Archive - Sep 2008

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Two weeks ago, the most powerful atom smasher to be built had been switched on to global acclaim and scientists were ready to begin experiments that could unlock many of the enduring mysteries of the Universe. They are going to have to wait a little longer. On Friday the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) created the wrong sort of big bang - a fault so serious that CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced last night that the particle accelerator would have to be shut down until next spring for repairs.

Preliminary investigations into the incident, in which a huge quantity of helium leaked from the LHC’s cooling system, have suggested that it was caused by a faulty electrical connection between two of its superconducting magnets. The fault affected a part of the accelerator that is kept chilled to within 1.9C of absolute zero, and it will have to be warmed up to room temperature before the problem can be understood fully and resolved. It will take at least three to four weeks to warm the affected sector and then to open the damaged magnets for inspection, and then another month to re-chill them to their operating temperature.  read more »

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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair went back to school Friday, launching his new role as a lecturer on religion at top US university Yale. During the first seminar, he said that religious faith inspired some people to do harm but it also had the potential to do great things in the modern world. The "faith and globalization" course is intended to explore religious faith's power to bring the world's people together instead of driving them apart.

"I genuinely believe that the issue to do with faith and globalization is the single-most determining issue of the 21st century", said Mr Blair During the first seminar, "Faith is important because it motivates people...to do harm. But it also has the potential to do good." The course he is co-teaching as Yale's Howland Distinguished Fellow is linked to the work of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which seeks to work for peace between religions in an age of globalization. Blair is also a special envoy of the Mideast Quartet, the group of big powers attempting to coordinate a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Melbourne has become the world's latest destination for inventive, delicious cuisine. The term "foodie" is often heard in Melbourne, such a mecca for good eating, you could call it the Southern Hemisphere Paris. Certainly, securing a reservation at chef Shannon Bennett's Vue de monde can be as tough to get as a table for two at one of Joel Robuchon's establishments. Culinary creations by Bennett, 34, a native of Melbourne who looks more like a surfer than a super chef, include what he calls a "virtual gnocchi," a cep puree treated to an in-kitchen chemistry lesson which defines its shape, then served accompanied by sautéed king brown and shimeji mushrooms and zucchini flowers and finished with a tarragon emulsion. Another crowd pleaser is the bouillabaise which is presented at the table in a glass-toped, 1950s-style coffee percolator filled with aromatic shellfish stock. After this concoction is brought to a boil, it is poured into a bowl of tartares of crayfish and king fish cloaked in buffalo mozzarella.

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CT scans can be better medicine for doctors than for patients - they provide detailed views of internal organs, but the price is increased doses of radiation. A chest CT scan is equivalent to about 100 X-rays.

When Maureen Scanlan had a painful kidney stone episode four years ago, she was pleased that her doctor ordered an annual regimen of CT scans to monitor her condition. The scans involved hundreds of razor-thin X-rays of her innards stitched together by a computer into stunningly detailed 3-D images showing the size and location of the stone, down to the millimeter. What she didn't realize was that the perfection of the images was a result of a radiation dose equivalent to more than a dozen standard abdominal X-rays -- all for a condition that though painful is relatively mundane.

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The specs for Tesla Motor's new car are in: an all-electric, four-door, five-seat sedan that gets in excess of 240 miles per charge and accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in under six seconds. It will be built in what the company is calling the "greenest auto manufacturing plant in the world" on the outskirts of San Jose, Calif., the self-proclaimed world headquarters of clean technology. In other words, the car of the future is on its way here. Eventually.

Winning a $250m (£139m) deal with electric car maker Tesla to base its new factory there, the city beat other contenders to secure a project that will bring more than 1,000 jobs to the area. "This is a big step toward being the center of world cleantech innovation," said San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. Tesla boss Ze'ev Drori said that "this is proof the time has come for the electric car."

The company plans to produce an all-electric luxury sedan, called the Model S, at the plant with a retail price of around $60,000 (£33,000.) It already manufactures a two seater zero emission Roadster which sells for $109,000 (£61,000) and is built by Lotus in England.  read more »