Conserving Energy

Just recently I took a trip to Europe, and I was amazed by the simple measures they took to cut down on the excess use of energy. One such energy saving device were motion sensor escalators. These escalators would remain off until a person came to the escalator, turn on just long enough to bring the person to the top, and then turned off until the next person was nearby. In addition, hotel rooms were equipped with slots to place room keys in to turn the electricity in the hotel room on. Since the room key needed to be removed from the slot when the occupant leaves the room, it would shut off the electricity to the room while no one was there, preventing occupants from leaving TVs and lights on all day. Whether or not you champion the conservation of energy for global warming's sake, it makes perfect business sense to import these technologies from Europe to America. Less energy being needlessly wasted means less money in operating costs. There might be a few one time costs involved in installing the technology, but the technology undoubtedly conserves not just energy, but also money in the long haul.

Global Warming is Cooling Down

In the May 15 edition of Science magazine, global warming hotheads have finally begun to forgo scare tactics in favor of logical reasoning. The article in the magazine talked about the West Antarctic Ice Shelf, the region circled in the picture above. Previous estimates have put the raise of global sea levels if this shelf were to collapse at 20 feet. In this new study, researchers have slashed that number in half, down to 10 feet. While a collapse of this shelf would still incur global destruction for coastal cities and regions, it does show that the science community is "cooling" with their doomsday global warming predictions. They are going back to pure logic to prove their points, and hopefully will remain that way in the remaining global warming debates to come.

Swine Flu

After a nearly 3 month hiatus (sorry about that everyone), I am officially returning to posting for the Science and Education section of SPR NEWS.

To kick off the return of this section, I've decided to go with a topic that is getting a lot of international attention these days: swine flu. Known officially as H1N1 influenza A, swine flu is a novel virus that popped up in central Mexico in early March. There is no vaccine for the virus, and humans appear to have no natural immunity to the new mutation of this influenza. What has caused the World Health Organization and other world governments to react with such furor is that swine flu, unlike the avian flu scare two years ago, has the ability to transmit from human to human. People claim we have a international pandemic on our hands, akin to the disastrous 1918 Spanish influenza (also a variant of the H1N1 influenza A type). So far 2371 people have been confirmed to have the disease, with 44 confirmed deaths. The WHO is already at pandemic level 5 out of 6, the United States is at level 3 but treating it as a level 6. People everywhere are panicking over this new super virus and its potential impact on the world.

My guess: This is all complete hysteria. The world will survive this outbreak, and it will fade into an unknown corner of history. There have only been 44 deaths so far, all except two in Mexico; the other two being a Mexican citizen visiting the United States and a woman with chronic health problems who lives near the US-Mexico border. Not only that, but as people around the world are educated about the virus, the infection and mortality rates for the virus have been dropping significantly. The world should have nothing to worry about.

All statistics come from the most recent WHO report.

The New Marketing Technology

Malls are places full of advertisements for the latest products. With all the different products available, manufacturers have found a new way to guarantee their advertisement is broadcast to the right person. In a few scattered malls throughout the nation, cameras are being added inside of and around screens of advertisements in order to recognize the viewer of the advertisement. These cameras can determine a viewer's gender, age range, and even ethnicity. While not a perfect system, accuracy is being improved with more advances in technology and recognition software. This allows the advertisement screen to change its advertisement based on who is in the area, and to record how long someone is looking at the advertisement and gauge the interest of a group in a certain product. Critics have claimed this is too much of a "Big Brother" intrusion into the privacy of consumers, while companies who use the technology state a computer instantly analyzes the video, and none of the video is stored for any reason. However, this technology is still brand new, and within the next ten years, it is feasible the technology could have expanded to recognize individuals and keep a record of each person's spending habits, a virtual gold-mind for marketers at the expense of the people's privacy.

The Abortion Question

January 22 marked the 36th anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision. I myself had the privilege of attending the March for Life in our nation's capitol that day. Abortion is wrong. It is the murder of an unborn human being. Medical textbooks that educate our nation's doctors all state life starts at conception. By week five, the brain of the fetus has divided into the three recognizable sections all humans have, and the heart is pumping blood throughout the fetus's body. By week nine, the fetus begins moving on its own. It is sad that the United States will allow such an act of inhumanity. While I can see the argument for abortions of children conceived during rape, or those that would harm the health of the mother, those abortions only count for 7% of all abortions. The remaining 93% of abortions are because the baby is not wanted. Its an almost unreal statistic. A baby is not an infestation, it is a wonderful creation in God's image. Humans do not have the right to take away the life of another human being; there are laws in all fifty states that clarify that action as murder. Which is what abortion is, murder. Just imagine what our world would be like if Mrs. Obama had decided she did want to give birth to the child who would later become the 44th president of the United States. The murder of unborn babies is an injustice against not just the mother and baby, but the entire human race. It is our job to inform our leaders on Capitol Hill of this unspeakable crime, and to save the human race, one baby at a time.

The Leap Second

Sometime this year, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service is planning to have a vote on whether to keep our standard time system, with the leap second included, or switch to the atomic standard for all timekeeping, scraping the leap second. Why make a big deal out of an extra second every few years? Because cell phone providers, aviation technology, satellites, GPS systems, and even the Internet use the atomic time scale, which is the average recording of over 200 atomic clocks scattered throughout the globe and accurate to the billionth of a second, to keep time. And the extra second can sometimes cause glitches to occur in those technologies, as many cell phone users discovered in the minutes after the new year. So why not just get rid of the extra second and use the atomic standard? Scientists argue that within the next 1,000 years, by following the atomic standard would give us days where we wake up at 1:00 AM, the sun reaches its highest point in the sky at 6:00 AM, and we go to sleep at 3:00 PM, for example. It would completely throw off the age-old conception of time. Scientists are currently favoring the switch to the atomic standard, but only time will tell what system we will be using a year from now.

2008: The Longest Year

Happy New Year Everyone! Thanks for the all the support in 2008; we managed to get over 7500 hits since this sub-blog was created in late August. I hope for your continued support into 2009.

Did 2008 seem to drag on and on, and never seem like it was going to end? Well you would be correct in believing so, for not only did 2008 include an extra day for leap year, but at 23:59:59 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), a leap second was tagged onto the year, making 2008 the longest year since 1992. The world's official timekeepers decided to add on the extra second, a practice begun in 1972, in order to keep our time in sync with the Earth's rotation and revolution around the sun. The addition of the leap second, which has now been done twenty-four times, last occurred in 2005, and will not happen again until 2012 or 2013. So those who believed that last year would never end can take solace in the fact that 2009 will be over a day shorter than last year.