Paging Fox Mulder...Paging Fox Mulder...

Now this is cool, rational explanation or not!

Updated: 03:08 PM EST
Mars Rovers Get Mystery Power Boost
By JOHN ANTCZAK, AP

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 4) - As NASA's Mars rovers keep rolling past all expectations of their useful lives, scientists have a happy mystery: For some reason one of the vehicles has actually gained power recently.

Opportunity recently experienced an unexplained rejuvenation from what can so far be described only as two or three significant "cleaning events," said Jim Erickson, the rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

"Now we're assuming they're cleaning, but all we can really say is that overnight the solar panels produced between 2 and 5 percent additional power immediately," he said.

"We're surmising that for some reason dust is being removed from the solar panel and that's increasing the efficiency of the sunlight being converted to electricity."

The rover team has been bandying about theories, but hasn't figured out the cause.

"One favorite is that a dust devil happened to pick the vehicle to go through and go over the surface of it and clean it off a little bit," Erickson said.

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, parachuted to opposite sides of Mars back in January, but they remain in good shape after enduring the worst of the Martian winter, which cut down on the amount of energy reaching their solar panels.

Both six-wheeled rovers have discovered geologic evidence of past water activity on the Red Planet and are continuing to send valuable data.

"We are pushing these vehicles to their very limits," said Steve Squyres, the rover principal investigator from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "In many ways they are performing better in some sense just because we've gotten better at operating them and we are in this much more challenging and geologically rich terrain."

Spirit has had several minor problems, indicating that various parts may be showing their age, Erickson said.

Spirit, having trekked nearly two miles across the flat terrain of the vast Gusev Crater region where it set down, is zigzagging up the rugged Columbia Hills and is now nearly 200 feet above the surrounding plain.

The intriguing layered rocks of the hills are much different than the plain below, and scientists are working on multiple hypotheses to explain how they formed.

The leading theory is that the rocks began as volcanic ash that fell out of the sky or moved along the ground in ash flows, and minerals inside them were subsequently altered by ground water, said Ray Arvidson, the rover deputy principal investigator from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

Opportunity is nearing the end of its exploration of stadium-size Endurance Crater in the Meridiani Planum region and may claw its way over the rim.

The rovers had available about 1,000 watt-hours a day when they arrived on Mars, but dust on their solar panels and the seasonal decrease in solar energy have limited their power, and therefore their activities.

Opportunity is now at about 820 watt-hours and remains very close to full capability. Spirit, which is in a less advantageous position to point its arrays toward the sun, has 350 to 400 watt-hours daily.

11/04/04 23:16 EST
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20041104231809990004

More on the Day of the Dead

From the Houston Chronicle:

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com Section: Editorial

Nov. 1, 2004, 1:33AM

DAY OF THE DEAD

Rites to celebrate transition have affirmed life and strengthened cultures over centuries.
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

Tomorrow's date, Nov. 2, has been momentous in these parts for years — more than 500 years, in fact. Long before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November became America's day to choose its leaders, Nov. 2 marked the profound, joyous and complex Day of the Dead, a holiday so resonant it still inspires yearly festivals, observances and artworks.

For Mexicans, El Dia De Los Muertos is a multilayered holiday honoring dead loved ones. Spanish conquistadors and their priests gave the New World All Soul's Day, a solemn Catholic holiday when dead souls are thought to walk the earth. But they never neutralized the coinciding Aztec rite — which celebrated death, the cyclical nature of life, and the fleeting chance to interact with beings from another world.

To welcome their dead loved ones home, families today craft brilliant altars adorned with loved ones' photographs. The offerings include marigolds; favorite drinks and snacks of the deceased; candles; and floating tissue paper banners. On Nov. 2, relatives troop to the graveyard to clean and decorate the family graves, pausing after their labor to pray, picnic and toast the honored dead.

In Anglo culture, the corresponding celebration is Halloween, a prank-filled, slightly anxious holiday. But for Mexicans, this yearly ghost-return is full of cheer and contemplation. It allows families to celebrate their ongoing bond with dead loved ones. And on a deeper level, it represents a portal. El Dia de Los Muertos is the one day when the wall between two worlds foreign to one another is breached. Death, rather than being alien and menacing, simply is another country to which mortals can periodically gain access. The contact gives them strength and helps to banish helplessness and fear.

