from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/lost-army-of-cambyses/

http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/cambyses-lost-army-images.html
http://news.discovery.com/videos/archaeology-ancient-lost-army-found.html
http://www.archeologiaviva.tv/tv/video/80

Vanished 2,500 Year Old Persian Army Found In Desert?
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/cambyses-army-remains-sahara.html
Bones found in Egyptian desert may be remains of Cambyses’ army
“The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C. According to Herodotus, Cambyses sent the soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa and destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimize his claim to Egypt. After walking for seven days in the desert, the army got to an “oasis,” which historians believe was El-Kharga. After they left, they were never seen again. “A wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear,” wrote Herodotus. As no trace of the hapless warriors was ever found, scholars began to dismiss the story as a fanciful tale. Now, two top Italian archaeologists claim to have found striking evidence that the Persian army was indeed swallowed in a sandstorm. Twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni are already famous for their discovery 20 years ago of the ancient Egyptian “city of gold” Berenike Panchrysos. Presented recently at the archaeological film festival of Rovereto, the discovery is the result of 13 years of research and five expeditions to the desert. According to Castiglioni, from El Kargha the army took a westerly route: “Since the oasis on the other route were controlled by the Egyptians, the army would have had to fight at each oasis.” To test their hypothesis, the Castiglioni brothers did geological surveys along that alternative route. They found desiccated water sources and artificial wells made of hundreds of water pots buried in the sand. Such water sources could have made a march in the desert possible. At the end of their expedition, the team decided to investigate Bedouin stories about thousands of white bones that would have emerged decades ago during particular wind conditions in a nearby area. Indeed, they found a mass grave with hundreds of bleached bones and skulls. “We learned that the remains had been exposed by tomb robbers and that a beautiful sword which was found among the bones was sold to American tourists,” Castiglioni said. A number of Persian arrow heads and a horse bit, identical to one appearing in a depiction of an ancient Persian horse, also emerged.”

Buried Alive
http://mitchtestone.blogspot.com/2008/10/lost-army-of-cambyses-redux.html
“The primary source for the tale of Cambyses and his lost army is the ancient Greek traveller and historian Herodotus, an intrepid man who travelled all over Egypt just 75 years after the Persian invasion. Herodotus followed in Cambyses’ footsteps and recorded the local tales and histories of the invader. Unfortunately his impartiality is questionable; his Histories slander Cambyses remorselessly, painting him as a despot, madman and general ne’er-do-well. According to Herodotus, an army of 50,000 men was ordered to ‘enslave the Ammonians and burn the oracle of Zeus’. Led by guides, the army set off into the desert, reaching ‘the city of Oasis’, known to the Greeks as ‘The Isles of the Blest’ (modern-day Kharga), seven days’ march to the west. After this, they were never seen again, although the Siwans themselves were somehow able to give a rough account of what happened next. If Herodotus is right, the Persian army met a bleak end. The Western Desert is one of the hardest places in the world to be looking for lost relics. It is vast, covering about two-thirds of modern-day Egypt: an area of 680,000 square kilometres (263,000 square miles), equal to the combined size of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. The conditions are incredibly harsh and desolate. Much of the area is restricted owing in part to the millions of landmines from World War II. And there is always the likelihood that any finds that are stumbled across will soon be covered up by the shifting desert sands.”

Better Than Drawing Straws + Eating Each Other
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1938822,00.html
“While these 50,000 Persian warriors disappeared in the desert, Cambyses didn’t fare much better. At the time, he was marching on a kingdom in Ethiopia, but provisions ran out beneath a scorching sun and his troops were forced to pick lots having divided into groups of 10. According to Herodotus, the unfortunate 1 of each 10 was killed and eaten by the other ravenous troops. Cambyses eventually withdrew, chastened by Egypt and its desert.”

