Archive for August 3rd, 2008

Science News has a look at the latest paleontological fashion: what might be the remains of pigment in fossilized feathers 100 million years old. The material in question is believed to be black melanin, on the evidence of its similarity in scanning-microscope images to the modern pigment. The researchers are hopeful of identifying other varieties of melanin, which provide red or yellow coloration; and also possibly of spotting fossilized nanostructures of melanin that create iridescent patterns in some modern animals.

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Fed prone to hold rates steady amid crosscurrents - Forbes
An ugly brew of rising unemployment, spiking foreclosures and gyrating energy prices is plaguing the country and making life difficult for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as he tries to right the economy. Bernanke and his central bank

Wealth plunges as shares and property slide - News.com.au
Average wealth fell 5pc in the first half of the year Biggest six month plunge since 1982-1983 recession More personal finance news in our Money section TUMBLING share markets and sliding property prices have produced the biggest six-month fall in

Exhibit shows change toward green homes is close - Detroit Free Press
The water closet tiles are recycled wine bottles. The hardwood floors are sustainable bamboo. And the sprawling garden gets sprinkled with rainwater collected in 300-gallon barrels. From its recycled plastic deck to its solar-paneled roof, everything in

Property prices might fall 30% by 2011 - Financial Times
House prices are expected to fall by almost 30 per cent during the next three years according to the leading indices of property price futures, with more investors than ever looking to bet on long-term property prices as the value of their own homes

Brisbane to put limits on numbers of people in single house - News.com.au
CRAMMED student housing will prompt Brisbane City Council to reduce the number of people allowed to live in a single dwelling. Civic Cabinet is this day expected to approve the change to prevent situations where up to 15 students have shared a single

Undersupply could bring back house price inflation - Daily Telegraph
Undersupply in the housing market could lead to a return to rapid house price inflation by 2010, according to a report published this day. Falling output from housebuilders could lead to a 30pc increase in home prices between 2009 and 2012, according

An acid-tongued maverick keeps bankers on the edge of their seats - International Herald Tribune
Lutz, Florida, is on no one’s list of world financial capitals. But from his home there on Tiffany Lane, 1,100 miles from Wall Street, Richard X. Bove can rattle the mighty of American banking. Lately some of his pronouncements have caused a few

The faster house prices fall, the better off we’ll be - Daily Telegraph
Something must be done! This is something. Therefore it must be done. Following such logic, governments have blundered into all sorts of interventions which they’ve subsequently lived to regret. By contrast, last week’s interim report from Sir

Looking good - Boston Globe
A mong the humble brick and vinyl suburban-style houses along Hyde Park Avenue in Roslindale, the Hyde-Blakemore Condominiums stand out. There are the mahogany-louvered fences, the solar panels, and the flying-V roof line on the main building, which

Mayslake Village continues to update, upgrade - Chicago Tribune
Like a lot of older properties meant for seniors, the big Mayslake Village development for those with low incomes is being updated. A new wellness center is getting under way at the 40-acre campus in west suburban Oak Brook , and a new $10 million

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Roland Piquepaille writes “An international group of scientists has produced some of the sharpest x-ray holograms of microscopic objects ever made. According to one of them, they improved the efficiency of holography by a factor of 2,500. In order to achieve these spectacular results, they put a uniformly redundant array next to the object to image. And they found that this parallel approach multiplied ‘the efficiency of X-ray Fourier transform holography by more than three orders of magnitude, approaching that of a perfect lens.’ Besides these impressive accomplishments, it’s worth noting that this technology has been inspired by the pinhole camera, a technique used by ancient Greeks. ‘By knowing the precise layout of a pinhole array, including the different sizes of the different pinholes, a personal can recover a bright, high-resolution image numerically.’”

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azuredrake and many other readers have written to tell us: “The New York Times reports that the third SpaceX launch has failed following the second-stage ignition of the Falcon 1 rocket. The SpaceX launch had three satellites on board, all of which were presumably destroyed in the incident. This marks the third failed launch for SpaceX — twice they failed to reach orbit, and once the Falcon 1 rocket was lost five minutes after launch. While the company vows to carry on, this certainly raises some questions about the likelihood of successful privatization of the Space industry.” Reader Nano2Sol points out a video of the launch from a camera on Falcon 1, and notes a small oscillation just prior to the footage being cut off. Spaceflight Now ran a mission update blog leading up to the failure, and they also have more coverage on the loss of the rocket.

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Fees lighten wallets at Clemson University - Greenville News

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A year ago we took note when Brian Might, guitarist for Queen for the last 30 years, submitted his thesis for a Ph.D. in astrophysics. The news now is that the thesis has been published. You, too, can read all about the population of little asteroids and space dust that cause the Zodiacal light. The finished thesis appears as the book “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud” (Springer and Canopus Publishing Ltd., 2008), available at Amazon for $71.96. Might was awarded his Ph.D. last summer and accepted a position as chancellor at a British university in November.

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