Monday 1 September 2014

Sniffing out billions in US currency smuggled across the border to Mexico

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Criminals are smuggling an estimated \$30 billion in U.S. currency into Mexico each year from the United States, but help could be on the way for border guards, researchers will report in the American Chemical Society today. The answer to the problem: a portable device that identifies specific vapors given off by U.S. paper money. They will present the new research at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The meeting features nearly 12,000 reports on new advances in science and other topics. It is being held here through Thursday. In the past fiscal year, law enforcement officials say they uncovered more than \$106 million in smuggled cash headed from the U.S. to Mexico. But this was only a small portion of the billions that made it across the border undetected — hidden among belongings, in clothing or elsewhere. The bulk of that currency is laundered drug money. Travelers crossing the U.S./Mexico border are required to report cash or endorsed checks over \$10,000. If they don’t declare larger sums, the money that is found can be seized. “We’re developing a device that mimics the function of trained dogs ‘sniffing’ out concealed money,

The post Sniffing out billions in US currency smuggled across the border to Mexico has been published on Technology Org.

 
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World Briefing: Geckos on Mission Die Aboard Russian Spacecraft

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Five geckos launched into space for an experiment on sexual reproduction in near-zero gravity were found dead after their spacecraft returned to earth, the Russian space agency said.















via New York Times

Elements of Astronomy scientific chart from 1790 Print

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: map of space, solar system, astronomy, 1700s, c cooke, map, antiquity, antique, vintage, print, poster

Restored print of the "Elements of Astronomy, including the Solar System with the discovered Planted the Georgium Sidus See System of Astronomy. Originally published by C Cooke in 1790. Reproduction print. Still has some tiny markings, because I like them and think they lend authenticity to the age of the illustration. This chart is very large, but you can buy a smaller print by adjusting the drop-down menu up and to the right. This chart is very large, but you can buy a smaller print by adjusting the drop-down menu up and to the right. All vintage art in my store has been lovingly restored -- adjusting colors and fixing flaws. Posters and prints are available in many sizes, which you can adjust. Thanks so much for stopping by! You can customize this print in order to have it your way: larger, smaller, with text, and many other options.

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September packed with events to celebrate CERN's 60th


On 29 September 1954, the CERN Convention entered into force, officially establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research with 12 European member states. Now the world's biggest particle physics laboratory, CERN is celebrating “60 years of science for peace” with an official ceremony and several public events taking place throughout September.


The highlight of this anniversary month will be the official ceremony on 29 September, which will be attended by many representatives of CERN’s Member States, Associate Member States and Observers. Journalists can attend this event, subject to having obtained accreditation before 18 September via Indico. “With its discoveries and innovations, CERN has been bringing the world together through science for 60 years. We'd like to celebrate this important anniversary with our friends and neighbours.”, said Rolf Heuer, CERN’s Director General.


CERN is also inviting the general public to several cultural events commemorating its anniversary: concerts, a film, a play, shows and lectures will all bring science to the general population, adults and children alike.


Friday, 19 September: Concert by the United Nations Orchestra


Conducted by Antoine Marguier, the United Nations Orchestra will accompany violin maestro Matteo Fedeli, a soloist performing on a Stradivarius under the patronage of the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations Office. The programme includes the overture to Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, George Bizet’s Carmen Suite No. 1 and Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture.


Free entry, booking required – please see www.cern.ch/voisins for details.


Saturday, 20 September: screening of Particle Fever film and Comedy Night


This documentary brings to life the start-up of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the LHC, and the two-year-long global effort that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson. The screening will be followed by a discussion with director Mark Levinson, editor Walter Munch and the scientists featured in the documentary.


The second part of the evening will see scientists take to the stage as comedians for the Comedy Night.


Free entry, booking required via www.cern.ch/voisins


Wednesday, 24 September: TEDxCERN


CERN hosts the second edition of TEDxCERN, which you can watch live via webcast.


Friday, 26 September: Researchers’ Night/POP Science


For the ninth Researchers’ Night, CERN will bring science to the general public at three venues:



  • From 4.30 to 9.30 p.m. at the Rive branch of FNAC in Geneva: workshops, poetry, music, science cafés and a dedicated children’s area. Free entry, no booking required.

  • 7 p.m. at the Théâtre du Bordeau in Saint-Genis-Pouilly: a preview of Origins, an innovative play combining new technology, holograms and dialogue with the audience. The play will be followed by a one-off discussion with Etienne Klein, Hubert Reeves and Michel Spiro. Entrance fee applies – please see www.cern.ch/voisins for details.

