Tune in Thursdays, 5 to 6pm at 89.5FM in the northeast San Pablo Bay Area (American Canyon, Benicia, Crockett, Fairfield, Suisun, Vallejo), or online at [is.gd/kJ1EUt ].
Send info, music tracks, events listings etc., to [GOTT.PRODUCTIONS@) Gmail.com]
New Music
Contest of Eons for Tunes and Tasting At CULLENS
[facebook.com/events/1711633762430977]
Saturday, June 11 at 6 PM - 9 PM
Cullen's Tannery Pub & Saloon 131 1st St, Benicia, California 94510
A perfect Saturday in downtown Benicia! Denise and Dennis have invited CONTEST of EONS for the pubs 1st outdoor show! Come down and enjoy fine liquor and music tell 9pm. bar stays open late.
Contest of Eons is an Alternative Rock band taking root in the San Fransisco Bay area. If you love High-energy shows and catchy songs follow this band!
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InD.I.Y.pendent News
[shareable.net]
* "Modified microalgae converts sunlight into valuable medicine; A special type of microalgae can soon produce valuable chemicals such as cancer treatment drugs and much more just by harnessing energy from the sun. The team of scientists from Copenhagen Plant Science Centre at University of Copenhagen has published an article about the discovery in the scientific journal Metabolic Engineering" (2016-05-20, University of Copenhagen, science.ku.dk) [archive.is/awHLv], photo caption: The microalgae cultures are able to grow rapidly using waste water and light. Photo: Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences
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Stranger News
[futurism.com] [kurzweilai.net] [eurekalert.org]
* "Solar Powered Family Car Generates More Energy Than It Uses" (2015-07-13, by Evan Ackerman, spectrum.ieee.org) [is.gd/bDaGoo], attached video [youtu.be/A-JeEV2R4bw]:
Solar powered vehicles, whether we’re talking about cars or airplanes, usually share the characteristic of perpetually almost falling apart. What I mean is, solar power is so close to not being usable that vehicles must be as light as possible, or they will not fly (or drive). Technology is improving, though, and it’s at the point where a team from the Eindhoven University of Technology has been able to create a solar powered car that manages to seat four while generating more energy over the course of the year than it uses to drive [solarteameindhoven.nl/stella-lux].
“Stella Lux” is an upgrade of Solar Team Eindhoven’s “Stella” solar powered family car, originally developed in 2013. Stella Lux is made primarily of carbon fiber and aluminum for a total weight of just 375 kg, and features a tunnel that runs through the bottom center of the car to improve aerodynamic efficiency. On the roof is a 5.8 square meter array of solar panels to feed the car and charge 15 kWh of onboard batteries, giving the car a fully charged range of about 1,100 km where it’s sunny (like in Australia) and 1,000 km where it’s not (the Netherlands). This range almost certainly goes down if you’re carting around three American-sized passengers, or if you push the car to its top speed of 125 km/h.
Inside, the car actually looks pretty comfy, despite the big tunnel down the middle. The seats and doors are integrated with each other to save weight while increasing interior space, and there’s some sort of mood lightning. The driver has access to a whole bunch of tactile controls with haptic feedback, and the navigation system is weather aware, able to plan the most efficient route by taking into account where the most sunlight can be found.
What might be most impressive about Stella Lux is that it’s energy positive: on average, the car uses less energy driving than it produces during the day, even in a place like the Netherlands where it’s not constantly sunny. Depending on weather, the daily range of the car on solar power alone varies between about 50 km and 300 km, and driving any less than the daily max solar range results in a surplus of energy that can be returned to the grid.This October, Stella Lux will be competing in the the Cruiser Class of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, a 3,000 km race through the Australian Outback. And for a mere 10,000 Euro pledge to the team's crowdfunding campaign [solarteameindhoven.nl/support-us], they’ll fly you to Australia to ride in Stella Lux yourself.
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Space News
* "The Faint Young Star Paradox: Solar Storms May Have Been Key to Life on Earth" (2016-05-23, svs.gsfc.nasa.gov) live link [svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11853], archive link [archive.is/r5l8I] [begin excerpt]:
Our sun's adolescence was stormy—and new evidence shows that these tempests may have been just the key to seeding life as we know it.
Some 4 billion years ago, the sun shone with only about three-quarters the brightness we see today, but its surface roiled with giant eruptions spewing enormous amounts of solar material and radiation out into space. These powerful solar explosions may have provided the crucial energy needed to warm Earth, despite the sun's faintness. The eruptions also may have furnished the energy needed to turn simple molecules into the complex molecules such as RNA and DNA that were necessary for life.
Understanding what conditions were necessary for life on our planet helps us both trace the origins of life on Earth and guide the search for life on other planets. Until now, however, fully mapping Earth's evolution has been hindered by the simple fact that the young sun wasn't luminous enough to warm Earth.
This newly discovered constant influx of solar particles to early Earth may have done more than just warm the atmosphere, it may also have provided the energy needed to make complex chemicals. In a planet scattered evenly with simple molecules, it takes a huge amount of incoming energy to create the complex molecules such as RNA and DNA that eventually seeded life.
