Mark H

"It’s reasonable to call the two Voyager spacecraft our first interstellar probes, in the sense that they are approaching the heliopause and are still transmitting data. Long before controllers shut them down — which should occur somewhere in the 2020s — Voyager 1 will have left the Solar System and we’ll have data on what happens when the solar wind gives way to the stellar winds from beyond. A case could be made for the Pioneer craft as interstellar probes as well, but while Pioneer 10 has reached a distance of 107 AU, the Pioneers are no longer transmitting data. Voyager 1 is now 123.45 AU out, for a round-trip light time of 34 hours, 15 minutes." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Voyager is still deeply in the grip of the Sun. In fact, Voyager 1 would have to travel another 14,000 years to reach the roughly 50,000 AU distance where the Sun’s gravity would cease to be a factor. [...] How far would our Voyagers have to be from the Earth before the Sun began to look like just another star? It turns out we’d have to go a long way. From 400 AU, a distance at which... more... - Mark H

"The Wilkinson Residence by Oshatz Architects, located at the Pacific Northwest site, sits like a little nest among the trees. The exterior consist out of a series of horizontal layers of different wood and metal, while the walls are made of glass, to provide natural lighting on the interior and a beautiful view to the surrounding nature to watch the animals. The spacious and warm rooms with their organic curved walls and high ceiling overhead follow an open plan. The built in furnishings made out of natural materials bring a variety of colors and textures into the house. The Architects left no detail untouched and created an environmentally friendly surrounding. As the resident is a lover of music, the interior space acoustics were carefully controlled, allowing the house to resonate with the flow of music." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"So it appears that the difference in flavor you get in a rye whiskey, which can come from either the U.S. or Canada, and a Scotch, which are made from malt or grain (or a blend) and has to be aged for at least three years, is that ryes tend to be a little spicy, while Scotches have a bit more of a honey flavor. Irish whiskies are generally sweet and oaky, and a good Canadian single malt should have a vanilla taste." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

The 10-y-o is fine and, as Victor says, the peaty taste may not be to yours. But I love it. - Mark H

"Smith’s most well-known work is the poster he designed for the Charlton Heston film Ben Hur – the one with the film’s title in giant stone writing with chariots riding around it. He was also responsible for other popular film posters like the 1967 children’s film Doctor Dolittle and Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando. In true VoEA style we’re taking a look at some of his lesser-known work, like the family friendly film Pippi Longstocking, Cult favourite The Subterraneans, Monster movie Gorgo, the Evel Knievel film and the seventies disaster flick Earthquake." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Neuroscientists have discovered that women are better at distinguishing among subtle distinctions in color, while men appear more sensitive to objects moving across their field of vision. [...] In one study, Abramov and his research team showed subjects light and dark bars of different widths and degrees of contrast flickering on a computer screen. The effect was akin to how we might view a car moving in the distance. Men were better than women at seeing the bars, and their advantage increased as the bars became narrower and less distinct." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

It's the worst thing about female UI designers --- they don't make any allowances for color blind folks like me! - Piaw Na

"In 2012, the Creation Museum reported a 10 percent decline in attendance from the previous year, and its parent group, Answers in Genesis, posted a 5 percent drop in revenue. That continues a four-year slump and a new low for the museum at 280,000 total visitors last year. Even more ominously, fundraising for the Ark Encounter has slowed to a crawl. Its future is further imperiled by the decline of the Creation Museum, whose visitors were expected to be a huge source of funding for the ark park. As of January, Ham had failed to raise even half the money required to build the ark replica itself, let alone the rest of the park. To help out, you can buy a peg, a blank, or even a beam for $100, $500, and $1,500, respectively—but seeing as the fate of the ark is in serious jeopardy, is a free pass to the grand opening really worth the risk?" - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"A spectacle like the Creation Museum has a pretty limited audience. Sure, 46 percent of Americans profess to believe in creationism, but how many are enthusiastic enough to venture to Kentucky to spend nearly $30 per person to see a diorama of a little boy palling around with a vegetarian dinosaur? The museum’s target demographic might not be eager to lay down that much money: Belief... more... - Mark H

You mean 6,000 or so years old, don't you, Mark? :^) - Friar Ticket to Ride

"The South African daisy Gorteria diffusa has a means of attracting pollinators that is either mean-spirited or brilliant, depending on how much you sympathize with the pollinators in question: its dark-spotted petals fool male bee flies (Megapalpus capensis) into mating with the flower. This is, of course, a fruitless exercise for the bee fly, but not so for the daisy, since the decieved males pick up pollen in the process, which they’ll transfer to another daisy when they’re fooled again." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Scientists have discovered a new planet orbiting a Sun-like star, and the exoplanet is the smallest yet found in data from the Kepler mission. The planet, Kepler-37b, is smaller than Mercury, but slightly larger than Earth’s Moon. The planet’s discovery came from a collaboration between Kepler scientists and a consortium of international researchers who employ asteroseismology — measuring oscillations in the star’s brightness caused by continuous star-quakes, and turning those tiny variations in the star’s light into sounds." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"The host star, Kepler-37, is about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. All three planets orbit the star at less than the distance Mercury is to the Sun, suggesting they are very hot, inhospitable worlds. Kepler-37b orbits every 13 days at less than one-third Mercury’s distance from the Sun. The estimated surface temperature of this smoldering planet, at more than 800... more... - Mark H