  • 10 p.m., science café at the Salle Centrale de la Madeleine theatre in Geneva, with Fabiola Gianotti, Etienne Klein, Hubert Reeves and Michel Mayor. Free entry, booking required – please see www.cern.ch/voisins for details.


Tuesday, 30 September: Concert by the CERN Choir


Directed by Gonzalo Martinez, the CERN Choir celebrates its 40th anniversary this year with a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s monumental Missa Solemnis. Tickets on sale at the Victoria Hall – please see www.cern.ch/voisins for details.


More information about CERN’s 60th anniversary can be found at www.cern.ch/cern60.





via CERN: Updates for the general public

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/09/september-packed-events-celebrate-cerns-60th

Why lethal injections fail

Science Focus

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Euthanizing lab animals is a routinely regulated and reviewed process. It's subject to constant revision by veterinary associations and animal care committees at labs and universities, conducted by trained technicians, and reevaluated by ongoing research.

The three-drug lethal injection procedure used to execute human prisoners across the U.S. for decades was improvised by Oklahoma state medical examiner Jay Chapman in 1977, has not been refined with the input of even basic scientific research, and would be illegal to use on animals in most of the states where it's used to execute humans.

... More 
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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/265888/why-lethal-injections-fail
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VIDEO: Can US 'secret serum' cure Ebola?

Science Focus

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Alastair Leithead visits the San Diego research centre where a serum used on two US Ebola patients was developed. 
#science 
 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28715159#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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5 delightful science experiments from 100 years ago

Science Focus

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In 1892, the dubiously named Mr. Tom Tit published a book of at-home activities for children called Magical Experiments: or, Science in Play. He made sure each scientific exploration could double as a parlor trick; something exciting and strange to impress as well as instruct.

Some of his experiments are all but impossible to do today (even if you can find spermaceti candles, you really shouldn't use them), and some of his once common ingredients haven't been available at drug stores for decades. But that doesn't mean you can't do them. If the product still exists, you can find it online. This...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/265916/5-delightful-science-experiments-from-100-years-ago
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Monogram - Emission Nebula NGC 2467 in Puppis Round Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, galaxies and stars, sculptured gas clouds, enebicp, constellation puppis, ngc 2467, the stern, hot young stars, star incubator, monogram initials

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A colourful star-forming region is featured in this stunning image of NGC 2467 located in the southern constellation of Puppis (The Stern). Looking like a roiling cauldron of some exotic cosmic brew, huge clouds of gas and dust are sprinkled with bright blue, hot young stars. Strangely shaped dust clouds, resembling spilled liquids, are silhouetted against a colourful background of glowing gas. Like the familiar Orion Nebula, NGC 2467 is a huge cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, that serves as an incubator for new stars. Some of these youthful stars have emerged from the dense clouds where they were born and now shine brightly, hot and blue in this picture, but many others remain hidden.

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image code: enebicp

Image credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

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Airglow Ripples over Tibet

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Carina Nebula Detail Wall Decal

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: space, stars, dark, nebula, photo, photography, space photography, carina nebula, astronomy, wallpaper, universe, hubble, deep space, outer space, astronaut, beautiful, colorful, cloud, colors, red, blue, yellow, orange, green, black, white, decorative, amazing, background

Beautiful and high quality photo of Carina Nebula Detail. Great prints, phone cases, clothing and other great gifts.

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Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2012 iPad Cases

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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Competing forces coax nanocubes into helical structures

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SEM image of a well-defined double helix Nanocubes are anything but child’s play. Weizmann Institute scientists have used them to create surprisingly yarn-like strands: They showed that given the right conditions, cube-shaped nanoparticles are able to align into winding helical structures. Their results, which reveal how nanomaterials can self-assemble into unexpectedly beautiful and complex structures, were recently published in Science. Dr. Rafal Klajn and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Gurvinder Singh of the Institute’s Organic Chemistry Department used nanocubes of an iron oxide material called magnetite. As the name implies, this material is naturally magnetic: It is found all over the place, including inside bacteria that use it to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. Magnetism is just one of the forces acting on the nanoparticles. Together with the research group of Prof. Petr Král of the University of Illinois, Chicago, Klajn and Singh developed theoretical models to understand how the various forces could push and pull the tiny bits of magnetite into different formations. “Different types of forces compel the nanoparticles to align in different ways,” says Klajn. “These can compete with one another; so the idea is to find the balance of competing forces that can induce the self-assembly of the particles into novel

