Scientists have begun analysing the responses of 250 people who took part in the study into the effects of infrasound, carried out at Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral last September.
They showed the audience's emotions intensified as the inaudible sound vibrations, too low for the human ear to perceive, were blasted out during a 50-minute piano recital.
Those feeling uncomfortable when the concert began, found their mood turning to anger.
Others, who had felt happy, started to notice sensations of joy.

icLiverpool - Soundless Concert Stirs The Emotions

While some recovered memories turn out to be true, Loftus says her experiments repeatedly show that memories are fragile possessions that are easily manipulated. But she does not condemn her subjects for being gullible.

Of adopting false memories, she said: "This behavior is entirely normal."

Yahoo! News - Study: False Memories Easily Implanted

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - For the first time in the history of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, officials have approved a detour because of a lack of snow on the normal route.

Yahoo! News - Lack of Snow Cover Forces Iditarod Detour

"WASHINGTON -- A NASA engineer weighed the possibility of a "catastrophic" failure resulting from extreme heat on the shuttle Columbia's tires despite assurances days earlier that possible damage to insulating tiles near the landing gear wouldn't imperil the crew."

This is more fairly inaccurate and sensational reporting relating to the evidence that is coming out about Columbia. It surprises me that the Chronicle, which has some of the best space reporting in the business, would view this email in such light. They wait until the middle of the article to point out that "Daugherty acknowledged his concerns were 'over the top in many ways,'" which he does at the beginning of his email. Fortunately, they link to the actual document from the article, which allows us all to see the way the engineers were discussing these issues.

I'd like to point out that Daugherty is concerned about an explosion or overpressurization of the tires, and hence the wheel well itself. Just going on the data that NASA has released, particularly the Flight Director's comm loop recording, they weren't seeing any indication that this is what was happening. It IS possible that the overpressure scenario could have happened after all data was lost, but IMO that's not consistent with the evidence either. We'll see...

HoustonChronicle.com - Engineer warned of possible wheel well failure

Although there are several possible benign explanations for the image -- such as a barely perceptable jiggle of the camera as it took the time exposure -- NASA's zeal to examine the photo demonstrates the lengths at which the agency is going to tap the resources of ordinary Americans in solving the puzzle.

S.F. man's astounding photo / Mysterious purple streak is shown hitting Columbia 7 minutes before it disintegrated

I thought this was an interesting story, but before anyone leaps to conclusions -

"More likely, the TSEC equipment is the encryption box routinely used to receive messages from Mission Control in Houston. NASA codes its messages to the shuttle so no one can intercept them and play them back later to the shuttle, fouling its flight control. "

Our spacecraft have flown with some kind of encryption technology since Gemini, IIRC.

HoustonChronicle.com - Top secret part among the shuttle debris

What is surely a page-in-progress, and well worth monitoring for information relating to the Columbia Accident Investigation as it progresses. Currently contains links to "Risk Management for the Tiles of the Space Shuttle - 1994" and "STS-87 Post-Flight Inspection - 1997" in PDF format.

STS-107 Investigation Reference Page

jessica wrote:
] ] A few days before the Columbia shuttle disaster, NASA
] ] noted that debris that hit the left wing during takeoff
] ] created "the potential for a large damage area to the
] ] tile."
]
] NASA seriously needs to get their shit together. I am sure
] that if they had gotten their act together, the astronauts
] could have done -something-, at least made a spacewalk to
] survey the damage. NASA and their damn memos.

EVA to repair missing or damaged tile is impossible, from a flight safety standpoint.
1) No tether carried onboard would allow a member of the crew underneath the vehicle.
2) Even if one could reach the underside of the vehicle, the crewmember attempting this would be out of sight of the rest of the crew, a major flight safety violation.
3)Even if that was acceptable, there are absolutely no handholds of any kind down there. In zero gravity, you can't do anything if you have nothing to hold on to. This also leads to a signifigant risk of damaging even more tiles, making matters worse.
4)Even if you get down there, don't break anything and don't kill a one of your crew by trying, you have nothing to fix it with.

The risks outweigh any possible gains, and the general consensus among the engineers and managers is that there was no problem. Even the memo that the above quote comes from ends by saying: "no safety of flight issue". If people would read these memos a bit more closely (or the press would report on them more accurately), I think they would see that there was a consensus that there was no cause for alarm.

Debris has hit the orbiter before. Tiles have been damaged before. It has never before caused the loss of the vehicle or crew.

RE: NASA memo warned of 'potential for large damage'

KIRKENES, Norway (Reuters) - The shrinking Arctic icecap may open a fabled passage for ships between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within a decade, transforming an icy graveyard into a short-cut trade route.

If this isn't a seriously absurd example of looking on the bright side of things, I don't know what is.

Yahoo! News - Shrinking Arctic Ice to Open New Trade Route

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NetLogo User Manual