Dissent
http://rogueclassicism.com/2009/11/13/cambyses-lost-army-found-dont-eat-that-elmer/
http://rambambashi.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/cambyses-not-so-lost-army/
“…The Persians controled Egypt for more than a century (from 525 to c.401) and there must have been dozens of occasions on which soldiers were sent to the west. All these expeditions may have found itself lost in the western desert…”

Sandstorms 101
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/sandstorms-on-earth/2353
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/1289311.html

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/future-safety-measures/

No Provision Against Acts Of God (Or Future God-Particles)
http://edms.cern.ch/file/342513/LAST_RELEASED/AOC_E.pdf
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/bread-loving-bird-shuts-down-lhc
Bread Dropped By Bird Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really)
“The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine. This incident won’t delay the reactivation of the facility later this month, but exposes yet another vulnerability of the what might be the most complex machine ever built. With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched.”

Retrocausality
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html
The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate
“More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half. According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass. “It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.” Dr. Nielsen admits that he and Dr. Ninomiya’s new theory smacks of time travel, a longtime interest, which has become a respectable research subject in recent years. While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus.”

Long Odds
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/09/19/lhc-first-magnet-failure/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/14/spooky-signals-from-the-future-telling-us-to-cancel-the-lhc/
“In their December 2007 paper — before the LHC tried to turn on — they very explicitly say that a “natural” accident will come along and break the LHC if we try to turn it on. Well, we know how that turned out. But NN have an ingenious suggestion for saving us from future accidents at the LHC — which, as they warn, could endanger lives. They propose a card game with more than a million cards, almost all of which say “go ahead, no problem.” But one card says “don’t turn on the LHC!” In their model, the nonlocal effect of the imaginary part of the action is to ensure that the realized history of the universe is one in which the LHC never turns on; but it doesn’t matter why it doesn’t turn on. If we randomly pick one out of a million cards, and honestly promise to follow through on the instructions on the card we pick, and we happen to pick the card that says not to turn it on, and we therefore don’t — that’s a history of the universe that is completely unsuppressed by their mechanism. And if we choose a card that says “go ahead,” well then their theory is falsified. (Unless we try to go ahead and are continually foiled by a series of unfortunate accidents.) Best of all, playing the card game costs almost nothing. But for it to work, we have to be very sincere that we won’t turn on the LHC if that’s what the card says. It’s only a million-to-one chance, after all.”

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/make-your-own-supercompute/

PlayStation 3 Modification Tutorial
http://www.ps3cluster.umassd.edu/
http://www.xbox360forum.com/forum/chit-chat/87640-scientists-use-ps3s-create-supercomputer.html
“Computer hobbyists and researchers take note: two U.S. scientists have created a step-by-step guide on how to build a supercomputer using multiple PlayStation 3 video-game consoles. The instructional guide allows users with some programming knowledge to install a version of the open-source operating system Linux on the video consoles and connect a number of consoles into a computing cluster or grid. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth physics professor Gaurav Khanna first built the cluster a year ago to run his simulations estimating the gravitational waves produced when two black holes merged. Frustrated with the cost of renting time on supercomputers, which he said can cost as much as $5,000 to run a 5,000-hour simulation, Khanna decided to set up his own computer cluster using PS3s, which had both a powerful processor developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, but also an open platform that allows different system software to run on it. On the how-to-guide Khanna says the eight-console cluster is roughly comparable in speed to a 200 node IBM Blue Gene supercomputer. Khanna says his research now runs using a cluster of 16 PS3s. Khanna’s not the first researcher to use PS3s to simulate the effects of a supercomputer. The University of Stanford’s Folding at Home project allows people to help with research into how proteins self-assemble — or fold — by downloading software onto their home PS3s, creating a virtual supercomputer. Their research is currently targeting proteins relevant to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. But the guide posted by Khanna and Poulin is the first that might allow someone to set up a supercomputer in their own home.”

Previously On Spectre : Gravity Waves
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/gravity-waves/

See Also
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3325757/Why-scientists-love-games-consoles.html
“Todd Martínez has persuaded the supercomputing centre at the University of Illinois to buy eight computers each driven by two of the specialised chips that are at the heart of Sony’s PlayStation 3 console. He is using them to simulate the interactions between the electrons in atoms, as part of work to see how proteins in the body dovetail with drug molecules. He was inspired while browsing through his son’s games console’s technical specification “I noticed that the architecture looked a lot like high performance supercomputers I had seen before,” he says. “That’s when I thought about getting one for myself.” The Wii, made by Nintendo, has a motion tracking remote control unit that is cheaper than a comparable device built from scratch. The device recently emerged as a tool to help surgeons to improve their technique. Meanwhile, neurologist Thomas Davis at the Vanderbilt Medical Centre in Nashville is using it to measure movement deficiencies in Parkinson’s patients to assess how well a patient can move when they take part in drug trials.”

