Rob Johnson's Profile

This iceberg sings

Some icebergs 'sing' as water rushes through their crevasses and tunnels at high pressure.Scientists monitoring Earth movements in Antarctica believe they have found a singing iceberg. Sound waves from the iceberg had a frequency of around 0.5 hertz, too low to be heard by humans. But by playing them at higher speed the iceberg sounds like a swarm of bees or an orchestra warming up, the scientists say.

Between July and November 2002 researchers picked up acoustic signals of unprecedented clarity when recording seismic signals to measure earthquakes and tectonic movements on the Ekstroem ice shelf on Antarctica's South Atlantic coast. They say the signal was similar to volcanic tremors from Kilauea and Mount St Helens. Tracking the signal, the scientists found a 50 by 20 kilometre iceberg that had collided with an underwater peninsula and was slowly scraping around it.

THE DOLPHINS AND MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS IN THE OCEAN

Joan Ocean, M.S.

One of the Speakers at our Dolphin and E.T. Civilizations Conference in June, 2005 is Dr Richard Sauder. I invited him to be a speaker because I was fascinated by his research of Underground and Underwater Bases. He has been gathering information about these oceanic sub-marine bases for decades.

I am interested because I have seen artificial lights down deep in the ocean; large white lights that are approximately 3 – 5 feet across, facing upward to the surface and illuminating the water. It is difficult to determine their exact size because the movement of the water expands and diffuses the light.

The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a method of figuring out an Internet user's geographic location.

Patent 6,947,978, granted Tuesday, describes a way to discover someone's physical location by comparing it to a "map" of Internet addresses with known locations.


The NSA did not respond Wednesday to an interview request, and the patent description talks only generally about the technology's potential uses. It says the geographic location of Internet users could be used to "measure the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions" or flag a password that "could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the appropriate location."

Red yeast rice, a fermented product of rice on which red yeast (Monascus purpureus) has been grown, has been used in Chinese cuisine and as a medicinal food to promote "blood circulation" for centuries. In Asian countries, red yeast rice is a dietary staple and is used to make rice wine, as a flavoring agent, and to preserve the flavor and color of fish and meat. (1) Red yeast rice forms naturally occurring hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMG-CoA reductase) inhibitors known as monacolins. The medicinal properties of red yeast rice favorably impact lipid profiles of hypercholesterolemic patients.

The presence of an enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy has been detected by a researcher funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The evidence is being reported this week at the Central Parsecs Galactic Center Workshop '98 in Tucson, Arizona, by Andrea Ghez, of the University of California-Los Angeles. "What lies in the center of the Milky Way has been one of this century's 'big' science questions," said Terry Oswalt, NSF program manager for Stellar Astronomy and Astrophysics. "Ghez's work has massive implications on our understanding of how galaxies evolve."

By Bonnie Azab Powell, NewsCenter | 8 March 2005

BERKELEY – "Hello. My name is David Byrne, and I'm going to do an introduction to PowerPoint."

The roar of applause and cheers that greeted this deadpan statement was undoubtedly the most enthusiasm ever exhibited before a lecture held in UC Berkeley's Dwinelle Hall. Byrne, best known as the front man for the Talking Heads, proceeded to do exactly what he said he would. But while he poked fun at the popular Microsoft presentation software's bullet-point tyranny and Autocontent Wizard inanity, Byrne also defended its appeal as more than just a business tool — as a medium for art and theater. His talk was titled "I [Heart] PowerPoint," and he confessed that he loves the program not in spite of, but in some ways because of, its shortcomings.

George W. Bush’s reelection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state.

Scientists believe that a shift of mass toward the Earth's center during the quake caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth's rotation, shortening days by a fraction of a second and caused the planet to wobble on its axis, U.S. scientists said Tuesday.

Wednesday, December 29, 2004 Posted: 2:44 PM EST (1944 GMT)

"This is a small clip of video that I took while visiting the ruins of Tolum and Chichen Itza around Cozumel," writes Jorge. "I was looking around a field with my camera when I stopped taping and happened to look up and see this. There was something about it that caught my curiosity. It didn't look like a bird from where I was, but it seemed to catch the attention of some other people around. For all I know, it could be just another bird or something...." Of course, this is almost certainly a bird, but there are interesting similarities to a pterosaur called Rhamphorhynchus. Can anyone out there positively identify what kind of bird this is?

December 30, 2004