This is an x-ray of a newly discovered species of stingray, native to the Amazon. You can't tell from this shot of its innards, but the Heliotrygon gomesi actually resembles a "pancake with a nose"—big, round, flat, and beige. Read more about this creature at Our Amazing Planet.
Image: Ken Jones
Submitterated by Ajourneyroundmyskull
Japan's nuclear safety agency (NISA) today raised the level of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant from level 4 (local consequences) to level 5 (wider consequences, same level as Three Mile Island), on the 7-point scale* created by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
NISA's assessment was declared retroactive to Tuesday.
More on the story: New York Times, Kyodo News, NHK English (with video).
* Okay, 8 levels if you include the 'zero' default.
PHOTO: The damaged Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant in Fukushima is seen in this DigitalGlobe satellite image, taken March 18, 2011. About 300 workers are racing against time to restore power and cooling systems to the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi and try to avert the biggest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl in 1986. Japan has entered its second week after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and 10-metre (33-foot) tsunami flattened coastal cities and killed thousands of people.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has given the .XXX top-level domain (TLD) its final seal of approval. The TLD is meant to give pornographic websites a clearly marked home on the Internet, but it has gone through so many ups and downs over the last 11 years that it's almost a shock that it has finally gone through. Still, the measure didn't pass without opposition—nine ICANN board members voted in favor of .XXX, while three opposed and four abstained—and the vote went against the recommendation of ICANN's Government Advisory Committee.
The .XXX TLD was initially proposed by ICM Registry in 2000 and resubmitted in 2004, but it faced strong opposition from politicians and conservative groups. After the second .XXX proposal was approved in 2005, the Family Research Council (FRC) launched a campaign arguing that the TLD would allow pornographers to 'expand their evil empires on the Internet.' The porn industry opposed the TLD as well, arguing that it would lead to censorship and promote legislation harmful to the industry.
I worked without gloves. It was hard to see. The mirror helps, but it also hinders -- after all, it's showing things backwards. I work mainly by touch. The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time -- I try to work surely. Opening the peritoneum, I injured the blind gut and had to sew it up. Suddenly it flashed through my mind: there are more injuries here and I didn't notice them ... I grow weaker and weaker, my head starts to spin. Every 4-5 minutes I rest for 20-25 seconds. Finally, here it is, the cursed appendage! With horror I notice the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst and ...
At the worst moment of removing the appendix I flagged: my heart seized up and noticeably slowed; my hands felt like rubber. Well, I thought, it's going to end badly. And all that was left was removing the appendix ... And then I realised that, basically, I was already saved.
This table links radiation dose to radiation risk in a way that's a bit more clear. It was put together for BoingBoing by Kelly Classic, public outreach coordinator for The Health Physics Society, and a radiation physicist at The Mayo Clinic. I'm going to try to get it converted into something prettier and more infographic-y later.
Some important points to go along with this chart:
• The risks of radiation exposure are radiation sickness, and/or increased lifetime risk of cancer. Only people receiving very high doses develop radiation sickness—the Fukushima 50, working inside the power plant, are at risk of this. Somebody in Tokyo is not.
The other risk—an increase to the victim's lifetime risk of developing cancer—is a lot more complicated. Key thing to remember: On an individual basis, it's an increase in risk, not a promise that cancer will develop. And it has to be understood in context with already existing cancer risks. In the footnotes of the chart, Kelly Classic points out that the average American has a 42% risk of developing (not dying from) some kind of cancer in his or her lifetime. If one of us gets hit with a 300 rem dose of radiation—a high enough dose that we'd have symptoms of radiation sickness—we'd see our lifetime risk of cancer increase to 42.03%.
• When this table says "n/a" under the risk heading, that's not because the information isn't available. It's because, at that dose, the health effects are so small as to be unmeasurable.
Radiation dose and risk works on what Ralf Sudowe, professor of health physics and radiochemistry at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, calls "linear no threshold." Scientists assume that any amount of radiation—no matter how small—carries some risk. They also assume that the risks increase linearly, along with the dose.
But, Sudowe (as well as Kelly Classic, and the other health physicists I've spoken to) also say that, even though radiation isn't safe at any level, that doesn't mean there's reason to panic at every level. At low enough doses, scientists can no longer find evidence of an increased rate of cancer. And that's pretty much the point where we don't have to worry.
• Time also matters. "A high exposure given in a short time (minutes, hours) that could cause a harmful effect may not do anything if given over years because our body adapts and our cells repair minor damages," Kelly Classic says. "So if I was exposed to 500 mSv in a period of minutes, my blood would show some changes, but if I was exposed to 500 mSv over 50 years, I'd have an increased risk of cancer, but no discernible signs of radiation exposure [meaning no radiation sickness].'