Folding@home
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-PS3
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/02/foldinghome-rea/
Folding@home Reaches Million PS3-User Milestone
“Sony recently announced that more than one million PlayStation 3 owners are taking part in Folding@home, the distributed computing project run by Stanford University. The participation of PS3 owners in Folding@home allows the project “to address questions previously considered impossible to tackle computationally.” Folding@home’s mission is to try and better understand how proteins fold, and how misfolds are related to various diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. PS3s currently comprise about 74 percent of the entire computing power of Folding@home. When the project achieved a petaflop in September, it officially became the most powerful distributed
computing network in the world.”

Salvaged PCs
http://stonesoup.esd.ornl.gov/
http://extremelinux.esd.ornl.gov/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-do-it-yourself-superc
The Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer
“Our solution was to construct a computing cluster using obsolete PCs that ORNL would have otherwise discarded. Dubbed the Stone SouperComputer because it was built essentially at no cost, our cluster of PCs was powerful enough to produce ecoregion maps of unprecedented detail. Other research groups have devised even more capable clusters that rival the performance of the world’s best supercomputers at a mere fraction of their cost. We knew that obsolete PCs at the U.S. Department of Energy complex at Oak Ridge were frequently replaced with newer models. The old PCs were advertised on an internal Web site and auctioned off as surplus equipment. A quick check revealed hundreds of outdated computers waiting to be discarded this way. Perhaps we could build our Beowulf cluster from machines that we could collect and recycle free of charge. We commandeered a room at ORNL that had previously housed an ancient mainframe computer. Then we began collecting surplus PCs to create the Stone SouperComputer. Our room at Oak Ridge turned into a morgue filled with the picked-over carcasses of dead PCs. Once we opened a machine, we recorded its contents on a “toe tag” to facilitate the extraction of its parts later on. We developed favorite and least favorite brands, models and cases and became adept at thwarting passwords left by previous owners. On average, we had to collect and process about five PCs to make one good node.”

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/or-are-you-happy-to-see-me/

Researchers Create Portable Black Hole
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.2159v1
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091015/full/news.2009.1007.html
Mini-hole made of metamaterials ensnares microwave light
“Physicists have created a black hole for light that can fit in your coat pocket. Their device, which measures just 22 centimetres across, can suck up microwave light and convert it into heat. The hole is the latest clever device to use ‘metamaterials’, specially engineered materials that can bend light in unusual ways. The new meta-black hole also bends light, but in a very different way. Rather than relying on gravity, the black hole uses a series of metallic ‘resonators’ arranged in 60 concentric circles. The resonators affect the electric and magnetic fields of a passing light wave, causing it to bend towards the centre of the hole. It spirals closer and closer to the black hole’s ‘core’ until it reaches the 20 innermost layers. Those layers are made of another set of resonators that convert light into heat. The result: what goes in cannot come out. “The light into the core is totally absorbed,” Cui says.”

Metamaterials
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial
http://discovermagazine.com/2009/apr/10-metamaterial-revolution-new-science-making-anything-disappear/

Artificial Event Horizons
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~ulf/fibre.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2027413242598238803#
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3325303/Device-mimics-black-hole-event-horizon.html
Device mimics black hole event horizon
“Now it seems these horizons can be mimicked using a table-top device that harnesses lasers to create an artificial black hole, according to a study by Prof Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews that could help win a Nobel prize for the world’s best known physicist, Prof Stephen Hawking. At St Andrews, Prof Leonhardt works on what are called quantum catastrophes, where so-called “singularities” can be created where the laws of wave physics are in danger of breaking down. Black holes are also singularities, where the pull of gravity is so intense that even light is sucked in. The professor’s team accomplished the feat of simulating key features of a black hole by firing lasers down an optical fibre, exploiting how different wavelengths of light move at different speeds within the fibre. Prof Hawking’s chance of winning the Nobel prize has improved markedly because this device makes it possible to test his theories, which make specific predictions about the event horizon – the rim of a black hole. “We show by theoretical calculations that such a system is capable of probing the quantum effects of horizons, in particular Hawking radiation.”

