Official "Science News" Thread

[ewmayer]

Colorado man awarded $7.2 mill in "popcorn lung" lawsuit: (Reuters) - A U.S. federal court jury on Wednesday awarded a Colorado man $7.2 million in damages for developing a chronic condition known as popcorn lung from a chemical used in flavoring microwave popcorn.

Jurors agreed with the claims by Wayne Watson, 59, that the popcorn manufacturer and the supermarket chain that sold it were negligent by failing to warn on labels that the butter flavoring, diacetyl, was dangerous.

The condition is a form of obstructive lung disease that makes it difficult for air to flow out of the lungs and is irreversible, according to WebMd.

Watson, of suburban Denver, was the first consumer of microwave popcorn diagnosed with the disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, his attorney Kenneth McClain said.

Watson was diagnosed in 2007 at Denver's National Jewish Health, a respiratory health center, after years of inhaling the smell of artificial butter on the popcorn he said he ate daily.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for diacetyl.

I would like to propose augmenting the disease name to the more popcorn-connoting bronchiolitis obliterans redenbacherii. (Note that ConAgra Foods, maker of Orville Redenbacher's and Act II microwave popcorn brands, announced it had removed added diacetyl from all of its butter-flavored microwave popcorn varieties in late 2007).

[ewmayer]

Me and the local coffee shop denizens just saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour, piggy-backed on the specially modified Boeing 747 carrier plane, fly nearly overhead (about 1 mile east of us) at low altitude on its final flight into retirement in southern California. Very cool.

http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-...-over-bay-area

[6:30 pm] Followup: A friend who lives very close to Moffett Field (home of the eponymous naval air station and NASA Ames research center) and who is a semi-professional photographer took the attached shot from his backyard.

[Dubslow]

http://news.utoronto.ca/first-physic...or-scotch-tape

An international team led by University of Toronto physicists has developed a simple new technique to induce high-temperature superconductivity in a semiconductor for the first time - using Scotch Tape.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...comms2042.html

As always, PM me for the full article.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

http://news.utoronto.ca/first-physic...or-scotch-tape



http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...comms2042.html

Note that the abstract carefully avoids using the words "Scotch" and "tape".

Four years ago, when it was announced that peeling Scotch tape in a vacuum produced bursts of X-rays, the abstract (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture07378.html) did include the word "tape", though not "Scotch".

[chappy]

Given these examples and the graphene, isn't it about time that Scotch tape took its rightful place in the pantheon with duct tape, WD-40, and chewing gum?

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by chappy

Given these examples and the graphene, isn't it about time that Scotch tape took its rightful place in the pantheon with duct tape, WD-40, and chewing gum?

Scotch tape might not have saved the Apollo 13 astronauts the way that duct tape did: http://www.universetoday.com/63673/1...-10-duct-tape/

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by chappy

Given these examples and the graphene, isn't it about time that Scotch tape took its rightful place in the pantheon with duct tape, WD-40, and chewing gum?

Over here we call it "Sellotape".
"Scotch" is something altogether different, as Paul or Ernst will readily explain.

D

[Spherical Cow]

Not sure if this is already posted somewhere, but next year could be a good year for comets. Possibly bright enough to be visible in daylight? Longest tail ever observed? The hype is building...

Norm

http://www.nightskyhunter.com/Comets...0Tonight!.html

[cheesehead]

"Bizarre 2012 earthquake signals birth of world's newest tectonic plate "

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/201...tectonic-plate

(This "birth" has been in progress for 8 to 10 million years, but recently seismology has advanced so that the unusual aspects of a strong April 2012 quake could be interpreted as a consequence of it.)

On the afternoon of April 11, 2012, one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded — and now revealed to be among the weirdest — struck in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Sumatra. It's a region all too familiar with geological catastrophe.

Eight years earlier, in December 2004, the third largest earthquake on record had ripped through a nearby region of the ocean floor. The magnitude-9.1 earthquake and the monstrous tsunami that soon followed killed more than 227,000 people in 14 countries,

So when a magnitude-8.7 earthquake (some put the magnitude at 8.6) shook the Indonesian island on that Wednesday afternoon earlier this year, many expected the worst. Yet, no monster wave appeared. A wave did come ashore, but it was a miniature tsunami, just 12 inches (31 centimeters) high.

All told, the earthquake did very little damage — yet only five higher earthquake magnitudes have ever been recorded. So what was the deal?

. . .

[chappy]

Originally Posted by davieddy

Over here we call it "Sellotape".
"Scotch" is something altogether different, as Paul or Ernst will readily explain.

Sellotape, like Scotch tape, is a proprietary eponym for transparent or semi-transparent tapes obviously. But, do you think that many Scots would buy Scotch tape if they knew that the name was pejorative?

I've tried to learn to drink scotch a couple times in my life. I just can't get passed the burnt wood flavor. I prefers me some beers.

[Dubslow]

SpaceX's second Dragon launch to the ISS is tonight.

PS It will be webcast live.