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http://www.spaceweather.com/ PROTO NEW-CYCLE SUNSPOT: A sunspot from the next solar cycle could soon appear in the sun's northern hemisphere. SOHO magnetograms show an emerging magnetic dipole with the telltale polarity of Solar Cycle 24: So far this is merely a proto-sunspot; the magnetic fields have not coalesced to form a truly dark sunspot core. Nevertheless, the little active region is significant. It is a herald of new Solar Cycle 24, and a sign that the solar cycle, while seemingly stuck in endless minimum, is actually progressing normally. The calm won't last forever! Readers with solar telescopes, keep an eye on...

Where are the Sunspots? Are we in for a Quiet Solar Cycle?Written by Ian O'Neill So what's up with our Sun? Is it going through a depression? It seems as if our closest star is experiencing a surprisingly uneventful couple of years. Solar minimum has supposedly passed and we should be seeing a lot more magnetic activity, and we certainly should be observing lots more sunspots. Space weather forecasts have been putting Solar Cycle 24 as a historically active cycle… but so far, nothing. So what's the problem? Is it a ticking bomb, waiting to shock us with a huge...

The sun's surface has been fairly blank for the last couple of years, and that has some worried that it may be entering another Maunder minimum, the sun's 50-year abstinence from sunspots, which some scientists have linked to the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Could a new sunspot drought plunge us into another decades-long cold spell? It's not very likely, says David Hathaway a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The question came up after an international solar conference held last week at Montana State University, where scientists discussed the dearth of solar...

It was a curious exercise, watching environmentalists and weathermen turn Global Warming into a universal evil: the average temperature of the world is rather chilly. Virtually all animals and plants do better in a warmer climate than a cooler one. And not just because of the temperature: a warmer climate means more rain showers because water vapor increases. This also means less cyclonic storms, contrary to public perception. But not to be deterred from turning a very active sunspot cycle into good news--in spite of record harvests throughout the world between 1995 and 2005--nut jobs, hysterics, Luddites, and opportunists...

Boomers Driving Motorcycling Trend With High Fatality Rates By EDWARD WALSH[Portland, OR] -- Geff Hinds remembers seeing the movie "Easy Rider" as a teenager in the 1970s and thinking, "Oh my, that's what I want to do." Eventually, Hinds' dream of cruising the open roads faded, replaced by other preoccupations. But, he said, "I told myself I'd take up motorcycling when I'm old." His time arrived last March. Hinds, a 53-year-old Web designer from Tacoma, Wash., now feels "old enough" to resume his boyhood fascination with motorcycling. So he's the proud new owner of a black Yamaha V-Star 650 Classic....

Once again, catastrophic fire has left its devastating footprint on our California landscape. It seems that this time every year, we find ourselves in the same precarious situation of watching our hillsides get drier and drier while the summer gets hotter and hotter, until a fire erupts and we scramble to contain it and minimize its effect. Once the fire's been put out and things return to normal (for the most part), we do little to prevent future fires. Then summer hits once again and we're back to square one. It's time we put an end to this cycle. --snip--...

12/8/2005 - KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- When the faucet comes on and water begins swirling in the sink and into the drain, it is actually beginning a never-ending journey. The water used by troops here and at Forward Operating Base Warrior circles in a never ending loop that, without the oversight of several guardsmen, might not go so smoothly. “We treat more than 100,000 gallons of waste water each day,” said Master Sgt, Bruce Larrabee, senior operator in charge of waste water treatment for the 506th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron here. The sergeant deployed from Pease Air National...

Nuclear weapons remain the most powerful force ever invented by humankind. They can be constructed with either highly enriched uranium (over 20% 235U) or plutonium. Most modern nuclear weapons rely on a combination of fission and fusion, using the initial nuclear release from a core of uranium or plutonium to ignite a secondary fusion of lighter elements. The first nuclear weapons developed by the US had explosive yields equivalent to 10-20 kt of TNT, while most of today's deployed weapons range from 100-500 kt in yield. In all, there are approximately 27,600 nuclear weapons in existence. Read More…About the author:...

The U.N. nuclear agency said Friday it will hold an emergency executive meeting next week to persuade Iran to continue negotiations with European powers on an incentive package aimed at getting Iran to halt some of its nuclear activities. The meeting comes as Tehran is threatening to restart processing of some nuclear materials. IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the 35-nation board is acting at the request of Britain, France and Germany, the three countries negotiating a deal to induce Iran to scale back its nuclear ambitions. "Three countries of the EU have called for a special session of the board...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Is there such a thing as too much democracy? California voters are in the midst of what might seem like a never-ending election cycle - soon to decide their fourth statewide election in two years - and some of them are starting to get burned out. The cavalcade of candidates and ballot propositions - dating to the October 2003 election that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in office - has left many weary of the baggage that goes along with the elections: the high cost, the finger-pointing and the barrage of television commercials. "I'm not looking forward to...