Blackest Body Yet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/ultrablack/
Scientists Make Blackest Material Ever
“Scientists have fashioned what may be the blackest material in the universe: a sheet of carbon nanotubes that captures nearly every last photon of every wavelength of light. The substance absorbs between 97 percent and 99 percent of wavelengths that can be directly measured or extrapolated. It’s the closest that scientists have yet come to a black body, a theorized state of perfect absorption whose closest analogue is believed to be the opening of a deep hole. The material is made from a flat array of vertically-aligned, single-walled carbon nanotubes. Photons that aren’t immediately absorbed by a single nanotube deflect off and are absorbed by its neighbors. “This interaction,” write the researchers, “repeats until the attenuated light is completely absorbed by the forest.” To the naked eye, the substance appears perfectly flat; in effect, it’s a sheet of deep holes. By comparison, the blackest paints and coatings absorb between 84 and 95 percent of all light. Researchers say the material would be useful in solar panels or to collect heat in the frigid vacuum of space.”

Information Loss
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8836-black-holes-the-ultimate-quantum-computers.html

Previously On Spectre : Space-Time Foam
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/space-time-foam/
What Miniature Black Holes Don’t Kill You Make You Stronger
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/what-miniature-black-holes-dont-kill-you-make-you-stronger/

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/where-ships-go-to-die/

The Ghost Fleet Of Johor
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1212013/Revealed-The-ghost-fleet-recession-anchored-just-east-Singapore.html
Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of Singapore

“The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. But there is something slightly odder which I can’t immediately put my finger on. Then I have it – the 750ft-long merchant vessel is standing absurdly high in the water. The low waves don’t even bother the lowest mark on its Plimsoll line. It’s the same with all the ships parked here, and there are a lot of them. Close to 500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew, and without a destination between them. Nearby, as we meander in searing midday heat and dripping humidity between the hulls of the silent armada, a young European officer peers at us from the bridge of an oil tanker owned by the world’s biggest container shipping line, Maersk. We circle and ask to go on board, but are waved away by two Indian crewmen who appear to be the only other people on the ship. ‘They are telling us to go away,’ the boat driver explains. ‘No one is supposed to be here. They are very frightened of pirates.’

Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: ‘Before, there was nothing out there – just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them. Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.’ The size of the idle fleet becomes more palpable when the ships’ lights are switched on after sunset. From the small fishing villages that dot the coastline, a seemingly endless blaze of light stretches from one end of the horizon to another. Standing in the darkness among the palm trees and bamboo huts, as calls to prayer ring out from mosques further inland, is a surreal and strangely disorientating experience. It makes you feel as if you are adrift on a dark sea, staring at a city of light.

As daylight creeps across the waters, flags of convenience from destinations such as Panama and the Bahamas become visible. In reality, though, these vessels belong to some of the world’s biggest Western shipping companies. And the sickness that has ravaged them began far away – in London, where the industry’s heart beats, and where the plummeting profits and hugely reduced cargo prices are most keenly felt. You may wish to know this because, if ever you had an irrational desire to charter one, now would be the time. This time last year, an Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost £31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500).

Three thousand miles north-east of the ghost fleet of Johor, the shipbuilding capital of the world rocks to an unpunctuated chorus of hammer-guns blasting rivets the size of dustbin lids into shining steel panels that are then lowered onto the decks of massive new vessels. As the shipping industry teeters on the brink of collapse, the activity at boatyards like Mokpo and Ulsan in South Korea all looks like a sick joke. But shipbuilding is a horrendously hard market to plan. There is a three-year lag between the placing of an order and the delivery of a ship. The labours of today’s Korean shipbuilders merely represent the completion of contracts ordered in the fat years of 2006 and 2007. Those ships will now sail out into a global economy that no longer wants them. ‘Whole communities in places like Mokpo and Ulsan are involved in shipbuilding,’ Wallis says. ‘So far the shipyards are continuing to work, but there have hardly been any new orders in the past year. In 2011, the shipyards will simply run out of ships to build.'”

