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Friday, December 16, 2011
Dyson $860 LED Desk Lamp Will Run For Almost Forty Years [Lighting]
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
UN climate talks face challenges
4 December 2011
Last updated at 13:27 ET
As ministers begin arriving at the UN climate talks in South Africa, new science is showing the challenges they face in trying to curb global warming.
Using a new methodology, a Swiss team has calculated that about three-quarters of the warming seen since 1950 is down to human influences.
A second report says glacier loss in parts of the Himalayas is accelerating.
And an international research group has confirmed that emissions have soared despite the global financial crisis.
At the talks, the main task facing ministers and their negotiating teams is to find agreement on a 143-page draft text covering issues such as speeding up emission cuts, safeguarding forests and helping the poorest countries protect themselves against climate impacts.
One EU official suggested that the majority of governments favoured beginning discussions on a new legally-binding agreement as soon as possible.
Continue reading the main storyAdaptation
Action that helps cope with the effects of climate change - for example construction of barriers to protect against rising sea levels, or conversion to crops capable of surviving high temperatures and drought.
But a number of important countries including China, India and the US are not persuaded.
Even if those discussions do begin soon, other nations such as Japan and Canada say their existing pledges on cutting emissions by 2020 will not be amended.
Observers point out that without tightening these pledges, global emissions will not peak before 2020 - the timeframe scientists think is necessary if the target of limiting the global temperature rise to 2C from pre-industrial times is to be met.
'Convincing'As delegates prepared to launch into the second week of talks, the journal Nature Geoscience published a new analysis of factors driving the Earth's warming since 1950.
Using information about the Earth's "energy balance" - the difference between the amount of energy it receives from the Sun and radiates back into space - researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich arrived at fresh estimates of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and other human-induced factors.
Their main conclusion is that it is extremely likely that at least 74% of the observed warming since 1950 has been caused by man-made factors.
They also conclude that greenhouse warming has partially been offset by the cooling effect of aerosols - tiny particles of dust thrown into the atmosphere that can reflect solar radiation back into space.
"It's pretty convincing stuff," commented Piers Forster, professor of climate change at the UK's University of Leeds and a former lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's assessment of factors driving global warming.
"Observations and the physical law of energy conservation have been used to show greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming and that alternative scenarios violate this law of nature.
"Previous proofs have relied on complex climate models, but this proof doesn't need such models - just careful observations of the land, ocean and atmospheric gases."
Careful observation of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas region, an area where climate change could bring major impacts to people, have been relatively scanty, due to the difficulty of doing science in remote areas, compounded by political disagreements.
The Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (Icimod) has released a series of reports setting out what is known and what is not known about climate change in the region.
The number of glaciers identified has risen above 54,000, largely thanks to satellite observations.
But only 10 of these have been regularly and rigorously studied, it says.
In these 10, the rate of ice loss has roughly doubled since the 1980s.
But overall, the report's conclusion is that observations need to be stepped up to enable better projections of the future for the estimated 210 million people living in the region and the 1.3 billion living in river basins supplied by Himalayan meltwater.
"Up until now, there has been complete uncertainty on the numbers and area of glaciers and the present status of their environmental conditions in the region," said Basanta Shrestha from Icimod.
"This research gives us a baseline from which to measure the potential impact of climate change in the region, and to develop options for mitigating the impact of dynamic changes the region is expecting in the coming years."
'Triple whammy'Meanwhile, Nature Climate Change journal has published a new assessment of how greenhouse gas emissions have changed in recent years.
Continue reading the main story?Start Quote
End Quote Christiana Figueres UNFCCC executive secretary"Every one of us needs to change our behaviour, business needs to change their investment patterns, everybody?
Conducted by the Global Carbon Project, an international research collaboration, it confirms other analyses in showing that the financial crisis made but a small blip in the rising trend of emissions.
During 2010, emissions grew by 5.9%, they calculate - more than compensating for the fall of 1.4% seen in 2009, when the recession caused a dramatic downturn in developed countries (although not in the developing world's industrial giants such as China).
