Science, Technology & Health: October 2012 Archives
Google Trekker takes Street View into the wilds, breaking ground for the future of virtual vacations.
Google is doing for the backcountry what it has done for cities and towns -- making digital maps that can be accessed on the go. Will it change the experience of the wilderness? NPR's Steve Henn travels to the Grand Canyon as Google engineers make their first trip with the Street View Trekker.Google's Street View maps are headed into the backcountry. Earlier this week, two teams from Google strapped on sophisticated backpacks jammed with cameras, gyroscopes and other gadgets, and descended to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But this is just the first step in the search giant's plan to digitally map and photograph the world's wild places.
It's not better than being there... yet....
Global warming stopped 16 years ago.
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the 'plateau' or 'pause' in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.
This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 - a very warm year.
Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.
"Concern" for global warming is primarily an excuse to justify ever-increasing government control of energy and industry. For a portion of the left, global warming is also used to push a Luddite anti-technology agenda. These ulterior motives will be unaffected by the science and will continued to be believed and pursued by faith.
Shinya Yamanaka was just awarded a Nobel Prize (shared with John Gurdon) for his work creating "induced pluripotent stem cells" from adult cells without killing embryos. This piece by William Saletan highlights Yamanaka's moral victory which was as important as his scientific accomplishment.
In the introduction to their Cell paper, Yamanaka and his colleagues outlined their reasons for seeking an alternative to conventional embryonic stem-cell research. "Ethical controversies" came first in their analysis. Technical reasons--the difficulty of making patient-specific embryonic stem cells--came second. After the paper's publication, Yamanaka told a personal story, related by the New York Times:Inspiration can appear in unexpected places. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka found it while looking through a microscope at a friend's fertility clinic. ... [H]e looked down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic. The glimpse changed his scientific career. "When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters," said Dr. Yamanaka ... "I thought, we can't keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way."
Sacrificing the lives of unborn children to treat adults is evil, and thanks to Shinya Yamanaka we don't need to debate the matter any more.