Abandoned Sailors Go On Hunger Strike
http://maritimenews.info/shipping-news/stranded-russian-sailors-go-on-a-hunger-strike-in-dubai/

“Three Russian seamen from a vessel stranded in the port of Dubai began a hunger strike on Friday, an International Transport Workers’ Federation official said. The Magdalena, owned by a German company and flying the flag of Antigua and Barbuda, has been anchored in Dubai since early August. The vessel’s owner reportedly owes the crew $230,000 in wage arrears. Onboard are nine Russians, two Ukrainians, four citizens of the Philippines, and one Estonian. “The captain of the vessel said that three crew members… went on hunger strike. The vessel’s owner has also been informed,” Pyotr Osichansky said. The seamen demand repatriation and the repayment of wage arrears, and refuse to perform their duties. In early September the crew asked for international aid as they were running out of food and water. A week later two weeks’ worth of water supplies, provisions for three weeks, and fuel for 50 days were provided. A total of 23 Russian sailors are currently in a similar situation on two other vessels – the Piryit bulk carrier, which is stranded near the port of Cristobal in Panama, and the Southern Pearl vessel is anchored off the Bulgarian coast.”

Repo Man, International Waters
http://www.vesselextractions.com/
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/01/local/me-repoman1
This repo man drives off with ocean freighters

“If repossessing a used Chevrolet can be tricky, consider retrieving the Aztec Express, a 700-foot cargo ship under guard in Haiti as civil unrest spread through the country. Only a few repo men possess the guile and resourcefulness for such a job. One of them is F. Max Hardberger, of Lacombe, La. Since 1991, the 58-year-old attorney and ship captain has surreptitiously sailed away about a dozen freighters from ports around the world. “I’m sure there are those who would like to add me to a list of modern pirates of the Caribbean, but I do whatever I can to protect the legal rights of my clients,” said Hardberger, whose company, Vessel Extractions in New Orleans, has negotiated the releases of another dozen cargo ships and prevented the seizures of many others. His line of work regularly takes him to a corner of the maritime industry still plagued by pirates, underhanded business practices and corrupt government officials. “International waters,” Hardberger said, “are worse than the Wild West. In many ways, there is little or no opportunity to avenge the wrongs people have done to you.” Before repossessing a ship, they make sure the vessel has been seized illegally and the claims filed against it are fraudulent. If negotiations and legal methods fail, the company will proceed with an extraction, a step that might include payments to local officials if a nation’s government is corrupt. Those payments, Hardberger said, are made under exceptions in the federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from bribing foreign officials to retain or obtain business. “In a rogue state, you can’t tie your hands behind you,” Hardberger said. “It is common to find that the court system is rife with corruption.””

Alang: Where Ships Go To Die
http://www.wesjones.com/shipbreakers.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/bigbreak/resources.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/alang-the-place-where-ships-go-to-die-1779656.html
Thanks to recession, Gujarat’s ship-breaking yards are booming, but impact on environment is toxic

“It is known as the graveyard of ships, a place where ageing vessels are torn apart by unskilled labourers and the metal then sold on as scrap. The scrapping of ships in South Asia – Bangladesh and Pakistan are also major scrappers – is a rudimentary, almost medieval affair. Ships are allowed to beach on the sands and then armies of men with little or no training pull apart the ships with hand-tools. Toxic substances such as mercury and asbestos are allowed to seep into the environment. One of the attractions to the ship owners of having their vessels dismantled here is that the ship breakers in this part of the world receive little of the regulatory oversight that takes place in Europe or the US. Over the last 10 months, the scrappers at Alang in Gujarat have received and dismantled around 280 ships, up from 163 during the same period a year earlier. Some breakers believe that over a 12-month period from January, they might reach a total of 400 ships. On the edge of Alang a huge flea market has sprung up, selling multifarious equipment and fittings taken from the ships. Locals say that when an owner decides to scrap a vessel, they rarely have the time or opportunity to make a full assessment of the value of such things. As a result, the flea market sells everything from ships motors and cutlery sets to fridges and lifeboats at bargain prices. “Last year I bought a torque wrench here for about 3,500 rupees (£44), which would have cost me 50,000 on the open market,” Vasant Pachal, an engineering workshop owner from the city of Vadodara, recently told The Hindustan Times while browsing at the market. “Apart from the great deals, I get to see the latest in technology every time I come here.””

