Midday Open Thread

• Louis Braille was born 200 years ago today. There don't seem to be many tributes about it, but the Australian has a nice one:

  The Frenchman, who lost his sight when he was four after an accident in his father's workshop, at the age 15 began developing a reading system that would allow millions of blind and sight-impaired people to receive an education and to explore literature.

  He used a combination of six raised dots to make letters, words and numbers.

  It was a simple but brilliant modification of a method of communication originally developed for the French military to enable soldiers to communicate silently and without light at night.

• Spirit, the first of the two Mars Rovers to land on the Red Planet in 2004 for an expected three-month tour, just had its five-year anniversary on Mars and is still going strong. Spirit's twin, Opportunity, will match Spirit's feat on January 25th if all goes well.
• McClatchy has a cool graphic displaying all of Obama's cabinet nominees, along with notes on their backgrounds.
• Look out! Yellowstone National Park is being gently shaken by a Swarm of earthquakes:

  [I]n the last eight days, there have been more than 400 earthquakes at Yellowstone National Park — where the volcanic system powers the geysers, mudpots and steam vents.

  Hank Heasler, a National Park Service geologist at Yellowstone, says the constant quakes haven't caused any damage, but they can be a nuisance to rangers who live at the park.

  "They have commented to me that they would appreciate it if the earthquakes would stop so they could get a good night's sleep," he says.

• Avarice in the Arctic:

  The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 90 billion barrels of oil, 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas are recoverable in the frozen region north of the Arctic Circle. And the fight over who owns those resources may turn out to be the most important territorial dispute of this century. Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland all have a stake in the Arctic's icy real estate.

  -- Plutonium Page

• The Toronto Star has a great article on the resurrection of science in the US, using Steven Chu's upcoming appointment as an example:

  ... under the Bush administration, the scientific community has been through some dark days, to say the least. And it hasn't been a simple case of diminishing funding, as is so often the issue in the realm of governmental research. No, [Al Teich of the AAAS] says, Obama's remarks at Chu's appointment spoke directly to the problem. Reading between the lines, Teich seized on two of Obama's statements in particular: "(Chu's) appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science," Obama said during the press conference. "We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that the facts demand bold action." "If that's not a departure from the last eight years, then I don't know what is," Teich says.

  -- Plutonium Page

• Did that H5N1 scary bird flu  go away? Are there no worries about a flu pandemic? Think again.

  Just when you thought you could scratch bird flu off your list of things to worry about in 2009, the deadly H5N1 virus has resurfaced in poultry in Hong Kong for the first time in six years, reinforcing warnings that the threat of a human pandemic isn't over.

  India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and mainland China also experienced new outbreaks in December. During the same period, four new human cases -- in Egypt, Cambodia and Indonesia -- were reported to the World Health Organization. A 16-year-old girl in Egypt and a 2-year-old girl in Indonesia have died.

  The full worldwide 2008 H5N1 media review can be found here, and there'll be more to come in the next few weekends including an interview with a leading scientist preparing for whatever comes. -- DemFromCT