SANTA CRUZ -- Like cats are drawn to visions of flushing toilets, so are astrophysicists drawn to black holes swallowing stars.

Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, a UC Santa Cruz professor, laughed when he agreed that a star in the gravitational clutches of a black hole bears a striking resemblance to a flushing toilet. But his research, recently accepted into the "Astrophysical Journal," is no joke.

Many black holes were once stars, but have collapsed in onto themselves. Their incredible mass, packed into a tiny point, creates a huge gravitational pull capable of destroying planets and stars alike.

Ramirez-Ruiz and his team have been working on a computer model that can simulate what happens when a star succumbs to a black hole. He tested the model on visual data published in the prestigious journal, "Nature" in 2012.

That study documented a black hole digesting a star, and said it was a rare helium star as opposed to a run-of-the-mill hydrogen star.

Ramirez-Ruiz and his former graduate student, James Guillochon, were skeptical of the study. Ramirez-Ruiz said that events such as these, known as tidal disruption events, only happen once every 10,000 years. That astrophysicists would see one involving such a rare star seemed like a statistical anomaly. "It's a very, very unlikely situation," Ramirez-Ruiz said.

After scrutinizing the data and putting it into his model, Ramirez-Ruiz and his team found that the shredded star was indeed composed of hydrogen. "We sort of cleared the mystery and said, 'Don't worry, these events are as you would imagine. You see the most common star disrupted by the most common black hole,'" Ramirez-Ruiz said.

Ramirez-Ruiz, 37, has been a professor at UCSC for seven years. He explained that when the universe was young, black holes consumed stars all the time. Now, stars rarely get close enough to black holes to be sucked in by their massive gravitational pull.

When they are, though, the light show is brilliant. As the star approaches, its outermost layers get gobbled up by the black hole while the rest of the gaseous star falls into orbit. Its mass flings and spins around the hole as the star is torn apart by the hole's gravity. The gas of the star heats up so much that when atoms bump into one another the force rips them apart.

Ripping atoms helps to shed light onto the findings in the "Nature" paper that Ramirez-Ruiz and Guillochon helped debunk. In the original paper, the authors could not find evidence of hydrogen and so concluded it was not there.

Read the rest here:
Professor sheds light on death of a star

"It looks like a graveyard." 9OYS sheds light on a dark dumping grou
It #39;s a neglected area, where dirt roads go on for miles and the desert seems endless.

By: kgun9

Read more from the original source:
"It looks like a graveyard." 9OYS sheds light on a dark dumping grou - Video

Captain Falcon Sheds Manly Tears
Breast Cancer awareness Ganondorf is a sight to behold but I legitimately freaked out when ganon pulled out the sword. @_@

By: GeocentricMedium

Read the original:
Captain Falcon Sheds Manly Tears - Video

GV Prakash sheds wieght for Pencil!
Music composer GV Prakash, is likely to make his debut as an actor. Meanwhile, he has shed nearly 9 kilos to look more appealing in Pencil. GV has added, tha...

By: Galatta Tamil |

See the rest here:
GV Prakash sheds wieght for Pencil! - Video

Ford Motor Co.s new F-150 pickup sheds 700 pounds from its body and chassis, but to get there, the Dearborn automaker needed help from about a dozen hefty men.

In an effort to improve the durability of its leather-wrapped truck seats, Ford hired a firm to enlist the help of men of a certain size: at least 265 pounds. Dressed in dirty jeans, their mission was to climb into the drivers seat, get down and climb up again, at least 10,000 times per truck.

The result of that punishment-testing is a pair of front seats made of higher-strength steel and tougher leather that weigh a combined 30 pounds less than the current seats, but withstand consistent beating from the beefiest and grimiest truck drivers.

Even though our seats met our internal standards, we were getting a few customers, especially with our leather seats, where the leather was cracking and not living up to expectations, said Tim Dunn, Fords North American seat complete engineer manager, in an interview. Ford eventually found a contributing factor in addition to weight: dirt. Most seat durability testing is done by robot, but engineers were wary of how dirt could mess with robots and never tried the combination.

Enter the seat testers. Wearing stiff new jeans, they worked as many as 10 hours daily, for about a week, in scorching heat last summer in Taylor. Oh, yeah: The participants had to wear the same jeans throughout the process to emulate long-term wear and tear. That got to be both sticky and uncomfortable as the combination of dirt a standardized test material known as Arizona dust, which was patted onto truck seats every 500 sits and sweat began to cake on the denims bottoms and inseams.

The seats will debut in the 2015 F-150, which arrives at dealers late this year.

