Your own private island?

If after tax day you still have some pennies left over, and after you’ve already reserved this absolutely awesome amplifier, today might be your day. Your day to wisely spend those pennies and get your own private island. Or 657 islands.

Additionally any of these islands come with the knowledge that your tax paying pennies have been spend wisely because scientists have discovered new, so far undiscovered, islands. A whopping 657. Generally it concerns barrier islands though, not habitable mountains of sand.

Barrier islands often form as chains of long, low, narrow offshore deposits of sand and sediment, running parallel to a coast but separated from it by bays, estuaries or lagoons. Unlike stationary landforms, barrier islands build up, erode, migrate and rebuild over time in response to waves, tides, currents and other physical processes in the open ocean environment.

Scientists who previously slept at work are know to take care of the important things in life such as the ultimate pancake recipe, admit that these isles aren’t new but were overlooked during the last survey.

The newly identified barrier islands didn’t miraculously appear in the last decade, said study team member Matthew L. Stutz of Meredith. They’ve long existed but were overlooked or misclassified in past surveys.

While some of you might be interested in the article, I now am going to become a scientist and scour Google Earth in order to find my own private island because after all that I can not imagine that the scientists have not overlooked some more islands.

Photo credit: Nixter on Flickr.

Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began “unzipping” the rift in both directions, the researchers explained in a statement today.

“We know that seafloor ridges are created by a similar intrusion of magma into a rift, but we never knew that a huge length of the ridge could break open at once like this,” said Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochesterand co-author of the study.

Water problems solved. But things would get worse even: the new ocean is said to connect the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Errr… yeah.

So when we translate all the sciencalese we come to this: the largest ass crack in the world will connect two seas which are already connected together all while solving the drought problem in Ethiopia. Wait, what happens to Ethiopia?

Via MSNBC.

Source: Discover Magazine.

In fact, there’s even an easy “rule of thumb,” Wallen says: Clitoris-vagina distances less than 2.5 cm — that’s roughly from the tip of your thumb to your first knuckle — tend to yield reliable orgasms during sex. More than a thumb’s length? Regular intercourse alone typically might not do the trick.

This confirms previous research in the 1920s by Princess Marie Bonaparte. So guys, you now have a counter question for when women ask you for your size.

Via LA Times.

We made this video about the Big Bang because the theory is important and amazing, but often misunderstood.
This video was produced without any funding from any outside sources. It was put together with donated creative time from a group with a desire to further public cognition of science.
Science has many amazing stories to tell, this is the first. The Big Bang Briefly.

What had been a simmering dispute over the reproduction of a single plate reached new heights in June when James Heilman, an emergency-room doctor from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, posted images of all 10 plates to the bottom of the article about the test, along with what research had found to be the most popular responses for each.

“I just wanted to raise the bar — whether one should keep a single image on Wikipedia seemed absurd to me, so I put all 10 up,” Dr. Heilman said in an interview. “The debate has exploded from there.”

Psychologists have registered with Wikipedia to argue that the site is jeopardizing one of the oldest continuously used psychological assessment tests.

While the plates have appeared on other Web sites, it was not until they showed up on the popular Wikipedia site that psychologists became concerned.

“The more test materials are promulgated widely, the more possibility there is to game it,” said Bruce L. Smith, a psychologist and president of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods, who has posted under the user name SPAdoc. He quickly added that he did not mean that a coached subject could fool the person giving the test into making the wrong diagnosis, but rather “render the results meaningless.”

To psychologists, to render the Rorschach test meaningless would be a particularly painful development because there has been so much research conducted — tens of thousands of papers, by Dr. Smith’s estimate — to try to link a patient’s responses to certain psychological conditions. Yes, new inkblots could be used, these advocates concede, but those blots would not have had the research — “the normative data,” in the language of researchers — that allows the answers to be put into a larger context.

Source: NYT.

People in the profession also drink 10 units more a week than the next heaviest drinking professionals – IT workers, who are closely followed by service-sector workers at 33 units, and people in finance, insurance and real estate at 29 units.

People working in education, transport and travel are the country’s most moderate drinkers, consuming an average of 24 units a week, although that is above the recommended limit for women and around the maximum for men.

The burning question now is What about bloggers? Are they converted IT drones or are they wannabe alcoholics journalists. I wonder if blogger is a recognized profession in the UK already. If it is, chances that enough of bloggers participated to be of any significance in the survey results are rather slim. But based on own experience and also by knowing several of my colleagues, I can tell you that bloggers also know how to lift a pint. More even, they tend to empty the glasses rather well. But our biggest usage is caffeine based.

Source: Finance Tech News.

The study … looked at the academic achievement of siblings — one of whom was breast fed as an infant and one of whom was not — found that an additional month of breastfeeding was associated with an increase in high school GPA of 0.019 points and an increase in the probability of college attendance of 0.014.

Source: UPI.com.