Tag: science

it begins

Jellyfish Invade Four Nuclear Reactors in Japan, Israel, Scotland:

Four nuclear reactors in Japan, Israel and Scotland were forced to shutdown due to infiltration of enormous swarms of jellyfish, which clogged the plant’s cooling system.

Earlier this week, the Orot Rabin nuclear power plant in Hadera, Israel was forced to shutdown when a swarm of jellyfish blocked the plant’s water supply which is used as a coolant.

The string of jellyfish surges began a week before with a reactor in Shimane, Japan. And in a week’s time two reactors at Torness power station, operated by EDF, in Scotland had to be shutdown as the seawater used as coolant was inundated with jellyfish.

I am conflicted about this family heirloom

World’s first womb transplant planned.

Eva Ottosson, 56, has agreed to take part in a groundbreaking new medical procedure, which if successful could see her donate her uterus to her 25-year-old daughter Sara.

Doctors hope if the transplant is successful Sara, who was born without reproductive organs, could become pregnant and carry a child in the same womb from which she herself was born.

“She needs the womb and if I’m the best donor for her… well, go on. She needs it more than me. I’ve had two daughters so it’s served me well.”

fascinating security hack

Hacking can take control of a car through an infected music file:

But their most interesting attack focused on the car stereo. By adding extra code to a digital music file, they were able to turn a song burned to CD into a Trojan horse. When played on the car’s stereo, this song could alter the firmware of the car’s stereo system, giving attackers an entry point to change other components on the car.

contact, as important as light from the sun

Novelty Seekers and Drug Abusers (might) Tap Same Brain Reward System.

The space shuttle Discovery had its final launch today. I watched from home, glued to my laptop screen, as the entire process played out over live streaming video from Florida, while Tony watched it with me over messenger, cheering for the crew from his Microsoft office in Redmond. We were a small slice of the future right then, together though separate, witnessing history through now common technology, eyes on an image televised live from the side of a rocket roaring with fire into outer space. The number of viewers at the foot of the screen declared that we’d shared the experience with over 30,000 other people. Beautiful. With that number there and Tony’s words on the screen, it was the first time in almost a week that I haven’t felt lonely.

let that be the end of it

As if more evidence was required to show that vaccines don’t cause autism, the British study that linked childhood vaccines to autism was recently proven to be a complicated fraud:

An investigation published by the British medical journal BMJ concludes the study’s author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of the 1998 study — and that there was “no doubt” Wakefield was responsible.

“It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, told CNN. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.”

The full paper from BMJ is here.

A condensate made of light

German physicists create a “super-photon”:

Physicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons. Until recently, expert had thought this impossible. This method may potentially be suitable for designing novel light sources resembling lasers that work in the X-ray range.