Last night's full moon was the biggest one of the year (by 14%) and also the brightest (by an impressive 30%).

The Moon's remarkable luminosity sprung from its proximity--about 50,000 km closer to Earth than other full Moons of the year. This can happen because the Moon's orbit is not a circle but an ellipse: diagram. Last night, the Moon was on the near side of the ellipse--a place astronomers call "perigee"--making it a big, bright perigee Moon.

The "Wolf Moon" designation applied to January full moons comes from Native American tradition, according to the Farmers' Almanac.  If you missed last night's maximum, it will still be impressive tonight.  Those experiencing cloudy weather can watch the movie "Moonstruck" instead.

Link.

Scientists meeting for a SETI conference have been told that recent developments in communications technology are rendering the Earth less detectable to alien civilizations.

In the past, TV and radio programmes were broadcast from huge ground stations that transmitted signals at thousands of watts. These could be picked up relatively easily across the depths of space, astronomers calculated.

Now, most TV and radio programmes are transmitted from satellites that typically use only 75 watts and have aerials pointing toward Earth, rather than into space...

"Very soon we will become undetectable," he said. In short, in space no one will hear us at all.

People will react in different ways to this news, depending on whether one's vision of alien life is that of a Reese's Pieces-munching E.T., an all-knowing elder race, a Grey, a Predator, or any of an endless number of other possibilities.

Link.  Image credit.

Conventional photographs of the Sphinx, such as the one featured in this month's issue of Smithsonian magazine, are taken looking west and give the impression that the figure and the three pyramids sit in a remote Egyptian desert. The reality is that urban development of Cairo and Giza have brought the cities to within easy walking distance, as one can see from a Google satellite view.  This photo, taken from inside a nearby fast food location, emphasizes that reality in a dramatic fashion.

Photo credit. Via Reddit.

The National Wildlife Federation has an annual photography competition.  The image above was the Grand Prize winner in the "Professional" category in 2009.

While watching a group of bald eagles that had congregated at a local cattle feed lot, Palmer noticed the raptors were climbing into the air to catch starlings and blackbirds—not necessarily typical prey for the large birds.

At the link are the winning photographs in about a dozen other categories.

Link.

This map is the creation of Neil Freeman, who noted that the current 50 states have populations ranging from a half million to 33 million.

This Electoral Reform Map redivides the territory of the United States into 50 bodies of equal size - 281,421,906 divided by 50 is 5,616,997. This map shows one possible way to redraw the fifty states... The map was laid out with no political orientation or wealth. As a result, states may be favor one or the other parties.

In a U.S. Senate based on this map, each Senator would represent the same number of constituents.

Link, via James Fallows.

YouTube link.

Unlike conventional modern "magic," what was involved in the underwater breathhold was not special effects or hidden technology.  Instead, Blaine prepared using a combination of hypoxic tent training to increase his hematocrit, preloading with 100% oxygen, meditation to decrease his oxygen consumption, and hyperventilation to delay his hypercapnic response.

As a useful reference point, his 17-minute breathhold time is almost the same length as this 20-minute TED talk.  It's also worth noting here as an addendum that the hyperventilation ("purging") he describes should not be attempted by amateurs to increase underwater breathhold time while swimming or diving.  The technique does allow a longer breathhold, but does not provide additional oxygen, so novices can become disoriented from hypoxia and drown.

This winter has been unusually cold in Britain.  In response, three Holiday Inn hotels there are offeering to provide guests with bed-warmers.  Human bed-warmers.

If requested, a willing staff-member at two of the chain's London hotels and one in the northern English city of Manchester will dress in an all-in-one fleece sleeper suit before slipping between the sheets.

Holiday Inn said the warmer would be fully dressed and leave the bed before the guest occupied it. They could not confirm if the warmer would shower first, but said hair would be covered.

Link.  Pictured in the inset is a traditional English copper bed warmer.

The museum, formerly called the Army Medical Museum, is now part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C.  It houses millions of artifacts in a variety of historically significant collections.  Selections from their photographic archives have been assembled in a Flickr photostream, which "began as unofficial 'favorite photos' of the staff of the Otis Historical Archives" at the museum.

The subject material is understandably weighted toward anatomic and pathologic specimens, but also includes historical photos re public health and the delivery of health care in war and in peacetime.

Links for the museum and the photostream.  Photo credit Joe Clark.

As Clark Kent, Superman was raised as a Methodist.

While growing up in Smallville, Kansas, Clark Kent attended Sunday church services at the local Methodist church with his mother, Martha Kent, every week until he was fourteen years old. These aspects of the character are not speculative, but are canonical - established by in-continuity published DC Comics.

Batman's religiosity is a bit more complex:

...there is some disagreement among fans as well as among writers about whether the character is a mostly lapsed Catholic or a mostly lapsed Episcopalian. There is universal agreement that the character is not an active churchgoer in any faith.

The religious affiliation of hundreds of comic book characters and superheroes has been tabulated at Adherents.com.  You can search through a list to find your favorites, or view them as groups.  Pictured above, for example, is the Legion of Baptist Superheroes.

Link.

This skimmer was found last year, attached to the front of a Citibank automatic teller machine in California.

This is fairly professional job: Notice how the bulk of the electronics fit into the flap below the card acceptance slot. Also, check out the tiny pinhole camera [on the left, underneath the slot], ostensibly designed to switch on and record the victim’s movements as he or she enters their PIN at the ATM.

