An article from Science dated 13, June 2008 has some amazing discoveries about carbon dioxide uptake in the the world’s deserts. When Li Yan began researching carbon uptake in remote Gubantonggut Desert in 2005, he thought his equipment had malfunctioned. Amazingly the alkaline soil of Gubantonggut is storing away carbon at the rate of a temperate forest. This mechanism is not confined to just China. Researchers in the U.S. have found that the Mojave desert is doing the same amount of carbon uptake. If extrapolated to all the deserts that are on Earth, the effects are huge. 35% of the Earth is desert and if they could be taking up 5.2 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuels a year or more than half released by combustion of carbon fuels. In fact the deserts are now though to be taking up more carbon than temperate forests! The mechanisms are still not well known and more research is needed into what is driving this newly found sink.

Biogeochemist Pieter Tans, a climate change expert with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. “They may have found a significant effect, previously neglected, but I would like to see more evidence.”

The article can be found here.

Yesterday in response to the less than life on Mars news about finding perchlorates on Mars I made a quick and kinda stupid web page saying Mars sucks. When I posted it some friends told me that this site had been hacked. Pwned. Apparently a weakness in the older wordpress code we were running allows for some rather simple javascript (.js) hacks, and we weren’t defaced or anything like that. Since google began its new security service to alert web surfers of potential security risks many sites have been blacklisted like spacecheck, many without even sending a courtesy email telling webmasters they had had found something fishy. The warnings state something along the lines of “This website may be dangerous” on every search result. This site is not dangerous and while there was one instance of a corrupted bit of .js code that had been inserted around an image, we have been upgraded and cleaned up. Only one page and one instance of anything out of the ordinary existed in the first place. Over the last 24 hours we have asked Google 2 times to manually check the site, and have not heard anything back from them.

I called Google as well and spoke to someone who told me to just re-submit the site into Google’s search engine, which was done. Despite the rampant amount of spam and malware out there shouldn’t a quick response to such an issue such as this by a webmaster, who has taken the steps required to ensure the site is safe not be met with silence from Google? For those of us that take security seriously our rapid action to fix any issues should be met with the same speed by Google in taking our sites off the blacklist.

So the car I have to get restored finally has a slot open in Huntsville, Alabama. We took her down there last week. Hopefully in 6 months the car will be completed.

poker runcaribbean poker portal webforo poquercaribbean poker pagina webjuegos de poker onlinejugar apostar internettragaperras portales webjugar lineapremios paginas internettragamonedas lineajuegos seguros lineajugar jack blackplay baccarat onlinecasino portal internetjuegos de casino on linejuego instantaneo paginas internetjuegos de casino gratuitosganar dinero verdadero pagina websalidores ruleta practicasapostar weball slotspremio dinero lineala rouletteroulette portaljuegos interactivos webganar dinero real internettragamonedas onlinepremio paginas webpremio gordoganar dinero lineaapuesta dinero pagina webel juego de la ruletajugar a la ruletapremios dinero paginas webganar dinero real portalescasino on line,casinos web,online casinojuegos de casino onlinejuegos interactivos paginas internettrucos casinojuego ruleta de la fortunaganar dinero paginas internetpremio dinero onlinecasino virtual paginas webjuegos azar paginas internetgames freejugar tragamonedas webjuego video pokercasino internacional webjugar cartas webjugar casino gratis free ringtones for sprint phone | free samsung ringtones | download free ringtones to cellular phone | download free ringtones t mobile | christian download free ringtones | cell phone ringtones | gratis ringtones | free nokia ringtones composer | cell phone ringtones verizon | free samsung x427 ringtones | free music real ringtones sprint | free music real ringtones | cell phone ringtones and wallpaper | download polyphonic ringtones | new ringtones | listen mosquito ringtones | cell free phone ringtones verizon | music ringtones | mp3 ringtones maker | download ringtones motorola |

Sometimes it is hard to be the final arbitrar in sticky situations, and that is what I found myself in a day or two ago in #space. We have a great channel, and a great community, but it gets difficult dealing with bickering between two strong personalities. I hope the situation is finally resolved and that we can move forward from this point. We will see. I don’t understand why some people enjoy fighting so. It gets tedious. Maybe the internet is making us all a tad meaner. It is so easy to say things online that we would never say in person. I am not saying the internet should be all candy canes and sugar cookies, but humility and niceness are all too rare these days.

