Astronauts aboard the International Space Station noticed two mysterious dark circles in the ice of Lake Baikal in April. Though the cause is more likely aqueous than alien, some aspects of the odd blemishes defy explanation.
The two circles are the focal points for ice break-up and may be caused by upwelling of warmer water in the lake. The dark color of the circles is due to thinning of the ice, which usually hangs around into June. Upwelling wouldn’t be strange in some relatively shallow areas of the lake where hydrothermal activity has been detected, such as where the circle near the center of the lake (pictured below) is located. Circles have been seen in that area before in 1985 and 1994, though they weren’t nearly as pronounced. But the location of the circle near the southern tip of the lake (pictured above) where water is relatively deep and cold is puzzling. (Read more at: Wired.com)
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{Photography by NASA Earth Observatory}
A patent is granted is someone invents something, something new that didn’t exists before. That’s the layman’s understanding of what a Patent is.
What about ‘stuff’ that is there, was already there, just . . . not found? Is that patentable? Could Christopher Columbus patent America? Sounds weird and funny, doesn’t it?
Genes, as in human genes, are the components of our DNA, which . . . have always been there, and companies are filing and obtaining patents on genes. If you a baffled on how the USPTO grants patents on genes, how that’s views from en ethic prospect, and how different organizations like ACLU views it, here’s a short list of interesting articles that might raise more questions than provide answers:
- How Human Genes Become Patented (CNN.com)
- Diamond v. Chakrabarty (Wikipedia)
- Human Genome Project (Wikipedia)
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{Photography: Genes by Red Cherry Hill}
OSLO — When capitalism seemed on the verge of collapse last fall, Kristin Halvorsen, Norway’s Socialist finance minister and a longtime free market skeptic, did more than crow.
As investors the world over sold in a panic, she bucked the tide, authorizing Norway’s $300 billion sovereign wealth fund to ramp up its stock buying program by $60 billion — or about 23 percent of Norway ‘s economic output.
“The timing was not that bad,” Ms. Halvorsen said, smiling with satisfaction over the broad worldwide market rally that began in early March.
The global financial crisis has brought low the economies of just about every country on earth. But not Norway. (More at the New York Times online)
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{Photography by Jimg944}
Order a meal in any fast-food restaurant, and you’ll likely walk away with a sandwich, fries and a drink. If you had to identify the ingredients of this meal, you might list beef (or chicken), lettuce, tomato, cheese, ketchup, bread, potatoes and soda. Not complicated, right? Wrong.
Burger and chicken joints don’t think of the building blocks of a menu item as ingredients. They think of them as components, which are made of ingredients. For example, McDonald’s famous Big Mac jingle — “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun” — suggests the sandwich has seven components. Would you believe it has 67 ingredients? (More at HowStuffWorks.com)
