Welcome! This is the 5th edition of “Winds of Discovery”, a report by Larry Ice of Correct-Amundo! that will take you on a wild ride across the spectrum of science and discovery.

Topics this week include: Cleveland; Brain Function; Stroke Effects; Tiny Propellors; Photovoltaic Film; Photovoltaic Polymers; Extreme Memory; Sun Patents; Humane Interface; Lab Silk; Dark Matter; Methane Rain; Hubble Scrapped; Titan Life; Smart-1; Douglas Adams; Petrified Wood; Global Warming; and 2 new ways to generate Hydrogen

If YOU have a link suggestion send it to discovery, here @windsofchange.net. Regular topics include:

* Biotech & Medical
* Nanotech
* Invention & Discovery
* Space
* The EnvironmentBIOTECH & MEDICAL

* Cleveland has the upper hand in a bid to secure funding from the National Cancer Institute for a five year study of nanotechnology and its uses to diagnose and treat cancer.

* Scientists have discovered the specific regions of the brain that determine whether someone will look you in the eye or look away.

* Scientists discover that it’s not so much the Calcium ions that get into cells during a stroke, it’s the ones that don’t get out of the cell that cause the most damage.

NANOTECH

* Scientists have created a chemically powered nano-propellor.

* This company is using the nanotechnology to develop large sheets of photovoltaic film.

INVENTION & DISCOVERY

* Scientists in Canada are developing a spray on polymer based film that they claim will convert 30 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity. Current solar cells can only convert 6 percent of the suns energy into electricity.

* Rambus is pushing a new eXtreme Data Rate Memory into the market. Will it repeat the strategic mistakes it made with the introduction of RDRAM a few years ago?

* Sun Microsystems has place 1600 patents related to Open Solaris in the Public Domain. This follows their opeing up the their source code earlier in the week.

* Jef Raskin has recieved funding for work on the Humane Interface, a way for computers to work with people, not the other way around. Expect something good from one of the original Apple employees who helped design the Mac.

* Hate spiders? Stay out of this lab – Scientists have spun the first lab-made spider silk/a>.

SPACE

* A new study suggests that Dark Matter may have played an important role in the formation of the cosmos.

* It doesn’t quite have the ring of the Weather Girls song, but it’s raining Methane onTitan.

* The BBC is reporting that the federal budget does not include funding for the Hubble Rescue Mission.

* Scientists are studying the results of a Gas Chromatography Experiment on the Huygens Probe to determine the source of all that methane on Titan.

* Europe’s Smart-1 probe has started snapping some incredible pictures using its “Arnie” camera. Yeah, I know, we’ve seen pictures of the moon before. But that was with 35 year old technology, not the latest digital technology. Check them out.

* Astronomers have named an asteroid for Douglas Adams, the author who penned “The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy”.

THE ENVIRONMENT

* Scientists have successfully created Petrified Wood in the lab. Thank god, I was worried we’d run out.

* Scientists running a global climate model using shared time on volunteers PC’s have seen some alarming results.

* Scientists have found a way to use half the energy previously used in high temperature electrolisis, a breakthrough in hydrogen production for fuel cells. Too bad it’ll take new nuclear plant construction to supply the electricity we’re going to need to make all that hydrogen.

* Fortunately, other scientists are working on ways to use sunlight to generate Hydrogen. If successful, this is a lot less expensive way to do it.

Please check back soon for another exciting edition of Winds of Discovery!

Michael Totten is over coordinating blogging at the new English & Arabic “Friends of Democracy” website.

This week is history being made, and like most history it’s not very pleasant to live through.

I’m thinking about all the brave Iraqis a lot, and hoping that things go better for them in the next month than I fear (and others hope) they may. And admiring them for pushing their way forward to a decent future in the face of those who would instead chain them to an indecent one.

Gunner Palace, a documentary about the troops is premiering on March 4 around the country (sadly, not in L.A. yet). Check out the trailer, and if it’s playing close to you – along with the rest of the Blogosphere, I’ll be posting more details as they come. And when they get a venue in Los Angeles, you bet I’ll be there.

It’s not that you don’t love us, comments appear to be farked. The smart people are working on it and we’ll get it fixed ASAP…

Hoder blogs some US domain regstrars/hosts telling Iranian bloggers that they need to shut their sites down.

This is confusing at best and stupid mostly.

Go check it out and help me investigate this more; once we have some idea what’s up we can formulate a response.