A few of the same feelings color Americans' own observance of Election Day, which this year falls on Nov. 2. Election Day also provides a portal: Once every four years, it gives ordinary people direct access to the most remote regions of power. The contact is welcome, solemn and, above all, vital to both sides. Like the Aztec holiday, Nov. 2 reminds and reassures Americans that transition is a part of life. To embrace it properly, all one needs to do is vote.

El Dia de los Muertos

Yesterday was the Day of the Dead in Mexico. An intensely interesting thing, this Day of the Dead, with its celebrations and its sugar skulls...The article below is from Yahoo via Reuters. I have often wished very badly that I could participate in this Day, with its celebrations.

Cheering the Day of the Dead with Food, Flowers

Tue Nov 2, 8:33 AM ET

By Tim Gaynor

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - From indigenous Indian villages to violence-torn cities on the U.S. border, millions of Mexicans trekked to cemeteries on Monday to honor their dead with flowers, food and musical tributes.

The two-day celebration has its roots in Roman Catholic tradition and ancient pagan rites where families honor dead relatives by cleaning their graves, offering them favorite food, laying out flowers and even serenading them with the music they used to love.

Drawing on a belief of the Tarascan people in central Mexico that departed souls can be lured back, the celebration begins on Nov. 1 with the Day of the Innocents to honor departed children while the Day of the Dead on Nov. 2, coinciding with All Souls' Day, is to remember adults.

The tradition is one of the most colorful and deep-rooted in Mexico and celebrated by factory workers in boomtowns along the U.S. border, urban professionals in the capital and among traditional Mayan communities in the tropical south.

"It's a happy occasion because you're remembering someone beloved," barman Alfredo Rodriguez said in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The party mood inside cemeteries amounts to a celebration of death, even in Ciudad Juarez, where a horrific 11-year killing spree has claimed the lives of well over 300 women.

Those murders, the failure of authorities to catch the killers and vicious turf wars between rival drug gangs have seen Ciudad Juarez dubbed "The City of the Dead."

MOCK AND EMBRACE DEATH

But Mexicans both mock and embrace death in these annual celebrations.

"You have to smile, as you'll be joining them soon enough," Rodriguez quipped as he tended the tiny grave of his brother Jose Antonio, who died aged four months in 1974.

"It's a day for everyone in the city to remember their dead, and we make a party of it," working mother Sofia Lopez said in Ciudad Juarez as she knelt to heap golden marigolds on the dirt grave of her daughter, Elizabeth, who died in 1990.

"We come here to spend a little time with her, just as if she were alive," she added, as around her visitors raked dirt by the tombs of much-loved family members, and touched up weathered headstones with paint.

In some indigenous communities in the Yucatan peninsula in sultry southeast Mexico, families traditionally take the bones of dead relatives out of their vaults ahead of the two-day festival, cleaning and caressing them in an annual rite.

Altars loaded with flowers and large skeleton figures -- some in indigenous dress, others as Spanish conquistadors -- were set up in Mexico City's vast central square on Monday, and incense filled the air.

Day of the Dead spills out of the cemeteries and small-town graveyards into shops, restaurants and homes across Mexico, where the souls of the dead are beckoned home with altars charged with votive candles, candy skulls and cherished keepsakes.

Offerings include "pan de muerto," a cake sprinkled with sugar and decorated to look like bones, as well as tequila shots and a glass of water to quench the returning spirit's thirst after the journey from the afterlife.

While supermarket chains increasingly stock up on pumpkins and Halloween masks imported from Mexico's powerful NAFTA-partner to the north, few doubt the resilience of the national tradition to hold its own against trick-or-treating.

"It is important to conserve and pass on traditions to children," lawyer Elizabeth Maldonado said as she tended her mother's grave at Mexico City's urban Dolores cemetery, while around her children dressed as devils and clowns played hide-and-seek among the tombstones.

"But (the children) are happy with costumes, and that doesn't damage tradition. It's a mixture," she added.

Brain differences?

As I try to remain calm, this interesting article from CNN.com:

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- Applying some of the same brain-scan technology used to understand Alzheimer's and autism, scientists are trying to learn what makes a Republican's mind different from a Democrat's.

Brain scanning is moving rapidly beyond diseases to measuring how we react to religious experiences, racial prejudice, even Coke versus Pepsi. This election season, some scientists are trying to find out whether the technology can help political consultants get inside voters' heads more effectively than focus groups or polls.