Image used on http://www.boingboing.net/sci page is Yuriko Nakao / Reuters.
Scientists report, for the first time, that they have observed precipitation of methane over the equatorial region of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Clouds and rain have been reported on Titan before (see our previous coverage, linked below), but precipitation has only been observed over the poles, not in the equatorial region. That area is covered in dunes and is quite arid, which is unlike Earth’s tropical equatorial climate.
The difference between Titan’s and Earth’s climates at the equator can be explained by the seasonal swing of the intertropical convergence zone, where the surface winds from the northern and southern hemispheres meet and cause rainfall. On Earth, the intertropical convergence zone is confined to the tropics. However, Titan has a slower planetary rotation, allowing the intertropical convergence zone to move almost completely from pole to pole.
This model comes from the Center for Tsunami Research at the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, and displays the anticipated wave heights of the tsunami as it travels across the Pacific, after the 8.9 earthquake that struck northern Japan on March 11, 2011.
The largest wave heights are expected near the earthquake epicenter, off Japan. The wave will decrease in height as it travels across the deep Pacific but grow taller as it nears coastal areas. In general, as the energy of the wave decreases with distance, the near shore heights will also decrease (e.g., coastal Hawaii will not expect heights of that encountered in coastal Japan).The second image shows the depth of the Pacific Ocean floor. Notice the similarity between areas of low wave height and deeper areas of the ocean.
This morning, I got an email from a BoingBoing reader, who is one of the many people worried about the damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Japan. In one sentence, he managed to get right to heart of a big problem lurking behind the headlines today: 'The extent of my knowledge on nuclear power plants is pretty much limited to what I've seen on The Simpsons'.
For the vast majority of people, nuclear power is a black box technology. Radioactive stuff goes in. Electricity (and nuclear waste) comes out. Somewhere in there, we're aware that explosions and meltdowns can happen. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that set of information is enough to get by on. But, then, an emergency like this happens and, suddenly, keeping up-to-date on the news feels like you've walked in on the middle of a movie. Nobody pauses to catch you up on all the stuff you missed.
As I write this, it's still not clear how bad, or how big, the problems at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant will be. I don't know enough to speculate on that. I'm not sure anyone does. But I can give you a clearer picture of what's inside the black box. That way, whatever happens at Fukushima, you'll understand why it's happening, and what it means.
At a basic level, nuclear energy isn't all that different from fossil fuel energy. The process of generating electricity at a nuclear power plant is really all about making heat, just as it is at a coal-fired plant. Heat turns water to steam, steam moves turbines in the electric generator. The only difference is where the heat comes from--to get it, you can light coal on fire, or you can create a controlled nuclear fission reaction.
A fission reaction is a lot like a table filled with Jenga games, each stack of blocks standing close to another stack. Pull out the right block, and one Jenga stack will fall. As it does, it collapses into the surrounding stacks. As those stacks tumble, they crash into others. Nuclear fission works the same way--one unstable atom breaks apart, throwing off pieces of itself, which crash into nearby atoms and cause those to break apart, too.
Every time one of those atoms breaks apart, it releases a little heat. Multiply by millions of atoms, and you have enough heat to turn water into steam*.
In a Boiling Water Reactor, like the ones at Fukushima, water is pumped through the core—the central point where the actual fission reactions happen. Along the way, fission-produced heat boils the water, and the steam rises up and is captured to do the work of turning turbines.
In the Core
The core is the part that really matters today.
In the core of a nuclear reactor, you'll find fuel rods—tubes filled with elements whose atoms are unstable and prone to breaking apart and starting the Jenga-style chain reaction.
Usually, the elements used are Uranium-238 or Uranium-235. They're refined and processed into little black pellets, about the size of your thumbnail, which are poured by the thousands, into long metal tubes. Bunches of tubes--each taller than a basketball player--are grouped together into square frames. These tall, skinny columns are the fuel assemblies.
The fission reactions that happen are all about proximity. In a fuel rod, lots of uranium atoms can crash into each other as they break apart. Pack the fuel rod into an assembly, and lots more atoms can affect one another—which means the reactions can release more energy. Put several fuel assemblies into the core of a nuclear reactor, and the amount of energy released gets even higher.
Proximity is also what makes the difference between a nuclear bomb, and the controlled fission reaction in a power plant. In the bomb, the reactions happen—and the energy is released—very quickly. In the power plant, that process is slowed down by control rods. These work like putting a piece of cardboard between two Jenga towers. The first tower falls, but it hits a barrier instead of the next tower. Of all the atoms that could be split, only a few are allowed to actually do it. And, instead of an explosion, you end up with a manageable amount of heat energy, which can be used to boil water.