From Jim Flanigan’s column in the L.A. Times today:

On top of that, these public pension plans are quite generous compared with their private-sector counterparts.

But the unions’ case is weak. Traditionally, the rationale was that public employees were entitled to sweet pensions because they weren’t paid all that well. Today, however, public employees are more than holding their own.

The average weekly pay in state government is $966 — well above the private-industry average in California of $805. (Local government workers pull down an average of $850 a week.)

Meanwhile, concern about the future of CalPERS, as well as the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, is mounting. At present, the funds have only enough money to meet 88% of their future obligations because the municipalities that pay into them, beset by their own budget woes in recent years, have deferred their annual contributions.

…emphasis added.

See, this is a problem for me.

I’m a liberal; I believe that government has a vitally necessary role in aiding the weak, feeding the poor, and defending workers.

But…

This is a great indicator of a serious problem. We’re told that we have to raise taxes to keep government from abandoning the poor – and there’s some truth to that.

But while we haven’t been looking, we’ve bought labor peace with the public employees by offering them – not only job security, superior benefits, a great pension plan – but higher wages as well.

And so the middle-class state employees soak up the money that ought to be going to the poor.

Does anyone see why a liberal might have a problem with that?

We’ve got MilBloggers and LawBloggers…

…but I’m looking for one or more LEO bloggers in response to a request from a friend. If anyone can point me to one or more, I’d be grateful.

Alaa, writing about the election in The Mesopotamian, has a realistic look at how the election is likely to play out and what it means – and doesn’t.

He finishes with something I think we all need to keep in mind:

Moreover, no one should expect that the security situation and strife would somehow improve after the elections; it is more likely to intensify. This is an unfinished war; the Saddamists and their allies have fully regrouped and rearmed and are being very well financed and supported. The brave American people have given President Bush the mandate to finish this war despite the painful sacrifices and material cost. The Iraqi people are up in arms through the political groupings, new army, N.G. and various security forces and are suffering the greater part of the sacrifice. Despite all the snags and faltering, these forces are getting bigger and stronger and should be supported and nurtured until they can bear the full responsibility; this is the only viable “exit strategy” available. In fact, we do not like this phrase, for what is required is a “victory strategy”. This war must be fought to the bitter end, and there is only one outcome acceptable both to us and to you: Total and Complete Victory. Anything else is completely unthinkable.

Salaam

And Wa alaikumus salaam to you, Alaa…good luck and all our support.

Listening to PRI on KPCC today, they started discussing the upcoming Iraqi elections, and my buddy Juan Cole comes on (audio file).

Listen to the gist of his comment: “The Iraqi people are being asked to vote for party lists or coalition lists…but they most often don’t know which politicians are running. I think it’s a little bit absurd to call that an election.”

Mr. Cole, please take a look at this:

It’s a party ‘ticket’, one of the original paper ballots used up to the 19th Century here in the United States. Voters would drop the ‘ticket’ into the ballot box, and choosing a ticket was that way one voted.

I’ll skip over the history in the urban East Coast, where political machines like Tammany used ties with immigrant groups to induce them to vote for candidates whose names they couldn’t read, and simply suggest that the ‘blanket’ or ‘Australian’ ballot – one that listed all the candidates for a party and allowed the voter to select one – wasn’t implemented in the US until very late in the 19th Century.

…I could recommend some history books for the Professor, if he’d like.

And yes, I’m aware that we do a better job of it now, and that it’s the 21st Century. But might we allow that democracy – like every other thing that grows – might have a start in Iraq that will look much like our own?

I listened to the 2004 U.S. Presidential Inauguration on the radio, and was neither thrilled nor depressed.

Bush places a framework around the global issues we face – that the only real defense against terrorism is to eliminate it by addressing the root causes, which are not poverty but lack of freedom and ideologies of rage which are growing up in response to oppression.

I like that.

But a lot needs to go into the framework.I have consistently hammered Bush for failing to make the case for the war, and for failing to go beyond high rhetoric to tie our policies to that high framework, and for being absent when it comes time to stand up and speak both to us in the West and to the real audience – those in the Muslim world who are facing the choice between Islamist rage and a future. We have to offer them a choice; we have to paint that future they may choose as one that is both attainable and worth having.

I’m going to make one of my messages a regular one trying to keep track of what the Administration is doing on that front.

It’s not enough. It’s not likely to ever be “enough”. But they damn well better do more.