APPLE'S Spaceship-like Headquarters

Apple likes to cloak its new products in mystery, so it seems fitting that visitors to its new energy-efficient headquarters won't be able to see much of the building from the road.

New drawings show the landscaping at the Cupertino, California campus will be extensive -- the spaceship-like building will be entirely surrounded by a thick layer of trees, mostly apricot. There also will be jogging paths and walking trails.

Apple also plans to power the headquarters with its own energy center that will run mostly off the grid.

Groundbreaking for the new headquarters is planned for later this year, with completion scheduled for 2015.

Like just about everything Apple, the facility will be impressive -- the 2.8 million-square-foot, four-story circular structure will have huge walls of glass that let Apple employees look out from both sides of the ring onto park-like landscaping. The headquarters will accommodate up to 13,000 employees and contain a 1000-seat auditorium, 300,000 square feet of research facilities and underground parking.

Apple Insider, most of the power for the facilities will come from an "on-site low carbon Central Plant" and solar power. The updated plans feature in-depth sketches that detail how the headquarters will be outfitted with solar panels that will ring the top of the building. The Cupertino power grid will be used as a backup electrical supply.

The late Apple founder Steve Jobs, who proposed the project to the Cupertino City Council last June, had said Apple plans to keep its existing headquarters building at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino

A NEW ELEMENT ????

Lead, iron and uranium are nothing compared to ununseptium, the temporary name for element 117, an extremely heavy combination of berkelium and calcium isotopes created in a particle accelerator in Dubna, Russia.

The new element existed for only the tiniest fraction of a second before vanishing again, but the fact that it remained stable for even the fleeting instant it did is promising. The heavier artificial elements get, the less stable they become, until they reach a point at which the curve turns back up and they begin to last longer and longer. Ununseptium is on the upward part of that arc suggesting that what physicists call “islands of stability” may exist, at which the heaviest elements of all could last for months or years.

THE UNKNOWN TITANIC CHILD

Days after the Titanic sank the body of a baby boy was found and recovered from the North Atlantic. After the child could not be identified he was buried in Nova Scotia with a tombstone reading simply ‘The Unknown Child’. In 2001 researchers at Lakeland University in Ontario were granted permission to exhume the body. By consulting the passenger lists they had narrowed down the possible identity to one of four children: Gosta Paulson, Eino Panula, Eugene Rice and Sidney Goodwin. Initial tests concluded that the body was Eino Panula. However in 2007 this was shown to be not true. More advanced DNA testing was carried out on a tooth from the body and when compared to the DNA of a surviving Goodwin relative it proved an indisputable match. It confirmed that ‘the unknown child’ was Sidney Goodwin. Sidney was the youngest of six children born to Fred and Augusta Goodwin from Fulham, England and were immigrating to Niagara Falls New York. (All were onboard) Neither Sidney’s parents nor his siblings’ bodies were ever recovered.

Interesting Fact: The sailors aboard the recovery ship were very upset by the discovery of the unknown boy’s body and paid for his monument. He was buried on 4 May 1912 with a copper pendant placed in his coffin by recovery sailors that read “Our Babe”

ANCIENT TABLET DECIPHERED

The circular clay tablet shown  was discovered 150 years ago at Nineveh the capital of ancient Assyria, in what is now Iraq. The tablet shows drawings of constellations and pictogram-based text known as cuneiform which was used by the Sumerians, the earliest known civilization in the world. For decades scientists have failed to decipher the tablet. In 2008 two scientists, Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell from Bristol University finally cracked the cuneiform code. By using a computer program that can reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago. The two scientists were able to establish the tablet was a night notebook of Sumerian astronomers and refers to the events in the sky before dawn on the 29th of June 3123 BC (Julian calendar).

Interesting Fact: What makes this discovery even more amazing is the tablet also shows a large object travelling along the constellation of Pisces. The symbols show the trajectory of the object to an error of one degree to hit Köfels Austria. Köfels is recognized as the area of the largest rockslide in the crystalline Alps and has given rise to numerous theories about the cause of the rockslide. There is no crater so to modern eyes it doesn’t look as a meteor impact site should look. However from the information gathered from the tablet, the trajectory explains why there is no crater. The in-coming angle was very low (six degrees) so the scientists theorize that the asteroid clipped a near by mountain called Gamskogel and this caused the asteroid to explode before it reached its final impact point. To explain how they were able to get this much information from this little tablet is above my pay grade.

New Type of Neutrino Oscillation Discovered at Daya Bay

After of tens of thousands of interactions of electron antineutrinos at Daya Bay, data revealed a new type of neutrino oscillation, which was measured with unmatched precision, and researchers believe this will lead to future understanding of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.

