Trilobis 65 Floating Home

Trilobis 65 is a semi-submerged
dwelling environment. Reaching 20 metres in length designed by Giancarlo Zema for habitation by six people at sea. It is ideal for living in bays, atolls and maritime parks. The main aim of the project is to allow anyone to live in a unique environment through a self sufficient, non-polluting dwelling cell in unison with their ocean surroundings.
 

Trilobis 65 has been designed on four separate levels connected by a spiraling staircase.
The top level is 3.5 metres above
sea level. The next level is at 1.4 metres above sea level and hosts the daylight zone with all services and allowing outdoor access. The third level is situated at 0.8 metre below sea level, semi-submerged, and is devoted to the night-time zone. At 3.0 metres below sea level, totally submerged, there is the underwater observation bulb, an intimate and mediative place.

The shape of Trilobis 65 allows the annular aggregation of more
modular units, creating island colonies.
This special project refers to the Trilobiti, little creatures that lived in the sea 500 milion years ago.
Contact Underwater Vehicles Inc. for further details regarding custom floating homes and Neptus 60 cliff-side dwellings with underwater viewing compartments. All homes are engineered to meet strict ABS and Lloyds certification requirements.

Maximum length - 20 mt
Maximum width - 13 mt
Observation bulb - 3 mt o.s.l. Max Speed - 7 knots
Accommodation - 6 beds
Power source options - Ballard fuel cells, solar, wind, diesel

New - from Giancarlo Zema Lake Washington Commercial and Recreational Marine Park

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Global Warming: Can Earth EXPLODE ?

The real danger for our entire civilization comes not from slow climate changes, but from overheating the planetary interior.

Galileo discovered that Earth moves. Copernicus discovered that Earth moves around the Sun. In 2000 Tom Chalko, inspired by Desmarquet's report, discovered that the solid nucleus of our planet is in principle a nuclear reactor, it is eccentric, and that our collective ignorance may cause it to overheat and explode. The discovery has been published in June 2001 by the new scientific journal NUJournal.net.

Polar ice caps melt not because the air there is warmer than 0 deg Celsius, but because they are overheated from underneath. Volcanoes become active and erupt violently not because the Earth's interior "crystallizes", but because the planetary nucleus is a nuclear fission reactor that needs COOLING.

It seems that the currently adopted doctrine of a "crystalline inner core of Earth" is more dangerous for humanity than all weapons of mass destruction taken together, because it prevents us from imagining, predicting and preventing truly global disasters.

In any nuclear reactor, the danger of overheating has to be recognized early. When external symptoms intensify it is usually too late to prevent disaster. Do we have enough imagination, intelligence and integrity to comprehend the danger before the situation becomes irreversible?


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UFO files released by MoD, UK

The MoD recently made the decision to release previously unseen files from their UFO investigations.

The files were released on the National Archives Website.

Link for files released in 2009 here

For previously released files here

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THE IMMORTALITY ENZYME

As the human body ages, it loses bone. Individual cells lose something equally vital. Every time one divides, it sheds tiny snippets of DNA known as telomeres, which serve as protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. After perhaps a hundred divisions, a cell's telomeres become so truncated that its chromosomes--site of the cell's genes--begin to fray, rather like shoelaces that have lost their plastic tips. Eventually, such aged cells die--unless, like "immortal" cancer cells, they produce telomerase, an enzyme that protects and even rebuilds telomeres. Scientists have long dreamed of drugs that would inhibit the immortalizing enzyme because, observes M.I.T. biochemist Robert Weinberg, "then maybe cancer cells would run out of telomeres and just poop out."

Wishful thinking? Maybe not. In papers published just a week apart in the journals Science and Cell, two teams of researchers--one led by Nobel-prizewinning biochemist Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado, the other by M.I.T.'s Weinberg--have announced a breakthrough that could help bring about such a drug. Both teams have managed to clone a gene that controls the activity of the telomerase enzyme in human cells. That could set the stage for development not only of inhibiting drugs but also of substances that switch on the enzyme--which might help combat degenerative diseases associated with aging.

Such possibilities, to be sure, are speculative, but that didn't stop Wall Street, where the stock of Geron Corp., a small biotech company based in Menlo Park, Calif., that helped Cech's group discover the gene, more than doubled, to 1618 a share. In fact, Geron researchers have been looking for antitelomerase compounds for several years, using indirect-screening methods. Because tumor cells--the main source of the human enzyme--produce it in vanishingly small quantities, the scientists lacked pure telomerase, which could have sped the search for drugs that might be used against it.

With the new gene in hand, the researchers should be able to churn out at will the protein for which it provides the genetic blueprint. That protein, they believe, is telomerase's most important building block. "For us," exults Calvin Harley, Geron's chief scientist, "it's like having access to an organism's brain."

The new protein, it turns out, bears an intriguing resemblance to an enzyme produced by HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. Indeed, the AIDS drug AZT has already been shown to inhibit telomerase activity. But the viral enzyme and the human enzyme, says Colorado's Cech, are only 20% identical, which explains why AZT is not an ideal telomerase inhibitor. "What we want," he declares, "is a compound that fits telomerase the way a hand fits a glove."

