Friday's Fact

There is one particular area of study that is a part of all others, what is it? It is the base for everything else. I mean consider physics, chemistry, math, biology, medicine, astronomy, psychology, or whatever you can dream up and you will find this as the root. Can you name it?

Last weeks fact is “about 13 billion light years thick.” It was very closely approximated by pogofrog, who within minutes of my posting made a rough guess of ten thousand million light years. Good Job. Loy said, “It is impossible to fold a piece of paper over itself more than seven times.” Literally correct but assuming you can then:

After 6 folds and compressing it as best I could I measured approximately ¼ of an inch thick. Continuing using that measurement you get 7 folds at ½ inch, 8 folds is 1 inch etc.

14 folds is about 5.3 feet thick.

24 folds is about 1 mile thick.

51 folds is about equal the distance to the sun. (from earth)

66 folds is about one light year thick.

73 folds is about as thick as light would travel in a long lifetime. (99 years)

100 folds is about 13.3 billion light years….thick.

Amazing…don’t you think?

Dr. Hassan Badkoobehi (R)

National University Headquarters

Click the link above and zoom out to see surrounding area. Nice location.

Friday's Fact

How thick would a piece of paper (standard 8 1/2 by 11) become if it was folded in half over and over again 100 times?

Last weeks fact is “Every letter in the alphabet is used.” Correctly answered by LaidBare and Crazy Dan.

Motorola -- Ed Zander, Chairman & CEO

This morning we had the pleasure of having breakfast with Ed Zander, Chairman and CEO of Motorola, courtesy of the San Diego Telecom Council. Mr. Zander was quite entertaining and insightful as he described significant changes taking place at Motorola, including refocusing on one of the company’s strong points, innovation. Since Ed took the helm at Motorola they have completely reorganized and delivered some of the biggest hits in the mobile device market, namely the Razr phone (which now comes in pink). I guess my daughter will have to trade in her silver Razr. I personally like the new MotoQ and am on the list when it is introduced in the US. After the talk I told Ed that I hoped he would concentrate on quality. In my mind Motorola has taken the lead in innovation in the past only to let it slip through their fingers by offering poor quality. I hope Ed will fix the issue once and for all.

Dr. Evans, Dean of the School of Engineering and Technology was present, as well as, Dr. Ron Norman. Dr. Carol Sledge and Carter Jones from Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute attended as our guests. SOET and Dr. Evans are Spectrum Sponsors of the San Diego Telecom Council.

Mozilla Vulnerabilities

From US-CERT

A vulnerability in the way Mozilla products and derivative programs handle certain malformed URIs could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

Disable the use of IDN

Mozilla and Firefox users are encouraged to consider disabling IDN. While implementing this workaround does not correct the buffer overflow error, it prevents the vulnerable portion of code from being exploited. This can be accomplished by adding the following line to the prefs.js file:

user_pref("network.enableIDN", false);

or by following these steps:

1. Open the browser, type about:config into the location bar, and hit enter.
2. In the "Filter" dialog box, enter "network.enableIDN" (without the quotation marks) and hit enter.
3. A single Preference Name should appear in the results.
4. Double-click on the result. In Firefox, this will toggle the value from true to false. In Mozilla, this will open a dialog box titled "Enter boolean value." Enter "false" into this box and hit enter.

Credit

This vulnerability was reported by Tom Ferris.

This document was written by Chad Dougherty and Will Dormann.

Firefox vs. Explorer -- Can you solve this?

A few months ago I began using Firefox as my main browser and I like it a lot more than Explorer especially given the fact that Firefox makes this blog look better than Explorer. Check out the difference for yourself by comparing the two screen shots in the next posting below. The image on the ‘left’ is a screen shot of this blog using Firefox while the ‘right’ image is of basically the same frame using Explorer. The Explorer shot misses the SOET pictures from Flickr and does not show the broad line divider between post dates. It also has alignment problems. Unfortunately, more of you use Explorer than Firefox so this blog looks like hell from your perspective. Any ideas on how to fix this problem so both browsers display the same look and feel?