In Case of Emergency
Now that you understand what's going on inside a nuclear reactor, you get a good idea of what happened at Fukushima. Like the other nuclear power plants in Japan, Fukushima Daiichi got a message from the country's earthquake warning system, and shut down in advance of the quake. Basically, that means that control rods—"big metal gizmos", as Charles Forsberg, executive director of the MIT Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project, described them to me—were inserted into the fuel assemblies, cutting the fuel rods off from one another. But, because you aren't completely separating all the uranium atoms from one another, shutting down the core isn't the same thing as flipping an 'off' switch.
When a reactor core is shut down, its energy output drops not to zero, but about 6% of its normal output, Forsberg told me. The reactions grind to a halt over the next few days, as the falling Jenga towers run out of other towers they can actually hit. In the meantime, atoms keep breaking apart, releasing both heat and fast-moving particles that can penetrate human skin and damage our cells. Because of this, every nuclear reactor has ways of getting rid of the heat, and blocking those fast-moving radioactive particles.
When the reactor at Fukushima shut down, it should have been kept cool by water pumped through the core. But, because the tsunami damaged the diesel-powered generators that pumped the water, the core kept heating up. If that sounds like a design flaw, you're right. The Fukushima reactors were built in the early 1970s. In modern nuclear reactor designs, pumps aren't necessary to move water through the core in an emergency shut down. Instead, the water moves via gravity.
But, in this case, no pumps meant no water movement. So the core got hotter, which boiled off some of the water. The boiling caused pressure in the core to increase. To protect the core, and prevent a bigger problem, authorities had to vent some of that steam into the atmosphere, which means venting some of the radioactive particles along with them.
This is also probably tied into the explosion that happened, according to MIT's Charles Forsberg.
'There's zirconium in the fuel rods. When you overheat the reactor core, the first thing that happens is that the zirconium begins to react with steam or water and forms zirconium oxide and hydrogen,' he says. 'You get a mixture of steam and hydrogen. When you release steam into a secondary building [to decrease pressure in the core], the steam condenses and leaves behind just the hydrogen. Then all you need is an ignition source and you can get a hydrogen burn. That's what happened at Three Mile Island. I don't know if that's what happened in Japan, but it's likely to be the source of that explosion.'
The good news is that the explosion seems to have happened outside the core. In that case, it's completely reasonable that an explosion could happen without releasing lots of radioactive material. That's because nuclear power plants come in layers, like an onion.
The core is contained within a building that has solid concrete walls, 3-to-6 feet thick. It's meant to withstand collision with an airplane. It's also meant to withstand an explosion from inside. But that bunker sits inside something a lot flimsier—a building more akin to a metal shed. It's the shed that exploded today at Fukushima. Because radiation levels didn't rise after the explosion, we can be pretty certain that the bunker is still intact.
How To Win This
This is a serious emergency, but there are some good reasons to be hopeful. According to World Nuclear News and Reuters, there were seven reactors in Fukushima that were affected by the earthquake. Of those, four have access to outside power to run their water pumps and are stable. Three lost their power. Out of those three, one has steady levels of water. Only two have decreasing water levels. But, in recent hours, workers have started pumping in seawater to one of those. Hopefully, both can be stabilized. But it's hard to say right now.
And then what happens? Remember, this is really just an emergency shutdown gone awry. The control rods are still in place. The Jenga columns are still separated. So, over time, the fission reactions will still slow down and stop. As they do, heat levels will drop, and so will levels of radiation.
Really, what we have here is a waiting game. The goal is to keep the reactors stabilized long enough that the shutdown can completely shut down.
For more information—and details I might have missed—I recommend checking out a recent BBC article, and an interview Skepchick blogger Evelyn did with her father, a nuclear engineer.
*If you want to understand thy physics of nuclear energy in more detail, I'd recommend reading Marcus Chown's The Matchbox That Ate a 40 Ton Truck
Image: Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. AirPhoto
Last December, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act—a popular, bipartisan bill that would have protected public workers who exposed corruption, waste, and illegality—died a sudden and surprising death, not by vote, but by a legislative tactic called an anonymous hold. Basically, one senator killed that bill, and doesn't have to be publicly accountable to his constituents for doing so.