LONDON (Reuters) - London's streets creaked and rattled with nervous new cyclists Friday after bicycle sales rocketed in the wake of bomb blasts on three underground trains and a double-decker bus. Seasoned cyclists told of weary walkers offering them up to 300 pounds ($500) for their bikes as they headed home on Thursday, and of giving impromptu lessons to shaky beginners. Tim Davies who manages Cycle Surgery near Holborn, said: "the shop is so close to where the bus got hit that we thought we'd be evacuated. "But by 11 o'clock we were running around like crazy. We'd normally sell...

If the story about Wal-Mart getting away for years with employing illegal immigrants as janitors didn't make the United States' ambivalence about immigration law clear, the latest report from the General Accounting Office should do it. The GAO, which does in-depth research for Congress, found that the feds have virtually stopped cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants. In 1999, for example, federal authorities sent notices of intent to fine to 417 employers. In 2004, they only sent those same notices to three employers. Similarly, the number of arrests made in workplace raids has plummeted from 2,849 in 1999...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Colorado authorities are trying to figure out why the bike of a well-known Des Moines doctor and cyclist would have headed into oncoming traffic. Dr. Robert Breedlove, an orthopedic surgeon from Des Moines, died Thursday while cycling in a nationwide bike race. Breedlove was competing in the 24th Annual Race Across America endurance race, which takes just over a week to complete. Breedlove holds the RAAM tandem record. The race began on June 19. The accident happened at about 11:30 a.m. Thursday about 26 miles west of Trinidad, Colo. The driver of that truck said he...

The Law of Unintended Consequences "There has been widespread denial that there could be anything like a real estate 'bubble,' even given recent activity. Yet, anyone with a pulse can see wild speculation taking place all around them." --William F. Hague, President, W.F. Hague Investments Question: Why has the Fed allowed a housing bubble to develop? Answer: Because they didn't have any choice. The past several years of low interest rates have allowed households to extract cash from inflated property via cash-out refis, home equity loans, and sales; and to use lower interest rates to reduce monthly mortgage payments and...

Stage one about to begin.

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 December 6 Zimbabwe Solar Eclipse Credit & Copyright: Murray Alexander Explanation: Normally hiding from view in the glare of the Sun, the shy solar corona came out to play Wednesday as a total solar eclipse graced morning skies over southern Africa. This telescopic image of the Sun's corona or outer atmosphere shimmering around the silhouetted Moon was recorded near the centreline of the total eclipse path, 10...

Source: Syracuse University Date: 11/14/2002 New Evidence That El Niño Influences Global Climate Conditions On A 2,000-Year Cycle El Niño, the pattern that can wreak havoc on climate conditions around the world, is like a beacon, pulsating through time on a 2,000 year cycle, according to a new study by scientists from Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.; Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., and from the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, Colo., that is being published in the Nov. 14 issue of Nature. The study, which resulted from a detailed analysis of a continuous 10,000-year record of El Niño events from a lake in...

Why the Dems are staring at the Kool-Aid (tm) cups. If the normal business cycle turns upward, as is always expected, maybe with the help of some Bush/Republican stimulus as a bonus, then the Democrats have no issues for 2004. It will only get worse for them. Add a Republican prescription drug benefit, continued crack-down/convictions on corporate fraud, and a steady foreign policy philosophy then Dems will really have to grope for issues. Pothole Repair? Collective Bargaining for Preschool Students? They are done. Stick a fork in their reason for being.

The coral bleaching observed in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands over the past several weeks could be caused by global warming -- or it could just be a cycle in nature, scientists say. Either way, it offers an unprecedented opportunity to study the recovery of bleached coral reefs, said scientists who returned Tuesday from a monthlong research cruise to Hawaii's most remote islands. The researchers said they were surprised by the amount of bleached, or dying, coral they observed there, even though they had a clue they might find bleaching because of abnormally high water temperatures. Though the cause of the...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 August 1 Sunspots and Solar Active Regions Credit & Copyright: Fred Espenak (courtesy of www.MrEclipse.com) Explanation: July was a good month for sunspots ... really big sunspots. In fact, the full disk and inset pictures above show three large groups of spots, photographed only a few days ago on July 28. Together the sunspots span a region about thirty times the diameter of planet Earth. Now rotating...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 July 18 Sunspot Region 30 Credit: MDI, SOHO, ESA, NASA Explanation: The solar active region designated number 10030 (or simply region 30) is now appearing on the visible hemisphere of the closest star. Dwarfed by the Sun's disk, the group of sunspots which make up region 30 actually cover an enormous area -- nearly 10 times the size of Earth. The panels above were recorded July 15,...

Election 2002 All data are from nationwide surveys of Americans 18 & older. Generic House ballot testControl of Congress State and local campaign polls are available in the subscriber area of our web site. INFORMATION ON SUBSCRIBING   Generic House Ballot Test Polls listed chronologically. Public Opinion Strategies (R). Latest: June 30-July 1, 2002. N=800 likely voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.5. . "And thinking ahead to the next U.S. congressional election in your district in November: If the election were held today, for whom would you vote: [rotate] the Republican candidate or the Democratic candidate? [If Republican/Democrat, ask:] And...