While enough energy appears to be hugely important for a growing planet, too much would also be an issue -- a constant chain of solar eruptions producing showers of particle radiation can be quite detrimental. Such an onslaught of magnetic clouds can rip off a planet's atmosphere if the magnetosphere is too weak. Understanding these kinds of balances help scientists determine what kinds of stars and what kinds of planets could be hospitable for life. [end excerpt]
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* "Space travel now in a parachute soon available" (2016-05-20, europe.chinadaily.com.cn) [archive.is/cZHIG], photo caption: Professional parachutists Wang Desong, He Yufeng and Qi Yao (from left to right) unveil China's first ever space parachuting suit on May 19, 2016 in Beijing.
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Ancient News
* "Mammoths and Mastodons: All American Monsters; A mammoth discovery in 1705 sparked a fossil craze and gave the young United States a symbol of national might" (2010-04, smithsonianmag.com) [archive.is/4bNZt]
* "Jefferson’s Old Bones: Did the so-called father of American vertebrate paleontology believe in fossils?" (2011-05, americanscientist.org) page 1 [archive.is/Oe9KI], page 2 [archive.is/mWI12], page 3 [archive.is/baIP3], page 4 [archive.is/ZoID4]
* "Thomas Jefferson: Paleontologist" (by Thomas O. Jewett, earlyamerica.com) [archive.is/XVPVj] [begin excerpt]: Paleontology seems to have been Jefferson’s main interest in a pure science. Some such as Frederick Lucas and Henry Osborn have dubbed him the “Father of Paleontology”. They felt that Jefferson laid the foundations of the science with his refutation of Buffon’s degeneracy theory, his invention of “stratigraphical” observation which established the fundamental principle of scientific excavation (Lehmann, 1985), and his work on the Megalonyx.
There are some though, who feel that Jefferson does not deserve the title. They argue that the entire basis of his beliefs about paleontology were mistaken since he denied that any animal species could ever become extinct. “Such is the economy of nature, that in no instance can be produced her having permitted any race of her animals to become extinct.” (As cited in Curtis, 1901). It is this reasoning which allowed Jefferson to put forth the theory that there was a large herd of mammoths wandering wild in the Mississippi Valley and one of the reasons he sponsored expeditions to the West.
Perhaps Jefferson’s greatest contribution to paleontology is that while President he helped to make it a respectable pursuit and was largely responsible through the American Philosophical Society for bringing together the materials necessary for its advancement. As the first citizen of the young nation, Jefferson’s passion brought prestige and respectability to the young science. [end excerpt]
* "Thomas Jefferson built this country on Mastodons" (2015-07-02, atlasobscura.com) [archive.is/ziTbp], illustration caption: Drawing of an early 19th century attempt at a mammoth restoration. Note the upside-down tusks.
* "The Last Mammoth: Lewis and Clark’s Secret Mission" (by Tim Deatrick and Jaime Babbitt, National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, nathpo.org) [archive.is/JBxmR] [begin excerpt]: 1781, a tooth sent to Thomas Jefferson by General George Rogers Clark from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky was the beginning of what has been described as “the greatest camping trip of all time,” the manifest destiny of a fledgling nation; but to the Native Americans who lived along the rivers, plains and mountains of the Lewis and Clark “Corps of Discovery” trail, it was an unprovoked invasion. It was a mammoth hunt that forever changed the native way of life. [...]
Native Americans have a specific way of revealing their historical knowledge. Their oral stories are often embellished with interactions between historical events and supernatural beings. In 1762, the Shawnee told John Wright about the big stone skeletons found along the Ohio River. They said the bones belonged to an immense animal, the "father of all buffalo," which had been hunted by "great and strong men" of the distant past. But the Great Spirit destroyed the huge animals with lightning. The Delaware elders told Thomas Jefferson a similar story; only they claimed that the gigantic animals were driving away smaller game, like deer and bear. This angered their god, who blasted the great beasts with lightning. Only their petrified bones were left, although some thought that the huge animals escaped to the far north.
The origins of the Lewis and Clark expedition took root in Jefferson’s childhood fascinations with Native Americans and their legends. After the war of Independence, General Clark’s mammoth tooth set in motion Jefferson’s quest to find a living mammoth and confirm his belief of a westward migration. His opportunity to seek the mammoth came during his first term as President in 1803 with the launch of the Corps of Discovery. Jefferson’s motive was twofold: Lewis and Clark would discover living specimens of the fossils; and “to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits.” –Jefferson’s Inaugural Address, 1801.
In a secret letter to Congress dated January 18, 1803, Jefferson sought Congressional funding for the expedition without mention of the scientific purposes for the mission and stated that commerce and converting the Indians to agriculture would “prepare them ultimately to participate in the benefits of our governments.” He knew diplomacy with the increased goal of commerce could be sold to Congress and scientific discovery could not.
The Congress approved the Corps of Discovery funding in February 1803 and in April, Jefferson sent Lewis to Lancaster and Philadelphia to be tutored in the natural sciences, particularly paleontology. On his way to meet Clark for the expedition, Jefferson ordered Lewis to investigate the skeletal remains of a mammoth uncovered by Cincinnati physician Dr. William Goforth at Big Bone Lick and to send bones to the White House in his instructions to Lewis for the Corps of Discovery, Jefferson asked Lewis to note, “animals of the country generally not known in the U.S. and the remains and accounting of any which may be deemed rare or extinct.”
The Corps of Discovery was not a benevolent mission. Welcomed notions quickly turned to unexpected surprise of betrayal. Upon meeting a tribe for the first time, captains of the expedition informed tribal leaders their land now belonged to the United States government and their “new great father” was President Thomas Jefferson. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was the trickle that started the flood of subjugation. [end excerpt]
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