NPR's 'On the Media', along with the Government Accountability Project, set out to identify the secret senator, by asking listeners to contact their senators and ask, "Were you the person responsible for killing the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act?" As of yesterday, the field has been narrowed down to three—Jon Kyl of Arizona, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, or James Risch of Idaho. One of these men refused to protect government whistleblowers, and doesn't want the people who voted for him to know that he did it, or why. If you're a resident of Arizona, Alabama, or Idaho, maybe you can help unravel the mystery.
We are asking constituents to call the remaining three Senators and ask them if they placed the hold and why they believe the public does not have a right to hold them accountable for something as basic as killing a bill.
Below are some suggested questions to ask those Senators. Regardless of how they answer, even if you are forwarded to an answering machine, let us know how they respond by emailing [email protected] and we will post their responses on the website in the table below. Together, we can can forcefully remind our elected officials how much transparency matters to the people they represent.
When calling the remaining Senators, use these questions as a way to guide the conversation:
• 1) Did you place the anonymous hold on the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act?
• 2) What is the Senator's policy regarding inquiries from constituents about his use of the anonymous hold?
• 3) When is the Senator's "hold" the public's business, about which the public has the right to know?
• 4) What determines when use of the "hold" is a "personal, private matter" that is not the public's business?
• 5) Why would the Senator be publicly supportive of the bill but work to defeat it in private?
• 6) All but three Senators have confirmed that they did NOT use the hold to kill S. 372, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. Assuming that the senator who placed the hold is eventually identified—as they frequently are—and it is your senator, is he prepared to deal with the fallout that comes from ignoring constituent questions?
On the Media: Blow The Whistle!
Image: Some rights reserved by stevendepolo
'South Park' creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have long made sport of skewering cultural icons, and are known for poking at religion with particular delight—from Jesus to Scientology to Mohamed in a bear suit, no faith is any safer than the celebrities ridiculed weekly on their Comedy Central show.
With that LOL-legacy in mind, I will admit that when I went to see their Broadway musical The Book of Mormon in previews last week (geeks: this is like your app being in beta before the 1.0 launches), I expected a few hours of clever Joseph Smith mockery. It was clever, there was some Joseph Smith, and much mockery. But the show was far more complex and entertaining than those expectations allowed. And holy golden tablets, was it ever packed with easter eggs for nerds: Mothra! Vader! Uhura! Yoda! Tolkien! Seriously!
Here is the TL;DR version: The Book of Mormon was fucking awesome. This is the funniest live show I have ever seen; tight, colorful, blasphemous, outrageous. The music, developed with Robert Lopez (of 'Avenue Q' fame), was terrific. Throughout the evening, the entire audience was choking with ROFL. It does not matter if you are an atheist, an agnostic, or faithful (hell, even LDS), this show will make you laugh so hard you'll weep.
Matt Stone described the show to me as 'an atheists's love note to religion.' Both Stone and Parker are nonbelievers. 'In a way,' Parker has said, ''Star Wars' was our religion, and Spider-Man's a religion.'
But Book of Mormon has more to do with how we create culture, and the roots of why humans express kindness or violence to one another, than some rote send-up of faith. I would feel just as confident taking my Catholic auntie to see this show as I would Richard Dawkins, and not just because I know they both appreciate a good scrotum joke and a chorus line. Wait what did I just type.
At 11:57amET/16:57 GMT today, the Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to land for the last time after 39 missions, 365 days in space and 148 million miles. Watch the landing live on NASA TV.
Image (NASA): The space shuttle Discovery is seen from the International Space Station as the two orbital spacecraft accomplish their relative separation on March 7. During a post undocking fly-around, the crew of each vessel photographed the opposing craft.
The Smithsonian today launched a new searchable website, siwild.si.edu, that presents more than 202,000 wildlife photos taken with camera traps--automated cameras with motion sensors. These images 'record the diversity and very often the behavior of animals around the world.' Launch announcement here.
(BB Submitterator, thanks Gary Price)
Quintin posted about the latest posing from the Unreal engine last week, but lamented the lack of a video with which to demonstrate this new-era graphical clout. Now we can do that. Behold – the worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrld of tomorrow!
(more…)
Some years back, Yale Professor Robert Shiller produced a long-run nominal home price index for the U.S. by fusing together data that had been gathered from a number of historical archives.
Shiller then adjusted the index for inflation revealing the very interesting fact that, in real terms, prices for U.S. homes changed very little over the span from 1890 to the mid-1990s.
This might come as a surprise to many since recent 'common sense' notions held that homes were always a great investment carrying the implication that they must typically increase in value yet, the reality is that over the long run home prices must stay in-line with changes in the level of income (the source generally used to fund the home cost) or else typical households would not be capable of making a purchase.
Posts
All Comments