Previously On Spectre — Dubai Skips
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/dubai-skips/
So Is It Mom Or Chevrolet?
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/mom-or-chevrolet/
Today’s Pirate
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/todays-pirate/
Cashless Capitalism
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/cashless-capitalism/
Worldwide Food Riots
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/worldwide-food-riots/
Taken To The Streets
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/taken-to-the-streets/
Fairly Bad Indicators
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/fairly-bad-indicators/
April Fools! Dollar Actually Fine
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/april-fools-dollar-actually-fine/

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/sat-hacks/

Realtime Sat Tracking
http://science.nasa.gov/RealTime/jtrack/3d/
http://satellite.tracks.free.fr/satrace/satrace.php?language=en

Community Networks
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1046475/community-wi-fi-network-satellite-dishes
Community Wi-Fi network even uses satellite dishes
“Among the most popular attractions of this year’s CAFECONF 07 Linux conference down in Argentina, the “Buenos Aires Libre” group, is promoting its hobbyist, city-wide “community network”. B.A. Libre aims to run a network with its own backbone, capable of routing traffic between nodes even if the Internet goes down, it doesn’t rely on the public internet for transportation. The project was kick-started by a handful users a long six years ago and after several iterations and change of structure and leadership, now seems to show steady progress. The BAL network spine uses point-to-point links and directional antennas along with inexpensive consumer Wi-Fi APs or in some instances full PCs in waterproof enclosures- loaded with their own customized Linux software, dubbed Obelisco – Spanish for ‘obelisk’ the city’s landmark. I asked them if they had any run-ins with the airwaves watchdog and their response was an emphatic no. There’s a regulation making selling VOIP or telephony services using Wi-Fi equipment strictly and specifically forbidden by the airwaves watchdog, but it’s aimed at ISPs. First BAL is a non-profit endeavour, a community network, and it doesn’t aim to provide any specific services, just inter-connect computers. Thus the local regulating authority gives them no hassle at all because such non-profit usage falls within the ‘private use’ considerations of the local regulations. On the software/organisation aspect, they have done a quite impressive job. The Wiki shows a lot of work, and there’s even an on-line map built using Google Maps satellite images and showcasing all nodes and clients, and which are currently active. The registration /membership system is also well done. Dubbed the “BA Libre Location System” or BALLS for short, the project’s web map lists 259 “points of interest”, that is, either nodes or users who have decided to take part in this project in the whole capital city and its metro area of influence, with 13 on-line nodes and APs in BA city at the time of this writing. There is also a Wiki, an IRC channel and mailing lists.”
http://balls.buenosaireslibre.org/
http://wiki.buenosaireslibre.org/Obelisco
http://www.buenosaireslibre.org/

TV On The Radio
http://www.pervisell.co.uk/ham/gs1.htm
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/sstv.html
“Slow scan television is a way of sending video over a voice bandwidth channel–this can make it practical to send video over thousands of miles via ionospheric propagation. Modern computers have this once rare and expensive mode readily available to the average ham.”

Continue reading →

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/bioprospecting-termites/

And The Bugs Inside Them
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/termites
“The greatest mystery of all is found in the worker termite’s third gut, which is delineated by an intricately structured stomach valve, as unique from species to species as individual snowflakes are and, in its way, just as lovely. The size of a sesame seed, the third gut contains a dense mush of symbiotic microbes. Many of these microbes live nowhere else on Earth; they depend on adult termites to pass them on to the young by means of a “woodshake,” a microbial slurry. Recently, sophisticated genetic sequencing produced an inventory of more than 80,000 genes, spanning some 300 microbial species, from the guts of Costa Rican termites. If we could turn wood waste into fuel with even a fraction of the termite’s efficiency, we could run our economy on sawdust, lawn clippings, and old magazines. Last year the Department of Energy founded three Bioenergy Research Centers, which collectively house scientists from seven government labs, 18 universities, and several private companies, and are aimed at making cellulosic ethanol competitive with gasoline within five years. The centers are expected to come up with ideas that can be commercialized—actually making them more like Bell Labs, say, than like the Manhattan Project. Even for people accustomed to avalanches of data, the effort to map the contents of the termite’s third gut is extraordinary. “A disgusting mess of a data set,” says Phil Hugenholtz, the head of the institute’s Microbial Ecology Program. Traditional genomic analysis sequences one organism at a time, but Hugenholtz is a leading practitioner of metagenomics—the new science of sequencing genes from whole environments of microbes at once, and sorting out the resulting jumble of loose DNA code with the aid of computer science, statistics, and biochemistry. Metagenomics is not only breathtakingly fast; it allows us to catalog genes that were previously unknowable because so few types of microorganisms—fewer than 1 percent of all species of bacteria—can be cultured in a lab. Many biologists regard metagenomics as a scientific revolution akin to the invention of the microscope.”

