (Via Goldman Sachs, GS Weekly Handbook, 15 February 2010)

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  • People in Open Relationships Are Unhappier than Singles, Facebook Says

    A bit late but better than nothing, Facebook decided that it can put the mountains of data it gathers every second to good use and has released an analysis on people’s happiness based on their relationship status. Valentine’s Day has come and gone, but maybe Facebook postponed the release because the results weren’t that optimistic. Well, not exactly, it turns out that people in relationships are generally happier than singles. Not much of a surprise here, but the Facebook data team did uncov… (read more)

  • Janosh’s New Images

    Three new images from a favorite artist based in the Netherlands.  Enjoy!

  • Greece Will Expose Europe’s Bailout Bluff In 30 Days

    george papaconstantinou greek greece

    Eurozone nations have urged Greece to announce major deficit-control plans by the middle of March, in a bid to add teeth to last week’s vague pledge of support for Greece:

    Reuters: “Financial markets are completely wrong if they think they can destroy Greece,” Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister and chairman of the finance ministers’ meeting in Brussels, told a news conference.

    He and others went to lengths to say Greece had 30 days to prove its plans were off to a convincing start and he said that Athens could count on unspecified support if that was not the case and markets refused to give it breathing space.

    …

    Greece would have to prove on a day-to-day basis between now and March 16 that it was on track and, if short of the mark, come up with proposals for further measures to meet its target of a four-percentage-point cut in the deficit this year.

    Meanwhile, Greece doesn’t appear eager to take action or take responsibility for its debt problems. Instead, they are resisting calls for greater action, blaming speculators, and implicitly asking for a bailout:

    [Emphasis added]: Papaconstantinou said urging Greece to do more right now made no sense and suggested ministers develop on the pledges of support that leaders made after emergency talks last Thursday. “If we announce new (Greek fiscal) measures today, will that stop markets attacking Greece?” he asked.

    “My guess is what will stop markets attacking Greece is a further, more explicit message that makes operational what has been decided last Thursday at the European Council (summit).”

    Read more here >

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  • Climate Gate’s Phillip Jones Admits no Global Warming Since 1995



    Professor Phil Jones has bowed to the inevitable and accepted the reality that the data was showing him for fifteen years.  Fifteen years is a long time to go without creditable evidence of global warming.  This at least ends the spurious debate over the validity of supposed ongoing warming.
    The climate warmed modestly over perhaps-s two decades leading up to 1995, at which point it peaked and settled back rather gently.  That is noteworthy, because known cooling events are quite abrupt.
    I have been arguing recently that the evidence supports an increase in Atlantic heat distribution that we know little about.  We suffer from almost no data points but the two that I have are powerful.
    The first is that the velocity of the Gulf Stream slowed sharply or something significant happened.  Again we have too little data.
    The second is the discovery that during the Bronze Age, when temperatures were warm and constant for millennia or two in Northern Europe, the temperature of the Atlantic surface waters was an astonishing two degrees warmer!
    Those are my two data points.  It tells me that the most likely forcer of warming in the northern hemisphere is changes in the Atlantic heat machine.  The evidence to date supports exactly that interpretation.
    The Arctic sea ice continues to disintegrate and should be largely gone in 2012.  Even the scientists up there are now saying that this is true in a tone that suggests that they cannot believe their eyes.  The press has not quite woken up yet and more troublesome, they are still attached to the anthropogenic theory which is simply inadequate to now explain what is happening in the Arctic.
    Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
    By JONATHAN PETRE

    Last updated at 5:12 PM on 14th February 2010


    Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ has gone missing
    There has been no global warming since 1995
    Warming periods have happened before – but NOT due to man-made changes
    Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’
    The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.
    Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers. 
    Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organizational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.
    The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory. 
    Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
    And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
    The admissions will be seized on by skeptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
    Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that skeptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.
    The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analyzed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
         
    Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.
    Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying.
    Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change.
    That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.
    According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realized that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’.
    Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organization in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.
    But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.
    Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be.
    ‘There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’
    He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not. 
    He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.
    And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.
    Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.
    But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.
    Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.
    ‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
    ‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’
    Skeptics’ said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.
    Professor Jones criticized those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.
    Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.
    But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the skeptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’.
    He said that until all the data was released, skeptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates.
    He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.



