How Words Affect Climate Change Perception

Perception of climate change may be influenced by the frequency that climate-science words appear in the popular literature. CREDIT: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation  View full size image

Like fashion fads, climate-science words rise and fall in popularity, finds a new study.

And how frequently these scientific words, such as biodiversity and paleoclimate, filter out of journals and into the popular lexicon may influence public perception of climate science, the researchers add.

The study showed that over the past 200 years, the appearance of key climate-science terms in the public vocabulary has followed "boom and bust" cycles. Given the resistance that climate change faces from some sectors of the public, understanding how cycles of word usage affect public views on the reality of climate change could offer insight into improving science communication, the study suggests. 

Michael O'Brien, dean of the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri, and colleagues mined Google's online book database to track the frequency of keywords related to climate change. Google's "Ngram" database contains more than 5 million books published in seven languages since the 1500s, amounting to about 4 percent of all books ever published worldwide.
O'Brien's team analyzed how often climate-science words have appeared in the popular literature since 1900. The researchers used the frequency of the most commonly occurring English word, "the," as a baseline reference point. Usage of words such as "climate," "diatoms" and "pollen" remained relatively constant. By contrast, words like "biodiversity" (the amount of variation in types of organisms within a given area) and "paleoclimate" (the prehistoric climate, usually measured by ice cores, tree rings and pollen in sediments) peaked in use in a wavelike manner, entering the public lexicon at different times before leveling off.
The results show that the use of scientific terms in books for the general public fits a well-known model — specifically, one originally used to describe how new products get adopted in the marketplace.
The researchers "remind us that communication is a social process, for science as for any other human activity," environmental consultant Henry Huntington, of Huntington Consulting in Eagle River, Alaska, told LiveScience in an email.
"Scientists need to understand better how their ideas are conveyed to and taken up by the general public, so that we can engage more effectively in public discourse," added Huntington, who was not involved in the study. [The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted]
Several of the words studied appear to have joined the common parlance over a period of 30 to 50 years, about the length of a human generation. Others seem to have taken several generations to trickle into the public discourse. The movement of words related to climate change into and out of public usage could be linked to the acceptance of climate science by society, O'Brien and his team propose.
"We suggest that some of the core vocabulary of climate science becomes passé in public usage, even as the scientific activity may remain steady," the researchers wrote in the study published Nov. 7, 2012 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The Center of the Milky Way Space Wallpaper

The Center of the Milky Way Space Wallpaper

About this Image

This space wallpaper shows the central parts of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, as observed in the near-infrared with the NACO instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope. By following the motions of the most central stars over more than 16 years, astronomers were able to determine the mass of the supermassive black hole that lurks there.

The Star Explosion That Wasn't: Astronomers Solve 150-Year-Old Mystery

An artist's illustration of a powerful supernova, which could be the eventual fate of T Coronae Borealis. CREDIT: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss  View full size image

After a stellar explosion was reported in 1866, British astronomer John Herschel announced he had seen a bright flare from the same location 24 years earlier.

Herschel's claim was contested almost immediately, with some saying he had seen only a fairly common star in 1842.

Now the question of whether Herschel actually saw a recurrent  supernova or a common star has finally been answered, clearing up a point about stars that "go off" periodically.

To solve the 150-year-old mystery, Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University dug through the records of the Royal Society in Britain, to which Herschel donated his papers. Schaefer was unable to find the astronomer's original chart, but he found the second best thing: a copy made by Herschel and sent to another astronomer a few short weeks after the 1866 explosion.

The document revealed that what Herschel observed was not the recurrent nova T Coronae Borealis (T CrB) but another star, BD+25°3020.

Blown away — again

Rather than dying in a single blaze of glory, recurrent novas cycle through explosions on a steady basis. White dwarf stars pull in material from companion stars, and they flare up when enough material has fallen onto their surfaces. Understanding just how often an individual nova, such as T Coronae Borealis (T CrB), explodes is crucial to understanding objects that could eventually evolve into Type 1a supernovas.