AT&T customers across the Southeast United States are experiencing a total denial of service at this moment. I am coming through to you on port 2200 via ssh via ssh through Knownhost. I don’t know why the network is allowing connections to them and no one else. That is a wierd question isn’t it? The technician I spoke told me that ATT doesn’t know when service will be back to normal. Normally ATT does a pretty good job of managing their network, so hopefully it will be a short outage. I can say that this sucks. I will make sure that this posts, and then tweak it a bit. They say that us geeks are like cockroaches and I guess they are correct. We tend to survive, or find a way to survive when faced with adversity. Times like this make being a real geek so cool. I am coming at ya from the Blackout Zone! Sorry ATT but I am not going anywhere.

*note* sorry for any errors in spelling *endnote*

I just saw my wife and children off on a trip to her parents place for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately I have to work the day before and the day after Thanksgiving, and since I am an partner in the business it is not possible to miss work. My wife expects me to either drive up there tonight arriving around 12:30 or 1:00 am or strike out Thanksgiving morning for the four hour drive, and turn around and drive the four hours back either Thanksgiving evening or leave at 5:00 in the morning Friday. All of this adds up to “”I don’t want to go”. I don’t want to go because eight hours of driving for a few hours with family sounds a little wasteful. Gasoline alone will cost 100 dollars or so, and that money may be better spent for Christmas. So most likely I will be alone. I could go to my side of the family for Thanksgiving dinner and fellowship, but without my immediate family there it would feel even lonelier than being alone. This is not a piece written as a sad, whining editorial but rather an honest view of my position. It is gonna feel wierd not going anywhere or doing anything on Thanksgiving. For the first time in my life I will be alone, albeit self-imposed, on Thanksgiving. There is a lot to be thankful for however; health, happiness and beautiful children.

The sun will rise over the mountains tommorrow and course its way overhead and then set in orange and purple hues that will reflect my mood. If you are alone on Thanksgiving take solace and give thanks anyway. Maybe do an act of kindness for no reason at all. Or spend the day reflecting on the good things in life. I know I will. I resolve to be thankful on Thanksgiving even if my not driving 4 hours in each direction somehow makes me feel guilty about “not being there”. I am there already in my heart, and on Thanksgiving isn’t that what matters?

When thinking about the universe our imaginations tell us many planets outside of our solar system exist. It has been postulated that they might be as numerous as grains on sand on a vast beach. This notion is often tempered by the paucity of exosolar planet candidates that have been ferreted out by terrestrial telescopes. Indeed, any exosolar find from Earth is a hard won exercise. We dream about those grains of sand because they tell us something about who we are, and where we are going. The French COROT space telescope which launched on December 27, 2006 is celebrating its 300th day in orbit. COROT is giving us hope of finding more grains of sand. Currently COROT is discovering exoplanets by measuring ‘light curves’ at phenomenal rate that only has been limited by available resources to follow up on detections. COROT is telling us after 300 days in orbit that there are many, many planets indeed out there. Planetary wonderers and galactic dreamers take comfort. COROT gives good initial findings that Earth is but one grain of sand among many in the cosmos.

Astronomers have announced the discovery of a fifth planet circling 55 Cancri, a star beyond our solar system. The star now holds the record for number of confirmed extrasolar planets orbiting in a planetary system.

55 Cancri is located 41 light-years away in the constellation Cancer and has nearly the same mass and age as our sun. It is easily visible with binoculars. Researchers discovered the fifth planet using the Doppler technique, in which a planet’s gravitational tug is detected by the wobble it produces in the parent star. NASA and the National Science Foundation funded the research.

Read more

(CNN) — An internal NASA review found no evidence to back up last month’s report that astronauts have been allowed to fly drunk according to NASA on Tuesday.