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Clouds can communicate, Scientists Say, Source: Fox News
Friday, August 13, 2010
Clouds Can Communicate, Scientists Say
By Jeremy A. Kaplan
Published August 13, 2010
| FoxNews.com
Little, fluffy and talkative? Clouds can communicate, a new paper suggests — but what are they talking about?
A new study has found that clouds “communicate” with each other, much like chirping crickets or flashing fireflies on a summer night. The surprising findings, published online in the journal Nature, may have significant implications for our understanding of the Earth’s climate.
So the next time you find yourself laying on your back picking out shapes among the clouds, mull on this one: Are they talking among themselves about you?
“Cloud fields organize in such a way that their components ‘communicate’ with one another and produce regular, periodic rainfall events,” explained Graham Feingold, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) and the paper’s lead author.
In other words, Feingold found clear evidence of self-organization in the regular patterns of rainfall and repeating growth of those floating puffs of cotton.
How does such synchronization come about? Falling rain cools the air as it descends. This creates downward air currents. These downdrafts hit the surface of the planet, flow outward, and collide with each other, forming updrafts. The air flowing up creates new clouds in previously open sky as older clouds dissipate. Then the new clouds rain, and the oscillating pattern repeats itself.
“In a sense what’s going on is that the clouds are communicating with each other by driving down to the ground. If you have a number of clouds doing exactly that, air is forced to go sideways from one cloud and meets the air from another,” Feingold told FoxNews.com.
Voila! cloud speech!
Earlier theories about cloud structure explained that temperature change was at the heart of cloud generation, that warming and cooling shifts were the key forces. Precipitation as a driving factor is something of a radical shift.
But talking clouds? That’s even more radical.
Feingold is nevertheless quite serious, citing a lengthy history of research into cloud communication.
“If you go back far enough, the basic physics behind this phenomenon was recorded in the early 1900s by a French scientist,” he explained.
He was looking at the sun though a telescope and noticed convection patterns. Lord Rayleigh later put it into a theoretical framework, explaining the hexagonal patterns observed in the lab, Feingold told FoxNews.com.
“1933 is the earliest report of patterns in the clouds,” by a scientist known as Graham, he said. But Feingold thinks the idea of cloud communication might date back far further.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the ancients were looking up at the clouds and seeing patterns early on,” he told FoxNews.com.
Scientist lives as Inuit for a year to save disappearing language, Source: CNN
Friday, August 13, 2010
Scientist lives as Inuit for a year to save disappearing language
By Thair Shaikh, CNN
August 13, 2010 1:21 p.m. EDT
London, England (CNN) — A British anthropologist is setting out on a year-long stay with a small community in Greenland in an ambitious attempt to document its dying language and traditions.
Stephen Pax Leonard will live with the Inughuit in north-west Greenland, the world’s most northernmost people, and record their conversations and story-telling traditions to try and preserve their language.
The Inughuit, who speak Inuktun, a “pure” Inuit dialect, are under increasing political and climactic pressure to move south, says Leonard.
“They have around 10 to 15 years left in their present location, then climate change and politics will force them to move south and they will be assimilated into a different culture, into a broader community, and their way of life will be lost,” Leonard told CNN.
Leonard, who flies out to Copenhagen on Sunday before heading to Greenland, says there are about 1,000 speakers of Inuktun, an undocumented language.
Although most Inughuit are trilingual, also speaking Danish and Greenlandic, their primary language is still Inuktun.
“There is no doubt that this is a major linguistic challenge… they speak a very pure form of Inuit, partly because of their geographic isolation. Their entire culture is based on a story-telling culture.”
Greenland
There is no doubt that this is a major linguistic challenge
–Stephen Pax Leonard
–Stephen Pax Leonard
Leonard, an anthropological linguist at Cambridge University, England, is under no doubt about the physical and cultural hurdles that face him. The average temperature is minus 25 degrees Celsius, although it can fall to minus 40 degrees Celsius in the winter.
Inughuit, which is the name of the northern Inuits, are hunter-gatherers; they do not have a cash economy and the men can spend weeks away from home hunting for walruses, seals and other mammals. They still use dog sleds in the winter and kayaks in the summer.