Already, the scientists are predicting that brain scanning -- known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI -- will be a campaign staple four years from now, despite ethical concerns about "neuromarketing."

Brain scans measure blood flow. When brain cells start firing in a part of the brain that governs a particular emotion or activity, they need more oxygen, which is carried by the blood. During an fMRI, active regions of the brain can be seen lighting up on a computer monitor.

Last month, Drs. Joshua Freedman and Marco Iacoboni of the University of California at Los Angeles finished scanning the brains of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Each viewed images of President Bush, John Kerry and Ralph Nader.

When viewing their favorite candidate, all showed increased activity in the region implicated in empathy. And when viewing the opposition, all had increased blood flow in the region where humans consciously assert control over emotions -- suggesting the volunteers were actively attempting to dislike the opposition.

Nonetheless, some differences appeared between the brain activity of Democrats and Republicans. Take empathy: One Democrat's brain lit up at an image of Kerry "with a profound sense of connection, like a beautiful sunset," Freedman said. Brain activity in a Republican shown an image of Bush was "more interpersonal, such as if you smiled at someone and they smiled back."

And when voters were shown a Bush ad that included images of the September 11 attacks, the amygdala region of the brain -- which lights up for most of us when we see snakes -- illuminated more for Democrats than Republicans. The researchers' conclusion: At a subconscious level, Republicans were apparently not as bothered by what Democrats found alarming.

"People make tons of decisions and often they don't know why," Iacoboni said. "A lot of decision-making is unconscious, and brain imaging will be used in the near future to perceive and decide about politicians."

Freedman came to political brain scanning through his brother Tom, who served as a consultant to President Clinton. Tom Freedman asked his neuroscientist brother if the technology could improve on how campaigns woo voters.

"No one had done fMRI with politics," Dr. Freedman said. "So we decided to see what we could find."

The UCLA researchers said they have not been contacted by any political consultants other than Freedman's brother and a collaborator, though they expect that to change after the election.
Already, some companies are dabbling in neuromarketing.

DaimlerChrysler used MRIs to gauge interest in different makes of cars. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology are scanning brains for reaction to movie trailers. Baylor University scientists just published brain scans suggesting preference for Coke or Pepsi is culturally influenced, and not just a matter of taste.

"This is a story of the corruption of medical research," warned Gary Ruskin, who runs a Portland, Oregon, nonprofit organization called Commercial Alert. "It's a technology that should be used to ease human suffering, not make political propaganda more effective."

Moon phases thingy

Shamelessly swiped from Chandira ( Diary of a Hope Fiend ) is the cool little Moon phases thingy in the sidebar.

Tycho Brahe's star found after 400+ years

On election day, I think I want to focus on fun stuff ;) and avoid the news until tonight. In that spirit, some astronomy news from www.space.com :

432-Year Search: Lost Star Found
By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer
posted: 01 November, 20047:00 a.m. ET

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe spotted a new star in the sky on Nov. 11, 1572, and astronomers have been trying ever since to figure out exactly what happened. The case appeared to be solved last week.

A star racing away from the explosive scene has been found. It is streaming through space three times faster than others in its vicinity, a dead giveaway that it was shot like a cannon from the scene of a supernova eruption, astronomers claim.

Tycho's supernova, as it is called, was one of those crucial events of science, used to refute the centuries-old view of Aristotle that the heavens were static.

Here's what astronomers think happened: A hot, dense and dying star called white dwarf was sucking lots of material off a normal companion star. The white dwarf was condensed by all the new material, triggering a thermonuclear explosion whose brightness temporarily exceeded a billion suns.

The companion was struck by the explosion and shoved on a new course related to its former orbital path.

Fleeing the scene

The visible light faded with time, but the region still emits intense X-ray and radio energy as an expanding bubble of matter slams into interstellar gas. Astronomers have long monitored it in hopes of learning whether the scenario they use to describe the cataclysm is accurate or not.
A team led by Pilar Ruiz-Lapuente of the University of Barcelona has spotted the somewhat depleted remains of the companion. Its path and speed, and the fact that it is not far from the center of the expanding visual remnant of the explosion, suggest it was indeed involved in the supernova.