  • The Strangest Liquid

    Understanding what water is doing has been problematic forever.  This article outlines the full range of the anomalies.
    I would like to throw another conjecture into this mix that is supported by the hard data that I have had to work with.  My conjecture is that all water is contaminated with biologically modified water that most likely takes the form of a ring molecule weakly bonded having the form H3 O3.   I have written on this before on this blog but also in my manuscript ‘Paradigm’s Shift’.  The molecule allows oxygen retention in biologically active water and explains the oxygen cycle available to marine life and land based wet environments.  It appears to run around one percent contained oxygen, but the extreme difficulty in measuring it has made it all but invisible.
    It explains needle like crystals in freezing pond water.
    It explains general oxygen availability in the marine environment that is not explained by seven parts per million at all.  The problem was recognized early on but appears to have been largely forgotten or at least ignored if not forgotten.
    It explains the high noise threshold in spectrographic analysis which should otherwise reflect that of water.
    It is chemically neutral unlike hydrogen peroxide, although easily unbound to release free oxygen and a spare hydrogen atom.
    We have discovered that it is a powerful medical agent.
    My conjecture is that the weirdness of water can be resolved once this molecular form is taken into account.
    Inquiries are welcome from researchers who want samples to work with.

    The strangest liquid: Why water is so weird

    03 February 2010 by Edwin Cartlidge
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527466.200-the-strangest-liquid-why-water-is-so-weird.html?page=1
    http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2746/27466201.jpg
    We are confronted by many mysteries, from the nature of dark matter and the origin of the universe to the quest for a theory of everything. These are all puzzles on the grand scale, but you can observe another enduring mystery of the physical world – equally perplexing, if not quite so grand – from the comfort of your kitchen. Simply fill a tall glass with chilled water, throw in an ice cube and leave it to stand.
    The fact that the ice cube floats is the first oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a thermometer and measure the temperature of the water at various depths. At the top, near the ice cube, you’ll find it to be around 0 °C, but at the bottom it should be about 4 °C. That’s because water is denser at 4°C than it is at any other temperature – another strange trait that sets it apart from other liquids.
    Water’s odd properties don’t stop there (see “Water’s mysteries”), and some are vital to life. Because ice is less dense than water, and water is less dense at its freezing point than when it is slightly warmer, it freezes from the top down rather than the bottom up. So even during the ice ages, life continued to thrive on lake floors and in the deep ocean. Water also has an extraordinary capacity to mop up heat, and this helps smooth out climatic changes that could otherwise devastate ecosystems.
    Yet despite water’s overwhelming importance to life, no single theory had been able to satisfactorily explain its mysterious properties – until now. If we can believe physicists Anders Nilsson at Stanford University, California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm University, Sweden, and their colleagues, we could at last be getting to the bottom of many of these anomalies.
    Their controversial ideas expand on a theory proposed more than a century ago by Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays, who claimed that the molecules in liquid water pack together not in just one way, as today’s textbooks would have it, but in two fundamentally different ways.
    Key to the understanding of water’s mysteries is the way its molecules – made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom – interact with one another. The oxygen atom has a slight negative charge while the hydrogen atoms share a compensating positive charge. As such, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms of neighbouring molecules are attracted to one another, forming a link called a hydrogen bond.
    Hydrogen bonds are far weaker than the bonds that link the atoms within molecules together, and so are continually breaking and reforming, but they are at their strongest when molecules are arranged so that each hydrogen bond lines up with a molecular bond (see diagram). The shape of a water molecule is such that each H2O molecule is surrounded by four neighbours arranged in the shape of a triangular pyramid – better known as a tetrahedron.
    At least, that’s the way the molecules arrange themselves in ice. According to the conventional view, liquid water has a similar, albeit less rigid, structure, in which extra molecules can pack into some of the open gaps in the tetrahedral arrangement.
    That explains why liquid water is denser than ice – and it seems to fit the results of various experiments in which beams of X-rays, infrared light and neutrons are bounced off samples of water.
    True, some physicists had claimed that water placed under certain extreme conditions may separate into two different structures (see “Extreme water”), but most had assumed it resumes a single structure under normal conditions.
    Then, 10 years ago, a chance discovery by Pettersson and Nilsson called this picture into question. They were using X-ray absorption spectroscopy to investigate the amino acid glycine. The peaks in the X-ray absorption spectrum can shed light on the precise nature of the target substance’s chemical bonds, and hence on its structure. Importantly, the researchers had got hold of a new, high-power X-ray source with which they were able to make more sensitive and accurate measurements than had ever been possible. They soon realised that the water containing their glycine sample was producing a far more interesting spectrum than the amino acid. “What we saw there was sensational,” Nilsson recalls, “so we had to get to the bottom of it.”
    What we saw in the water was sensational, so we had to get to the bottom of it