But in 1866, novas were not well understood.

"When T CrB went off, the world of astronomy became ablaze," Schaefer said during a presentation in January at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society. [Supernova Photos of Star Explosions]

Back in 1866, John Herschel, son of astronomer Sir William Herschel, dug through his records to find a map of the night sky he had made nearly 24 years before. But the published chart seemed to place what Herschel claimed was the explosion near the spot of another star, and generated an almost immediate response from the astronomical community.

"We had a couple of people coming up to Herschel saying, 'Hey, are you sure this isn't just the BD star?'" Schaefer said.

The recurrent nova white dwarf exploded again in 1946, which would give it a time scale of 80 years between flares. But if Herschel saw it explode in 1842, that would change the time scale of the star, and call into question astronomers' understanding of these repeating explosions.

Solving the mystery

For Schaefer, who studies recurrent novas, solving the mystery wasn't as simple as determining exactly where Herschel's mystery object sat in the sky. The BD star is too faint to be observed at sea level with the naked eye, according to Schaefer, so Herschel could not have seen it without assistance. If Herschel was relying on his own eyes to map the night sky, he must have seen T CrB — or so the argument goes.

Digging through letters, Schaefer found a notation that all of Hershel's observations weren't made unaided. On occasion, the British scientist used an opera glass, which would have allowed him to see the BD star.

Still, this wasn't definitive enough. Schaefer kept digging, searching for the original sky map.

Instead, he found a letter from Herschel to another astronomer with a diligently replicated chart.

According to Schaefer, Herschel placed a heavy piece of paper under the original chart and used pins to precisely map the location of each star in the sky. He sent the duplicate chart to the fellow astronomer.

"We have him guaranteeing it's a fair copy," Schaefer told SPACE.com.

The chart revealed that the object Hershel observed sat in the same position as the BD star, and not where T CrB lit up the sky.

"T CrB did not go off in 1842," Schaefer said, closing the door on 150-year-old mystery.

Schaefer's findings will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal The Observatory.

'Habitable Zone' for Alien Planets, and Possibly Life, Redefined

A new definition of the habitable zone around planets, denoting where liquid water could exist, shifts Earth toward the very edge of the solar system's own habitable zone. CREDIT: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, Rogelio Bernal Andreo  View full size image

One of the most important characteristics of an alien planet is whether or not it falls into what's called the habitable zone ­— a Goldilocks-like range of not-too-close, not-too-far distances from the parent star that might allow the planet to host life.

Now scientists have redefined the boundaries of the habitable zone for alien planets, potentially kicking out some exoplanaets that were thought to fall within it, and maybe allowing a few that had been excluded to squeeze in.

"This will have a significant impact on the number of exoplanets that are within habitable zone," said research team leader Ravi Kumar Kopparapu of Penn State University.

The habitable zone defines the region where a planet might be able to retain liquid water on its surface. Any closer to the star and water would vaporize away; any farther, and it would freeze to ice. But water in its liquid state is what scientists are after, since that is thought to be a prerequisite for life.

The new definition of the habitable zone is based on updated atmospheric databases called HITRAN (high-resolution transmission molecular absorption) and HITEMP (high-temperature spectroscopic absorption parameters), which give the absorption parameters of water and carbon dioxide — two properties that strongly influence the atmospheres of exoplanets, determining whether those planets could host liquid water. [9 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

The scientists cautioned that the habitable zone definition still does not take into account feedback effects from clouds, which will also affect a planet's habitability.

The previous habitable zone definitions were derived about 20 years ago by Penn State researcher James Kasting, who was also part of the team behind the updates.

"At the time when he wrote that paper no exoplanets were discovered," Kopparapu told SPACE.com. "In 20 years, hundreds, maybe thousands have been discovered."