Though it wasnt known exactly how much the seat testers were paid, it apparently wasnt enough: The firm had to increase the pay rate to avoid losing participants and having to start over, Dunn said.

A couple of them said it just wasnt worth it for what they were getting paid, making $60 to $70 a day, he said.

Here is the original post:
Hefty men pound Ford's F-150 into shape

The Hassan City Municipal Council (CMC) and Hassan Cooperative Milk Producers Societies Union are at loggerheads over setting up temporary sheds in vacant plots sanctioned by the CMC, to sell Nandini products here.

While the CMC has alleged that the milk union was constructing permanent structures in the guise of temporary sheds, the union defends its structures as non-permanent.

The CMC had sanctioned 16 plots at a monthly rent of Rs. 150 to Rs. 300. Among them, nine were allotted by the CMC in May 2010, while the remaining seven in June 2013.

So far, sheds have come up in 10 plots. Construction of the remaining was under progress. The union allots these structures to those interested, through tender process, and the highest bidder gets the shed for two years. The union earns a monthly rent varying from Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 6,000 and shopkeepers are permitted to sell only KMF products.

CMC Commissioner V.H. Krishnamurthy said he took objection to the construction of one such structure at Basattikoplu road near Slators Hall, and pointed out that the union had violated the conditions laid by the CMC.

He said a notice had been issued to the union on January 29 stating that it had taken up construction of a permanent structure. He appealed to the union to remove the permanent structure and erect a temporary shed in its place.

The issue got political significance after the former Minister H.D. Revanna, who is president of the union, took objection to the CMCs notice.

He reportedly called up the CMC Commissioner and warned him of dire consequences if he failed to follow his words.

Mr. Krishnamurthy, on Saturday, told The Hindu, the plots were allotted to support sale of KMF products. The union cannot go for permanent structures, which cant be removed. But, the union is constructing brick walls. They should place only sheds, which can be removed in case the plots are required by the CMC for road widening or any other projects.

The milk union, however, said the structures were all temporary.

Continued here:
Hassan CMC, milk union at loggerheads over sheds

Your physical height can affect your emotional state of mind, according to a new study.

We already know that language bestows positive value on people of tall stature: We look up to them rather than down. And various studies have found correlations between being taller and earning more.

Now virtual reality is adding to the understanding of the short state of mind. A study conducted at Oxford University and published in December 2013 used avatars to let participants go through the virtual experience of riding a subway at their normal height and then at that height reduced by ten inches.

For the study, 60 womennone with a history of mental illness, but all of whom had recently reported mistrustful thoughtsdonned headsets and viewed monitors as they participated in two 3-D virtual-reality trips on the London subway system. They were able to move and interact with other virtual passengers, exchanging glances or looking away from others, for instance.

The virtual train trips journeyed between subway stations, took about six minutes each, and were programmed and animated identically except for one thing: In one ride, the avatar representing the participant was reduced in height by 25 centimetersa little less than ten inches. That's "approximately the height of a head" in the words of Oxford clinical psychologist and lead researcher Daniel Freeman.

The results: Participants reported that during the ride in which they were made to feel shorter, they felt more vulnerable, more negative about themselves, and had a greater sense of paranoia. "The key to this study was there were no reasons for mistrust," says Freeman. Yet when the participants saw the world from a height that was a head shorter than usual, "they thought people were being more hostile or trying to isolate them."

Short on Confidence

That doesn't suggest that if you're short you're always less trustful or more paranoid, says Freeman. But the findings do reinforce common perceptions about height. "Height seems to affect our sense of social status," he says, and being taller tends to be socially desirable.

"The implication is that greater height can make you more confident in social situations," he says. "All of us can recognize that when we feel worse about ourselves, we can hunch up and stoop and take up less space, but when we feel more confident we feel taller and take up more space."

There may be some reality to the virtual reality, too, as expressed in a comment from a study participant. "I noticed the second time I was shorter. People, even suitcases, were feeling high. I was frustrated to feel like a child again, felt out of place on the tube, because I wasn't an adult." Being shorter, in other words, replicated the sense of vulnerability of a little child, not yet grown into the full height of adulthood.

Read the original:
Short People Got Lots of Reasons to Legitimately Feel Paranoid

Portable storage sheds at OriginalShelters.com

By: Tom Storage

See more here:
Portable storage sheds at OriginalShelters.com - Video

By Nick Cunningham for OilPrice.com

The oil industry may be in the midst of entering a new phase of high costs and slower growth. New oil discoveries are harder to come by, and the scramble to replace depleting production is costing more and more. The days of the large discovery that is easy to tap into are gone. Now, the industry has to go to the ends of the earth to get more oil. And for years, the majors were happy to do so capital expenditures rose significantly over the last decade for most of the largest oil companies. But the main problem? Production for many of them has not increased in a corresponding fashion.

Now, instead of blowing evermore cash on boosting booked reserves, several oil companies are pulling back in order to shore up profitability. That means passing on huge projects, divesting from underperforming ones, and focusing on core assets. Much of the cash raised will then be returned to shareholders in buybacks or dividends to prop up their stock prices. This shift to a conservative approach was evident in the most recent earnings season.

Shell (RDS-A) made the most headlines by scrapping its Arctic program (for 2014 at least), selling off a $1.1 billion stake in the Wheatstone LNG project in Australia, and selling $1 billion of assets in an offshore oil project in Brazil. Last year it wrote down $2 billion for a gas-to-liquids facility in Louisiana. Most recently, Shell informed Canadian regulators that it will stop work on a proposed oil sands mine in Alberta as it reevaluates the timing of various asset developments with a focus on maintaining a competitive business and successful delivery of near-term growth projects. It also announced plans to sell off assets in the North Sea. All told, Shell plans on divesting $15 billion over the next two years. This is because production slipped 5% over the last year despite huge spending.

Chevron (CVX) is also divesting some assets to improve its balance sheet, although not to the degree of Shell. Its oil production declined 3.5% in 2013 compared to the year before, and it posted negative free cash flow for the year. Its cutting its spending by 5% to reduce cash flow pressure. CEO John Watson said that 2014 will be its peak year for its LNG spending after two major Australian projects near completion. But, despite the trouble, Chevron is still investing $40 billion in 2014 in an effort to increase oil and gas production by 25% by 2017.

BP (BP) wrapped up a massive divestiture plan last year, to the tune of $38 billion. Its situation is unique in that its overwhelming motivation was to pay for the historic Macondo well blow out in 2010 and all the legal mess that followed. Yet, BP may continue shedding assets to raise cash and cut costs. Fuel Fix reports that BP may sell an additional $10 billion in assets by 2015. The asset sales cut production for the oil giant, which fell 1.9% in 2013. BP also expects production in 2014 to continue to fall. It posted a 30% decline in fourth quarter profit, although BPs CEO thinks its remaining assets are in good shape.

In this new era of difficult oil, major oil companies are selling assets in order to operate leaner and smarter. This makes sense. Throwing billions of dollars at projects that fail to live up to their billing is not a recipe for success. The flip side is that the failure to find and book new reserves means that many oil companies face an uncertain future as their current production levels slowly decline and they decline to invest in new fields.

Read the original article at OilPrice.com.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.

Read the original post:
Big Oil Sheds Assets to Fix Balance Sheets

Ford Motor Co.s new F-150 pickup sheds 700 pounds from its body and chassis, but to get there, the Dearborn automaker needed help from about a dozen hefty men.

In an effort to improve the durability of its leather-wrapped truck seats, Ford hired a firm to enlist the help of men of a certain size specifically, those weighing at least 265 pounds. Dressed in dirty jeans, their mission was to climb up into the drivers seat, get down and climb up again at least 10,000 times per truck.

The result of that punishment-testing is a pair of front seats made of higher-strength steel and tougher leather that weigh a combined 30 pounds less than the current seats, but are able to withstand consistent beating from the beefiest and grimiest truck drivers.

Even though our seats met our internal standards, we were getting a few customers, especially with our leather seats, where the leather was cracking and not living up to expectations, said Tim Dunn, Fords North American seat complete engineer manager, in an interview. Ford eventually found a contributing factor in addition to weight: dirt. Most seat durability testing is done by robot, but engineers were wary of how dirt could mess with robots and never tried the combination.

Enter the seat testers. Clad in stiff new jeans, they worked as many as 10 hours each day for about a week in scorching heat last summer in Taylor. Oh, yeah: The participants had to wear the same jeans throughout the process to emulate long-term wear and tear. That got to be both sticky and uncomfortable as the combination of dirt a standardized test material known as Arizona dust which was patted onto truck seats every 500 sits and sweat began to cake on the denims bottoms and inseams.

Though it wasnt known exactly how much the seat testers were paid, it apparently wasnt enough: The firm had to increase the pay rate to avoid losing participants and having to start over, Dunn said.

A couple of them said it just wasnt worth it for what they were getting paid, making $60 to $70 a day, he said.

Original post:
Ford hires 265-pound men to test F-150 seats