httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txkRCIPSsjM

Molten potassium chlorate is a strong oxidizing agent that reacts violently with sugar. Gummy bears have lots of sugar in them.

poor gummy

Ben Wang shoots a space shuttle launch, the Endeavour in November of 2000. This shot is a 5 minute exposure. Five minutes after liftoff the shuttle is about 229 statute miles downrange.
Pretty cool. A larger picture of this can be found here.

You really want to know how big the earth is compared to the other planets and the sun?

Proportions - How Small We Are

This topic was something I looked at in an Astronomy class I took last year.
We also had to discuss creating a scale model of the solar system to help appreciate how big it is. If you would use a typical classroom globe of the earth as scale the sun would be 146 feet in diameter, Earth would be 40 feet away from the sun. Pluto would be 3 inches in diameter and 118 miles away from the sun. Alpha Centauri A our next closest star would be 822,400 miles away. That far away if the earth was the size of a classroom globe. It really helps people appreciate how much space is in space.

Robin Lloyd
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com Thu Apr 20, 10:00 AM ET

Men and women are actually from the same planet, but scientists now have the first strong evidence that the emotional wiring of the sexes is fundamentally different.

An almond-shaped cluster of neurons that processes experiences such as fear and aggression hooks up to contrasting brain functions in men and women at rest, the new research shows.

For men, the cluster “talks with” brain regions that help them respond to sensors for what’s going on outside the body, such as the visual cortex and an area that coordinates motor actions.

For women, the cluster communicates with brain regions that help them respond to sensors inside the body, such as the insular cortex and hypothalamus. These areas tune in to and regulate women’s hormones, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and respiration.

“Throughout evolution, women have had to deal with a number of internal stressors, such as childbirth, that men haven’t had to experience,” said study co-author Larry Cahill of the University of California Irvine. “What is fascinating about this is the brain seems to have evolved to be in tune with those different stressors.”

The finding, published in the recent issue of the journal NeuroImage, could help researchers learn more about sex-related differences in anxiety, autism, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The new study focused on activity in the amygdala, a cluster of neurons found on both sides of the brain and involved for both sexes in hormone and other involuntary functions, as well as emotions and perception. Cahill already knew that the sexes use different sides of their brains to process and store long-term memories, based on his earlier work. He also has shown that a particular drug, Propranolol, can block memory differently in men and women.

Cahill and his co-author Lisa Kilpatrick, scanned the brains of 36 healthy men and 36 healthy women. The subjects were told to relax with their eyes closed during the scan, so that differences between the sexes could be studied at rest rather than during heavy lifting like accessing memories.

The scans also showed that men’s and women’s amygdalas are polar opposites in terms of connections with other parts of the brain. In men, the right amygdala is more active and shows more connections with other brain regions. In women, the same is true of the left amygdala.

Scientists still have to find out if one’s sex also affects the wiring of other regions of the brain. It could be that while men and women have basically the same hardware, it’s the software instructions and how they are put to use that makes the sexes seem different.

Another study stating the obvious, than men and women are different!
Imagine that!

YORK, Pa. — A math lesson this morning at York’s Smith Middle School involved sixth-graders and more than 5,000 rulers.

It took students about two hours to line up 5,280 rulers end to end outside the school to demonstrate how many feet are in a mile. It wasn’t the straightest line, but the point was made.

“This is like a once-in-a-lifetime experience doing this ruler stuff. And it’s something that we’re probably not going to forget,” said sixth-grader Jose Vasquez.

“It’s a good way to teach students, and it is a fun way. We always do a lot of fun stuff in class,” said sixth-grader Breyonna Small.

York Mayor John Brenner helped students put down the final ruler.

The students got the rulers from within the York City School Districts. Parents and others also volunteered to donate some.

York, PA right up the road from me.

Not too straight is it?
A good way to teach students what? How not to make a straight line? That each ruler is a foot which is why it took 5,280 rulers.
Two hours, huh.
Did the students learn where the length of a mile came from?
Or how Britain modified it to fit their needs? Or how to convert a mile to metric since pretty much the rest of the world doesn’t use miles?

A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics — relations with Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. [.contine.]

“UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.”
“I’m so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something.”
“The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”

I spent all that time running seti@home for nothing!

The new guy at work sends me a link to put up on my site. Who am I to say no?
Off the island of Yonaguni of Japan are massive sunken hewn rock and stone structures.
What makes this interesting is that the structures are really old, maybe 8,000 years old. That’s older than the earliest structures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China. So this has sparked controversy among historians and archaeologist, some saying these structures occurred naturally.
Looks like steps to me!

http://www.morien-institute.org/uwnewsarchive.html

Found this link which had some better photos.

13 things that do not make sense

As much as we have discovered in science, there is plenty that is unknown. So much is unexplainable that science as we know it now could be quite wrong. Here is a list of 13 things that just do not make any sense.

Some of the 13 things include…..
The placebo effect
The horizon problem
Ultra-energetic cosmic rays
Belfast homeopathy results

Sex and romantic entanglements among astronauts could derail missions to Mars and should therefore be studied by NASA, warns a top-level panel of US researchers.
NASA plans to return astronauts to the Moon by 2018 and later on to Mars. But a round-trip mission to the Red Planet would probably last at least 30 months and carry six to eight people. That would be a hotbed for intense crew relationships, says a report by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS). [continue]

The obvious answer to this issue is just to use all heterosexual males for the journey.
But in today’s politically correct climate one would not dare to even suggest that. This is not a problem on the ISS? Those people are up there months at a time. Just because the trip to mars will take them farther from earth this becomes an issue now?
The military is dealing with the same problem. A problem that if actually reported on would fly in the face of political correctness so it is still hush hush, for now.

Academics in the UK claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women.
A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests. [continue]

Let the hate begin, I think I hear the feminist shouting already.
I personally really do not care, even if the studies results were reversed.
In general, men and women each have abilities that each is better at.
Remember kiddies, different doesn’t not mean bad. And if one sex in general is more intelligent than the other when it comes to specific things, that is not bad, just different.