British Future Soldier Equipment Concept

link.

More Threats From Scotland to Seek Independence

Scotland's First Minister on Friday warned that a united Britain was "on borrowed time" unless Prime Minister David Cameron devolved more powers to Edinburgh, on the first anniversary of a historic independence referendum.

Scottish voters decided to stay part of the United Kingdom by 55 percent to 45 percent on September 18 last year, but First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told supporters that she would favour another referendum if polls showed renewed public demand.

"Only the people can decide if we will have another referendum," the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader said in the anniversary address.

"Only the people can decide when that will be. And only the people can decide if Scotland will become independent."

Recent polls have shown an increased support for independence.

"Right now, what people see at Westminster is a Tory government failing to fully deliver on the vow it made on more powers for our parliament," she said in the speech in a conference hall in Edinburgh.

link.

First Britons More Than 800k Years Ago

Ancient man ventured into northern Europe far earlier than previously thought, settling on England's east coast more than 800,000 years ago, scientists said.

It had been assumed that humans — thought to have emerged from Africa around 1.75 million years ago — kept mostly to relatively warm tropical forests, steppes and Mediterranean areas as they spread across Eurasia.

But the discovery of a collection of flint tools some 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of London shows that quite early on man braved colder climes.

[...]

About 75 flint tools have been found at the site near Happisburgh, a seaside hamlet in Norfolk, Parfitt and colleagues report in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The researchers dated the artifacts to somewhere between 866,000 to 814,000 years ago or 970,000 to 936,000 years ago. That's at least 100,000 years before the earliest known date for British settlement, in nearby Pakefield.

Exactly what kind of humans made these tools is unknown.

"It is impossible to guess who those people were without fossil evidence," said Eric Delson, an anthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York, who was not involved in the research.

Mammoths and saber-toothed cats roamed the area at that time, and the River Thames flowed into the sea there — about 150 kilometers (90 miles) to the north of where its mouth is today. The climate was a little colder than now, at least during the winter.

(wow the blog got dusty fast)

Do these count as trace fossils for hominds, I wonder?

British Found Own Space Agency

Britain has created a new national space agency, with plans to build a multimillion-dollar space innovation center. Until now UK space policy has been split between government departments. "The new agency will be a focal point in order to coordinate in a much more streamlined and efficient manner, working both on national projects and alongside ESA for the wider industry as well" said the UK's first astronaut Major Tim Peake, who was selected in 2009 to represent England in space.

Finally!

Monster Pliosaur Found on Britian's Jurassic Coast

So...Mark...was it really a Liopleurodon?

UK Puts Out Their Own Graphics For Climate Change

Summer Temperature in Increase (middle case) in degrees C.


Summer Precipitation Decrease in percent (middle case again).



Winter precipitation change in percent (middle case).

The Brits also have the error bar book end scenarios up at the page as well. Climate Feedback has some criticism of the above, fwiw. However, on the heels of me posting up about Mike's work for the a similar report for the US, - and the rest of NorAm, cuz it's the auxiliary US, really, these days *just kidding* - I thought I'd better put up the UK version. I know other countries are putting up theirs as well and I'll link to them as they come available (and I am made aware of them).

Remembering...

I used to be really, really into stealth aircraft and really wanted to design them. However, as I was getting ready to go to college, it became apparent that the aerospace world was contracting massively and there'd be few if any new programs to make a mark with in the post cold war world. Alas. I headed towards physics and astronomy...and ended up doing everything else instead.

Uk Due for Regular Severe Flooding by 2080

Flooding like that which devastated the North of England last year is set to become a common event across the UK in the next 75 years, new research has shown.

A study by Dr Hayley Fowler, of Newcastle University, predicts that severe storms – the likes of which currently occur every five to 25 years across the UK – will become more common and more severe in a matter of decades.

Looking at 'extreme rainfall events' – where rain falls steadily and heavily for between one and five days – the study predicts how the intensity of these storms may change in the future.

Dr Fowler found that across the UK, the amount of rain falling during one of these extreme events was likely to increase by up to 30 per cent by 2080. This increase is most likely to occur in autumn, winter and spring when the ground is already saturated, posing the biggest threat of flooding.

Dr Fowler, Reader in Climate Change Impacts at Newcastle, explained: "Predicting how extreme rainfall might change many years in the future is very difficult because events can be quite localised, especially in the summer.

"You only have to think about how difficult it is for the Met office to predict the weather two or three days in advance – the overall picture for the country tends to stay the same but local weather patterns can change quite dramatically.