    Dramatic implications

     

    The feature that sparked their interest was a peak in the absorption spectrum that is not predicted by the traditional model of liquid water. In fact, in a paper published in 2004 they concluded that at any given moment 85 per cent of the hydrogen bonds in water must be weakened or broken, far more than the 10 per cent predicted by the textbook model (Science, vol 304, p 995).
    The implications of this finding are dramatic: it suggests that a total rethink of the structure of water is needed. So Nilsson and Pettersson turned to other X-ray experiments to confirm their claims. Their first move was to enlist the help of Shik Shin of the University of Tokyo, Japan, who specialises in a technique called X-ray emission spectroscopy. The key thing about these spectra is that the shorter the wavelength of the X-rays in a substance’s emission spectrum are, the looser the hydrogen bonding must be.
    The team struck gold: the spectrum of emitted X-rays included two peaks that might correspond to two separate structures. The spike of the longer-wavelength X-rays, the researchers argued, indicates the proportion of tetrahedrally arranged molecules, while the shorter-wavelength peak reflects the proportion of disordered molecules.
    Importantly, the shorter-wavelength peak in the X-ray emissions was the more intense of the two, suggesting that the loosely bound molecules must be more prevalent within the sample – an assertion that fitted the team’s previous models. What’s more, they also found that this peak shifts to an even shorter wavelength as the water is heated, while the other peak remains more or less fixed (Chemical Physics Letters, vol 460, p 387).
    That suggests that the hydrogen bonds connecting molecules arranged in a disordered way are more likely to loosen upon heating than those linking the more regularly arranged molecules – which again is what the team had predicted. They then reanalysed older experimental data that had seemed to support the traditional picture of water – and now argue that these results, too, are consistent with the new model.
    If the team is right, another question arises: how large are the different structures within the liquid? To find out, they turned to the high-power X-rays generated at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in California, this time measuring how water scatters rays arriving from various angles. The results, they say, reveal that water is dotted with small regions of tetrahedrally arranged molecules, each region being 1 to 2 nanometres across (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 106, p 15214).
    Combined with further measurements carried out by Uwe Bergmann at Stanford University, they concluded that the ordered structures consisted of roughly 50 to 100 molecules, on average, surrounded by a sea of the more loosely bound molecules. These regions are not fixed, however. In less than a trillionth of a second, water molecules are thought to fluctuate between the two states as the hydrogen bonds break and reform.

    Explaining the inexplicable

     

    The changing balance between Nilsson and Pettersson’s two types of water provides an explanation for the way water’s density peaks at 4 °C. In the disordered regions, water molecules are more closely packed, making them denser than regions where the molecules are arranged in a tetrahedral structure. At 0 °C these disordered regions should be relatively uncommon, but as the water is warmed the extra heat energy tends to shake the more ordered structure apart, so molecules spend less time in the tetrahedral structure and more time in the disordered regions, making it more dense on average.
    Counterbalancing this, the loosely bound molecules will move around more vigorously as the temperature rises, gradually forcing them further apart from each other. Once enough of the molecules become loosely bound – at 4 °C – this expansion effect will dominate, and the density will fall with increasing temperatures.
    According to Pettersson, the theory offers equally tidy explanations for many of water’s other previously inexplicable anomalies – something they say that no other theory can yet achieve (see “Water’s mysteries”). Martin Chaplin, a chemist at London South Bank University, agrees. Explanations based on the conventional one-component system have to “go round the houses” to try to accommodate the maxima and minima in various properties as the temperature of water changes, he says. “The dual-structure idea is strongly supported by experiment and can explain water’s anomalies far more readily than the conventional picture,” Chaplin says.
    Nilsson and Pettersson’s 2004 paper in Science has now been cited over 350 times by other researchers. Yet many remain sceptical. One criticism is that the team’s explanation of their X-ray spectroscopy results is based on simulations of at least 50 interacting water molecules – an immensely complex model that can only be resolved approximately. “We need a much more accurate theory in order to make such drastic claims,” says Richard Saykally at the University of California, Berkeley.
    He claims that minor adjustments to the arrangement of the hydrogen bonds in the conventional structure are enough to explain Nilsson and Pettersson’s X-ray results.
    One member of their group, Michael Odelius of Stockholm University, even left the collaboration because he disagreed with their interpretation of the X-ray emission data.
    One detail that alienated many sceptics was an assertion in the 2004 paper that the more loosely bound molecules form rings and chains – and indeed Nilsson and his colleagues are now less specific about the structure of the disordered molecules. Eugene Stanley of Boston University, however, does not believe that this fatally damages the team’s case. “I don’t think they should be condemned forever,” he says. Though their argument is not yet watertight, the X-ray scattering results provide “one more piece of supporting evidence”, he says.
    There is no doubt that Nilsson and Pettersson still face stiff opposition, but the rewards of a comprehensive understanding of the structure of liquid water could be considerable. It could lead to a better understanding of how drugs and proteins interact with water molecules within the body, for example, and so provide more effective medicines. And by giving us a better idea of how water behaves around narrow pores, it might improve water desalination attempts and so increase access to clean water.
    “Our understanding of water is an evolving picture,” Pettersson says. “Further research by many different groups is needed before this exciting and important journey can end.” With so much to gain, who could disagree?

