Musings and Mutterings

A new study finds, yet again, that driving while talking on a cellphone, even a hands-free, is far more unsafe that talking with a passenger. There may be three intuitive reasons for this: 1) with a passenger you have a second person who can alert you to hazards you miss, 2) a passenger can see and evaluate your driving ability so it is in the driver's best interest to be seen to be driving safely, and 3)  when you are talking on a cell phone you are mentally with the listener, not in the car.

Carleton University has decided to reverse their decision to pull out of the Shinerama fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis. They had originally voted to drop Shinerama because they believed it to be an illness that strikes primarily male Caucasians. The disease, in fact strike men and women in equal proportion and afflicts people of Indian and Middle Eastern descent as well as Caucasians. Bob MacDonald, host of CBC's Quirks and Quarks, referred to the decision as emerging from "an information rich, knowledge poor" culture that plagues our modern world.

A Quebec car dealer is offering a deal of one free Dodge Calibre with every purchase of a luxury Chrysler 300C. The dealer says that the promotion will generate neither profit not loss for them, but will clear space for next year's models so they hope to come out ahead in the end.

Recent research has discovered that people diagnosed as being autistic react 1/20th of a second slower to sounds than those not diagnosed as autistic based on MEG scans. The researchers believe that this may be linked to post-mortem studies that have noticed fewer connections among neurons in the brains of people who had been diagnosed a autistic. They hope that this research will lead to a classification system for degree of autism, pending the results of studies using young children.

NASA has officially stopped listening for messages from the Phoenix Lander.

Those of you wanting something to look at in the sky might be interested to know that the "ISS Toolbag", dropped recently by an astronaut doing repairs outside the ISS, can be seen using a pair of 10x50 binoculars. The bag is expected to burn up on re-entry in June.

A University of California researcher has demonstrated a logic gate that based on the interference of spin waves. Spin wave-based gates can, theoretically, be made even smaller than traditional logic gates, and don't involve the movement of electrons so require far less power and generate far less waste heat. A number of significant challenges remain before this approach can be used to build spin-based chips.

US researchers have developed a "cyborg leaf" that is able to convert light to electricity, albeit far less efficiently than contemporary photovoltaics. The photosynthetic system consists of a protein complex harvested from spinach and deposited on a gold leaf substrate. Significant work is required to make the system commercially viable, but the materials and construction process is relatively cheap so it promising.

Here are bunch from the past two weeks at space.com

Scanning Earth for signs of life - The mission is meant to determine how we can detect life on other planets using Earth as a "control". The study is being conducted using the Venus Express spacecraft, currently in orbit around, strangely enough, Venus.

Life inside a cosmic bubble - The latest theory to explain the apparent expansion of the universe without resorting to dark matter has our galaxy residing in an area of the universe that is "lower density" than it surroundings. As a result, the universe could be static but would appear to be accelerating because of light crossing from high- to low-density space.

Pheonix may not rise again from frosty death - Scientists say that when the sun sets for the last time on the Martian Arctic, it is unlikely that Pheonix will restart in the spring. As one scientist put it, the lander is already "past its expiry date". That said, the lander has a "Lazarus mode" that, in theory, might re-awaken the lander in the spring, but they expect that the deep cold of the Martian winter will do it in.

Virgin says no to sex - in space that is. Virgin Galactic was offered $1 million (US) to film 5 minutes of zero-g sex. That will have to wait for Bigelow Aerospaces's Sundancer modules, due to enter orbit in 2011. Unless it's already happened onboard the International Space Station, but so far nobody's talking.

And from other sources...

Servicing satellites in space - Canadian researcher Michael Greenspan is developing a vision-based control system for a space-based repair robot to identify and hook up with an ailing satellite before. The repair robot would then be remotely controlled by ground-based to technicians, hopefully, effect repairs.

Canadian discovers a comet - Rob Cardinal of the University of Calgary discovered a previously-unknown comet. After being confirmed as a "new" comet, it was christened "C/2008 T2 Cardinal".

Martian dust devils - Follow the link to see images of dust devils captured by the Phoenix Lander.