Here's what’s passing for science this week: understated British division
The number of people left-handed may vary
LONDON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Using evidence from the classic films, British researchers said that the number of left-handed people suffered something of a setback in Victorian England.
"Left-handedness is important because more than 10 percent of people have their brains organized in a qualitatively different way to other people," Ian Christopher McManus of the University College London said in a statement. "That has to be interesting. When the rate of a -- variable trait -- changes, then there have to be causes and they are interesting as well."
Although left-handers currently form about 11 percent of the population, earlier studies showed that about 3 percent of those born in 1900 were left-handed but the precise reasons for why the rate varies remains murky, the researchers said.
The researchers examined classic films and identified 391 arm-wavers and compared them to a modern control group.
The study, published in Current Biology, found that the earlier Victorian rates of left-handedness are broadly equivalent to modern rates, whereas rates then decline, with the lowest values for those born between about 1890 and 1910.(science daily)
As the peoples of the earth breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Who knows where the time goes? No really, who knows and when did they know it?
L.A. has worst traffic; drivers lose 72 hrs a year
By Joan Gralla
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Los Angeles metropolitan area led the nation in traffic jams in 2005, with rush-hour drivers spending an extra 72 hours a year on average stuck in traffic, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The metropolitan areas of San Francisco-0akland, Washington, D.C.-Virginia-Maryland, and Atlanta were tied for the second most gridlocked areas, according to the study by the Texas Transportation Institute.
Drivers in those three areas spent an extra 60 hours on average during peak periods, defined as 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., the study found.
But drivers in other regions around the country were not much luckier. The report (http://mobility.tamu.edu) found traffic gridlock worsened in all 437 large, medium and small urban centers in 2005.
"What causes congestion? In a word, 'you.' Most of the Mojave Desert is not congested," wrote report authors David Schrank, associate research scientist, and Tim Lomax, research engineer.
The study found that drivers in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas, area had average delays of 58 hours.
Yeah, fine, but did you ever try to get a decent pizza in the Mojave?
Dueling headlines of the day—both from today’s Obscure Store
Car wreck saves choking driver's life
UPPER DEERFIELD --Hunger pains turned quickly into real pain for Bryan Rocco on Tuesday afternoon. The 43-year-old Vine-land man wasn't badly injured in the one-car crash on Landis Avenue near Morton Avenue, but instead walked away with one heck of a story.
"I was on my way back to the office and stopped at Burger King and bought a chicken sandwich and onion rings," the foreman for DJ's Painting in Vineland said Tuesday evening. "I started to choke on one of the onion rings and then I guess I just blacked out."
The air bag apparently dislodged the bite of onion ring stuck in Rocco's throat.
"The whole thing caught me by surprise," he said. "I was going out, blacking out and then I'm awake."
Aside from a cut on his head, a few bumps and bruises and a swollen chin, Rocco made it out relatively unscathed.
His dignity, though, might take a hit when he gets back to work.
"Oh, I know I'm going to hear it," Rocco said. "It's OK. It is kind of strange." (Daily Journal/The Obscure Store)
Class, the successful execution of the self-administered Heimlich requires the following: onion rings, a car and a tree.
and
Man with live chicken in his trunk gets tasered by cops
For those keeping score at home, Richard D. Brown has now been tasered at least five times in three separate incidents in which he fought with police. (In the latest incident, it was drugs -- not the bird -- that got him in trouble.) (Sheboygan Press)
Man, your orbital space station's so ugly...
Nobel laureate calls international space station an 'orbital turkey'
According to a story by Ker Than posted on MSNBC- A physics Nobel Laureate named Steven Weinberg says nothing of value has come out of NASA's manned spaceflight program and questions the scientific usefulness of the international space station.
"The international space station is an orbital turkey," said Steven Weinberg, a particle physicist at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-recipient of the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics. "No important science has come out of it. I could almost say no science has come out of it. And I would go beyond that and say that the whole manned spaceflight program, which is so enormously expensive, has produced nothing of scientific value."
Weinberg was speaking at a workshop on dark energy at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. (MSNBC)
Well, besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
Like Missile Command, only for real
Air Force activates provisional Cyber Command
By Ana Radelat
Gannett News Service
ARLINGTON, Va. — At a celebration of the Air Force's 60th birthday Tuesday, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne moved forward on the service's Cyber Command, officially activating it as a provisional unit with its headquarters, for now, at Barksdale Air Force Base.
In a speech to airmen and officers, Wynne said the Air Force must "defeat emerging threats," especially enemy attacks on U.S. communications and computer systems.
The new command's mission will be to protect the nation from attacks on its electronic and informational systems. The command would also develop the capability to attack enemy computer and communications systems.
"We dominate the air, we dominate space, we want to dominate cyberspace, but I don't think we do that right now," Wynne told reporters at the anniversary celebration. (The Shreveport Times)
So Flash Gordon and William Gibson walk into a bar.
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