The post Competing forces coax nanocubes into helical structures has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Neutron stars at odds

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Space Science Image of the Week: Old magnetic neutron star overshadowed by the veil of quiet, younger counterpart

via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/08/Magnetar_discovered_close_to_supernova_remnant_Kesteven_79

High Frontier Colonization Poster-Map, April 2014

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: sierra madre, games, high frontier, colonization, science, fiction, astronomy, solar system, phil eklund, poster-map, alpha centauri

Use this Poster-Map as a game board to play any edition of High Frontier. It has many more sites to explore than the standard Colonization map, including new sites on Luna and Mercury, the inner systems of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune including the Neptune aerostat, the solar Oberth maneuver, Phobos space elevator, the asteroids Fortuna and Icarus plus the Sylvia family, Comet Holmes, the Norse moonlets, the Portia Group, the Kreutz sungrazer, a fourth space venture, and the newly discovered rings of Chariklo. Updated Apr 2014. "I printed the Colonization HF Poster-Map in Large (48.00" x 22.46"), Value Poster Paper (Matte). It is great as long as you have the space for it. Otherwise, I would get the 36” X 24" version. If you combine with another Poster-Map (Bios-Origins or Interstellar) then you could do even better on price since you only need to pay for shipping once. The quality on both maps are top notch so I can strongly recommend them." Russell Harley

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Child Spaceman with Holly and Christmas Message Gift Wrap

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!


tagged with: xmaswrp, holly leaves, red berries, merry christmas message, child astronaut, space explorer, fun, childs face, kids face, spaceman

Just Fun series A great gift wrap for any child who wants to be an astronaut. Upload your child's photo to go inside the space helmet. The background is a real photograph from outer space.
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image code: spastro

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Monogram Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672 Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: monogram initials, star galaxies, deep space astronomy, barred spiral galaxy, bsgsst, starry space picture, galactic arms, supermassive black hole, dust lanes, star forming galaxy

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series This NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672 unveils details in the galaxy's star-forming clouds and dark bands of interstellar dust.
One of the most striking features is the dust lanes that extend away from the nucleus and follow the inner edges of the galaxy's spiral arms. Clusters of hot young blue stars form along the spiral arms and ionize surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas that glow red. Delicate curtains of dust partially obscure and redden the light of the stars behind them by scattering blue light.
Galaxies lying behind NGC 1672 give the illusion they are embedded in the foreground galaxy, even though they are really much farther away. They also appear reddened as they shine through NGC 1672's dust. A few bright foreground stars inside our own Milky Way Galaxy appear in the image as bright and diamond-like objects.
As a prototypical barred spiral galaxy, NGC 1672 differs from normal spiral galaxies, in that the arms do not twist all the way into the center. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus. Viewed nearly face on, NGC 1672 shows intense star formation regions especially off in the ends of its central bar.
Astronomers believe that barred spirals have a unique mechanism that channels gas from the disk inward towards the nucleus. This allows the bar portion of the galaxy to serve as an area of new star generation.
NGC 1672 is also classified as a Seyfert galaxy. Seyferts are a subset of galaxies with active nuclei. The energy output of these nuclei can sometimes outshine their host galaxies. This activity is powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes.
NGC 1672 is more than 60 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado. These observations of NGC 1672 were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in August of 2005. The composite image was made by using filters that isolate light from the blue, green, and infrared portions of the spectrum, as well as emission from ionized hydrogen.
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image code: bsgsst

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

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Balloon rise over fort sumner

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In a few days, a balloon-borne telescope sensitive to the polarization of high-energy “hard” X rays will ascend to the edge of the atmosphere above Fort Sumner, N.M., to stare fixedly at black holes and other exotic astronomical objects. It will be carried aloft by a stratospheric balloon that will expand to a sphere large enough to hold a 747 jetliner the float height of 120,000 feet, three times the height at which commercial aircraft fly and on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Launching the balloon is not child’s play.

via Science Daily

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Crab Nebula Wall Decals

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.

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Purple Galaxy Cluster iPad Mini Covers

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: blue, purple, nasa, hubble, space, images, galaxy, cluster, macs, j0717, stars, pretty, galaxies, macsj0717

Galaxy Cluster MACS J0717 thanks to NASA and Hubble program.

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