Hivshu, an Inughuit who now lives in Sweden, helped Leonard establish contacts with his former community in Greenland.
He has written about the Inughuit way of life on his website: “Even before I went to school I began assisting my father when he was out hunting, summer or winter, no difference. That was the way I heard the stories about my ancestors and their songs told and sung by the old people as it was a tradition to tell the stories and sing the traditional drum songs of Inuit to all of us during the hunting.”
Leonard says he is determined to become a part of their community and plans to hunt with the men if he is allowed.
He is taking solid-state audio recorders that should work in the freezing conditions and plans to produce an “ethnography of speaking.”
That he hopes will be a permanent record that shows how their language and culture are interconnected.
Article Courtesy of CNN at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/08/13/greenland.inuit.language/index.html?hpt=Sbin
Best and Worst College Degrees for 2010 Grads, Source: Fox News
Friday, August 13, 2010
Best and Worst College Degrees for 2010 Grads
By Hope Holland
Published May 17, 2010
| FOXBusiness
College graduates across the nation are facing a pulverized job market as they attempt to put that newly-attained degree to work and begin a career. With the employment situation still nursing wounds from the economic cyclone, choosing that initial career move will be a critical step.
“This information changes on a dime in this economy, so people always need to do some research and look into the long-term forecasting before they make decisions that might affect them years from now,” said Kathy Sims, director of the UCLA Career Center.
So which are the sturdiest first steps on the many career ladders out there?
“Between [NACE’s] Salary Survey reports and the Job Outlook results, I would have to say that in general, students in the technical and business fields may be the luckiest in getting job offers from the Class of 2010,” said Andrea Koncz, employment information manager at NACE.
Technical and business positions include careers related to engineering, computers sciences, accounting, retail and management fields.
“Their salary offers continue to rise, and they appear to be receiving most of the offers,” Koncz said.
Meanwhile, the Department of Labor sees advanced manufacturing, health care and planet saving as growing fields for graduates. With the constant growing attention on health care and green jobs, these industries have continued to expand, help in no small part from national and state-level government grants.
However, not all industries are as healthy. Big businesses, fine arts, municipalities and higher education are all areas today where employment is not a priority.
Author and career expert Lindsey Pollack advises graduates to look beyond corporate America for future positions. She recommends digging deep and looking into opportunities with small businesses, start-ups, nonprofits and government agencies.
“These jobs can be harder to find, so you must tap into your network and ask the people you know to help connect you to opportunities in their networks,” Pollack said.
In reference to NACE’s Salary Survey reports and Job Outlook results, Koncz said the majors that fall more into the “liberal arts” category are not as reliable for finding and securing jobs in the current economic climate.
What alternatives are available for students with degrees that aren’t doing the job?
“If you are already in an area that is struggling, we tell students to go to you career centers to help figure out what skills are transferable and find out what industries are still hiring or growing,” Sims said. “This way, students can determine whether not they have the skills to work in those areas.”
Pollack pointed out a handful of skills that are valuable to any employer – in any industry.
“There will always be a need for people with excellent transferable skills, such as good communication skills, leadership, creativity, teamwork, logic, design, research, etc.,” Pollack said.
Article Courtesy of Fox News at: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2010/05/14/best-worse-college-degrees-graduating-class/?cmpid=partner_baynote_Best%2520and%2520Worst%2520College%2520Degrees%2520for%25202010%2520Grads
New Drug-Resistant ‘Superbug’ Claims First Life, Source: Fox News
Friday, August 13, 2010
New Drug-Resistant ‘Superbug’ Claims First Life
Friday, August 13, 2010 
A new “superbug” that originated in South Asia, has claimed the life of a Belgian man. It’s the first reported death from the drug-resistant bacteria, Agence France-Presses reported.
The man became infected while he was being treated at a hospital in Pakistan.
“He was involved in a car accident during a trip to Pakistan,” Denis Pierard, a microbiologist from AZ VUB hospital in Brussels, where the man had been treated since June, told Belgian media. “He was hospitalized with a major leg injury.”
Pierard said the man then returned to Belgium, but he was already infected. Doctors administered a powerful antibiotic, but it was no help, and the patient died.
Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain.
NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called carbapenems, and experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it.
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