Two University of Sheffield students have recorded a video of the Earth from the edge of space, using homemade equipment and on a shoestring budget.

The balloon was launched from Ashborne, Derbyshire on 17 December 2010, and was in flight for approximately two hours and 50 minutes, before landing in a field in Strethall, Cambridgeshire, a journey of over 100 miles. The location, which is Chris´ home town, was chosen specifically, as it was predicted that launching there would result in the device landing in a rural area. The video footage, which lasts for two hours, shows the balloon being launched at sunrise and rapidly climbing above the clouds, filming the ground below and eventually showing the curvature of the Earth´s atmosphere. The balloon, after swelling to many times its original size, eventually burst, allowing the parachute to open and the box to descend back to Earth. It is thought that at its maximum height, the balloon reached an altitude of 37km. The video also shows the box being built from scratch, and the journey to collect the device from a snowy field in Cambridgeshire.

Wikipedia: Stratosphere + Atmosphere of Earth

Atmospheric physicist, MIT Professor of Meteorology and former IPCC lead author Richard S. Lindzen joins us to discuss the state of the climate change debate, the lack of evidence for catastrophic warming and what the science really tells us.

The super-volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming has been rising at a record rate since 2004. It would explode with a force a thousand times more powerful than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980. Spewing lava far into the sky, a cloud of plant-killing ash would fan out and dump a layer 10ft deep up to 1,000 miles away. Two-thirds of the U.S. could become uninhabitable as toxic air sweeps through it, grounding thousands of flights and forcing millions to leave their homes. This is the nightmare that scientists are predicting could happen if the world’s largest super-volcano erupts for the first time in 600,000 years, as it could do in the near future. Yellowstone National Park’s caldera has erupted three times in the last 2.1million years and researchers monitoring it say we could be in for another eruption. They said that the super-volcano underneath the Wyoming park has been rising at a record rate since 2004 - its floor has gone up three inches per year for the last three years alone, the fastest rate since records began in 1923.

[Erta Ale, a volcano in the deserts of Ethiopia’s Afar Triangle in northeastern Africa, erupts. The volcano’s crater had always had a bubbling soup of silver-black lava. But, in November 2010, it started erupting again after decades of lying dormant.]

The fissures began appearing years ago. But in recent months, seismic activity has accelerated in northeastern Africa as the continent breaks apart in slow motion. Researchers say that lava in the region is consistent with magma normally seen on the sea floor -- and that water will ultimately cover the desert.

Cynthia Ebinger, a geologist from the University of Rochester in New York, could hardly believe what the caller from the deserts of Ethiopia was saying. It was an employee at a mineralogy company -- and he reported that the famous Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia was erupting. Ebinger, who has studied the volcano for years, was taken aback. The volcano's crater had always been filled with a bubbling soup of silver-black lava, but it had been decades since its last eruption.

IT'S the ultimate experience for Star Wars fans - staring forlornly off into the distance as twin suns sink into the horizon. Yet it's not just a figment of George Lucas's imagination - twin suns are real. And here's the big news - they could be coming to Earth. Yes, any day now we see a second sun light up the sky, if only for a matter of weeks. The infamous red super-giant star in Orion’s nebula - Betelgeuse - is predicted to go gangbusters and the impending super-nova may reach Earth before 2012, and when it does, all of our wildest Star Wars dreams will come true. The second biggest star in the universe is losing mass, a typical indication that a gravitation collapse is occurring. When that happens, we'll get our second sun, according to Dr Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland.

“This old star is running out of fuel in its centre”, Dr Carter said. “This fuel keeps Betelgeuse shining and supported. When this fuel runs out the star will literally collapse in upon itself and it will do so very quickly.”

When this happens a giant explosion will occur, tens of millions of times brighter than the sun. The bad news is, it could also happen in a million years. But who's counting? The important thing is, one day, night will become day for several weeks on Earth.

In Finland it is a law that every structure larger than 600 square meters must have a bomb shelter. Below Helsinki a vast network of nuclear fall-out shelters underpin the whole city. Even parking a car in an underground car-park in the Finnish capital means driving into a fall-out shelter, but things have changed considerably since the country’s neighbour, the Soviet Union, fragmented into a country that will host the 2018 Soccer World Cup and is somewhat less likely to fire off nuclear weapons… although one never knows.

