Tag: technology

News

Dramatic Rescue In Pacific Ocean For Three Canadians

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Nine-year-old West James was sailing to Hawaii with his father, Brad, and his uncle, Mitchell last week.

The boy had permission from his mother and teacher to take the trip if he documented (wrote about) the voyage.

The three were in the Pacific Ocean on their way to Mexico when they ran into a series of squalls, sudden storms with high winds and waves.

The storms flooded the sailboat’s engine and damaged their boat’s mast. They tried to rig a new sail, but it blew away.

When Mitchell James tried to fix the mast, he fell into the cold, choppy water. The others got him back in the boat but they feared he had a concussion (head injury).

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Breaking News News Technology

Do You Want to Buy A Piece Of Facebook?

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Facebook is the most popular “social networking” website in the world and it may be for sale soon. Or at least part of it.

A “social networking” website is one that lets people meet and chat with each other—not face-to-face, but over the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are two popular social networking websites.

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook with some university friends in 2004. Recently, he decided to “go public” with Facebook. In this case, that means people he doesn’t even know will be allowed to buy a share (part) of the company.

Right now, Facebook is privately owned by some individuals and companies. Zuckerberg himself owns 24 per cent or almost one-quarter of Facebook–the largest portion.

When a company “goes public,” it is given a value (for instance, Facebook is said to be worth $100-billion) and that value is divided into “shares.” Those shares, which each represent a tiny piece of the value of the company, are then offered for sale.

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Environment News Science

12-Million-Year-Old Plant May Soon Be Extinct

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Cycads, a very rare type of plant, are in danger of becoming extinct because of poachers.

Poaching usually means to hunt animals illegally. In this case, trees are being taken from the wild.

They are then secretly sold for a lot of money – up to $100,000 each – to people who collect unusual plants.

The first cycads existed during the time of the dinosaurs, during the Jurassic period. The kinds of cycads that are alive today have been around for 12 million years.

They look like a cross between a fern and a palm tree, and they can take hundreds of years to grow to their full size.

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News Science Technology

Toronto Teens Send Legonaut Into (Near-) Space

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Two teenagers in Toronto, Ont. have taken a giant leap – for themselves, and for one little Lego man.

The teens launched a Lego figure into near-space.

They hooked a helium weather balloon, a home-sewn nylon parachute and four cameras to the figure. And then they went out to a soccer field and let their contraption go.

The cameras were set to take pictures every 20 seconds.

When their figure came back to Earth, they looked at the pictures the cameras had taken.

They were shocked to see their little Lego figure, clutching his Canadian flag, with a picture of the curved horizon of the Earth in the background.

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Animals News Science

Zebra Dung May Be New Fuel Source

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Thanks to zebra dung, cars could one day run on fuel made from old newspapers.

Today, we use mostly oil and gas to run our cars; oil and gas come from fossilized plants and animals. But fossil fuels are expensive, and there aren’t enough of them. Scientists are looking for cheaper and more plentiful fuels.

David Mullin is a biology professor at a university in New Orleans. He and his students are trying to make a fuel from plants. Plant-based fuels are called “biofuels.”

He knew that if he could break down “cellulose,” he could turn it into a fuel that could run vehicles.

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Kids Lighter Science

Are Parents Smarter Than Their Kids In Math And Science? Maybe Not

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Do you think you know more about science than your parents do? You could be right.

At a big science fair in England last November, 2,000 moms and dads were asked what sort of questions their kids had about science, and how they answer them.

Most of the parents said they found it hard to answer their children’s questions. A few of them said they think their kids know more about science than they do.

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Arts Lighter News

Mahler Symphony Gets An Unwelcome Addition

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When you go to hear live classical music, it’s usually quite a formal occasion.

The audience is respectful of the musicians.

Usually people even clap only at certain times. That’s so the beauty of the music isn’t interrupted.

The New York Philharmonic is a very famous classical music orchestra.

So you can imagine what people in the audience were thinking when, right in the middle of the soft and beautiful ending of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 – someone’s cell phone started ringing.

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Lighter Technology

Google Offers Holiday Easter Eggs

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If you type the words “let it snow” (without the quotation marks) into the search engine Google.com or Google.ca*, you probably won’t be surprised when Google gives you back a list of links to the classic Christmas song.

What might surprise you, however, is that it will also start snowing on your computer screen!

Eventually, so much “snow” will fall that your screen will fog up. But don’t worry, you can click on Google’s “defrost” button to clear it again. You can also use your mouse to “wipe” the screen clean.

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News Science

Two Earth-Sized Planets Discovered

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Two planets have been discovered, about 1,000 light years away from Earth.

Both of the planets are about the size of Earth. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller, and Kepler-20f is slighty larger than Earth.

The surface of the planets are too hot for water to exist on them; it would not be possible for life to exist on them either. They are hot because they orbit close to a star very much like our sun.

Kepler-20e has a termperature of about 760 degrees Celcius. (In contrast, Earth’s average surface temperature is 14 degrees Celsius.)

The planets were discovered during a mission by NASA using the Kepler space telescope. They have been combing the skies searching for planets since about 2009.

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Entertainment Lighter

The Mythbusters Accidentally “Bust” Someone’s House

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Usually they’re busting myths, but this time they busted a house – and a minivan.

Mythbusters is a popular television show in which scientists – led by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman — try to figure out if certain “myths” are true.

For instance, there is an idiom about someone who is clumsy being like “a bull in a china shop.”

The Mythbusters crew filled a shop with china and brought in several 1,800-pound bulls to see whether that “myth” was actually true.*

A big part of their show is that they often perform outrageous scientific stunts, like blowing up things or setting things on fire to prove or disprove the myths.

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