The graphic shows habitable zone distances around various types of stars, according to an updated habitable zone definition. Some of the known extrasolar planets that are considered to be in the habitable zone of their stars are also shown. On this scale, Earth-Sun distance is 1 astronomical unit, which is roughly 150 million kilometers.
CREDIT: Chester Herman

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The new definition isn't radically different from the old one. For example, in our own solar system, the boundaries of the habitable zone have shifted from between 0.95 astronomical units (AU, or the distance between Earth and the sun) and 1.67 AU, to the new range of 0.99 AU to 1.7 AU.

"It's a surprise that Earth is so close to the inner edge of the habitable zone," said astronomer Abel Méndez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, who was not part of the team behind the redefinition.

Méndez manages a list, called the Habitable Exoplanet Catalog, off all the known planets beyond our solar system that could be habitable to life. The new study will necessitate some adjustments to the catalog, he said.

"Right now as I see it as a significant change," Méndez said. "Many of those planets that we believe were inside are now outside. But on the other side, it extends the habitable zone's outer edge, so a few planets that are farther away might fall inside the habitable zone now."

He mentioned one planet in particular, Gliese 581d, was thought to lie at the outer edge of its star's habitable zone. With the new definition, though, it falls almost smack in the middle, making it perhaps a better candidate for extraterrestrial life.

"That will be a big change for that particular planet," Méndez said. "That means the prospects for life on the planet will be much better."

The researchers detail their new habitable zone definition in a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

To explore the Habitable Planet Catalog directy, visit: http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog

Venus Can Have 'Comet-Like' Atmosphere

When the solar wind dies down, an outer layer of Venus's atmosphere billows outward (illustrated on right), making the second planet from the sun look like a comet. CREDIT: ESA/Wei et al.  View full size image

The planet Venus sometimes looks less like a planet and more like a comet, scientists say.

Scientists with the European Space Agency have discovered that a part of the upper atmosphere of Venus— its ionosphere — acts surprisingly different depending on daily changes in the sun's weather. The side of Venus' ionosphere that faces away from the sun can billow outward like the tail of a comet, while the side facing the star remains tightly compacted, researchers said.

The discovery was made using ESA's Venus Express spacecraft, which observed Venus's ionosphere during a period of low solar wind in 2010 to see exactly how the sun affects the way the planet's atmosphere functions. In 2013, the sun is expected to reach the peak of its 11-year solar activity cycle.

"As this significantly reduced solar wind hit Venus, Venus Express saw the planet’s ionosphere balloon outwards on the planet’s ‘downwind’ nightside, much like the shape of the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions," ESA officials said in a statement today (Jan. 29).

It only takes 30 to 60 minutes for the planet's comet-like tail to form after the solar wind dies down. Researchers observed the ionosphere stretch to at least 7,521 miles (12,104 kilometers) from the planet, said Yong Wei, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Katlenburg, Germany who worked on this research.

Earth's ionosphere never becomes comet-like largely because the planet has its own magnetic field that balances out the sun's influence on the way the atmospheric layer is shaped. Venus, however, doesn't have its own magnetic field and is therefore subject to the whims of the sun's solar wind.

Researchers think that Mars behaves in much the same way. The Red Planet doesn't have a magnetic field to mitigate the influence of the sun's wind either.

The Venus Express spacecraft launched in 2005 and has been orbiting the second planet from the sun since 2006. The spacecraft is equipped with seven instruments to study the atmosphere and surface of Venus in extreme detail. The spacecraft is currently in an extended mission slated to last until 2014 .

How to Lock Down Your Android and Lock Out Malware

CREDIT: Eric Milos/Shutterstock.com/Google/Creative Commons. Image composite by TechNewsDaily.View full size image

Have you ever thought about all the personal information stored on your smartphone or tablet?

I mean, really thought about everything you save so that it's always at your fingertips? 

Then think about how well protected that information is.

You may not care if your list of favorite wines goes public, but what if someone were to copy your spouse’s driver’s license and Social Security numbers?