BEIJING; BERKELEY, California; and UPTON, New York – The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a multinational collaboration operating in the south of China, today reported the first results of its search for the last, most elusive piece of a long-standing puzzle: how is it that neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel? The surprising answer opens a gateway to a new understanding of fundamental physics and may eventually solve the riddle of why there is far more ordinary matter than antimatter in the universe today.

Traveling at close to the speed of light, the three basic neutrino “flavors” – electron, muon, and tau neutrinos, as well as their corresponding antineutrinos – mix together and oscillate (transform), but this activity is extremely difficult to detect. From Dec. 24, 2011, until Feb. 17, 2012, scientists in the Daya Bay collaboration observed tens of thousands of interactions of electron antineutrinos, caught by six massive detectors buried in the mountains adjacent to the powerful nuclear reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group. These reactors, at Daya Bay and nearby Ling Ao, produce millions of quadrillions of elusive electron antineutrinos every second.

The copious data revealed for the first time the strong signal of the effect that the scientists were searching for, a so‑called “mixing angle” named theta one-three (written θ13), which the researchers measured with unmatched precision. Theta one-three, the last mixing angle to be precisely measured, expresses how electron neutrinos and their antineutrino counterparts mix and change into the other flavors. The Daya Bay collaboration’s first results indicate that sin2 2 θ13 is equal to 0.092 plus or minus 0.017.

“This is a new type of neutrino oscillation, and it is surprisingly large,” says Yifang Wang of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), co-spokesperson and Chinese project manager of the Daya Bay experiment. “Our precise measurement will complete the understanding of the neutrino oscillation and pave the way for the future understanding of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.”

Neutrinos, the wispy particles that flooded the universe in the earliest moments after the big bang, are continually produced in the hearts of stars and other nuclear reactions. Untouched by electromagnetism, they respond only to the weak nuclear force and even weaker gravity, passing mostly unhindered through everything from planets to people. The challenge of capturing these elusive particles inspired the Daya Bay collaboration in the design and precise placement of its detectors.

“Although we’re still two detectors shy of the complete experimental design, we’ve had extraordinary success in detecting the number of electron antineutrinos that disappear as they travel from the reactors to the detectors two kilometers away,” says Kam-Biu Luk of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley. Luk is co-spokesperson of the Daya Bay Experiment and heads U.S. participation. “What we didn’t expect was the sizable disappearance, equal to about six percent. Although disappearance has been observed in another reactor experiment over large distances, this is a new kind of disappearance for the reactor electron antineutrino.”

The Daya Bay experiment counts the number of electron antineutrinos detected in the halls nearest the Daya Bay and Ling Ao reactors and calculates how many would reach the detectors in the Far Hall if there were no oscillation. The number that apparently vanish on the way (oscillating into other flavors, in fact) gives the value of theta one-three. Because of the near-hall/far-hall arrangement, it’s not even necessary to have a precise estimate of the antineutrino flux from the reactors.

“Even with only the six detectors already operating, we have more target mass than any similar experiment, plus as much or more reactor power,” says William Edwards of Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, the U.S. project and operations manager for the Daya Bay Experiment. Since Daya Bay will continue to have an interaction rate higher than any other experiment, Edwards explains, “it is the leading theta one-three experiment in the world.”

The first Daya Bay results show that theta one-three, once feared to be near zero, instead is “comparatively huge,” Kam-Biu Luk remarks, adding that “Nature was good to us.” In coming months and years the initial results will be honed by collecting far more data and reducing statistical and systematic errors.

“The Daya Bay experiment plans to stop the current data-taking this summer to install a second detector in the Ling Ao Near Hall, and a fourth detector in the Far Hall, completing the experimental design,” says Yifang Wang.

Refined results will open the door to further investigations and influence the design of future neutrino experiments – including how to determine which neutrino flavors are the most massive, whether there is a difference between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations, and, eventually, why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe – because these were presumably created in equal amounts in the big bang and should have completely annihilated one another, the real question is why there is any matter in the universe at all.

“It has been very gratifying to be able to work with such an outstanding international collaboration at the world’s most sensitive reactor neutrino experiment,” says Steve Kettell of Brookhaven National Laboratory, the chief scientist for the U.S. effort. “This moment is exciting because we have finally observed all three mixing angles, and now the way is cleared to explore the remaining parameters of neutrino oscillation.”

“This is really remarkable,” says Wenlong Zhan, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the Chinese Physical Society. “We hoped for a positive result when we decided to fund the project, but we never imagined it could come so quickly!”

“Exemplary teamwork among the partners has led to this outstanding performance,” says James Siegrist, DOE Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics. “These notable first results are just the beginning for the world’s foremost reactor neutrino experiment.”