    Extreme water

     

    The dual structure of water proposed by Anders Nilsson of Stanford University, California, and Lars Pettersson of Stockholm University in Sweden may be a ghostly echo of the strange properties of “supercool” water – water that has been cooled to below 0 °C without freezing.
    Eugene Stanley of Boston University and his colleagues have long claimed that at temperatures below about -50 °C and pressures of more than 1000 times atmospheric pressure, distinct high and low-density forms of supercool water should exist. Several research groups claim they have found evidence for these two structures.
    Stanley, however, believes there should be small but discernible traces of this behaviour at higher temperatures too – seen as fluctuations in water’s density. Sure enough, the size of the fleeting high and low-density regions seen in Nilsson and Pettersson’s X-ray scattering experiments are consistent with his theory’s predictions.
    However, physicist Alan Soper at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire in the UK is not convinced that these density differences are anything other than the density fluctuations that can occur in any liquid.
    The crux of this dispute concerns the precise statistical distribution of regions of different density. According to Nilsson and Pettersson’s model, there should be two peaks at two distinctly different densities, but Soper believes only one continuous distribution is possible.
    Edwin Cartlidge is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. To enjoy more stunning images of water in motion by Shinichi Maruyama, visit his website:
    Scientists Freeze Water with Heat
    By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor
    posted: 11 February 2010 08:30 am ET
    http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/water-freeze-heat-100211.html
    Imagine water freezing solid even as it’s heating up. Such are the bizarre tricks scientists now find water is capable of.
    Popular belief contends that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). Surprisingly, if water lies in a smooth bottle and is free of any dust, it can stay liquid down to minus 40 degrees F (minus 40 degrees C) in what’s called “supercooled” form. The dust and rough surfaces that water is normally found in contact with in nature can serve as the kernels around which ice crystals form.
    Now researcher Igor Lubomirsky at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and his colleagues have discovered another way to control the freezing point of water — via what are called quasi-amorphous pyroelectric thin films. These surfaces change their electrical charge depending on their temperature.
    When pyroelectic surfaces are positively charged, water becomes easier to freeze, and when they have a negative charge, it becomes harder to freeze.
    The researchers saw that supercooled water could freeze as it’s being heated, as long as the temperature changes the surface charge as well. For instance, when supercooled water is on a negatively charged lithium tantalate surface, it will freeze solid immediately when the surface is heated to 17.6 degrees F (minus 8 degrees C) and its charge switches to positive.
    Curiously, positively charged surfaces inspire supercooled water to freeze from the bottom up, while negatively charged surfaces cause it to freeze from the top down. This likely has to do with how water molecules orient themselves — the negatively charged oxygen atoms in water molecules naturally point toward positively charged surfaces, while the reverse is true with hydrogen atoms.
    “The difference between the positive and negative charge was unexpected,” Lubomirsky said.
    The ability to better control the freezing temperature of supercooled water could be critical for a variety of applications, including the survival of cold-blooded animals, the cryo-preservation of cells and tissues, the protection of crops from freezing, and the ability to understand and trigger cloud formation.
    The scientists detailed their findings in the Feb. 5 issue of the journal Science.