Millions of people have such data stored in their smartphones or tablets. Because mobile devices are so easy to lose or have stolen, all data on them is at substantial risk.
With Android devices, there's additional danger. They've been plagued by shoddy security and malicious apps.
Cybercrooks are getting bolder and more creative with those apps every day. Just as you think you're one step ahead of the crooks, they come up with a new way to steal your personal information.
That’s why it's vital for every Android user to learn how to lock down and protect his or her device.

Keep out the digital thieves
Right now, malicious apps, which often pretend to be cheaper versions of popular apps or games, are the No. 1 risk for Android devices.

"Malicious applications targeted for Android devices [have] increased between 400 to 1,000 percent in the past 18 to 24 months," said Jerry Irvine, chief information officer of Prescient Solutions in Schaumburg, Ill.
"These malicious applications perform multiple tasks, but share one common goal — to attain the personal information on these mobile devices and push it out to criminal entities."
Malware can also be installed on an Android device in other ways, such as through websites, emails, text messages or even NFC (near-field communication) file transfers.

To best protect your phone from malware, Irvine said, download anti-virus and malware-scanning apps designed for Android devices.
Most of the better known anti-virus software companies have security apps available. Chances are you can stick with the brand you like best.
Be sure to upgrade the anti-virus software when prompted, since new malware is being released every day.


[10 Tips to Keep Your Android Phone Safe]

And the human ones
But malware isn't the only threat to the personal data on your smartphone or tablet. If the device is lost or stolen, the data's in someone else's hands.
You should consider installing a security product that regularly backs up the data on your device to a cloud-storage service — and also has a location detector and the ability to remotely wipe personal data if the device is gone for good.
The first line of defense, however, is to protect your device with a PIN, password or pattern lock. That way, no one can randomly pick it up and start checking your email.
"Passwords and PIN configurations on mobile devices can be configured to entirely wipe the device if the password is not entered correctly within a specific number of times," Irvine said.
"The security should be configured.  Strong passwords of eight or more characters should be used because they make it much harder to crack the password."
Keep your password, PIN or lock pattern truly secret by regularly wiping your device's screen clean. Repeated finger gestures will smear the glass, leaving smudge patterns that can tip off a thief.
Theft of smartphones and tablets is on the rise. Thieves have been known to swipe phones out of the hands of users who were still talking.
While these thieves may be primarily interested in the street value of the device, your unprotected data is always going to be at risk.
Considering how we use our smartphones and tablets (and got rid of address books and other tools that held our vital numbers), it's futile to recommend keeping all personally identifiable information off our gadgets.
Instead, keep the amount of such information on your device to a minimum, and make sure your phone has multiple layers of security.

Staggering Stats: Cats Kill Billions of Animals a Year

Cats may be adorable, but they're also killers: a new study suggests that kitties are responsible for billions of bird and small mammal deaths a year. CREDIT: Menna | Shutterstock.com  View full size image

Cats kill billions of birds every year and even more tiny rodents and other mammals in the United States, a new study finds.

According to the research, published today (Jan. 29) in the journal Nature Communications, cats kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 billion and 20.7 billion small mammals, such as meadow voles and chipmunks.

Though it's hard to know exactly how many birds live in the United States, the staggering number of bird deaths may account for as much as 15 percent of the total bird population, said study co-author Pete Marra, an animal ecologist with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.

Staggering toll
Marra and his colleagues are looking at human-related causes for bird and wildlife deaths in the country, from windmills and glass windows to pesticides.
But first, Marra and his team looked at the impact of the feline population, one of the biggest putative causes of bird demise in the country.      
While past studies had used critter cams or owner reports to estimate the number of birds killed by cats, those studies were usually small and not applicable to the entire country, Marra told LiveScience.
For this broader analysis, the team first looked at all prior studies on bird deaths and estimated that around 84 million owned-cats live in the country, many of which are allowed outdoors. [In Photos: America's Favorite Pets]
"A lot of these cats may go outside and go to 10 different houses, but they go back to their house and cuddle up on Mr. Smith's lap at night," Marra said.
Based on an analysis of past studies, the researchers estimated that each of those felines killed between four and 18 birds a year, and between eight and 21 small mammals per year.
But the major scourges for wildlife were not those free-ranging, owned-cats, but instead feral and un-owned cats that survive on the streets. Each of those kitties — and the team estimates between 30 million and 80 million of them live in the United States — kills between 23 and 46 birds a year, and between 129 and 338 small mammals, Marra said.
And, it seems, the small rodents taken by felines aren't Norway rats or apartment vermin, but native rodent species such as meadow voles and chipmunks, he added.