Firefox vs. Explorer

Yahoo / Alibaba

I’m curious to see how ebay will react to this…another Japan or 40 thieves?

Yahoo last month invested $1 billion in China’s largest E-commerce company, Alibaba.com, and said it would integrate its Chinese operations into the online auctioneer. The investment, which is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter pending customary closing conditions, gives Yahoo a 40% share of the company and 35% voting rights. The companies say by joining forces, they will create one of the largest Internet companies in China and the only one with positions in key growth sectors, such as business-to-business E-commerce, consumer E-commerce, on-line payments, communications, and search.

Alibaba currently has 15 million customers, which included 100,000 businesses that pay between $250 and $10,000 per year for Alibaba’s online services.

According to the companies, business-to-business and consumer E-commerce in China are forecast to have compound annual growth rates of 95% and 83%, respectively, from 2004 to 2007.

By Patricia Brown. From Optimize, September 2005.

Constitution Day

As a result of a new Federal Law, beginning this year all schools that receive any federal money (including grants) — from preschools through colleges — are required to commemorate Constitution Day in some way celebrating the day, September 17, 1887, that the Constitution was signed. If the day falls on a weekend, as it does this year, schools can celebrate the week before or after. In just four hand-written pages, the Constitution gives us no less than the owners’ manual to the greatest form of government the world has ever known.

Friday's Fact

“The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.”

Quickly, can you tell me what is unique about this sentence?

Last Weeks Fact is a Blue Ringed Octopus. Correctly answered by haddock and seawitch. Thanks.

Top Spin

Anyone watching Federer and Agassi battle it out saw ‘top spin’ at work on the ball. Here’s why it happens.

Now for the tennis ball. It doesn't look much like a wing. You can tilt the wing (change its angle of attack) and it looks different. Ignoring the seams, regardless of how you "tilt" the tennis ball it still looks the same - you can't change the angle of attack on a spherical ball.

So, how do you generate lift on a ball? Let's review what we said about generating lift on a wing: lift is generated by creating a pressure difference and deflecting the flow. To create a pressure difference on the wing we need to move more fluid around one side than the other - we need to set up the imbalance. Spinning the ball will do this.

When an object like a ball rotates, the fluid (liquid or gas like air) that is in contact with the balls surface tends to rotate with the ball. The air (a little bit farther from the ball) next to the air on the surface tends to do the same thing and so on. Far from the ball this rotation does not affect the surrounding air. But very close to the ball these fluid layers make up what is called a "boundary layer".

Let's look at topspin - the offense stroke in tennis. If the ball wasn't rotating as it flew through the air then both the top and bottom sides of the ball would meet the air rushing over it at the same speed.

But the ball is spinning. Relative to the ball, in topspin the top of the ball spins forward (top to bottom) into the oncoming air. There is more movement of the air towards the bottom surface. Now, more fluid needs to pass through the same space on the underside of the ball. (Basically, the flow is squashed on the lower side of the ball.) This means there needs to be a higher velocity on the lower side of the ball, and subsequently a lower velocity on the top of the ball.

On the top side of the ball this lower velocity creates a higher pressure and at the bottom the higher velocity creates a lower pressure. (This is an application of Bernoulli's Law.) With high pressure on one side and low pressure on the other there is an imbalance in the forces on the ball. In the case of top spin the higher pressure on the top curves the ball downward from its straight line path.

This effect is called the Magnus effect. It affects all sports balls (the hook and slice in golf, the infamous curveball in baseball) and ballistics.

Topspin pulls the ball down faster - its lift is in the negative direction.

What about flat (no spin) balls? There's no spin so there's no lift! That's right - a flat ball only has 2 forces acting on it - drag and weight.

Another way to look at it………

Thanks to Diary of a Hope Fiend who poses....

Q: What's Bush's position on Roe vs Wade?
A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans..

I offer another way to look at it………

Q: Why would you build a house below sea level?
A: To discuss the merits of Roe vs. Wade.

Cash moves into e-home

Coinstar is now waiving its 8.9% fee if you redeem your loose change for gift card credits at Starbucks, Amazon and others. Now the estimated $11 billion in change scattered about can find an e-home.