"The star sticks out," Ruiz-Lapuente told SPACE.com. "It has a much higher velocity than the [other] stars at that location."

The whole scene is about 10,000 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). So the explosion actually occurred about 10,432 years ago, and its light first reached Tycho's eyes 432 years ago.

The new studied relied on data from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. The finding was detailed last week in the journal Nature.

What it means

The finding will help researchers better understand the conditions under which a certain type of stellar explosion occurs. Some astronomers have suggested type 1a supernovas -- the variety apparently seen by Tycho Brahe -- might be the result of stellar collisions between two white dwarfs, rather than the mass-transfer idea.

"If we accept that the companion has been identified, then we now know for the first time that not all type-Ia supernovae are produced by coalescence of white dwarfs," writes University of Oklahoma physicist David Branch in an analysis of the work for the journal.

All this is important in part because type 1a supernovas are rare in our galaxy but common in the universe as a whole. All of them achieve an almost identical maximum brightness, then fade at a nearly identical rate. So astronomers use them as "standard candles" to measure distances to faraway galaxies.

In the late 1990s, studies of these supernovas revealed that the universe is mysteriously expanding at an accelerated pace. Some unknown force, dubbed dark energy, is thought to be behind the expansion.

"The profound cosmological implications of this are the motivation for astronomers to strive to better understand this class of supernova," Branch says.

With advances in telescopes, astronomers hunt down the supernovas deeper in space and farther back in time in an effort to pin down the properties of dark energy, a crucial first step in figuring out what it is.

Astronomers say a supernova ought to fire about every 100 years in a galaxy like the Milky Way. Another one, named for German astronomer Johannes Kepler, appeared in 1604. But none have been spotted since. The nearest recent supernova seen, named 1987A, was spotted in 1987 in our galactic neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

This article is part of SPACE.com's weekly Mystery Monday series.

Give me a break!

Look, I know that a lot of so-called Bible-thumpers hate Harry Potter. I am not a so-called Bible-thumper, and therefore find this article both funny and sad, for all sorts of reasons. Believe in God, believe in the Devil, okay. That's all fine. But an 18-year-old boy should have other things on his mind than whether or not reading Harry Potter is going to damn his immortal soul. Argh...I could go into a rant, I really could. I think instead I'll just post the article, which I found on Yahoo:

Pupil Appeals Harry Potter 'Witchcraft'
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African schoolboy appealed to education authorities after refusing to answer an exam question on Harry Potter because he believes the best-selling children's books promote witchcraft.

Eighteen-year-old John Smit did not answer a comprehension question on a review of one of J.K. Rowling's books on the boy wizard, worth 30 percent of his English exam.

"He wouldn't answer it because it supports witchcraft, and we're against witchcraft ... the Bible is against witchcraft," Smit's mother, who did not wish to give her first name, told Reuters.

The family has written to provincial director of examinations to complain. Authorities have yet to respond.

"I hope they will give him his average mark. This shouldn't happen again," she said.

African Christian Democratic Party MP Cheryllyn Dudley said South Africa needed a clear policy to avoid other pupils facing moral dilemmas during exams.

"I have read (Harry Potter books), I have researched them thoroughly, and my personal opinion is that they are witchcraft manuals," Dudley told Reuters.

Priestly ghost

Just in time for Halloween, from www.cnn.com :

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- As the legend goes, St. Mary's Episcopal Church is haunted by the ghost of Father Henry David Jardine, a 19th century priest whose footsteps still echo throughout the Gothic-style sanctuary.

On the eve of Halloween, St. Mary's will try to separate fact from fiction by bringing together the ghostly tales and historical documents about Jardine's life, which has been shrouded for years in mystery and intrigue.

"He is quite a legend. And sometimes it's hard to know what to believe," said Todd Chenault, the unofficial church historian who organized Saturday's $45-a-plate dinner. The event will feature fake fog and music from the church's 30-foot organ.

Chenault, 45, who has gone to St. Mary's all his life, remembers trading spooky stories about Jardine with his fellow Sunday school students in the 1960s. As an adult, however, he has worked to get the true story about the priest.

Rumor has it that Jardine killed himself in the church's third-story living area and was buried in a basement vault. Not true, Chenault said.

Old newspaper clippings show Jardine died in 1886 in St. Louis, not Kansas City. St. Mary's does have a tomb, but the downtown parish that Jardine commissioned was not finished until months after his death. The stigma of suicide kept him from ever resting in the crypt, which instead holds boxes of cereal and canned goods for the needy.