Neatorama has previously featured "traps" that physically steal the ATM card, and totally fake ATM machines.  To counteract these skimmers, some ATMs "now oscillate the card back and forth as it is motored into the machine, effectively not providing a smooth "swipe" these skimmers need."  Other ATMs incorporate GreenSleeves, but criminals have devised fake GreenSleeves!

http://www.krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/would-you-have-spotted-the-fraud/, via Reddit.

The U.S. Geological Survey has an extensive database of lava-related events in Hawaii.  One hundred of the best images have been assembled on a web page and placed on a DVD.  These were...

...selected from the collections of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory as enduring favorites of the staff, researchers, media, designers, and the public over time. They represent photographs of a variety of geological phenomena and eruptive events, chosen for their content, quality of exposure, and aesthetic appeal. The number was kept to 100 to maintain the high resolution desirable.

In the photo above a pair of "concerned scientists" decide to run from a "...surging ‘a‘a flow in Royal Gardens. The top of an ‘a‘a flow rides on the underlying mass and rolls over it like a tractor’s tread, advancing to the front of the flow."

Link, via.  Photo by J.D. Griggs, 7/2/83, JG2514 (click to enlarge).

Physical chemists at Northwestern University have demonstrated that a simple droplet of oil can navigate a complex labyrinth.

Grzybowski's team made a number of silicon mazes roughly 6.5 square centimeters in size. To create the conditions for movement, the researchers filled the labyrinths with an alkaline solution of potassium hydroxide. The maze runners, placed at the entrance of the labyrinths, were millimeter-wide droplets of either mineral oil or the organic solvent dichloromethane, both loaded with a weak acid and red dye. The "prize," placed at the exit of each maze, was a lump of agarose gel soaked in hydrochloric acid. "We wanted to give [the droplets] a bit of a challenge and see if they could do more than just go in a straight line," Grzybowski says.

Over the course of a minute or so, each droplet found its way to the end of the maze.

The mechanism is explained at the link.  The left diagram above shows that a droplet chose the shortest route from the entry to the dashed box where the "prize" was placed.  The droplet on the right went astray twice but corrrected itself en route.



The observation potentially has more than curiosity value; the researchers suggest that the basic principles involved may be applicable to the delivery of antineoplastic chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells.

Link.

Franca Cuneo poses on Capri. In real life, the 28-year-old is a restaurateur in Hamburg.

Brigitte, a German fashion magazine, has announced that it will no longer employ professional models for its fashion shoots.

But something about the photos looks different. A prominent tummy here and noticeable wrinkles there reveal that these are not size-zero Amazons straight from the catwalk, but real women. As of the January issue, which hit the newsstands Saturday, Brigitte will use only amateur models in its fashion shoots.

The public response has been overwhelmingly favorable, including thousands of applications from potential models.  The German press has been more skeptical, noting that the models chosen to date may be amateurs, but they still "correspond to the conventional ideas of beauty," suggesting that the entire enterprise is a publicity stunt.

Link, photo credit.

Record snowfall has covered the U.K., while cold temperatures are gripping Europe.  Seoul and Beijing have seen their heaviest snowfalls in recent memory, and arctic temperatures have penetrated the U.S. far enough to threaten crops in Florida.  For those who have to commute to work in such weather, this is a good time to appreciate the technology incorporated into winter service vehicles.

Sand- and salt trucks have evolved a long way from the era when two men with shovels used to stand on the back of a dump truck. Modern grit is a mixture of sand and rock salt, but the latter has deleterious effects not only on metal vehicle frames, but also on vegetation and freshwater lakes and streams.  A variety of techniques have therefore been devised to keep roads on a "low-salt diet."

"Pre-wetting" the salt -- spraying it with brine as it's dropped -- helps it stick to the road better, meaning crews can cut back from 500 pounds per mile to 200...

Vehicle-mounted electronic thermometers let supervisors know how far above or below freezing the pavement is. Some truck cabs have up-to-the-minute weather radar so crews know how long it'll be before the freezing rain or snow hits...

To prevent the grit from being thrown off the road surface by vehicle tires, additional substances may be intermixed to increase adherence.  The earliest additive was molasses, but it was difficult to use in cold weather and tended to attract cows and wildlife to the roads.

That means using brine, magnesium chloride and a sugar beet byproduct, which are mixed via a dozen yellow-handled valves marked with letters of the alphabet.

Fine-tuning the grit application to the weather conditions not only saves taxpayers money (one truckload of salt costs ~$800), but also reduces chloride levels in nearby lakes.

http://www.startribune.com/local/south/80513267.html.  Photo credit Richard Tsong Taatarii, Star Tribune

AbeBooks (U.K.) has a Weird Book Room, which they describe as...

"...the finest source of everything that's bizarre, odd and downright weird in books. We now have 101 crazy and strange titles about every oddball aspect of life you could possibly imagine and a few things you couldn't possibly imagine."

This assemblage is slightly different from the well-known Bookseller/Diagram Prize, which is awarded annually to the book with the most unusual title.  In the AbeBooks room, some of the selections have rather prosaic titles, but unusual subject matter.

The example shown is The Teach Your Chicken To Fly Training Manual, in which "Using careful instructions, detailed diagrams and specially designed exercises to build up wing strength, Weekes guides you in training your chickens to take to flight."

You can probably find something more to your liking.

Link, via Professor Hex.