[url]http://news.discovery.com/animals/endangered-species/thirty-one-species-get-new-un-protection-status-141110.htm[/url]

A big day on 12 November (Earth time) for Rosetta:
[URL]http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/[/URL]

The first ever landing of a probe on a comet has been achieved, by the European Space Agency:
[URL]https://www.facebook.com/RosettaMission/photos/a.1431900770359006.1073741829.1423532354529181/1546728488876233/?type=1[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;387486]The first ever landing of a probe on a comet has been achieved, by the European Space Agency:
[URL]https://www.facebook.com/RosettaMission/photos/a.1431900770359006.1073741829.1423532354529181/1546728488876233/?type=1[/URL][/QUOTE][URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30083969"]Nice pictures of Philae on the way in, the first landing site and then mid-bounce.[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;387486]The first ever landing of a probe on a comet has been achieved, by the European Space Agency:
[URL]https://www.facebook.com/RosettaMission/photos/a.1431900770359006.1073741829.1423532354529181/1546728488876233/?type=1[/URL][/QUOTE]

Nice, but alas safety concerns have made "Plan B" backup power generation options in the form of radioisotope generators a no-go.

Thus, we can only hope that they can revive the lander sometime next year when the comet is in a more favorable position w.r.to the sun.

[url]http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141118-nasa-video-carbon-dioxide-global-warming-climate-environment/[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;388018][URL]http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141118-nasa-video-carbon-dioxide-global-warming-climate-environment/[/URL][/QUOTE]


The difference in CO2 values in that video from green to dark red is ~7ppm.

How big of an impact does an annual variation of 7ppm have on climate? The fluid dynamics in that model are beautiful.

Just to be clearer, imagine an [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_capacity"]average person[/URL] going in a average room (say 5x4 meters big, and 2.5 meters high, which would give a 50k liters of air) holding his/her breath. Then he/she breaths-in deep, and breath out. Exactly 3 times. One, two, three. Then he/she goes out.

That is a change of about 7.2 ppm in the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing#Composition"]CO2 concentration in the room[/URL], like from the darker to the brighter on the chart.

I didn't see anybody dying around me after 3 breaths... Well, in spite of the farts in the room/office/etc...

Additionally, the chart is very biased due to the fact that the Earth is round, the northern and southern parts are ridiculously exaggerated, looking that half of the northern hemisphere is red. Look to a globe and see that Antarctica is not half of the southern hemisphere, but a "small spot" in the south. Same way, the big-red-north is just a spot around the polar circle.

But well, the animation is beautiful... :wink:

[URL]http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-prevent-reverse-obesity-fasting-20141203-story.html[/URL]

Side story: We have some sort of "food disorder". We are not sure if it is physical or mental or both, but it results in us being hungry all of the time. With intense exercise and ultra-restrictive diets, we have gotten as low as 159.5 pounds, but at the other extreme we weighed so much that our old mechanical scale spun past the highest mark of 280 pounds and wrapped around to go past zero again!

Over the last 20 years or so we have been testing various methods to scientifically master our fat allocation and burning system. We have attached a chart that shows our successes and failures over the last few years.

What we do know is:

Our eating patterns are closely related to how we feel psychologically.
Our feelings of hunger are exacerbated by holidays and close proximity to snacks.
Our body processes sugar as if it is crack cocaine, and if we eat sugar we experience "highs" and (unfortunately) "lows".
The medications we take have a great affect on how much we eat and how hungry we are.
Whatever mechanism in our brain that signals that we are full is either absent or malfunctioning.

About 10 years ago we discovered this excellent free book: [URL]https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/[/URL]

It is not only a book. There is a web interface and apps to track weight using sophisticated "averaging" methods. We have been logging our weight for that entire time but we lost 8 years of data and had to start over again in 2012.

Being obese, or even morbidly obese, is a very depressing situation to end up in. Our old plan from 2004 or so involved hours of exercise a day. It worked for a year or two until we tore the patellar tendon in our left knee. Up until that point we had ridden 95 centuries in less than a year. (A century ride is 100 miles on a bicycle.) We rode them very fast, averaging 16-18MPH. That plan allowed us to eat anything we wanted but when the exercise ended with injury we didn't stop eating.

Our new plan is stationary rowing (rowing ergometer) for 2,000 meters a day and a sugar restricted diet. The diet has a lot of meat (and fat) which signals the brain that we have eaten a lot even though it is not much. Our cholesterol count has doubled since we started the diet but we think it is better the be the proper weight with bad cholesterol numbers than to be morbidly obese with low cholesterol numbers. We could be wrong but there are other reasons that bear into this decision, like quality of life. Being "normal weight" is infinitely more comfortable and socially acceptable. Our previous injuries still hurt a lot but not nearly as much as when we are carting around a tub of lard.

Anyways, we could talk about this for hours and get even more boring. We'll leave it at this for now.

Chart:

The red line is the "smoothed average".
The gray line is actual weight that day.
Days above our "smoothed average" are like bobbers on a fishing line.
Days below our "smoothed average" are like lead sinkers on a fishing line.
The red line could be thought of as a fishing line.
There are days that we cheat on our diet. We try to do so scientifically. You may notice that we have recently found a way to cheat that affects the fishing line less than previous attempts. We think occasional days of sugar "shock" our metabolism and reignite our weight loss. Plus, we like sugary snacks!
We know when we are losing weight when we are freezing all of the time, even in 100 degree weather.
Our newest approach could be summed up as trying to be less extreme. (?)

Having medication which increases your appetite can make life very difficult.
Looking at the graph, I would say you are doing very well! :smile:

[QUOTE=Nick;389112]Looking at the graph, I would say you are doing very well![/QUOTE]It would be easy to say that weight loss means that we are doing well, but we think that repeated losses and gains are hard on the body, so our (newer?) metric for success is a stable long-term weight loss.

Currently we are just exploring how our body reacts to different inputs. Ideally we would keep the weight at or around 170 pounds indefinitely. Using [URL="http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/av.htm"]BMI[/URL] isn't a fool-proof method of determining ideal weight but it is better than just guessing.

:mike: