Success!!! The Falcon 9 launched successfully at 3:44am EST May 22nd. All systems were nominal, stage separation completed nominally, Solar arrays deployed successfully, and the Dragon capsule is now making its way toward the International Space Station. Stay tuned for more mission updates!



Way to go SpaceX!! This is the beginning of a new commercial era in space exploration.

*** Update - The launch was aborted at T-0.5 seconds, due to high chamber pressure in engine #5. Next launch window is May 22nd at 3:44am EST, and another window the following day, May 23rd 3:22am EST. Keep you posted on changes. ***



Hello there commercial space fans! This is indeed a big day for us. In just a few short hours, history could be made. If all goes according to plan, tomorrow morning - Sat May 19th, at 4:55am EST - SpaceX, a commercial space company headquartered in Hawthorne, CA, will be the first non governmental entity to launch a capsule toward the International Space Station.

The plan is to use a SpaceX Falcon 9 - a cluster of 9 . . . More

A provocative aspect of the climate change debate is the impact that temperature changes have on species. In particular, people have used the beloved and majestic polar bear, Ursus maritimus, as a mascot for the negative impact of climate change. A few years ago, it wasn't known that global warming could affect the fundamental definition of the polar bears species.

Polar bears are closely related to grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) and it has long been known that these animals can interbreed, creating a rare hybridization of the polar bear and the grizzly bear (formally called Ursus arctos horribilis and more commonly referred to as a grolar).

This hybrid, though extremely rare, has occurred in captivity and has long been storied in arctic legends. In 1864 biologist, Clinton Hart Merriam, described an animal killed at Rendezvous Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada as "buffy whitish with a golden brown muzzle". A century later, Clara Helgason remembers a bear shot by hunters on Kodiak Island during her childhood in 1943 as "a large, off-white bear with hair all over his paws".

In April 2006, Jim Martell, a sport hunter from the United States, shot a grolar near on Banks Island. Martell had paid $50,000, for an official license and a guide to hunt p . . . More

Food labeling is complicated. And confusing. For one thing, there is a lot of information on there, from calorie count to ingredients to calories per gram of fat. You almost need a science degree to start to understand it. Serving size, for example, isn’t helpful. On a bag of Doritos you’ll see that the serving size is 1oz (28g), and that there are about 9 servings in a bag. Now I have a kitchen scale. I advocate the use of a kitchen scale in cooking. But I, for one, am not going to pull out the scale when I want some chips to watch the Niners in week 2 of the NFL Playoffs. I don’t sit at home on a Saturday after the Costco run measuring out individual servings of pistachios and chips and peanuts and pretzels. I have other things to do. And yes, the new labels do approximate how many Doritos make up a serving, about 12, but I’m still not going to sit there and count out 12 chips per person per serving. Friends and family will think I finally fell off the deep end and have me committed.

But one of the big puzzles about the nutritional information is how it is calculated. Calories can be done quickly. Throw the items into a bomb calorimeter and burn them. Measure the increase in temperature and calculate the kJ of energy. Then convert those kJ to kcal. 4.184kJ = . . . More