Archive
Tectonic plates rattle- more turbulence at the South Pole
June 21, 2011 – ANTARCTICA – A 5.5 magnitude earthquake struck the South Sandwich Islands region, situated around 750km south east of South Georgia, in the South Atlantic early Sunday. It was the latest in a series of quakes to hit the Antarctic Region during the past 24 hours. The moderate quake struck at 9.37am GMT at a depth of 137km and was centered 69 km (42 miles) NNW of Visokoi Island and 330 km (205 miles) NNW of Bristol Island. The last significant earthquake to be recorded in the South Sandwich Islands region occurred on Read more…
Incoming Geomagnetic Storm Alert:C7-Flare/CME (June 21st, 2011).
INCOMING: Magnetic fields above sunspot complex 1236 erupted during the early hours of June 21st, producing a C7-class solar flare and a full-halo CME. The expanding cloud appears to be heading almost directly toward Earth:
This does not appear to be an especially powerful CME. Nevertheless, the incoming cloud could trigger polar geomagnetic storms when it reaches Earth on or about June 23rd. The aurora outlook favors southern hemisphere observers, where solstice skies are winter-dark. Stay tuned for updates.
Hong Kong declares scarlet fever outbreak
Hong Kong has declared an outbreak of scarlet fever after it claimed the life of at least one child while infecting thousands of others in the city and elsewhere in China.
A seven-year-old Hong Kong girl died from the illness late last month while a five-year-old boy in the city died Tuesday morning from what health authorities said was a “very likely” a case of scarlet fever.
Hong Kong authorities have recorded 40 new cases in the past few days, pushing the total number to 459 so far this year, the highest annual total in the city and more than three times the figure for the whole of 2010.
The boy — who also had chicken pox — developed a fever last Wednesday and was admitted to hospital on Sunday with symptoms of the illness.
His condition deteriorated rapidly and he died Tuesday morning, Thomas Tsang, controller of Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection, said.
Classes have been suspended at the boy’s kindergarten for a week, a first for Hong Kong following a scarlet fever death.
“The situation is rather serious at the moment,” Tsang said Tuesday.
“We are facing an epidemic because the bacteria that is causing scarlet fever is widely circulating in Read more…
An end to traditional crime dramas? New DNA technology could reveal who committed a crime in less than an HOUR
Suspects could be identified within minutes of committing a crime thanks to new technology developed by forensics experts.
The portable, high-speed equipment uses specially developed rapid profiling techniques to identify DNA from blood or tissue samples at the scene of a crime in a matter of minutes.
Currently, DNA samples have to be carefully lifted from any crime scene and transferred to a laboratory. The National DNA Database can then take several days to match a sample with a suspect.
No time for a getaway: The new technique means suspects could be identified within minutes (Posed by model)
LGC Forensics, which has developed the speeded-up technique, said it will give detectives a vital head start in their hunt for criminals.
Company managing director Dr Steve Allen told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Within 60 minutes of taking a sample it can produce a profile which can be transmitted to Read more…
Drought conditions taking toll on Texas lakes
The boat ramps at Lake Medina just seem to go on and on. What used to be only a few feet to the water are now hundreds of feet and getting further every day. While Medina is by far the lowest of the area lakes, it isn’t alone in its shrinking shoreline.
Medina Lake is down almost 30 feet, Canyon Lake is down 5 feet, Lake Buchanan is down 14 feet; even Lake Travis is down 34 feet.
The summer drought has depleted these reservoirs one by one, with areas of shoreline exposed for the sun for the first time in two years.
Across the state, the combined totals of Texas’s reservoirs are down to 71.8 percent, a decline of almost five percent since May 22, with lake levels dropping a combine 2,700,000 feet. Read more…
Trades reveal China shift from dollar
China began diversifying away from the US dollar in earnest in the first four months of this year, most likely by buying far more European government debt than US dollar assets, according to estimates from Standard Chartered Bank.
China’s foreign exchange reserves expanded by around $200bn in the first four months of the year, with three-quarters of the new inflow invested abroad in non-US dollar assets, the bank estimated.
“It certainly appears that China’s finally following through on its policy to diversify its foreign reserve holdings away from the US dollar,” said Stephen Green, the bank’s chief China economist.
For over six years, Beijing has continued to accumulate Read more…
World’s Oceans In ‘Shocking’ Decline
The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.
They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.
The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.
The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists.
Its report will be formally released later this week.
“The findings are shocking,” said Alex Rogers, IPSO’s scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University.
“As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.
“We’ve sat in one forum and spoken to Read more…
War Evolves With Drones, Some Tiny as Bugs
A microdrone during a demo flight at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio — Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds.
The base’s indoor flight lab is called the “microaviary,” and for good reason. The drones in development here are designed to replicate the flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world. “We’re looking at how you hide in plain sight,” said Greg Read more…
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