Animals and plants in Scotland are responding to climate change but some are altering quicker than others, according to a new report.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Natural events 'occuring earlier'

This is the Web Page for space.launch.info, a newsletter to inform visitors to Titusville Florida, and the surrounding Space Coast about the Space Shuttle launch they hope to witness while they are here. Feel free to check out the information here, and at the Space Launch Viewing FAQ Page, where more information is located.

While at Cape Canaveral for the Shuttle Lauch we ran into The Cheshire Catalyst, an old school phreak who was the last editor of TAP, the first phone phreak zine. In recent years he has been helping the general public enjoy shuttle launches by publishing this extremely useful information guide, printing launch zines, and assisting the HAMs in rebroadcasting NASA chatter with a longer range repeater. He was also personally responsible for the fact that the area code there is 321, as in 3-2-1-Liftoff. Very cool character.

There are plenty of launches to go see, including another shuttle launch in August, and if you're going this guide will come in very handy. BTW, he is absolutely correct that if you go to Kennedy Space Center you must see an IMAX movie. We're talking wall sized movies filmed in 3-D from the perspective of Astronauts. Its the closest you can get to actual space travel without getting an advanced degree in Aerospace Engineering, logging thousands of hours piloting various combat aircraft, and going through years of training where you learn to do the work of a plumber and an electrician in an extremely uncomfortable and combersome suit in an environment where the word "down" doesn't actually mean anything but the word "oops" means anything from "oops" I lost a billion dollars to "oops," everybody is dead.

Watching a lauch, btw, is highly recommended. We drove a long way, didn't get to sleep much, spent a lot of money, got screwed by our hotel, got frustrated and cranky, got rained out for two days, and spent hours baking under the summer sun, and the launch only lasts like 5 minutes. But TV cameras cannot convey how bright the engines are, how loud it is, or, ultimately, how exciting it is to see it happen first hand. When you see that machine streaking across the sky you know those guys are bad ass.

SpaceLaunchInfo.com - Home Page

lovely resource of NASA images
looking at the images I thought of something I read today

from the New Scientist 24/06/06

the "lonely hypothesis" - that there is no rational and good God, and probably no God at all, that humankind is a speck on the edge of a vast, pointless universe - has its own splendour and self-justification. If nothing else will supply meaning in the universe, the existence and achievements of human intellect, creativity and love are quite enough.

GRIN

Thirty years ago, a young biologist set out to explain some new ideas in evolutionary biology to a wider audience. But he ended up restating Darwinian theory in such a broad and forceful way that his book has influenced specialists as well.

Inspiring Evolutionary Thought, and a New Title, by Turning Genetics Into Prose - New York Times

A newly discovered asteroid in Neptune's orbit indicates the existence of a much larger, but as-yet-unseen, cloud of rocks in that region. The asteroids in Neptune's orbit might even outnumber those in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the new research suggests.

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - New Trojan asteroid hints at huge Neptunian cloud

SITTING in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was "printed", using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering.

New Scientist News - Print me a heart and a set of arteries

NASA's Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about the mysterious moon.

There are still many questions that enshroud this discovery. Although other moons in our solar system contain icy crusts, the real discovery here is that liquid water is apparently just below the surface of the moon. Scientists will now beginning exploring the possibility that lifeforms could have existed at one point in this environment...

NASA - NASA's Cassini Discovers Potential Liquid Water on Enceladus

Seems the latest analysis from core samples of Antarctic ice dated 650,000 years old "not good" for those still convinced the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels to be a "natural" trend...

"Levels of carbon dioxide have climbed from 280 parts per million two centuries ago to 380 ppm today.

Skeptics sometimes dismiss the rise in greenhouse gases as part of a naturally fluctuating cycle. The new study provides ever-more definitive evidence countering that view, however.

A previous ice-core sample had traced greenhouse gases back about 440,000 years. This new sample, from East Antarctica, goes 210,000 years further back in time.

Today's still rising level of carbon dioxide already is 27% higher than its peak during all those millennia, said lead researcher Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern, Switzerland.

'We are out of that natural range today,' he said."

Not good, but also not possible to tell everyone "stop burning fossil fuel NOW!" and no one is suggesting that. But the big corporations resisting change are running out of excuses.

-LB

Ancient air bubbles shed light on greenhouse gases

This is a great collection of Dawkins quotes.

hey wikiquote is cool
I found this

"Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive music." Marcus Brigstocke

Richard Dawkins - Wikiquote

One researcher has even proposed a way for life to survive on the giant Saturnian satellite. It is too cold for organisms to survive on the surface of Titan, where temperatures are about -178C (-289F).

But David Grinspoon of the Southwest Research Institute says organisms could occupy specific niches, such as hot springs. They could use acetylene, in reaction with hydrogen gas, to release enough energy to power metabolism, and possibly to heat their environments.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Titan moon occupies 'sweet spot'