The Daya Bay collaboration consists of scientists from the following countries and regions: China, the United States, Russia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The Chinese effort is led by co-spokesperson, chief scientist, and project manager Yifang Wang of the Institute of High Energy Physics, and the U.S. effort is led by co-spokesperson Kam-Biu Luk and project and operations manager William Edwards, both of Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, and by chief scientist Steve Kettell of Brookhaven.

Future NASA mission to sun

In 2018, NASA is scheduled to launch a spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to fly, Icarus-like, dangerously close to our star.

Fitted with a select set of instruments, Solar Probe Plus will address two questions that solar physicists have tussled with for decades: How does the corona, that ghostly, spiked halo seen during a total solar eclipse, heat to more than a million degrees, far hotter than the sun's surface? And what powers the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that flows from the corona?

An up-close look at the sun may ultimately help scientists predict solar flares, as well as coronal mass ejections — "solar storms" like those launched at Earth last week. These events send a barrage of high-energy particles crashing against the Earth's magnetic field, at times disabling satellites, wiping out power grids, forcing airlines to reroute flights and potentially exposing astronauts to fatal doses of radiation.

Scientists have sent probes to the solar system's edge, but never so near its heart. Coming within 3.7 million miles of the sun's surface — 25 times closer than Earth — the 1,350-pound unmanned spacecraft will heat to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit and endure 512 times the sunlight of vessels orbiting Earth. It is expected to make its first approach from that distance in 2024.

The mission "will undoubtedly have impact on our ideas about how life operates throughout the universe — if life does operate throughout the universe — how our planet evolved and how we're going to contend with the further exploration of space," said Richard Fisher, director of NASA's heliophysics division.

Half a century in the making, with an estimated price tag of $1.2 billion and barely 88 pounds allotted to experimental hardware, the project spawned fierce competition among heliophysicists for a piece of the action.

In September 2010, Kasper learned that his proposal to count the electrons, protons and helium ions in the solar wind had won one of five coveted spots. He happily ripped open boxes filled with commemorative copies of the proposal — he'd let them gather dust for months, afraid to jinx his chances — and passed them out to his team.

Now, with the instruments selected and the project's next phase underway, some researchers are elated while others tussle with a mix of emotions: sadness at being left out and excitement at what their field stands to learn.

Other spacecraft have ventured toward the sun before: In 1976 the Helios 2 mission came within 27 million miles. The European Space Agency plans to launch a solar orbiter in 2017 that will come as close as 26 million miles.

But Solar Probe Plus, to be built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, is more ambitious by far, venturing seven times closer.

Scientists have talked of such a journey since the 1950s, but plans were always logistically fraught and prohibitively expensive.

They had wanted to study the solar poles because the sun's magnetic field would be strongest there. But this meant flying over and under the sun rather than girdling its middle like the planets, requiring huge amounts of energy.

The proposed solution: Send the probe to Jupiter, whose gravity would twice lob it back toward the sun, over its north pole and under its south pole.

But sending a probe to such cold, dark reaches of space would require nuclear power — not just solar — and thus a heavy cooling system. Costs mounted.

Want to control anger?

‘Training’ yourself to use the ‘wrong’ hand can help you improve your self-control and behave less aggressively, say researcher. Dr Thomas Denson, of the University of New South Wales, suggests right-handers should get into the habit of using a computer mouse, stirring a cup of coffee oropening a door with their left hand - and left-handers should do the opposite.

Dr Denson said practising self-control is no different from getting better at golf or playing the piano.

In studies he showed people who try to use their non-dominant hand for two weeks keep a lid on their aggression better.

So if they are right handed, they are told to use their left hand ‘for pretty much anything that is safe to do,’ he said.

Dr Denson said it is only self-control that keeps us from punching queue jumpers or murdering conniving colleagues.

“Using the mouse, stirring your coffee, opening doors. This requires people to practice self control because their habitual tendency is to use their dominant hands,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

In one experiment, participants were mildly insulted by another student and were given the option of retaliating with a blast of white noise, a combination of all the different frequencies of sound also known as static.

Those who had practiced self-control responded less aggressively.

Dr Denson and colleagues said criminologists and sociologists have long believed people commit violent crimes when an opportunity arises and they are low on self-control.

“It is an impulsive kind of thing,” he said.

For the last ten years or so psychologists have joined this research, using new ways of manipulating self-control in experiments, and found self control and aggression really are tightly linked.

Studies have also found that, after people have had to control themselves for a while, they behave more aggressively.

“I think, for me, the most interesting findings that have come out of this is that if you give aggressive people the opportunity to improve their self control, they are less aggressive,” Dr Denson said.

Denson’s findings have been published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science.