Category Archives: News

wildfires again

News

Karen, Ben and I are all safe. My work has been “prevacuated” and it’s kinda stinky in my neighborhood, but otherwise we’re unaffected. Lots of friends have been evacuated, though, and the sheriff says it’s going to get worse before it gets better. It’s odd to have victims listed at the medical center down the street, or an evacuation center set up at the stadium a few miles away.
In related news, the Red Cross has a good idea, the online Safe and Well list. Anyone in a disaster area (!) can list their name on the site, plus where they are (evac’d, with friends…) and how to contact them.

If you’re interested in ongoing (non-TV) coverage, there are updates at the cat dirt sez blog and at the San Diego Union-Tribune’s fire blog.

Nate Ritter has been twittering with live updates and posting photos to Flickr. KPBS is updating a Google Map with fire information, too.

Researchers create gravity in lab experiment

News, Science

Funny, I was just talking to Nate about this the other day. “The real problem,” I said, “is that so far it hasn’t been possible to create any sort of artificial gravitational field. Without that it would be like developing a theory of electromagnetism if all we had was natural lodestones.” You can imagine my excitement at hearing that researchers measured a gravitational field created by movement, not just by ordinary mass. Better yet, it’s much bigger than predicted by relativity:

Small acceleration sensors placed at different locations close to the spinning superconductor, which has to be accelerated for the effect to be noticeable, recorded an acceleration field outside the superconductor that appears to be produced by gravitomagnetism.

Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth’s gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein’s General Relativity predicts.

Initially, the researchers were reluctant to believe their own results.  “We ran more than 250 experiments, improved the facility over 3 years and discussed the validity of the results for 8 months before making this announcement. Now we are confident about the measurement,” says Tajmar, who performed the experiments and hopes that other physicists will conduct their own versions of the experiment in order to verify the findings and rule out a facility induced effect.

If this turns out to be repeatable, it’s likely to be a big step toward figuring out the relationship between those things we can control (electric and magnetic fields) and those we wish we could (gravitational fields). Exciting stuff!

Legacy available for pre-order

Books, News

Legacy: A Novel by Kerrigan ValentineIt’s almost here! Kerrigan’s new novel Legacy is now available for pre-order, or immediate purchase if you’re lucky enough to live in Madison:

Due to a problem with the distributor (Book World), the Amazon release date has been pushed back to June 1, 2007. However, if you want the book NOW and would also like to support an independent book store, check out A Room of One’s Own in Madison, Wisconsin.

You can either pre-order it from from Amazon.com, order it directly from the distributor, or bug your friendly local to carry it or order it for you. (Tip: the ISBN is 0976060469.) I can’t wait to get mine!

news roundup

Environment, Medicine, News, News Roundup

I read news from a bunch of different sources each day, including Google News, Reddit, and a whole host of blog feeds. Some items are worth commenting on here, but often I just want to say “hey, read this one” instead of finding something specific to comment on.

So, I’m going to try a new feature here on Global Spin: the News Roundup. Each post is a list of timely articles with excerpts but little or no commentary, perhaps updated over the course of the day. If you find them useful, let me know. If you find them annoying, mention that too.

Doctors refuse to take bitter no-gift medicine (Chicago Tribune)

Whether it be Subway sandwiches for the office staff or reimbursement for continuing education, gifts showered upon doctors by drug- and medical device-makers have become so pervasive that they are a standard part of virtually every U.S. physician’s practice.

Despite self-policing initiatives launched by organized medical groups and the drug and device makers to curb the cozy relationship between physicians and industry, 94 percent “or virtually all” physicians have at least one type of relationship with the drug industry, according to a study scheduled to be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Stephen Hawking set to fly weightless (Houston Chronicle)

For a few seconds on Thursday, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking expects to feel the exhilaration of escaping his paralysis and floating free in zero gravity. The 65-year-old was set Thursday to become the first person with a disability to experience the Zero Gravity Corp. flight.

Canada Announces Greenhouse Gas Targets (Washington Post)

Canada’s Conservative government said Wednesday it will cut greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 and ban inefficient incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 as part of a national environmental initiative.

The plan, dubbed “Turning the Corner,” includes various measures to stop the rise of greenhouse gases in three to five years. Once the gases stop rising, the government plans to reduce them by 150 million tons by 2020, or about 20 percent the level of current emissions.