No easy answers
One obvious step to reduce the mass wildlife death is to keep kitties indoors, Marra said.Perhaps seeing their furry friends bring in a meadow vole or a cardinal will spur cat owners to say, "Listen,Tabby, we're going to have a heart-to-heart talk about how much time you spend outside," he said.
Wild cats pose tougher questions, because capture and sterilization approaches have varying levels of success depending on the community, said Bruce Kornreich, a veterinarian at Cornell University's Feline Health Center, who was not involved in the study.
While keeping owned-cats indoors is the best way to benefit both kitties and wildlife, acomplete cat ban, like the one recently proposed in New Zealand, is probably not the answer, he said.
For one, it's not clear how completely removing cats from outdoors would affect the ecosystem.
"It may be in some cases that cats may also be keeping other species that may negatively impact bird and other small mammal populations in check," Kornreich told LiveScience.

Identity of Famous 19th-Century Brain Discovered

The speechless patient called 'Tan' who allowed Paul Broca to tie a specific brain region to language has been identified as Louis Leborgne CREDIT: Bruno Delamain  View full size image

The identity of a mysterious patient who helped scientists pinpoint the brain region responsible for language has been discovered, researchers report.

The new finding, detailed in the January issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, identifies the famous patient as Monsieur Louis Leborgne, a French craftsman who battled epilepsy his entire life.

Wordless patient

In 1840, a wordless patient was admitted to the Bicêtre Hospital outside Paris for  aphasia, or an inability to speak. He was essentially just kept there, slowly deteriorating. It wasn't until 1861 that the man, who came to be known as Monsieur Leborgne, or "Tan," for his only spoken word, came to the famous physician Paul Broca's ward at the hospital.
Shortly after the meeting, Leborgne died, and Broca performed his autopsy. During the autopsy, Broca found a lesion in a region of the brain tucked back and up behind the eyes.


Paradigm shift
After doing a detailed examination, Broca concluded that Tan's aphasia was caused by damage to this region, and that the particular brain region controlled speech. That region of the brain was later renamed Broca's area in honor of the doctor. [See Photos of Broca's Brain]
At the time, scientists were debating whether specific areas of the brain performed specific functions, or whether it was an undifferentiated lump that did one task, like the liver, said Marjorie Lorch, a neurolinguist at Birkbeck, University of London, who was not involved in the study.
"Tan was the first patient whose case proved that damage to a specific part of the brain causes specific speech disorders," said study author Cezary Domanski, a medical historian at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Poland.

Life reconstructed
Yet Tan's identity remained shrouded in mystery. Most historians believed he was a poor, illiterate laborer, while others said he had gone mad from syphilis and that madness could explain his inability to speak. To discover just who he was, Domanski began to retrace the man's history.
"It was a challenge, for 150 years no one could even determine the name of the man —the same man whose brain is exhibited in a museum and shown in many books," Domanski wrote in an email.
But looking through the old medical records, he finally uncovered a death certificate for Louis Victor Leborgne, who was born in 1809 in Moret, France.
Domanski then used archival records to discover that Louis Leborgne was one of seven children of a teacher (his father) and his wife, and that his siblings were educated. He moved to Paris as a child.
Leborgne had apparently suffered epilepsy from childhood. But despite his seizures, he grew up to be a craftsman and a church keeper, and worked there until he was 30 years old, when he lost the ability to speak and was taken to the hospital. Epilepsy likely caused the damage that took away Leborgne's power of speech. [The 10 Greatest Mysteries of the Mind]
In the hospital, his condition worsened and he eventually became paralyzed and bedridden, and underwent surgery for gangrene. He was dying when Broca first encountered him.
The new discovery gives a very human identity to one of the medical textbooks' most famous cases, Lorch told LiveScience.
"Language, because it was viewed at that time in Europe as a God-given ability in humans, it was considered part of the soul and therefore not material," Lorch said. "This case was the case that really established the whole area of research on functional organization of the brain."