"By taking a much more detailed look at the results from different regional climate models, we have created a more accurate picture of how wet Britain will be by 2070.

"What the data quite clearly shows is that we're going to see far more of these extreme downpours in years to come, putting more and more homes at risk from flooding, particularly in autumn and winter months when the ground is already saturated."

The research, published online today in the International Journal of Climatology, looks at changes to seasonal extreme rainfall across the UK by 2070-2100.

[...]

Consistent with global warming, the team found that as the air becomes warmer and is able to hold more moisture, Britain will get wetter.

In general, the study suggests larger changes to the intensity of short duration extreme rainfall events – those lasting one or two days. Northern and western regions of the UK are predicted to be worst hit.

Dr Fowler added: "Unfortunately, we still have least confidence in the model's predictions for the summer months and it is still highly uncertain how summer flash flooding such as the Hull and Hereford and Worcester floods in 2007 will change.

"What our data does show is that floods are no longer going to be freak events. All 13 models we looked at predict increases in extreme rainfall in winter, autumn and spring by the 2080s although the percent increase varies.

Soggy Brits are coming to town!

Monday Militaria: European UCAVs

French Neuron UCAV

British Taranis UCAV

Britain's Taranis unmanned combat air vehicle demonstrator will fly in 2010, with the French-led Neuron to follow in 2011. Both will use the same model of Rolls-Royce Adour engine - though ironically, propulsion is one area that is underfunded by both nations in terms of future development.

Europe will conceivably be in a position to begin fielding operational UCAVs toward the end of the next decade, but both programs already build on years of predominantly classified research and development.

The U.K. and France have been instrumental in pushing UCAV technology development in Europe; in Britain, through the BAE Systems-led Taranis project, while France has taken the lead on the multicountry Neuron UCAV demonstrator. Even with defense budget pressures in both countries, industry officials are confident their efforts will proceed.

The Europeans are pushing ahead with their programs and hope to play catch-up to the US. With the USN starting to get cold feet about its UCAVs (*sighs*) and the USAF unable to conduct an acquisition program without frakking it up (*oy*), it's entirely possible that the Europeans will actually catch up. Note, the Neuron, Taranis, X-45, and even the Russian Skat all are pretty similar in form superficially.

The Reason for KT Tunstall's Stage Name

EDINBURGH-based pop star KT Tunstall has revealed a new reason behind her stage name.

The singer, 32, had previously said she changed her childhood name Katie because it "reminded her of a buxom maid".

However, she now says it is all to do with geology. She said songwriter Billy Bragg found a term called the "KT Impact, which marks the start of the extinction of the dinosaurs".

kewl...and a bummer. Too bad she didn't find it herself.

Brit Invisi-Tanks

Or should this be:

British really KLINGONS!

Russia Vs Britain over the Polonium Death

All of you that have been following the bizarre saga of the radiation poisoning via the uber expensive (or should that be bolshoi?) polonium of Alexander Litvinenko. The British conducted an investigation and indicted Andrei Lugovoy on the murder. The Brits then went about the usual procedure of requesting an extradition. The Russians said, "Nyet!" Since then, there has been a tit-for-tat diplomatic silliness, but things are starting to get worse.

The Britz expelled some diplomats. The Russians did likewise. Then the Russians did something they have not done in a long, long time. They flew bombers to Britain. They did claim it had nothing to do with the flap though. erm, no pun intended. Then there's this lovely quote from today from Mr Putin:

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday denounced Britain's demands for the extradition of a suspect in the killing of Alexander Litvinenko as insulting and a relic of its colonial thinking.

"What they propose is an obvious vestige of colonial thinking," Putin was shown saying on Russian state television.

"They must have clearly forgotten that Britain is no longer a colonial power, there are no colonies left and, thank God, Russia has never been a British colony," Putin said.

Huh. That's odd. First World Nations regularly extradite suspects for trial to one another after a legal proceeding. I do believe that the Britz haven't done anything other than make a request for this to take place. I hardly see how its a case of colonialism. Frankly, the quote above sounds more like a Third World Dictator caught with his hands in the cookie jar and trying to score political points than Britain trying to be an empire again!

GNXP Asks: Whither the UK?

I'd be curious to see what an Brits think.

Dr Pillinger wrong again?

A while ago I wrote about a site where the Beagle 2 team thinks their spacecraft crashed. It was a tiny, dark spot (about 20 meters in diameter) visible in Mars Global Surveyor MOC images on the flank of a large crater (a little under 2 kilometers in diameter). The MOC team had already dismissed the spot as a possible Beagle 2 crash site, having determined that it was a small, eroded impact crater, but the Beagle 2 team published an analysis indicating what they thought were parts of their spacecraft, including its deployed airbags.