Even accounting for the 2009 drop, emissions have risen faster in the last decade than at any time in the last 50 years.
"Global CO2 emissions since 2000 are tracking the high end of the projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which far exceed two degrees warming by 2100," said co-author Prof Corinne Le Quere, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at the University of East Anglia.
"Yet governments have pledged to keep warming below two degrees to avoid the most dangerous aspects of climate change such as widespread water stress and sea level rise, and increases in extreme climatic events.
"Taking action to reverse current trends is urgent," she said.
Senior lecturer in carbon management at Edinburgh University David Reay said: "From this latest study we see that the [2009] drop was all too ephemeral, and even the limp economic recovery of 2010 has put us back on a high emissions trajectory,"
"We now face the triple whammy of distracted world leaders, a scarcity of carbon finance, and a fast-closing window of opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change.
"For those striving for a breakthrough at the climate change conference in Durban, things just got even harder," he said.
At the conference itself, many delegates seemed aware that if the broad thrust of climate science is correct, time is running out for an agreement that can curb emissions enough to give reasonable odds of making the 2C target.
Equally, few were underestimating the political difficulties.
"Every one of us needs to change our behaviour, business needs to change their investment patterns, everybody," said UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres.
"That is very difficult to do. But there is no other option."
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Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-16022585
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Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Williams sisters win doubles in Milan exhibition
Williams sisters win doubles in Milan exhibition
DANIELLA MATARDANIELLA MATAR, Associated Press?
?Venus Williams, left, and her sister Serena, of the United States, celebrate after winning a point during an exhibition double tennis match against Italy's Flavia Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Venus Williams, left, and her sister Serena, of the United States, celebrate after winning a point during an exhibition double tennis match against Italy's Flavia Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Italy's Francesca Schiavone, left, and Flavia Pennetta wave thir fans prior to the start of an exhibition double tennis match against Serena and Venus Williams, of the United States, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Serena Williams of the United States gestures at the end of an exhibition tennis match against Italy's Flavio Pennetta, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Italy's Francesca Schiavone, left, and Flavia Pennetta dance to Michael Jackson's song "Beat It" prior to the start of an exhibition double tennis match against Serena and Venus Williams, of the United States, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Italy's Flavia Pennetta returns the ball to Serena Williams, of the United States, during an exhibition tennis match, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
MILAN (AP) ? Francesca Schiavone defeated both Venus and Serena Williams in singles on Saturday before they rallied to win the doubles in an exhibition in Milan.
Schiavone defeated Venus 7-5, 7-3, then countered a strong comeback from Serena to defeat the younger sibling 7-3, 8-10, 8-6.
Flavia Pennetta also beat Venus, whose strap broke on her dress before a sellout crowd of 11,000. Venus dashed off the court and returned in her third outfit of the event. She also brought popcorn to share with Pennetta, who won 7-6, 7-2.
Serena defeated Pennetta 6-8, 7-3, 7-3 before the Williams sisters won the doubles 3-7, 8-6, 8-6.
The Italian pair delighted the crowd in the warmup by dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."
Venus has played just once since pulling out of the U.S. Open three months ago because of an immune system disease. Venus defeated Serena in an exhibition match in Colombia last week.
Associated Press
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Monday, December 5, 2011
Stranded Alaskan survives 3 days on frozen beer
By Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News
Shared via The Associated Press
Clifton Vial, 52, climbed into the cab of his Toyota Tacoma on Monday night in Nome to see how far a road winding to the north would take him.
More than 40 miles out of town, at about 9:30 that night, he found out. As Pink Floyd's "Echoes" played on the stereo and temperature dipped well below zero in the darkness, Vial's pickup plunged into a snowdrift.
"I made an attempt at digging myself out and realized how badly I was stuck," Vial told The Anchorage Daily News. He was wearing tennis shoes, jeans and a $30 jacket from Sears. "I would have been frostbit before I ever got the thing out of there."