Are Ghosts Real? Science Says No-o-o-o

If you believe in ghosts, you're not alone: A 2005 Gallup poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe in haunted houses, and about one-third believe in ghosts. Tens of thousands of people around the world actively search for ghosts as a hobby. Researcher Sharon Hill of the Doubtful Newsblog counted about 2,000 active amateur ghost-hunting groups in America.

Digsby

IM, Email, and Social Networks in one easy to use application!

http://digsby.com

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Ghosts have been a popular subject for millennia, appearing in countless stories, from "Macbeth" to the Bible, and even spawning their own folklore genre: ghost stories. Ghosts are perhaps the most common paranormal belief in the world. Part of the reason is thatbelief in ghosts is part of a larger web of related paranormal beliefs, including near-death experience, life after death, and spirit communication.

The idea that the dead remain with us in spirit is an ancient one, and one that offers many people comfort; who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need? Most people believe in ghosts because of personal experience; they have seen or sensed some unexplained presence.

The science and logic of ghosts

Personal experience is one thing, but scientific evidence is another matter. Part of the difficulty in investigating ghosts is that there is not one universally agreed-upon definition of what a ghost is. Some believe that they are spirits of the dead who for whatever reason get "lost" on their way to The Other Side; others claim that ghosts are instead telepathic entities projected into the world from our minds.

Still others create their own special categories for different types of ghosts, such aspoltergeists, residual hauntings, intelligent spirits and shadow people. Of course, it's all made up, like speculating on the different races of fairies or dragons: there are as many types of ghosts as you want there to be.

Carol Anne: Hello? What do you look like? Talk louder, I can't hear you! Poltergeist helped define a paranormal culture in the United States.

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There are many contradictions inherent in ideas about ghosts. For example, are ghosts material or not? Either they can move through solid objects without disturbing them, or they can slam doors shut and throw objects across the room. Logically and physically, it's one or the other. If ghosts are human souls, why do they appear clothed and with (presumably soulless) inanimate objects like hats, canes, and dresses — not to mention the many reports of ghost trains, cars and carriages?

If ghosts are the spirits of those whose deaths were unavenged, why are there unsolved murders, since ghosts are said to communicate with psychic mediums, and should be able to identify their killers for the police. And so on; just about any claim about ghosts raises logical reasons to doubt it.

Ghost hunters use many creative (and dubious) methods to detect the spirits' presences, often including psychics. Virtually all ghost hunters claim to be scientific, and most give that appearance because they use high-tech scientific equipment such as Geiger counters, Electromagnetic Field (EMF) detectors, ion detectors, infrared cameras and sensitive microphones. Yet none of this equipment has ever been shown to actually detect ghosts.

Other people take exactly the opposite approach, claiming that the reason that ghosts haven't been proven to exist is that we simply don't have the right technology to find or detect the spirit world. But this, too, can't be correct: Either ghosts exist and appear in our ordinary physical world (and can therefore be detected and recorded in photographs, film, video, and audio recordings), or they don't. If ghosts exist and can be scientifically detected or recorded, then we should find hard evidence of that — yet we don't. If ghosts exist and cannot be scientifically detected or recorded, then all the photos, videos, and other recordings claimed to be evidence of ghosts cannot be ghosts. With so many basic contradictory theories — and so little science brought to bear on the topic — it's not surprising that despite the efforts of thousands of ghost hunters on television and elsewhere for decades, not a single piece of hard evidence of ghosts has been found.

