January 23, 2012

Good Morning,

I love when I come across articles like the last one in this issue. It reminds me that as great as technology is, it has its faults; serious and measurable ones.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Shuttle exhibit breaks ground in Florida

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Officials in Florida said ground-breaking has begun on a $100 million exhibit to hold the retired shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Visitor Complex officials said the 65,000-square-foot exhibit for Atlantis would be "the marquee element" of a 10-year master plan to attract more tourists to the site, Florida Today reported. Christopher Ferguson, the commander of the last spaceflight of Atlantis, was among those attending the Wednesday groundbreaking ceremony. The exhibit will provide visitors an up-close look at Atlantis, which carried out the final shuttle mission in July commanded by Ferguson. Atlantis is set to head to the Visitor Complex in November, with the exhibit scheduled to open in the summer of 2013. The other retired shuttle orbiters also are being prepared for their final homes, with Discovery set for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and Endeavour heading to the California Science Center.


Insects dominate count of new species

PHOENIX - More than half the 19,232 species newly known to science in 2009, the most recent calendar year compiled, were insects, a report by U.S. researchers said. The 2009 total of newly discovered species was a 5.6 percent increase over 2008, the report from the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University said. The State of Observed Species report said after the 9,738 species of insects, the second-largest group in the 2009 numbers was vascular plants, totaling 2,184. Rounding out the 2009 species discoveries were seven birds, 41 mammals and 1,487 arachnids -- spiders and mites. The 19,232 species described as "new" or newly discovered in 2009 are about twice as many species known in the lifetime of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who initiated the modern system of plant and animal names and classifications more than 250 years ago. "The cumulative knowledge of species since 1758 when Linnaeus was alive is nearly 2 million, but much remains to be done," Quentin Wheeler, an ASU entomologist and founding director of the species institute, said. "A reasonable guess is that 10 million additional plant and animal species await discovery by scientists and amateur species explorers."


Russia talks of permanent moon base

MOSCOW - Russia's space agency Roscosmos says it is in talks with European and U.S. partners about creating permanent manned research bases on the moon. "We don't want the man to just step on the moon," Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said in a radio interview Thursday. "Today, we know enough about it, we know that there is water in its polar areas," he said, and "we are now discussing how to begin [the moon's] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency." Talk of a base harkens back to Cold War-era plans to create a permanent outpost on the moon, a subject of interest to Soviet and U.S. scientists since the late 1950s, RIA Novosti reported. Popovkin mentioned two options, to "either to set up a base on the moon or to launch a station to orbit around it." Russia is proceeding with plans to send two unmanned missions to the moon by 2020, the Luna Glob and the Luna Resource, Popovkin said.


Severe injuries walking with headphones up

BALTIMORE - The number of serious injuries of those wearing headphones with an iPod or MP3 player tripled in the United States from 2004 to 2011, researchers say. Dr. Richard Lichenstein and colleagues from the University of Maryland School of Medicine analyzed data from the U.S. National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Google news archives and a university research database on injuries and deaths among pedestrians wearing headphones. However, all U.S. injuries involving cell phones, including hands-free devices, were excluded, Lichenstein said. The study, published online in the journal Injury Prevention, found during the six-year study period there were a total of 116 cases, 16 of which occurred in 2004/2005. By 2010/2011, this figure rose to 47. Seventy percent of the accidents were fatal, the study said. The average age of the victims was 21 and 55 percent were struck by trains, about two-thirds were male and two-thirds were age 30 and under. Twenty-nine percent said onlookers mentioned horns or sirens sounded before the individual was hit. The study authors said distraction and sensory deprivation both play a role in tuning out external sounds -- coined "inattentional blindness" -- which essentially lowers the resources the brain devotes to external stimuli.

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