Although the average December temperature in Helsinki is below freezing point, Finland is hot right now. The country is officially the least corrupt in the world, the number one in the Global Wealth and Happiness index, top in utility patents in the European Union and last year the Harvard Business Review rated it as the 2nd Innovation Hot Spot in the World.

According to Technopolis Online, there is a cluster of 813 high-tech companies in Helsinki. These include 67 cleantech companies, 175 mobile companies, 359 software companies, 16 nanotechnology companies and 100 life sciences companies. The city has undoubtedly benefited from the so-called Nokia effect, a company that was named after the Nokia river and was originally a paper manufacture business until it merged with the Finnish Rubber Works and Finnish Cable Works in 1967. You may know it slightly better as a handset maker.

[The graphic shows the precession of the equinoxes from 600 BC to 2600 AD. In 600 BC, the intersection of the ecliptic and celestial equator is in western Aries and marked by the Vernal Equinox. In the year 2007, the intersection is in Pisces. (Click on image to enlarge.)]

It's a great conversation starter: "What's your sign?" But before you ask or answer that question, consider this: your zodiac sign corresponds to the position of the sun relative to constellations as they appeared over 2200 years ago! The science behind astrology may have its roots in astronomy but don't confuse these two disciplines. Astronomy can explain the position of the stars in the sky but it’s up to you to determine what, if anything, their alignment signifies.

The Constellations of the Zodiac: The ecliptic, or the position of the Sun as it’s perceived from the revolving Earth, passes through the constellations that formed the Zodiac - Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Zodiac signs were originally determined by which constellation the Sun was "in" on the day you were born. Early astronomers observed the Sun traveling through the signs of the Zodiac in the course of one year, spending about a month in each. Thus, they calculated that each constellation extends 30 degrees across the ecliptic. However, a phenomenon called precession has altered the position of the constellations we see today.

You will most likely find that once precession is taken into account, your zodiac sign is different. And if you were born between November 29 and December 17, your sign is actually one you never saw in the newspaper: you are an Ophiuchus! The eliptic passes through the constellation of Ophiuchus after Scorpius. Now you really have something cool with which to start that conversation!

BBC: Have the Zodiac and star signs changed?

A small predator that hunted in South America 230 million years ago represents one of the earliest-known dinosaurs and foreshadowed later meat-eating beasts like Tyrannosaurus rex, according to scientists from Argentina and the United States.

In findings published on Friday in the journal Science, they described the discovery of a dinosaur called Eodromaeus, meaning "dawn runner."

It was a modest creature -- measuring about 4 feet long and weighing only 10 to 15 pounds (4.5 to 6.8 kg) -- that walked on two legs and possessed a long neck and tail, sharp claws and saber-shaped teeth.

But the scientists said it paved the way for some true monsters like T. rex. Tyrannosaurus, which lived at the very end of the age of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, approached 50 feet in length and weighed about 6 tonnes. The scientists found the fossilized remains of Eodromaeus in Argentina's "Valley of the Moon," a region that has provided a glimpse into some of the earliest days of the dinosaurs during the Triassic period.

Castro: Israel, US killed nuke scientists.

Recently it was revealed that Fidel Castro was super critical of the Iranian President’s views on Israel. When this became public the accusations came flying from every server on the Web… Fidel is a zionist, Fidel is senile, Fidel has lost his mind!

Today he proved that all of the above is false, and that his mind is as clear as it was when he and his forces toppled the Cuban dictator, Batista, in 1959. He probably holds the Guinness Book of Records’ ‘record’ for the Longest Lasting Thorn in the Side of The United States’ …. and here’s why:

Cuban revolutionist blames Mossad, secret services of US, UK for recent assassination of Iranian scientist. ‘I don’t remember another time in history when killing of scientists was official policy of powers armed with WMDs,’ he writes in local paper. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro on Friday accused Israel, the United States and Britain for the “massacre” of Iranian scientists. The Cuban revolutionist claimed that the mercenaries who acted on behalf of these countries are also responsible for a series of other assassinations that are meant to thwart the development of an Iranian nuclear program. Washington immediately refuted Castro’s allegations, calling them “ludicrous.”