  • Islamic Bosum Bombers

    Keeping track of sociopathic behavior is necessary in our mobile crowded world.  Most of this is sane in a crazy sort of way.  The hard part is to avoid getting all excited about it.
    The Islamic jihadist cult has as usual declared war on civilization.  That has always meant that no means are too foul.  They have been around since the beginning of Islam and always hijack religious enthusiasm to recruit the naïve and gullible. The result is almost perpetual conflict with Islamic governments who are never Islamic enough and the infidels of course.  It appears to be quiet only when they are simply too impoverished to own a weapon.
    As I have posted earlier, the world of Islam must establish true Islamic authority to suppress this profound evil that will have only one outcome if permitted to continue.  Unless you really want to believe that the Taliban or al Quaida is an aberration.
    In the meantime we get this crudity and similar stunts whose sole purpose is to impose costs and fear on the modern world.  The reality is that it is time to use the intelligence service we have to grab these silly fools as soon as they show up on the radar and to stop worrying so much about having a terrorist event.
    I do not know how many folks they can recruit to commit suicide, but it is obviously a small number.  We can accept that.  Intelligence will suppress most such treats even if they learn to snap it up a notch.  We really were that close to intercepting the Christmas bomber and he was that close to having an event.
    We need to use intelligence gathering to neutralize recruiters and promoters.  I am pretty sure that the Afghan women still know how to skin such folks alive so as to inform the others of our displeasure.
    Bosom bombers: Women have explosive breast implants
    Authorities alarmed by possibility of surgically placed explosives
    http://g2bulletin.wnd.com/
    Posted: February 01, 2010

    10:16 pm Eastern

    © 2010 WorldNetDaily

     The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, 

     LONDON – Agents for Britain’s MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives, according to a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

    Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.

    Similar surgery has been performed on male suicide bombers. In their cases, the explosives are inserted in the appendix area or in a buttock. Both are parts of the body that diabetics use to inject themselves with their prescribed drugs.
    The discovery of these methods was made after the London-educated Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came close to blowing up an airliner on Christmas Day with explosives he had stuffed inside his underpants.

    Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

    Hours after he had failed, GCHQ – Britain‘s worldwide eavesdropping “spy in the sky” agency – began to pick up “chatter” emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants.

    A hand-picked team was appointed by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, to investigate the threat. He described it as “one that can circumvent our defense.”

    Top surgeons who work in the National Health Service confirmed the feasibility of the explosive implants.

    In a report to Evans, one said:

    “Properly inserted the implant would be virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines. You would need to subject a suspect to a sophisticated X-ray. Given that the explosive would be inserted in a sealed plastic sachet, and would be a small amount, would make it all the more impossible to spot it with the usual body scanner.”

    Explosive experts at Britain’s Porton Down biological and chemical warfare research center told MI5 that a sachet containing as little as five ounces of PETN when activated would blow “a considerable hole” in an airline’s skin which would guarantee it would crash.

  • Masterflex AG at Hanover Fair and Powtech 2010

    Trendsetter with high quality and new products

    Masterflex AG, Gelsenkirchen – February 2010

    Under the new motto “Efficiency – Innovation – Sustainability”, the next HANNOVER MESSE – 19 to 23 April 2010 – will be showcasing innovations, new developments and technologies, alongside new materials from the world of industry. “When it comes to innovations, the Masterflex AG as an expert for upmarket hose and connecting systems made of innovative high-tech plastics, fabrics, and foils always has a say,” explains Sales Manager Alfons Beitz.

    “We work closely with our customers to meet their needs for their products, and together come up with a customized individual solution or even new products. Thereby it is of the highest order to manufacture products of highest quality”, says Beitz. “Due to our strong focus on cost savings we are now able to offer our customers for example connecting systems that are compatible with standard connectors, that means customers may continue use their existing systems. Our premium durable products as for example our extremely abrasion resistant PU hoses help our customers to save costs and respectively act economical as a result of the outstanding service life.“

    By the way, Masterflex has been displaying at the Hanover Fair (hall 5 booth no. A32) for 20 consecutive years. The company also takes part in the Powtech trade fair – International Trade Fair for Mechanical Processing Technologies and Instrumentation – which takes place from 27 – 29 April (hall 9 booth no. 547). Beitz: “Presenting our new products at these two major leading shows gives evidence of our inventive and dynamic approach towards providing hose solutions for all kinds of industries.”

    Masterflex will be displaying its entire product range and product news of the past twelve months. The company will be showcasing e.g.:

    – the new Master-TPA line
    – innovative connecting systems such as the new clamping systems and cast- on connecting systems for virtually all Master-PUR hose types
    – antistatic and electrical conductive hoses acc. to the new guideline TRBS 2153
    – the approved PUR line
    – the versatile types of the Master-Clip line
    – suction and transport hoses made of food-grade polyurethane (PU), polyolefin (PO) hoses with improved flexibility, as well as cast-on and moulded hose connecting systems certified for direct food contact
    – and many more