The University of Connecticut has found the chief of its biology lab — an expert on the health benefits of drinking wine — guilty of falsifying and fabricating data on more than two dozen papers and grant applications.

More science fraud: The University of Connecticut has found the chief of its biology lab — an expert on the health benefits of drinking wine — guilty of falsifying and fabricating data on more than two dozen papers and grant applications.

A 60,000-page report issued yesterday (you can read a 49-page summary here) by [University of Connecticut Health Center] (UCHC) found [Dipak] Das guilty of 145 counts of fabrication and falsification of data, involving at least 23 papers and 3 grant applications. … UCHC has frozen externally funded research in Das’ lab, and it turned away $890,000 in federal grants while the investigation was underway. The university has also begun proceedings to fire Das.

Just as in the Stapel case in the Netherlands, we have here another example of the science community responding correctly to scientific fraud. Both examples stand in stark contrast to how the climate science community whitewashed the fraud and malfeasance in its own community.

Phobos-Grunt’s reentry this weekend

path of Phobos-Grunt's reentry

Watch your head this weekend: The re-entry of Phobos-Grunt has been refined, and is expected to come down sometime between 5 pm (Eastern), Saturday January 14 and 9 am (Eastern), Monday January 16.

As you can see by the image on the right, there is as yet no way to predict where it will land, though it appears that — except for the tip of Florida — North America is in the clear. The blue lines show its orbital path during the first half of this window, while the yellow lines show its path during the window’s second half.

SpaceX outlines its new design goals for Falcon 9

What competition brings: SpaceX outlines its new design goals for Falcon 9 and its Merlin rocket engine.

[U]pcoming upgrades to the engine (Merlin 1D) will provide a vast improvement in performance, reliability and manufacturability – all of which could provide a timely boost to aiding the potential for success for the fully reusable Falcon 9.

Increased reliability: Simplified design by eliminating components and sub-assemblies. Increased fatigue life. Increased chamber and nozzle thermal margins,” noted SpaceX in listing the improvements in work.

Improved Performance: Thrust increased from 95,000 lbf (sea level) to 140,000 lbf (sea level). Added throttle capability for range from 70-100 percent. Currently, it is necessary to shut off two engines during ascent. The Merlin 1D will make it possible to throttle all engines. Structure was removed from the engine to make it lighter.

Improved Manufacturability: Simplified design to use lower cost manufacturing techniques. Reduced touch labor and parts count. Increased in-house production at SpaceX.

That’s just the engine. Most of the article however talks about the company’s effort to make as much of Falcon 9 reusable as possible. Hat tip to Clark Lindsey.

“the EPA touches on the lives of every single American every single day.”

Obama today: “The EPA touches on the lives of every single American every single day.”

Truer words were never spoken, but not in the way the President intended. He was speaking to a gathering of EPA employees in Washington, DC, and was praising them for their work. To the rest of the nation, however, the EPA’s effort is increasingly seen as a terrible burden that is squelching both the economy and the freedom of Americans.

Astronomers have concluded that the stars in the Milky Way must average at least one planet per star.

Billions and billions! Astronomers have concluded that the stars in the Milky Way must average at least one planet per star. More importantly, the data says the galaxy should have billions of habitable planets.

[According to astronomer Uffe Gråe Jørgensen], a statistical analysis … shows that out of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars, there are about 10 billion stars with planets in the habitable zone. This means that there may be billions of habitable planets in the Milky Way.

New data suggests that the crash of two white dwarf stars caused the nearest supernovae in 25 years

New data has found that the crash of two white dwarf stars not only caused the nearest supernova in 25 years, but appear to be the prime cause for these types of supernovae.

The data also says that there are no white dwarf primary systems in the Milky Way that are candidates to go supernova in this way. Thus, we can all sleep easy tonight!

The most distant supernova discovered so far.

The most distant supernova discovered so far.

SN Primo is the farthest Type Ia supernova whose distance has been confirmed through spectroscopic observations. The supernova was discovered as part of a three-year Hubble program to survey faraway Type Ia supernovae, enabling searches for this special class of stellar explosion at greater distances than previously possible. The remote supernovae will help astronomers determine whether the exploding stars remain dependable distance markers across vast distances of space in an epoch when the cosmos was only one-third its current age of 13.7 billion years.

The Supreme Court looks hard at the EPA and doesn’t like what it sees

The Supreme Court looks hard at the EPA and doesn’t like what it sees.

This case is about the EPA’s ongoing effort to steal property from private landowners.

The Sacketts wanted to build a home on a 0.63-acre lot near Priest Lake in the Idaho panhandle that they bought for $23,000. But after three days of bringing in fill dirt and preparing for construction in 2007, officials from the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ordered the activity stopped and said they suspected the land contained wetlands.

Months later, the agency sent the Sacketts a “compliance order” that said the land must be restored as a wetlands before the couple could apply for a building permit. The government acknowledged Monday that fines for failure to comply with the orders could be as much as $75,000 a day.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has renamed the thirty-one year old Very Large Array (VLA) after Karl Jansky, the man who invented radio astronomy.

A fitting honor: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) has renamed the recently upgraded thirty-one year old Very Large Array (VLA) after Karl Jansky, the man who invented radio astronomy.

Karl Guthe Jansky joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey in 1928, immediately after receiving his undergraduate degree in physics. He was assigned the task of studying radio waves that interfered with the recently-opened transatlantic radiotelephone service. After designing and building advanced, specialized equipment, he made observations over the entire year of 1932 that allowed him to identify thunderstorms as major sources of radio interference, along with a much weaker, unidentified radio source. Careful study of this “strange hiss-type static” led to the conclusion that the radio waves originated from beyond our Solar System, and indeed came from the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.

His discovery was reported on the front page of the New York Times on May 5, 1933, and published in professional journals. Jansky thus opened an entirely new “window” on the Universe. Astronomers previously had been confined to observing those wavelengths of light that our eyes can see. “This discovery was like suddenly being able to see green light for the first time when we could only see blue before,” said Lo.

The New Authoritarianism

The new authoritarianism.

If Obama does win, 2013 could possibly bring something approaching a constitutional crisis. With the House and perhaps the Senate in Republican hands, Obama’s clerisy may be tempted to use the full range of executive power. The logic for running the country from the executive has been laid out already. Republican control of just the House, argues Chicago congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., has made America ungovernable. Obama, he said during the fight over the debt limit, needed to bypass the Constitution because, as in 1861, the South (in this case, the Southern Republicans) was “in a state of rebellion” against lawful authority. Beverley Perdue, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, concurred: she wanted to have elections suspended for a stretch. (Perdue’s office later insisted this was a joke, but most jokes aren’t told deadpan or punctuated with “I really hope someone can agree with me on that.” Also: Nobody laughed.)

Read the whole essay. It is a remarkably concise and accurate description of the beliefs and desires of my liberal readers, which was further illustrated by their quick willingness in the comments here, here, and here to excuse an unconstitutional power-grab by Obama. This quote says it all:

Let leaders lead.

Very depressing.

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