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has accused the United States, Britain, and Israel of organizing the "butchery" of Iranian scientists to undermine Tehran's nuclear program. In an article published on Friday entitled “What Would Einstein Say?”, the 84-year-old Castro cited reports in the international media, particularly one article in the US magazine The Atlantic, describing efforts by the intelligence agencies of the three countries to subvert Tehran's nuclear program and torpedo international negotiations on it through sabotage, which sometimes includes the "coordinated disappearance" of Iranian scientists, AFP reported. "There are other serious developments related to the butchery of scientists, organized by Israel, the United States, Britain, and other powers," he wrote.

PressTV: Mossad involved in Iran assassinations

Alan Caruba: A Blizzard of Lies in The New York Times: Updated by Piers Corbyn
Twitter: Piers Corbyn

It's not something we'd like to admit, but it seems the human race may actually be becoming increasingly dumb. Man's brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.

This decrease in size follows two million years during which the human cranium steadily grew in size, and it's happened all over the world, to both sexes and every race. Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimetres to 1,350 cubic centimetres, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball,' Kathleen McAuliffe writes in Discover magazine. 'The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion.' She was reporting on comments made by Dr John Hawks, an anthropologist from the University of Wisconsin, who argues that the fact the size of the human brain is decreasing doesn't necessarily mean our intelligence is in decline as well. Some paleontologists agree with this diagnosis, that our brains may have become smaller in size, but increasingly efficient. But others believe that man has indeed become steadily more stupid as he has evolved.

British study shows conservatives' brains tend to have larger amygdalas, which responsible for primitive emotions. If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks. "It is very significant because it does suggest there is something about political attitudes that are either encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that our brain structure in some way determines or results in our political attitudes," Geraint Rees, the neurologist who carried out the study, told the media.

In the Silhouette Illusion (video at the bottom), a silhouetted woman is seen spinning on one foot, her leg extended. The appeal of the illusion is in the way the woman is spinning – she can be perceived as spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise.

A psychology professor has found that the way people perceive the Silhouette Illusion, a popular trick that went viral and has received substantial online attention, has little to do with the viewers' personality, or whether they are left- or right-brained, despite the fact that the illusion is often used to test these attributes in popular e-quizzes.

Instead, Niko Troje says that any reported preference for seeing the silhouette spinning clockwise rather than counter-clockwise is simply dependent upon the angle at which the viewer is seeing the image.

i-Pereception: The viewing-from-above bias and the silhouette illusion

A US study found that Neanderthals, prehistoric cousins of humans, ate grains and vegetables as well as meat, cooking them over fire in the same way homo sapiens did.

The new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) challenges a prevailing theory that Neanderthals' over reliance on meat contributed to their extinction around 30,000 years ago. Researchers found grains from numerous plants, including a type of wild grass, as well as traces of roots and tubers, trapped in plaque buildup on fossilized Neanderthal teeth unearthed in northern Europe and Iraq. Many of the particles "had undergone physical changes that matched experimentally-cooked starch grains, suggesting that Neanderthals controlled fire much like early modern humans," PNAS said in a statement. Stone artifacts have not provided evidence that Neanderthals used tools to grind plants, suggesting they did not practice agriculture, but the new research indicates they cooked and prepared plants for eating, it said.

Science News: Neandertal relative bred with humans

Everyone knows that "the moon on the breast of new-fallen snow gives the luster of mid-day to objects below." That is, except during a lunar eclipse. The luster will be a bit "off" on Dec. 21st, the first day of northern winter, when the full Moon passes almost dead-center through Earth's shadow. For 72 minutes of eerie totality, an amber light will play across the snows of North America, throwing landscapes into an unusual state of ruddy shadow. The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth's shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the "bite" to expand and swallow the entire Moon. Totality commences at 02:41 am EST (11:41 pm PST) and lasts for 72 minutes.

