science

Ringed Shaped UFO — Interesting

This is one of the best “UFO in action” videos on Youtube right now. Whether it is legit or not is a whole nuther’ ball of wax. It is fair to note that the guy who shot this didn’t stabilize or focus correctly. Hell — if we had seen something like this, would we?

Check it out.

PITTSBURGH -- Randy Pausch, a former Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose “last lecture” about facing terminal cancer became an international sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47.

MSNBC Article announcing that Dr. Randy Pausch has passed away

His last lecture.

It’s been almost 6 weeks since the accident, and my wife is still on high alert. She is still having lots of nightmares, and what I can only describe as flashbacks. Every interaction on the road leaps out at her like a high definition instant replay, in a thousand variations. She isn’t driving yet, and is seeing a therapist, who seems sincere. The therapist has her sitting behind the wheel of a safely parked vehicle, and doing breathing exercises, and that seems to help a bit, but it is a slow process. How can I describe to you what she is going through? I barely understand it myself. Her reptile brain has taken over, and she is in a constant state of agitation; the fight or flight reflex that for most comes only in small doses when really needed. For her it has come to stay and this heightened sense of alert magnifies her pain and keeps her in a shadowy half life that I am seemingly powerless to rescue her from. So as you can imagine I am constantly looking for ways to help her through this and get her “back on the horse” as they say.

To that end I discovered and recommended a kind of distraction that allows her to experience horrific car crashes in a safe and dare I say it? — “fun” setting. I turned her on to Grand Theft Auto 4. At first she was mortified by the violence of the car crashes in game, but over the course of a few hours she has definitely begin to enjoy it. I see a smile creep across her face that resembles my wife before the accident. She is learning to enjoy the interaction of twisted metal in first person, from the relative safety of the couch. I am thinking I may be on to something here.

It is probably to early to give a definite answer as we just started playing last night. She slept well though, and seemed to ride well today as we ran around town on several “real-life” errands. She is not behind the wheel herself yet, but the little changes are a welcome difference. She is still tense, to be sure. Tonight she leaned over to hug our daughter and turned her neck in an odd way that caused her to lock up — head and shoulders — for 20 – 30 minutes until we could massage the spasm out. I am certain that her pain was both real and distressing, but it seemed to pass quickly compared to previous days.

“One can only hope, and remain open to new ideas…” has become my only motto.

A “doomsday” seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters opened a few weeks ago. The seed vault is buried deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.

This facility will serve as a backup for hundreds of other seed banks around the world. It has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the world and shield them from man-made and natural disasters.

“The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is our insurance policy,” Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told delegates at the opening ceremony 130 metres underground (around 400 feet). “It is the Noah’s Ark for securing biological diversity for future generations.”

Dug into the permafrost of the mountain, it has been built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear strike, said Kent Bradford, director of the Seed Biotechnology Center at U.C. Davis.

Many more details in this good Science Daily article

Government of Norway Press Release

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened February 26 on a remote island in the Arctic Circle, receiving inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds that originated in over 100 countries. With the deposits ranging from unique varieties of major African and Asian food staples such as maize, rice, wheat, cowpea, and sorghum to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, the first deposits into the seed vault represent the most comprehensive and diverse collection of food crop seeds being held anywhere in the world.

The building of the vault itself has attracted much outside interest due to its location and its unusual engineering, security, and aesthetic features. Its engineering allows it to stay cool with only a single 10-kilowatt compressor, which is powered by locally generated electricity.

The vault consists of three highly secure rooms sitting at the end of a 125-metre tunnel blasted out of a mountain on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. The seeds will be stored at minus 18 degrees Celsius (minus 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and sealed in specially-designed four-ply foil packages. The packages are sealed inside boxes and stored on shelves inside the vault.

Each vault is surrounded by frozen arctic permafrost, ensuring the continued viability of the seeds should the electricity supply fail. The low temperature and moisture level inside the vaults will ensure low metabolic activity, keeping the seeds viable. If properly stored and maintained at minus 20 degrees Celsius (about minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit), some seeds in the vault will be viable for a millennium or more. For example, barley can last 2000 years, wheat 1700 years, and sorghum almost 20,000 years.

Anyone seeking access to the seeds themselves will have to pass through four locked doors: the heavy steel entrance doors, a second door approximately 115 metres down the tunnel and finally the two keyed air-locked doors. Keys are coded to allow access to different levels of the facility. Not all keys will unlock all doors. Motion detectors are set up around the site. Boxes of seeds inside the rooms are scanned before entering the seed vault.

A work of art also will make the vault visible for miles around. Artist Dyveke Sanne and KORO, the Norwegian agency overseeing art in public spaces, have worked together to fill the roof and vault entrance with highly reflective steel, mirrors, and prisms. The installation acts as a beacon, reflecting polar light in the summer months, while in the winter, a network of 200 fibre-optic cables will give the piece a muted greenish-turquoise and white light.