The Green Flash: A Prismatic Effect

The beach along the San Diego coast is a wonderful place to watch the sunset and with a little luck you may catch a glimpse of the Green Flash. This rare occurrence happens just before the sun completely dips below the horizon and the atmospheric conditions are just right. It happens fast so you have to pay attention. It is a result of optical properties and an interesting science discussion. Refraction is the bending of light as it travels from one medium into another medium. As light passes through a prism, its course is altered, and in the process the various wavelengths (colors) are separated. Sunlight is composed of every color of the spectrum, from blue to red. Shorter wavelengths are “bent” more than longer wavelengths so as light passes through a prism it spreads out so your eye can distinguish colors. The Earth’s atmosphere bends light in much the same way.

During a sunset light is traveling the longest distance through the atmosphere which is separating the wavelengths. The longer wavelengths (Red) gets bent the least so it appears near the bottom of the sun. The shorter wavelengths (Green and Blue) are bent the most and appear at the top of the sun.

The shortest wavelengths (Blue) are actually scattered throughout the atmosphere so much that they don’t reach your eyes so all you see is a green rim near the top of the sun. The green is visible for a few seconds and can be blocked by clouds, dust or moisture. The conditions must be just right for the Green Flash to occur. You can think of it as the last light seen is green.

The easiest way to see the Green Flash is to visit its name sake restaurant in Pacific Beach, California.

Friday’s Fact

Did you know that one of the most venomous creatures in the world can easily rest in the palm of your hand or about the size of a golf ball? It is a creature that gives a warning by pulsing vibrant bluish rings over its body. But by the time you notice the iridescent flashing it can be too late because if the creatures razor sharp tooth has punctured your skin, usually without you even feeling it, it is goodbye to this world for you. You could be dead in minutes. You see that little tooth has a layer of saliva containing a toxin, toxin so lethal that the amount found in just one creature can kill 26 adult humans in minutes. There is no antidote. Any idea what this creature is? Check back next Friday to find out for sure.

Stem Cells Simplified – Part 1.1

What is a stem cell? As you will recall from high school or college biology classes, in the beginning of cellular mitosis one cell divides into two and two divide into four until somewhere along the line the cells begin to differentiate into various types of tissues. Obviously this differentiation must occur in order that the 200 or so different cell types that make up the human body can be realized. If they remained the same cell type then a featureless mass of cells with no particular purpose would result. Think of a stem cell as the early cells that have the potential to develop into any type of specific cell like those that eventually become a heart or liver. Scientists are discovering ways to coax stem cells into developing into a desired cell type so specific tissues can grow at will. As technology advances these resulting tissues may be able to become replacements for damaged organs. Monday’s topic: Where do stem cells come from?

Stem Cells Simplified – Part 1

What is a stem cell…really? Where do they come from? What do they do? Why the interest in stem cells? Why the controversy over stem cells? Who’s ahead in the stem cell race?

Over the next few weeks we are going to look into the facts we know about stem cells and the world wide interest in them. We’ll start with Rudolf Virchow, who in the 1800s introduced the idea that disease begins inside of cells as he in fact popularized the epigram, Omnis cellula e cellula or “every cell originates from another cell.” Since that time scientists have studied how cells develop into a variety of tissues from brain to muscle and how unlocking this process may be the key to curing all sorts of diseases. Tomorrow’s topic: What is a stem cell?

Exploring Firefox

Browsers are not created equal so check your work on multiple browsers to make sure it presents well across formats. Not long ago I tried Firefox for the first time and liked it. Although using it started out as curiosity I ended up switching over entirely. That is until one day I happened to look at this blog using Explorer and discovered that it looked awful. The layout was wrong, dividers were off, and half the page was missing. You see I had given the blog a complete makeover, altering the template using Firefox until I liked the basic look. I thought all was well until I saw it using Explorer. Wow, what a difference. It took a bit of work, using Explorer, to get it looking somewhat the same as what Firefox displayed. Although I still prefer the look of this blog using Firefox as opposed to Explorer I was reminded of a valuable lesson. Browsers are not equal.