Extremophiles
http://www.verenium.com/specialty-enzymes.asp
“In the quest to discover novel products, Verenium has pioneered the field of “bioprospecting”. This has enabled the company to tap into the vast genetic resources of the microbial world by venturing into varied and often hostile environments, such as volcanoes and deep sea hydrothermal vents. Because the harsh temperatures and pH conditions in which these “extremophiles” live often mimic conditions found in today’s industrial processes, extremophilic microbes represent a valuable source of potential products.”

Coal-Eating
http://www.humaxx.com/pdf/Coal-Eating_Microbes_PR_070809.pdf
“Arctech’s microbes have been bio-engineered from the digestive systems of specially-bred termites, which are unique in their ability to digest the compressed, fossilised plant matter we know as coal.”

Metagenomics
http://dels.nas.edu/metagenomics/
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18073/
“Microorganisms make up an immensely important and often overlooked part of the environment. “They constitute the bulk of our biosphere and underpin all the nutrient cycles on our planet,” says Philip Hugenholtz, leader of the microbial ecology program at the Joint Genome Institute. Converting cellulose in trees and grasses into the simple sugars that can be fermented into ethanol is a very energy-intensive process. “If we had better enzymatic machinery to do that, we might be better able to make sugars into ethanol,” Bristow says. “Termites are the world’s best bioconverters.” Researchers at the Joint Genome Institute, which sequenced some of the human genome and is now largely devoted to metagenomics, have just finished sequencing the microbial community living in the termite gut. They have already identified a number of novel cellulases–the enzymes that break down cellulose into sugar–and are now looking at the guts of other insects that digest wood, such as an anaerobic population that eats poplar chips. The end result will be “basically a giant parts list that synthetic biologists can put together to make an ideal energy-producing organism,” says Hugenholtz. Several other projects–from whale carcasses to wastewater sludge–are under way or already complete, promising a huge volume of novel genetic data. A recent project at the University of California, Berkeley, for example, identified three new organisms living in the highly acidic environment of abandoned mines. (Bacteria covering the floors of these mines convert iron into acid, which can then pollute nearby streams.) “They are close to the size of viruses and may be the smallest organisms ever discovered,” says Brett Baker, a research scientist at UC Berkeley. These organisms may give clues to other life forms adapted to extreme environments, such as Mars…”

HELLO AND WELCOME
TO OUR EXCITING NEW SITUATION

WE ARE ONLY HERE TO HELP
THIS WILL JUST TAKE A MINUTE
IF YOU BELIEVE IN TIME, THAT IS
(HUMANS DON’T WELL UNDERSTAND IT)

MEANWHILE SOME OF YOU LOOK CONFUSED

HERE’S WHAT WE ARE :
A SAMPLING

RECENTLY ON SPECTRE
————————————
TOO FAR TO SHOUT
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/too-far-to-shout/
BRAZILIAN SATELLITE SQUATTERS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/brazilian-satellite-squatters/
ARE WE ON THE CLOCK?
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/are-we-on-the-clock/
MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/myth-of-fingerprints/
RETHINKING THE LIPSTICK INDEX
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/great-sex-strikes-thru-history/
COCAINE AS METAPHOR
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/cocaine-as-metaphor/
TANGANYIKA LAUGHTER EPIDEMIC, 1962-64
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/tanganyika-laughter-epidemic-1962-64/
VICTORY IN SIGHT
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/victory-in-sight/
IDLE THEORY
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/idle-theory/
TODAY’S PIRATE
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/todays-pirate/
MONKEY MONEY
http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/monkey-money/

A WARNING SHOT
WE LOVE YOU ALREADY
HELLO