Vial found himself alone near Salmon Lake, on a road that doubles as a snowmachine trail in the winter and stretches inland from the Bering Sea city. Far beyond the reach of his cellphone, Vial slipped into a fleece sleeping bag liner and wrapped a bath towel around his feet. He occasionally started the truck to run the heater and listen to the radio.
Was anybody talking about him? Did they know he was missing? By the third day, Vial said, the truck was nearly out of gas. "I felt really pissed at myself," Vial said. "I shouldn't have been out there by myself unprepared for what I knew was possible."
Normally Vial carries a sleeping bag, extra gasoline and other survival gear in the 2000 Toyota, he said. But on this trip he had few supplies, no food and no water. Even his dogs, a pair of labs that usually accompany him on drives, stayed home.
Vial kept busy trying to think of ways to stay warm. His wife and daughter were out of town, searchers said. No one would know he was gone until he failed to show up for work at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.
"He's a very punctual employee," said John Handeland, general manager for Nome Joint Utility System, where Vial works as an operator mechanic. "By 4 o'clock we figured something was wrong."
No one could reach Vial on the phone. Co-workers patrolling the town that night found no sign of his pickup.
Handeland called police on Wednesday when Vial missed work for a second day.
The Nome Volunteer Fire Department was alerted and Vial's co-workers and volunteer rescuers drove surrounding roads in search of the Toyota.
One searcher drove 41 miles along Kougarok Road -- just a few miles from where Vial sat shivering and stranded in his pickup -- but saw no tracks. The searcher turned back as daylight disappeared and the road conditions worsened, Handeland said.
Troopers joined the search. Rescuers looked for Vial on the ground and from the air, in planes and from a helicopter.
"When we get called on situations like this, it's a needle in a haystack," said Jim West Jr., a Nome fire department captain and search and rescue coordinator.
For Vial, the cold was worse than the hunger, he said. Still he scoured the pickup in vain for food.
His only provisions: Snow, and a few cans of Coors Light that had frozen solid in the cab.
Vial ate the beers like cans of beans. "I cut the lids off and dug it out with a knife," he said.
The overnight low temperature in Nome dropped from about 12 below Monday night -- not counting windchill -- to 17 below on Wednesday morning, said National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Aldrich.
Battling for warmth, Vial wrapped a bath towel around his feet and placed another over his knees and thighs. He shook his ankles and knees to keep moving. He stuffed rags in his clothes and unraveled tissue paper, jamming it down around his feet.
"When I was just sitting there in my coat in the sleeping bag liner I would pull my arms inside my T-shirt to try and utilize my body heat as much as I could," Vial said. "That worked fine for some time, as far as keeping my torso warm and my arms. But my legs and feet where getting pretty cold."
The wind rumbled like airplane engines, Vial said. He thought about his daughter, and about what would happen if no one found him in time.
"I tried to sleep when I could," Vial said, "but I knew that I might not wake up."
When he did close his eyes, Vial said, strange and vivid images appeared. "Saw my daughter. Saw my job. Saw some things that didn't look like people."
He would picture himself driving around Nome, saying hello to friends, only to snap awake and find himself back in the truck, freezing.
At one point Vial decided he would only fire up the pickup's engine once a day. "(The gas tank) was on `E' and the gas light was coming on," he said.
Vial never heard the rescuers arrive. It was early Thursday afternoon, three days after he first became stranded in the snow, when they pulled up behind his pick-up. A co-worker and another volunteer opened the door to the truck, he said.
They gave him a Snickers bar -- it seemed too dry to eat, he said -- and an orange soda.
Vial described the more than 60-hour ordeal in a short phone interview Friday from Nome. His daughter was home from Anchorage.
He planned to visit a doctor Friday afternoon, then return to work.
Vial's legs felt as if they'd been beaten, he said, but he found no signs of frostbite. "I weighed myself last night," he said. "I lost approximately 16 pounds."
? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Sunday, December 4, 2011
British soldier jailed for stabbing Afghan boy
LONDON?? A British soldier has been jailed for stabbing a 10-year-old Afghan boy with a bayonet for no reason, according to Britain's Ministry of Defense.
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Prosecutors said that Daniel Crook, a Grenadier Guardsman stationed in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, suffered from a hangover when he attacked the boy, who was on an errand. The boy survived the incident, which happened in March, 2010.
Crook admitted he stabbed the child, but could not explain why he did so when questioned by military police.
The Ministry of Defense confirmed Saturday that Crook was dismissed from the army, has faced court martial and is imprisoned for 18 months.
The boy's father, Haji Shah Zada told The Guardian newspaper that he didn't know why his son was attacked and received no apology from the British forces.
"Of course foreigners are the enemies of Afghans ? otherwise he wouldn't do that to innocent child who was just going by on his bike," the 72-year-old shopkeeper told the British newspaper.
He said his son still has difficulties walking to school, located nearly a mile away.
On the question of compensation, the father said: "We asked for $40,000 but they only gave us $800."
Reuters contributed to this report.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45534829/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
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Saturday, December 3, 2011
Friday Illusion: Ghostly images change shape
Caitlin Stier, video intern
Think hard: you can transform a circle into a hexagon using the power of your mind.? New animations created by Hiroyuki Ito from Kyushu University show how staring at coloured shapes can produce an afterimage that varies in form as well as hue. "This is the first study to show systematic shape changes in after-images involving shape processing mechanisms in the brain," says Ito.
The first version of the illusion uses solid, stationary shapes. After focusing on yellow circles, blue hexagons typically appear and vice versa. The same effect also occurs with outlines of the shapes.
In another variation, hexagons and circles rotate. Although the movement paints circular shapes on the retina, the animations produce the same shape-changing effect as the static illusions.
After-images are thought to occur when three types of retinal cells are overstimulated. Due to signals lingering on the retina, a blurred version in complimentary colours typically arises after the image disappears. But in this case, the additional shape change could be caused by tiring out areas in the cortex that detect corners and curves.
Ito now plans to investigate the neural mechanism involved and explore the influence of colour and brightness on after-images. He became fascinated by the phenomenon after staring at his circular ceiling light and noticing a ghostly image shaped like a polygon afterwards.
The research will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science.
Were you able to see the illusion? Let us know in the comments section below.
If you enjoyed this illusion, watch how girls can turn into gargoyles or check out a pattern that causes temporary blindness.
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Friday, December 2, 2011
Dad jumps onto field to defend 31-year-old rugby star
Parents often get impassioned when watching their children from the sidelines.
But the father of brawny French international rugby star Imanol Harinordoquy took family allegiance to a whole new level on Tuesday night when he walked onto the field to intervene in a dispute during a club game.
Lucien Harinordoquy walked onto the turf early in the Top 14 league game when his 31-year-old son, playing for Biarritz, clashed with a pair of Bayonne players. The player's father then attempted to punch one of them, Jean-Jo Marmouyet, in the face.
Before he was able to make contact with Marmouyet, Harinordoquy Sr. was tackled by Bayonne flyhalf Benjamin Boyet as seen in this video clip.
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"I tackled him because he was attacking one of my teammates. I put him to the ground and [Biarritz player] Benoit August told me to stop, because it was Imanol's father," Boyet told French sports daily L'Equipe on Wednesday.
'Intolerable'
Bayonne president Michel Cacouault condemned the attack.
"It is intolerable. The club will lodge a complaint against Mr Harinordoquy," Cacouault told the club's website.
Imanol Harinordoquy is known throughout the rugby world for his ferocity and unyielding style of play. He has played in three Rugby World Cup semi-finals, is 6ft 3in tall and weighs 240 lbs.
He has not commented on the incident.
Biarritz won the Basque derby 21-19.
Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45489113/ns/world_news-europe/
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