Well, HiRISE has now taken a look at the site, and it doesn't look like Beagle 2 is in there. Here is a montage of the two MOC images of the site with the new HiRISE picture. The one on the left is the initial image that was thought to be a splotch caused by the Beagle 2 crash; the center one is the one interpreted by the MOC team to prove that the spot was not a crash site, but was instead a small, eroded impact crater; and the one on the right is the HiRISE image, which indeed shows a small, eroded impact crater with no obvious sign of spacecraft hardware.

Outright stolen from The Planetary Society Weblog.

Ouch.

Nobels as Valid Measurement of Scientific Progress?

If this statistic of Nobel prizes is a valid measure of revolutionary science, then the main conclusion is that the USA has emerged to become the only nation that supports revolutionary science on a large scale. It seems that long-term strength in revolutionary science is mainly a product of a nation possessing numerous elite research institutions where revolutionary science thrives. A nation lacking such institutions will win relatively few Nobel prizes, and prizes will be spread around many institutions (eg. in Germany, the various Max Planck research institutions sometimes win a single Nobel prize, but no specific institute has ever won two prizes in 20 years).

Over the past 60 years, the UK has declined from being the only non-US focus of revolutionary science, to joining Switzerland and Germany (with nine prizes) as the kind of place where normal science has been thriving but revolutionary science is thinly-distributed and sporadic in occurrence. Presumably, recent US improvement has therefore been driven mainly by within-nation competition.

In contrast to the picture of long term decline in Nobel-prize-winning revolutionary science; UK and European scientific production (also that of Chinese science) is probably catching up with the USA in terms of scientometric measures such as numbers of publications and citations [12,13]. This difference between national performance in normal and revolutionary science seems to suggest that the research systems of revolutionary science and normal science are evolving towards separation [3]. Clearly, growth of the two types of science does not always go-together.

In future, it would probably be beneficial if this increasing separation between revolutionary and normal science were made explicit, with institutional self-definition and specialization, and differentiated funding streams and evaluation criteria for the small number of elite revolutionary science institutions [4]. Part of this process would be the development of a distinctive set of scientometric measures for revolutionary science. Counting Nobel laureates could be a first step in this direction.

There are a lot of profound discoveries that are simply not noticed by the Nobels: they are sometimes in areas that are not covered. It's something to think about though. As is the second part.

More Poms in Space

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

This is an alleged advertisement placed by the Discovery expedition to Antartica led by Robert Scott and including Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1901. Shackleton would later go on to set further precedents in Antarctic exploration including the furthest south expedition in 1909. Fast-forward almost 100 years and the NASA Moonbase, in the still more desolate and forbidding region of the Moon’s south pole, is a crater named after Shackleton himself. The same spirit of exploration that drove the great British explorers of the 19th and 20th century is found today in the American space agency. It’s easy to imagine the explorers of old picturing themselves as one member of an illustrious and continuous line of explorers who, as technology improved with time, would naturally go on further, higher, and to do even greater things. The naming of that region of the Moon is testament to that spirit. Shackleton’s inspirational will and vision provided a legacy far beyond what he probably would have comprehended, extending beyond even this planet. It will be a tragedy if the UK cannot see the good in being able to make a recognizable mark to space exploration as a distinct collaborator rather than a subcontracted minor player.

I never really understood why the Brits walked away from space exploration. Even if they had gone on to just do unmanned probes for an extended period, it would have been better than how this played out. True, they had economic problems, but one could imagine a TL where the Brits give up their earth bound Empire and instead became the leading light in space.

Poms to the Moon!

Britain could send its first un-manned mission to the moon by 2010 to study the lunar surface and find the best site for humans to inhabit, the BBC reported.

A report by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., a top British space company, found the cost of space travel had fallen enough to let the government consider such a probe, it said.

Britain's astronomy funding agency, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, was understood to be considering the idea, the broadcaster added.

"We are going to go to the moon in order to generate new business opportunities, science opportunities and develop technology," Surrey Satellite Chief Executive Martin Sweeting, who wrote the report, told BBC News late on Tuesday.

The idea would be to launch two forays to the moon.

The first, named "Moonlight," would fire four darts the size of suitcases onto the moon's surface from orbit to test for quakes, tremors and other data, the BBC said.

If the mission was successful, a second probe, "Moonraker" would be launched with the aim of landing on the moon.

Let's hope it turns out better than the Beagle 2.