Eric Brown | Page 15 | World Tech Today

Could there be a canyon system under Antartica’s ice?

Jan 15, 2016 by Eric Brown Leave a Comment

The particular shape outlined in an area of Antartica’s icy terrain presents clues of a vast subterranean canyon that could possibly rival the Grand Canyon, a new BBC report suggests. The undiscovered region, called “Elizabeth Land,” could be over 1,000km long and 1km deep in some pockets. A geophysical survey is currently being conducted over the area.

“We know from other areas of Antarctica that the shape of the ice surface is obviously dependent on the shape of the landscape underneath – because the ice is flowing over that landscape,” explained Dr Stewart Jamieson, from Durham University, UK. “When we look in Princess Elizabeth Land with satellite data, there seem to be some linear features in the surface ice that to us look very reminiscent of a canyon.”

He adds that researchers have traced the faint lines from the center of Elizabeth Land directly to the north coast. Possibly the canyon system is connected by a subglacial lake, which if confirmed, would measure up 1,250 square km, about 80 times the size of Windemere, England’s largest lake.

Radar data gathered in separate locations augments the theory. It shows land mass, specifically rock-bed, below the thick ice. Professor Martin Siegert of Imperial College London, UK said, “Discovering a gigantic new chasm that dwarfs the Grand Canyon is a tantalising prospect. Geoscientists on Antarctica are carrying out experiments to confirm what we think we are seeing from the initial data, and we hope to announce our findings at a meeting of the ICECAP2 collaboration, at Imperial, later in 2016.”

Although most of Antartica’s topography has been fully surveyed, two “Poles of Ignorance” need to be scanned. One of them is Princess Elizabeth Land, the other is Recovery Basin, also located in East Antarctica, and both of which are now focal points of rigorous study.

International teams of scientists from the U.S., UK, Australia, China, and other nations are detailing the ice with sensors covering a vast swath of Antarctica. When completed, this data will provide scientists not only a picture of what exists beneath but how the continent would continue to react to a warming climate. In order to engineer sensors, scientists need to know the shape of the subterranean rock bed.

Google self-driving cars prove people are terrible drivers

Jan 9, 2016 by Eric Brown Leave a Comment

Self-driving cars are leading people in highway safety. Adding to mounting evidence lurching towards a unanimous conclusion, Google conducted some more in-house number crunching and found that autonomous vehicles end up in one less crash per million miles driven than people controlled vehicles, according to an Engadget report. That is, a self-driving vehicle is 27-percent more likely to stay in one piece over an extended period of time.

The exercise focused exclusively on Google’s self-driving test fleet, and by Google’s estimates, has never taken blame in an accident. The data reveals that conventional drivers end up in 4.2 crashes for every million miles driven, whereas peopleless cars result in 3.2 crashes per million miles. Although convincing, studies have only been observed in select states without considering the number of miles people drive over a long course of time—several billion miles—compared to the short duration of Google cars.

Nonetheless, life imitating art initially suggests that it’s not as ominous as feared.

“We’re working toward vehicles that take you where you want to go at the push of a button,” Google describes the technology on its website. “We started by adding components to existing cars like our Lexus SUVs, then began designing a new prototype from the ground up to better explore what should go into a fully self-driving vehicle. We removed the steering wheel and pedals, and instead designed a prototype that lets the software and sensors handle the driving.

“With fully self-driving technology, the car is designed to do all the work of driving and the human ‘driver’ is never expected to take control of the vehicle at any time,” Google added in its FAQ. “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) calls this full self-driving automation (level 4). This is the type of technology Google is working on.”

Huge breakthrough: Milky Way’s evolution mapped out by scientists

Jan 9, 2016 by Eric Brown Leave a Comment

The birth and emergence of our cosmos have been theorized to have grown from the middle, outward. A new galactic map measuring the age of 70,000 stars across the Milky Way confirms this hypothesis, according to a BBC report. Older stars are clustered towards the center of the galaxy’s disc shape, as newer stars trail around the outer ring.

The space map is largest ever assembled presented at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Florida. Lead researcher Melissa Ness told the BBC, “We’re characterising in really unprecedented detail how the galaxy is formed, via this snapshot of stellar ages across the disc.” The map’s ringlets extend in different directions: one, threading through the center of the galaxy, and the other extending to outward from the disc. Dr. Ness of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany added, “And we not only have these ages in the plane of the disc, but also moving up above the galactic plane.”

The galaxy’s age was determined by collectively measuring data from two telescopes on each star. One of them, the Apogee project, is a derivative of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which sampled bands of stars, 300 at a time, using strategic wavelengths. The variation of wavelength’s spectra gave astronomers the chemical composition of the stars but couldn’t tell them their direct age.

So the team sourced the Kepler satellite, which observes stars for an extended timeframe and can establish the mass of each. This model was then extrapolated to calculate the ages of the remaining stars, a particular method which is considered revolutionary. Other techniques, such as watching a star spin, is much more strenuous.

Ness mentions, “This is really the first time that we’ve been able to infer ages for such a large number of stars, rather than relying on this small subset of stars with special observations.” She also notes, “These are an extremely valuable star to get ages for, because they are very bright and we see them at very large distances.”

All of this evidence suggests that our galaxy began as a small disc, which grew from the inside out.

Marijuana is coming to New York … with some surprises

Jan 9, 2016 by Eric Brown Leave a Comment

New York is finally joining the renaissance in medical marijuana use but with one inhibitive caveat: you can’t smoke it.

According to a Manteca Bulletin report, New York will open eight dispensaries across the state on Thursday. Doctors working at the dispensary must first pass a unique training regimen to recommend the drug to their patients adding to a litany of strict regulations, the most stringent among the 20 states that allow medical marijuana. But the turnout of patients and doctor participation is uncertain.

In June 2014, New York legislation drafted a version that appeal to the health benefits while pacifying concerns of unintended recreational use. New York and Minnesota are the only two states to limit usage to non-smokable extracts used in capsules, vaporizers and liquids. And New York is one of few states to require an accreditation course and limiting licensing to only 20 dispensaries with restricted conditions consisting of cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

Nicholas Vita, CEO of Columbia Care, a Manhattan dispensary, voices, “This is a medication. This is a serious opportunity to treat patients who haven’t necessarily found the treatment they need,” and added that the New York mandate “is going to be a game-changer for the industry … because nobody’s going to let anything slip through the cracks.”

New York’s state Department of Health noted that about 150 physicians statewide are poised to advocate the medical usage, but the agency hasn’t divulged the roster. Ambivalence over the law’s passing and concerns in the medical community still remain.

But other doctors stand by the evidence of marijuana’s welfare despite its associated stigma and federal illegality. Doctor Stephen Dahmer of Vireo Health, a dispensary in White Plains, New York, said, “Our hope, with Vireo Health, is to improve that evidence base.” Medical advocates also point out that curbing the practice of smoking it may skew an understanding of proper quantity since patients are forced to only ingest it. But Dahmer reinforces that the extracts are precisely measured out.

CEO Ari Huffnung adds that New York doesn’t intend to hold a brownie bake-off or mimic California’s dispensaries with open jars of wicked mother nature.”Grandmothers don’t want to walk into a dispensary and be told by a 27-year-old bud tender that they should buy an AK-47 joint.”