Gizmorama
November 1, 2010
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The Twister Car Performs Twists, Stunts, and Wheelies...
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Good Morning,
The first article highlights a report compiled by 174
scientists from all over the world, which takes a look at
the extinction of vertebrates. You may or may not be
surprised at the suspected culprits.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Extinction of vertebrates examined
NAGOYA, Japan - Twenty percent of the world's vertebrate
creatures are threatened with extinction, mostly from human
damage to habitats, a conservation summit in Japan heard.
A report from an international team of 174 scientists from
38 countries at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity
in Nagoya says losses are due largely to human encroachment
on habitat, over-fishing and over-hunting, The Christian
Science Monitor reported Thursday. The report also cited the
impact of invasive species in habitats where natural in-
habitants have evolved no defenses against the invaders.
Researchers examined 25,780 vertebrate species using the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature's seven
categories for a species' status from "least concern" to
"extinct," and found that 52 species of birds, mammals and
amphibians move one category closer to extinction each year,
with the biggest losses in the tropics. But the news is not
all bad, researchers say, pointing to conservations efforts
that have proved successful in stopping some of the declines
and have brought other species a step close to recovery. "The
bad news can be extremely disheartening," Ana Rodrigues, a
scientist with the Center for Functional and Evolutionary
Ecology in Paris," says. "But our results show that conserv-
ation efforts are not wasted."
Most massive neutron star discovered
GREEN BANK, W.Va. - U.S. astronomers say they've found the
most massive neutron star ever discovered whose size could
challenge long-held theories in physics and astrophysics.
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Green
Bank Telescope found the neutron star and a companion dwarf
white star about 3,000 light years away from Earth,
ScienceDaily.com reported. Neutron stars are the remains of
massive stars that exploded in a supernova and then collapsed
in on themselves so tightly their protons and electrons are
crushed down to neutrons. Neutron stars are so dense a
thumbnail-size piece of material would weigh millions of
tons. The newly discovered star is also a pulsar, emitting
tightly focused beams of radio waves that sweep through space
as it rotates. The researchers expected the neutron star to
have about one and a half times the mass of our sun, but
their calculations of its mass were a revelation. "This neu-
tron star is twice as massive as our sun. This is surprising,
and that much mass means that several theoretical models for
the internal composition of neutron stars now are ruled out,"
said Paul Demorest of the National Radio Astronomy Observa-
tory. The discovery could provide new ways of looking at
quarks, Gamma rays and even gravity waves, scientists say.
"Pulsars in general give us a great opportunity to study
exotic physics, and this system is a fantastic laboratory
sitting out there, giving us valuable information with wide-
ranging implications," Scott Ransom of the National Radio
Astronomy Observatory says. "It is amazing to me that one
simple number -- the mass of this neutron star -- can tell
us so much about so many different aspects of physics and
astronomy," he says.
China claims world's fastest supercomputer
TIANJIN, China - China says its Tianhe-1 supercomputer has
beaten all competitors to become the fastest computer in the
world. Located at the National Center for Supercomputing in
the northern port city of Tianjin, Tianhe-1, meaning Milky
Way, has a sustained computing speed of 2,507 trillion calc-
ulations, or 2.507 petaflops, per second, China's official
news agency Xinhua reported. Tianhe-1 bested China's previous
champion, Nebule, and all others in a biannual poll of the
world's 500 fastest computers. More than half those in the
poll are in the United States including the world's previous
fastest, the Jaguar system, located at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee and capable of 1.75 petaflops.
Tianhe-1 has upgraded Intel CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs and new domes-
tically developed FeiTeng-1000 CPUs, developer National Uni-
versity of Defense Technology said. Clients for the Tianhe-1
include the Tianjin Meteorological Bureau and China's
National Offshore Oil Corp. "It can also serve the animation
industry and biomedical research," Liu Guangming, director
of the National Center for Supercomputing in Tianjin, said.
Mars rover finds more evidence for water
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars rover Spirit is stuck in one
spot, but it's still making discoveries, including signs of
water in the soil it's stuck in, U.S. researchers say. The
ground where Spirit has been pinned since last year holds
evidence that water, perhaps as snowmelt, trickled into the
subsurface fairly recently and on a continuing basis, a NASA
release said Thursday. Spirit and its twin rover Opportunity
finished their three-month prime missions in April 2004 but
have kept on exploring in bonus missions. One of Spirit's six
wheels quit working in 2006. In April 2009 Spirit's left
wheels broke through a crust at a site called "Troy" and
churned into soft sand, immobilizing the rover. Researchers
took advantage of the opportunity to examine in great detail
the soil layers the wheels had exposed. Spirit's findings of
possible water contribute to a growing set of clues that Mars
may still have small amounts of liquid water at some periods
during its climate cycles.
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