Why many believe

Many people believe that support for the existence of ghosts can be found in no less a hard science than modern physics. It is widely claimed that Albert Einstein suggested a scientific basis for the reality of ghosts; if energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change form, what happens to our body's energy when we die? Could that somehow be manifested as a ghost?

It seems like a reasonable assumption — unless you understand basic physics. The answer is very simple, and not at all mysterious. After a person dies, the energy in his or her body goes where all organisms' energy goes after death: into the environment. The energy is released in the form of heat, and transferred into the animals that eat us (i.e., wild animals if we are left unburied, or worms and bacteria if we are interred), and the plants that absorb us. There is no bodily "energy" that survives death to be detected with popular ghost-hunting devices.

While most ghost hunters engage in harmless (and fruitless) fun, there can be a darker side. In the wake of popular ghost-hunting TV shows, police across the country have seen a surge in people being arrested, injured, and even killed while looking for ghosts. In 2010, a man died while ghost-hunting with a group of friends hoping to see the ghost of a train that crashed years earlier. The ghost train did not appear — but a real train came around a bend and killed one man.

The evidence for ghosts is no better today than it was a year ago, a decade ago, or a century ago. There are two possible reasons for the failure of ghost hunters to find good evidence. The first is that ghosts don't exist, and that reports of ghosts can be explained by psychology, misperceptions, mistakes and hoaxes. The second option is that ghosts do exist, but that ghost hunters are simply incompetent. Ultimately, ghost hunting is not about the evidence (if it was, the search would have been abandoned long ago). Instead, it's about having fun with friends, telling stories, and the enjoyment of pretending they are searching the edge of the unknown. After all, everyone loves a good ghost story.

Harsh LED Lights Get a Warm Glow

Harsh LED Lights Get a Warm Glow

Goodbye harsh blue glow. CREDIT: Fotokostic View full size image

LED (light emitting diodes) lights have long promised to replace incandescent bulbs and fluorescent lights by being more energy efficient. They were first usedin calculators and digital watches back in the 1970s and work by havingelectrons moving through a semiconductor material. By the late-2000s, researchers were predictingLED’s would revolutionize lighting. But they are expensive to make and their white light is harsh and blue-tinted, not warm. New research at the University of Georgia shows a way to make white LED light with a warm glow, by using a single light emitting material called a phosphor.

Here is the press release:
Athens, Ga. – Light emitting diodes, more commonly called LEDs, are known for their energy efficiency and durability, but the bluish, cold light of current white LEDs has precluded their widespread use for indoor lighting.



Now, University of Georgia scientists have fabricated what is thought to be the world's first LED that emits a warm white light using a single light emitting material, or phosphor, with a single emitting center for illumination. The material is described in detail in the current edition of the Nature Publishing Group journal "Light: Science and Applications."
"Right now, white LEDs are mainly used in flashlights and in automotive lamps, but they give off a bluish, cool light that people tend to dislike, especially in indoor lighting," said senior author Zhengwei Pan, an associate professor in the department of physics in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and in the College of Engineering. "Our material achieves a warm color temperature while at the same time giving highly accurate color rendition, which is something no single-phosphor-converted LED has ever been shown to do."
Two main variables are used to assess the quality of artificial light, Pan explained. Correlated color temperature measures the coolness or warmth of a light, and temperatures of less than 4,000 kelvins are ideal for indoor lighting. Correlated color temperatures above 5,000 kelvins, on the other hand, give off the bluish color that white LEDs are known for. The other important measure, color rendition, is the ability of a light source to replicate natural light. A value of more than 80 is ideal for indoor lighting, with lower values resulting in colors that don't seem true to life.