The study, "Perceptual learning, aging, and improved visual performance in early stages of visual processing," was published in the online November issue of the Journal of Vision. According to the research team from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and Boston University, the ability of elders to improve their sight so quickly has a host of important implications for the health and mobility of older people.

Changes in vision -- including contrast sensitivity, spatial vision, orientation, depth perception, dark adaptation, visual acuity, and motion perception -- have long been associated with aging. However, the new study shows for the first that specific eye "exercises" can improve vision among the elderly in the earliest levels of visual processing.

Although clinical observations suggest that humans with amygdala damage have abnormal fear reactions and a reduced experience of fear [1,2,3], these impressions have not been systematically investigated. To address this gap, we conducted a new study in a rare human patient, SM, who has focal bilateral amygdala lesions [4]. To provoke fear in SM, we exposed her to live snakes and spiders, took her on a tour of a haunted house, and showed her emotionally evocative films. On no occasion did SM exhibit fear, and she never endorsed feeling more than minimal levels of fear. Likewise, across a large battery of self-report questionnaires, 3 months of real-life experience sampling, and a life history replete with traumatic events, SM repeatedly demonstrated an absence of overt fear manifestations and an overall impoverished experience of fear. Despite her lack of fear, SM is able to exhibit other basic emotions and experience the respective feelings. The findings support the conclusion that the human amygdala plays a pivotal role in triggering a state of fear and that the absence of such a state precludes the experience of fear itself.

● Case study of patient SM, a rare human patient with focal bilateral amygdala lesions
● First investigation of the induction and experience of fear in such a patient
● SM failed to exhibit fear behaviors, and her fear experience was highly impoverished
● The human amygdala plays a pivotal role in triggering a state of fear

Here's a riddle with a dangerous answer: what do routine dental x-rays, mammograms, CT scans and body scanners at the airport have in common? They expose your body to radiation, a form of energy known to raise the risk of cancer. Despite the fact that ionizing radiation is known to trigger mutations and other genetic damage and cause normal cells to become malignant, mainstream medicine has long discounted a serious risk from the accumulated radiation exposure from these tests -- especially for middle-aged folks. But a new study just published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute comes to another, sobering conclusion. It turns out that, counter to conventional medical thinking, cancer risk after radiation exposure in middle-age increases the risk of cancerous tumors.

A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, 'is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record' - a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average. World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: 'Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far - 1998.' Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits - an ambition that was not to be met.

Daily Express: WINTER TO BE MILD PREDICTS MET OFFICE

[More in the same vein:]

[20 March 2000] Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past (The Independent) [H/T: WRH]

Cancun, Mexico--At COP16, the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, CFACT had the opportunity to interview the chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri. When asked about the fact that there has been no statistically significant global warming for the past 15 years, Pachauri became evasive. Even Phil Jones, a climatologist at the University of East Anglia and a prominent global warming alarmist, admitted this fact in the wake of Climategate. A year after Climategate, however, the IPCC's Pachauri still refuses to face reality and clings to the deeply flawed 4th Assessment Report, which has been completely discredited over the past year after it was revealed that many of its supposedly "peer-reviewed sources" were actually based on activist reports and interviews with hikers.

Most tellingly, while Pachauri agreed that global carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing for the last 15 years, he was at a loss to say how much global temperatures had increased during that same time. That seems like a pretty basic piece of information for the head of the UN's climate panel to know, but Pahauri has revealed his ignorance once again.

This picture of a perfect storm has earned the nicknames 'Eye of God' and 'Mothership'. The photograph is just one image from the portfolio of electrician and storm chaser Sean R Heavey, who lives in Glasgow, Montana, USA. Sean created this panoramic image by stitching together three photos from the 400 frames he took of a violent storm he witnessed in July this year. "The 'Mothership' picture is a super-cell storm that was around five to ten miles in diameter with winds of around 85 mph," said Sean. "I photographed it for over two hours as it travelled between Glasgow and the town of Hinsdale. I can honestly say that the photograph does not do it justice. I caught the shot just as the sun was setting which brought out the colours so vividly. I felt that if you could walk inside the rain and the wind right into the centre of the storm and stare up, then you would be able to see God's eye."

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. researchers are closing in on an accurate test for autism, a finding that could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment.