The odds that such a compound will materialize now seem high. But experts caution that it could take years before the first telomerase inhibitors are ready to be tested on humans to determine if they'll have any serious side effects--or if they'll actually inhibit tumor growth. Such questions are perhaps one reason Geron's stock leveled off at week's end, closing at 12 1/4 a share.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986922,00.html#ixzz0cZsIm6Hv

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Science news highlights of 2009

It was the year we learned of a spectacular smash-up in space, and scientists working on the world's biggest physics experiment delighted at collisions of an entirely different sort.
There were shockwaves, too, in Copenhagen, as the summit failed to reach a consensus on tackling climate change, instead merely noting a deal struck by major powers including the US and China.
The BBC's science reporter Paul Rincon looks back at the twists and turns of a year in science and the environment.

Source here

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World's tallest building in Dubai

By Malcolm Borthwick


Editor, Middle East Business Report, BBC World, Dubai
 

In recent years Dubai has grabbed the headlines with audacious offshore islands, rotating buildings and a seven star hotel. On Monday it opens the world's tallest building, Burj Dubai.


It's about twice the height of the Empire State Building, you can see its spire from 95km away and the exterior is covered in about 26,000 glass panels, which glisten in the midday desert sun.

The design of the building posed unprecedented technical and logistical challenges, not just because of its height, but also because Dubai is susceptible to high winds and is close to a geological fault line.

"You have the solutions for it but you always wonder how it will really work," Mohamed Ali Alabbar, chairman of Emaar, the developer behind Burj Dubai told the BBC.
 
"We have been hit with lightning twice, there was a big earthquake last year that came across from Iran, and we have had all types of wind which has hit us when we were building. The results have been good and I salute the designers and professionals who helped build it."
 
Rest of the story here

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Search for universe's hidden 'dark' objects

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff Staff Writer / December 13, 2009

Early Monday morning, after two delays, NASA is scheduled to launch an unmanned orbiting observatory that promises to greatly enhance, and significantly change, humanity's understanding of the heavens.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is expected to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif., between 9:09 and 9:23 a.m. Eastern time. From its eventual orbit 325 miles above earth, it will begin a blitz of picture-taking with equipment of unprecedented sensitivity. WISE will map the heavens on four infrared channels, frequencies of long-wave radiation that are invisible to the human eye and many telescopes.

The end-product of the 10-month mission will be a publicly available catalog of photos that, once stitched together and processed, will offer a portrait of the whole sky in unequaled crispness and detail.

"It really is going to be our GPS [Global Positioning System] for astronomers," says Amy Mainzer, WISE deputy project scientist, from the launch site at the Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif. "No matter what you like, we'll have something for you."

Seeing 'dark' celestial bodies

Looking at long-wave radiation offers several advantages compared with viewing just the visible light spectrum – the colors of the rainbow. All matter does not reflect light, nor do all stars emit it. Some asteroids are blacker than coal, and some young solar systems and galaxies are shrouded in light-blocking dust. Certain small stars, the so-called brown dwarfs, aren't quite massive enough to ignite a nuclear reaction. These "failed stars" emit heat, but no light.

All of these "dark" celestial bodies are invisible to standard telescopes.

But unless matter is at a temperature of absolute zero – an impossibility in a universe containing other energetic things, say scientists – it always emits heat. So scientists liken the launch of WISE to donning a very powerful pair of night-vision goggles. And once the goggles are in place, they expect to discover celestial bodies in many now seemingly empty areas of the sky.

After all, WISE is hundreds of times more powerful than its predecessor, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, which was launched in 1983.

Brown dwarfs, colliding galaxies, and more

WISE's sensors will pick up dark – and potentially threatening – near-Earth objects, like asteroids. The satellite will see the rings of dust around young stars that scientists think eventually build into planets like ours. Colliding galaxies, which are shrouded in dust, will also be visible. And brown dwarfs, which are thought to be more numerous than light-emitting stars in our galaxy, will be revealed.

Many researchers suspect that we have brown dwarf neighbors closer than Alpha Centauri, which, at 4.37 light years away, is usually considered the star nearest the Sun.

"It will be completing the census of these cold objects in the solar neighborhood," says Jonathan Fortney, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who is not involved with the mission. "We'll finally know what our solar neighborhood looks like."

One million pictures

Once in orbit – and after a systems-test phase – the 10-foot tall WISE will begin snapping pictures every 11 seconds. Armed with a 4 megapixel sensor, WISE will take more than 1 million photos during its mission.

"Having a list of objects from something like WISE provides you with ... targets” to look at more closely, says Marcia Rieke, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson. As principal investigator on the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2014, she plans to do just that.

Without the information from WISE, "there's no big sign post in space saying, 'Look here,' " Dr. Rieke says.

WISE's pictures of near-earth objects and minor planets will be immediately available as they're taken. The entire WISE catalog, part of which will be released during the mission, is slated for public release in 2011. Who knows what WISE will reveal.

"We're exploring the universe in a new way, and we're sure to find surprises," says Dr. Mainzer of the WISE team. "In fact, one thing I'm sure of is that I'm sure to be surprised."
 
Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2009/1213/WISE-set-to-search-for-universe-s-hidden-dark-objects

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