I've never heard of the NHA - Halil

"This incredibly detailed image comes from the one and only Robert Gendler and was assembled from three separate data sources. The detail for the nebula is from Hubble Space Telescope data, the background starfield from the Gemini Observatory/AURA and the color data from his own equipment. Here we see fanciful gas clouds with thick clumps decorating them. Intense radiation and gas streams from the central dying star in waves, fashioning out hollows and caves in the enveloping clouds. While these clumps in the clouds may appear as wispy details, each serves as a reminder of just how vast space can be… for each an every one of them is about the same size as our Solar System." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"At the heart of NGC 5189 shines the tiny light of its central star… no bigger than Earth. It wobbles its way through time, rotating rapidly and spewing material into space like a runaway fire hydrant. Astronomers speculate there might be a binary star hidden inside, since usually planetary nebulae of this type have them. However, only one star has been found at the nebula’s center and it might be one very big, very bad wolf." - Mark H

LOL! :( - Eivind

Most of those early stereotypes are lost on me. - Eivind

I really like that last picture. - Anika

"The Banyan Tree Al Wadi Resort is located in Al Wadi, the United Arab Emirates. The luxurious hotel is situated in an oasis and surrounded by vast dunes, the perfect spot for a holiday filled with relaxation and leisure." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"The series Senegal by Christophe Negrel subtly etches itself into our mind’s eye, developing into a collection of pictures with a notably atmospheric strength. By stepping away from being purposefully shocking, the photographer focuses his lens towards the humanity, subject and personality of the people in front of his camera. Christophe ingratiates us into a culture that is tender, loving, harsh and, at times, violent – full of emotional highs and lows shared by everyone." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Climate change, believed to have contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire (PDF) when drought forced villagers into a nomadic life in the late 16th century, is once again having an adverse affect on the Middle East. Precipitation has dropped off and temperatures have climbed for the past 40 years, with conditions growing especially severe in the last decade. A 2012 Yale study (PDF) showed that a drought from 2007 to 2010 so seriously stunted agriculture in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins that hundreds of thousands of people fled Iran, eastern Syria and northern Iraq." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"A new study published today in the journal Water Resources Research puts an even finer point to the climate change fall-out in the Middle East: The Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre-feet of their stored freshwater from 2003 to 2010, an amount almost equivalent to the entire volume of water in the Dead Sea. [...] Drought typically sends water-users underground in... more... - Mark H

I say "was" because after today I've decided there's no point. I've got no problem helping out at work when it's necessary but when you've got a project management structure that favours meetings, plans, plans about the meetings, meetings about the meetings, meetings to discuss more plans, and planning future plans over actually doing any work then I'll be buggered if I'm giving up time I could be spending at home with my missus just to do things that should be being done in the week. - Mark H

This has been a mini rant at the end of a quite tiring and fruitless day. But I have wine now so things are looking better. - Mark H

:) - Eivind

"A few years ago when I was a bright-eyed PhD student, I stumbled upon a press release making a provocative argument: a thousand year old supernova remnant in our Galaxy called W49B may have formed from a gamma-ray burst. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are extreme supernova explosions thought to mark the end of the lives of some very massive stars, and they are the most energetic and luminous events in the Universe. Although astronomers have now found several hundred gamma-ray bursts, these explosions tend to be billions of light years away. So the claim that one may have occurred in our own Galaxy seemed astounding. It got me thinking: what would a gamma-ray burst look like after a thousand years, and what would it leave behind?" - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"I went to a Skeptics in the Pub talk last night given by Rob Brotherton, a PhD psychology postgrad student doing research on cognitive biases and the causal factors involved with believing in conspiracy theories. The talk on conspiracy theories and theorist (CT) from a psychological perspective was really interesting, to say the least. Showing how certain people think, and the expressing of the huge gamut of cognitive biases and heuristics involved in fallible beliefs is always worth listening to. So, there I was with at this great talk, and at the back, constantly talking, rubbishing points under their breaths, and even (according to my mate standing next to some) threatening to go and get some eggs to throw at the talker, were a group of actual conspiracy theorists. I am not sure whether they accidentally came because they thought it was ABOUT conspiracy theories, or in order to have a ding dong. Either way, listening to their arguments was incredibly eye-opening." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

Yes, he would have been really interesting but we're a new group and quite small, and we had to take the decision to not overreach. - Mark H

"The good news for mice is that humans have spent billions of dollars to solve their illnesses. But it seems researchers have tortured mice in vain for decades in the search for drugs to help humans recover from certain traumas, like severe burns, blunt force, and sepsis. Mouse genes just don't react the same way as human genes in all cases--in fact, sometimes they are contrary to one another. But we shouldn't get rid of our fuzzy friends entirely." - Mark H from Bookmarklet

"Researchers even injected four healthy volunteers--yes, human volunteers--with low doses of bacterial toxins to monitor gene response. Then they compared this with genetic data from mice they afflicted with similar troubles. By the end of the study, the researchers looked at some 5,000 genes that overlap humans and mice. The genetic changes similar in both people and mice barely hit... more... - Mark H

We need to create lab humans to experiment on … - Amit Patel

Dead people from The Andromeda Strain, which is right up there in my top three favourite films of all time. - Mark H from Bookmarklet

It wasn't the quality, sorry poor choice of words, apparently they edited the film, including deleting the the ticker intro on the DVD reproduction. - Halil