The test, which uses conventional magnetic resonance imaging or MRI machines, detected 94 percent of individuals with a high-functioning form of autism, they reported on Thursday. "These results are the best yet in the search for a biological basis in terms of being able to distinguish those with and without the disease," said Nicholas Lange of Harvard Medical School, who directs the Neurostatistics Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. He said the findings, published in the journal Autism Research, were very preliminary, but if confirmed in several more and larger studies, they might replace current subjective tests now used to diagnose the disorder.

A new study says the number of stars in the universe is three times more than previously thought and that there is far less dark matter than earlier proposed.

Analyzing the light coming from elliptical galaxies, scientists found that they contained hundreds of millions of small, cool stars known as red dwarfs. According to the study published in the journal Nature, red dwarfs make up 80 percent of the star population.

The findings also brought hope since they suggest there is less dark matter in these galaxies than previously thought. Astronomers can understand stars far better than they do dark matter. Red dwarfs do not emit enough visible light to be seen from the Earth and only affect the overall glow from a galaxy. In these galaxies there are little pieces of the rainbow that are missing, wavelengths that have much less strength than the rest. Scientists, therefore used spectral analysis to find the so-called absorption lines that are known to be made by the red dwarf stars.

An international team of scientists was recently surprised to discover that sea sponges -- one of the oldest multicellular life forms -- share nearly 70 percent of the same genes as human beings, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

The team worked for five years to sequence the genome of the 650-million year old group of organisms, which was one of the first to develop the specialized cell groups that characterize organs. "The sponge represents a window on this ancient and momentous event," said University of California-Santa Barbara researcher Kenneth S. Kosik. "Curiously, the cells of a sponge bear little resemblance to cells found in the rest of the animal kingdom. For example, sponges lack neurons; however, the sponge genome reveals the presence of many genes found in neurons." Significantly, many of the genes that sponges share with humans may play a role in the development of cancer.

Aurora Borealis timelapse HD - Tromsø 2010 from Tor Even Mathisen on Vimeo.

Explanation: Have you ever seen an aurora? Auroras are occurring again with increasing frequency. With the Sun being unusually dormant over the past three years, the amount of Sun-induced auroras has also been unusually low. More recently, however, our Sun has become increasingly active and exhibiting a greater abundance of sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections. Solar activity like this typically expels charged particles into the Solar System, some of which may trigger Earthly auroras. As this year unfolded, the above timelapse displays of picturesque auroras were captured above Tromsø, Norway. Curtains of auroral light, usually green, flow, shimmer and dance as energetic particles fall toward the Earth and ionize air molecules high up in the Earth's atmosphere. With solar maximum still in the future, there may be opportunities to see spectacular aurora personally over the next three years.

Experts in the safety of genetically modified (GM) organisms have expressed concern over the release of GM mosquitoes into the wild on the Cayman Islands, which was publicised internationally only last month — a year after their initial release.

The trial of the OX513A strain of the dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito, developed by UK biotechnology company Oxitec, was carried out on Grand Cayman island by the Cayman Islands' Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU) in 2009, followed by a bigger release between May and October this year. Together they represent the first known release of GM mosquitoes anywhere in the world. Unpublished results of the trials, showing that the GM male mosquitoes competed with wild males, were presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual meeting in the United States, last week (4 November).

If you were an octopus, would you view the world from eight different points of view? Nine? The answer may depend on how many brains an octopus has, or, to say it another way, whether the robust bunches of neurons in its coiling, writhing, incredibly handy arms bestow on each of them something akin to a brain. Is an octopus a creature ruled by a single consciousness centered in its large brain, or, by dint of its nerve-infused legs, a collaborative, cooperative, but distributed mind?

The idea of a distributed mind among animals is not new, according to Peter Godfrey-Smith, who focuses his efforts on the philosophy of science. Experiments indicate that when a bird learns a skill using only a single eye, and is later tested while being forced to use the other eye, the learning does not transfer well. “This suggests that animal minds lack the cohesiveness that humans have,” said Godfrey-Smith, a philosophy professor at Harvard. “It may have something to do with consciousness. Maybe it acts as a unifying tool.”