On more than one occasion, Chenault says, he has heard footsteps shuffling from behind the organ. When he was a child, Christmas trees fell off ledges near the instrument for no reason, year after year.

"Have I heard things? Yes, plenty of times," Chenault said. "Have I seen any ghosts? No, never."

According to church archives, from 1879 to 1886 Jardine increased St. Mary's membership, created a hospital and schools for children.

Betty Herndon, who will help lead the Saturday event billed as "The Historic Haunting," said many church members during Jardine's time praised his emphasis on old Roman Catholic ways, but others were not as accepting. Influential members spread rumors, hoping for his resignation, Herndon said.

Jardine also was accused of misusing parish funds, drug use and immoral behavior with young church girls. The scandal prompted the priest to file a libel suit against a former editor of The Kansas City Times, John Shea. Jardine lost the case.

"It was a kangaroo court; witnesses made outrageous claims with no evidence. You name it," said Chenault, who said he reviewed court documents from the lawsuit.

Jardine then traveled to St. Louis, where his priesthood was revoked. Days before he was scheduled to contest the decision, he was found dead. In his hands, according to newspaper accounts, were a crucifix and rag soaked in chloroform.

Herndon said Jardine commonly inhaled the toxic drug to ease facial muscle spasms, so his death might have been accidental. He said few believed Jardine committed suicide or the allegations that came before. Arriving by train, Jardine's casket was covered in black cloth and his congregation came to view it.

"The scene was sorrowful, even to a stranger," The Kansas City Times reported.

Church archives show St. Mary's buried the priest a day later on unconsecrated ground for $88. The funeral precession stretched for more than a mile.

Over the past 100 years Jardine's remains have been exhumed and moved three times, most recently in 2000 to return his remains to St. Mary's. His ashes rest by the organ, under the church's high altar.

"Religious believers live in a spirit world," said the current rector, Father Jeffrey Cave. "We pray to be surrounded by angels and so forth. Ghost stories like Jardine's are all too common."

Pompeii gets virtual makeover

As the election nears, I find myself definitely shying away from any political posts--though I know I will post something--mainly because of stress. And so, here's yet another post to my Zero Room:

Pompeii gets digital make-over

The old-fashioned audio tour of historical places could soon be replaced with computer-generated images that bring the site to life.

A European Union-funded project is looking at providing tourists with computer-augmented versions of archaeological attractions.

It would allow visitors a glimpse of life as it was originally lived in places such as Pompeii.

It could pave the way for a new form of cultural tourism.

Combining real and virtual

The technology would allow digital people and other computer-generated elements to be combined with the actual view seen by tourists as they walk around an historical site.

The Lifeplus project is part of the EU's Information Society Technologies initiative aimed at promoting user-friendly technology and enhancing European cultural heritage. Engineers and researchers working in the Europe-wide consortium have come up with a prototype augmented-reality system.

It would require the visitor to wear a head-mounted display with a miniature camera and a backpack computer.

The camera captures the view and feeds it to software on the computer where the visitor's viewpoint is combined with animated virtual elements.

At Pompeii for example, the visitor would not just see the frescos, taverns and villas that have been excavated, but also people going about their daily life.

Augmented reality has been used to create special effects in films such as Troy and Lord of the Rings and in computer gaming.

Bringing past to life

"This technology can now be used for much more than just computer games," said Professor Nadia Magnenat-Thalman of the Swiss research group MiraLab.

"We are, for the first time, able to run this combination of software processes to create walking, talking people with believable clothing, skin and hair in real-time," she said. Unlike virtual reality, which delivers an entirely computer-generated scene to the viewer, the Lifeplus project is about combining digital and real views.

Crucial to the technique is the software that interprets the visitor's view and provides an accurate match between the real and virtual elements.

The software capable of doing this has been developed by a UK company, 2d3. Andrew Stoddart, chief scientist at 2d3, said that the EU project has been driven by a new desire to bring the past to life.

"The popularity of television documentaries and dramatisations using computer-generated imagery to recreate scenes from ancient history demonstrates the widespread appeal of bringing ancient cultures to life," he said.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3954659.stm
Published: 2004/10/31 07:27:18 GMT© BBC MMIV