The material that Pan and his colleagues fabricated meets both thresholds, with a correlated color temperature of less than 4,000 kelvins and a color rendering index of 85.
Warm white light can commonly be achieved with a blue LED chip coated with light emitting materials, or phosphors, of different emitting colors to create what are called phosphor-based white LEDs, Pan said. Combining the source materials in an exact ratio can be difficult and costly, however, and the resulting color often varies because each of the source materials responds differently to temperature variations.
"The use of a single phosphor solves the problem of color stability because the color quality doesn't change with increasing temperatures," said lead author Xufan Li, a doctoral student in the College of Engineering.


To create the new phosphor, Pan and his team combine minute quantities of europium oxide with aluminum oxide, barium oxide and graphite powders. They then heat the powdered materials at 1,450 degrees Celsius (2,642 degrees Fahrenheit) in a tube furnace. The vacuum of the furnace pulls the vaporized materials onto a substrate, where they are deposited as a yellow luminescent compound. When the yellow luminescent compound is encapsulated in a bulb and illuminated by a blue LED chip, the result is a warm white light.

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LED TVs can get expensive so make sure to consider these points when looking to buy one. Get an LED TV with local dimming. Get a fast refresh rate, large screen, and large contrast ratio. Plus get a bunch of connections – meanin...

Although his team's results are promising, Pan emphasized that there are still hurdles to be overcome before the material is used to light homes, businesses and schools. The efficiency of the new material is much lower than that of today's bluish white LEDs. Scaling the production to an industrial scale will be challenging as well, since even slight variations in temperature and pressure in the phosphor synthesis process result in materials with different luminescent colors.
The new yellow phosphor also has a new lattice structure that has not been reported before. The researchers currently are working to discern how the ions in the compound are arranged in hopes that a better understanding of the compound at an atomic level will allow them to improve its efficiency.


"We still have more work to do," Pan said, "but the color temperature and rendition that we have achieved gives us a very good starting point."
The U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Basic Research Programs of China and the U.S. Department of Energy funded the research.

New Mars Photos May Reveal 1970s Soviet Lander

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This set of images shows what might be hardware from the Soviet Union's 1971 Mars 3 lander, seen in a pair of images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona  View full size image

Russian space enthusiasts poring through photos from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have spotted what looks like the remains of the Soviet Mars 3 lander that arrived at the Red Planet in 1971.

The Soviet Union lander was the first spacecraft to survive a Mars landing long enough to transmit data back to Earth. However, after transmitting for just 14.5 seconds after landing on Dec. 2, 1971, Mars 3 went dark for unknown reasons.

Now a group of Russian Mars fans, who track the progress of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity online, may have found the lander after all these years. [Dead Spacecraft on Mars: A Countdown]

The citizen enthusiasts, led by Vitali Egorov of St. Petersburg, Russia, undertook a crowdsourcing effort to search for the vehicle in photos of the projected landing site from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been circling Mars since 2006. MRO launched toward the Red Planet in 2005 and is NASA's youngest and most powerful orbiter to study Mars from above.

In an image from 2007, they found features that resemble the Mars 3 lander, along with its parachute, heat shield, and terminal retrorocket. The features are the right size and shape for the equipment, and they're arranged in the configuration expected from the mission's entry, descent and landing plan, but it's too early to say for sure whether the photo actually depicts Mars 3.

"I wanted to attract people's attention to the fact that Mars exploration today is available to practically anyone," Egorov said in a NASA statement. "At the same time we were able to connect with the history of our country, which we were reminded of after many years through the images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter." 

A Russian scientists and advisor to the group, Alexander Basilevsky of the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow, contacted the MRO team and requested the orbiter take a follow-up image to confirm the features. The satellite's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera took a second image on March 10 of this year, which confirmed the features.

"Together, this set of features and their layout on the ground provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out," said HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona. "Further analysis of the data and future images to better understand the three-dimensional shapes may help to confirm this interpretation." 

Following the Mars 3 mission, the Soviet Union attempted twice more to land spacecraft on the Red Planet with the Mars 6 and Mars 7 missions in 1973, but both of those failed. The first vehicle to survive a landing on Mars was the U.S. Viking 1 lander, which touched down in July 1976.