Scientists find a 'low' (2-5 x earth) mass planet within the 'habitable' zone around tau ceti 12 light years away making them think habitable planets may be more common in the galaxy than we currently think.
The longest-operating Earth observing satellite is ending its mission after nearly 29 years, more than 150,000 orbits and 2.5 million images. Landsat 5 outlived its planned 3-year operation almost 10 times over, saving the continuity of the Landsat mission. Landsat 5's longevity became critical after Landsat 6 failed to reach orbit in 1993.
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To celebrate this mighty spacecraft's contribution to our understanding of the Earth, here are some of our favorite images Landsat 5 has taken over its three decades in space.
The notations in red are just meant to be suggestive, don’t take them too seriously. But we see all the parts of known microscopic physics there — all the particles and forces. (We don’t understand the full theory of quantum gravity, but we understand it perfectly well at the everyday level.) No experiment ever done here on Earth has contradicted this model.
(Obviously, observations of the rest of the universe, in particular those that imply the existence of dark matter, can’t be accounted for in this model. Equally obviously, there’s plenty we don’t know about physics beyond the everyday, e.g. at the origin of the universe. Most blindingly obvious of all, the fact that we know the underlying microphysics doesn’t say anything at all about our knowledge of all the complex collective phenomena of macroscopic reality, so please don’t be the tiresome person who complains that I’m suggesting otherwise.)
As physics advances forward, we will add to our understanding. This simple equation, however, will continue to be accurate in the everyday realm. It’s not like the Steady State cosmology or the plum-pudding model of the atom or the Ptolemaic solar system, which were simply incorrect and have been replace. This theory is correct in its domain of applicability.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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Discovery Channel and Japan's NHK teamed up to capture video of one of the most elusive and fascinating deep ocean creatures: the giant squid. Discovery Channel’s Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real will premiere in the US on Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 10/9c as the season finale of Curiosity. In Japan, NHK airs their special also this month.
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So, in the interest of science, the whole of human knowledge (Internet Edition™) was dropped into Watson's brain and then... the problems began.
Two years ago, Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for "Oh, my God," to slang such as "hot mess."
But Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity -- which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word "bull####" in an answer to a researcher's query.
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Fortunately for Watson's team, they had the option to remove all this useful knowledge before it offended other researchers who weren't as used to being coldly called on their bull####.
Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory. But the trial proves just how thorny it will be to get artificial intelligence to communicate naturally.
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They're not rechargeable, so that's a limiting factor, but they are a pretty decent size and apparently put out some good juice for a couple of weeks. Pretty useful if you're traveling in some remote areas. The article says they're not recyclable, though the creator says they are in the CES video, so I'm not sure about that.
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"An adherent of homeopathy has no brain. They have skull water with the memory of a brain."
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At 4 billion light-years in length, the Large Quasar Group (LQG) is the largest known structure in the universe and is some 1600 times larger than the distance from the Milky Way to Andromeda.
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I’m always amazed these sportscasters and announcers can call the game with McDavid’s **** in their mouths all the time.
In order to infect a cell, flu viruses need to produce a protein called hemagglutinin, which forms knobs on the virus’s surface and latches onto host cells. Once the virus gets inside the cell, other proteins shut down the host cell’s natural antiviral defenses, help guide the cell to make new genes, and then help package them up. Another protein on the shell of flu viruses, called neuraminidase, opens up the host cell to allow the viruses to escape.
Yewdell and his colleagues infected cells with flu viruses and then surveyed them for these essential proteins. Time and again, they found viruses that lacked at least one of them. They tested out these defective viruses and found they failed to work as a virus should. As they report in an upcoming paper in the Journal of Virology, almost ninety percent are incapable of replicating because they’re missing at least one essential protein.
