Altaeros’s blimp, technically called an “aerostat” since it is tethered to the ground rather than free-flying, is designed to hold a wind turbine in its hollow center and fly at nearly 2,000 feet, where the winds are more consistent and powerful.  A thick mooring cable will carry the electricity generated by the turbine to a ground station.

. . . . .

Altaeros believes its aerostat design could produce two to five times as much power as a pole-mounted, 350-foot-tall turbine in the exact location. Initially, the company is developing what you might call “wind power in a box,” packing the balloon, helium tanks, rotor, generator, and related gear into a shipping container. The container would then be sent to a remote oil field, island, or military post that would typically rely on a diesel generator for power. Altaeros’s aim is that the aerostat will be flying after just a day of set-up and will only need to descend every three or four months for a helium top-off and a maintenance check.

A generator that’s lighter than air — and relatively light on the wallet [The Boston Globe]

Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.

For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.

The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub’s pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.

His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.

But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.

Haub’s “bad” cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his “good” cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds [CNN]

The discovery, published in the prestigious science journal Nature today, could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012.

Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster’s Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and his team of researchers have also shown that the conversion is direct. Making blood from skin does not require the middle step of changing a skin stem cell into a pluripotent stem cell that could make many other types of human cells, then turning it into a blood stem cell.

“We have shown this works using human skin. We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process,” said Bhatia. “We’ll now go on to work on developing other types of human cell types from skin, as we already have encouraging evidence.”

The discovery was replicated several times over two years using human skin from both young and old people to prove it works for any age of person.

McMaster scientists turn skin into blood [Medical Daily]

. . . . .

To help space station crewmembers stay involved with their local politics, NASA has made arrangements with county officials that allow astronauts to vote from space. The ballots are prepared by county officials and beamed up from Mission Control.

. . . . .

Once the astronauts vote, the ballots are then beamed back to Mission Control and delivered to their respective county clerk’s office.

Voting From Space: American Astronauts Cast Ballots In Orbit [Space.com]

Video: Spacecraft Launched From Newburgh [Gothamist]

Southerners are more like to die from the effects of the weather than people living in any other region of the US.

But for all the attention garnered by catastrophic hurricanes such as Katrina and Andrew, simple heatwaves kill far more people than all natural disasters combined, according to a newly published county-by-county map of natural hazard deaths.

Other extreme summer hazards, such as floods, and cold winter weather also outranked hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires, according to geographers Kevin Borden and Susan Cutter, of the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Overall, natural disasters account for less than 5% of natural hazard deaths across the US.

Large cities like San Francisco and New York are among the safest places to live, but if city living isn’t for you, the odds of dying from the weather are lowest in the Midwest.

Death map USA: Natural disaster hotspots revealed [New Scientist]

Pope’s astronomer says he would baptise an alien if it asked him [The Guardian]

Stronger than glass, various military and commercial applications for this remarkable material are already being tested. What was once used in the science-fiction Star Trek movies, see-through aluminum is now something that – through test mixing with rubies, sapphires and more – is now being tried out in all kinds of ways to create transparency where strength is also required.

For now, it is used in static-free transparent aluminum wrapping for computer parts and other electronics. It is also being tested in otherwise-conventional see-through soda cans and military shielding for vehicles where windows once were. At over ten dollars per square inch, however, it is still not cheap enough for mainstream everyday use – but may be someday soon.

Transparent Aluminum: Real, Glass-Like, See-Through Metal [Dornob]

Dancing Pigeons – Ritalin from Blink on Vimeo.

Awesome: Flamethrower Vs. Fire Extinguisher [Geekologie]

An upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere recently shrank so much that researchers are at a loss to adequately explain it, NASA said on Thursday.

The thermosphere, which blocks harmful ultraviolet rays, expands and contracts regularly due to the sun’s activities. As carbon dioxide increases, it has a cooling effect at such high altitudes, which also contributes to the contraction.

But even these two factors aren’t fully explaining the extraordinary contraction which, though unlikely to affect the weather, can affect the movement of satellites, researchers said.

“This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years,” John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab was quoted as saying in NASA news report.

Emmert is the lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

“We cannot explain the abnormally low densities, which are about 30 percent lower” than from previous contractions, Emmert told CNN.com.

Scientists baffled by unusual upper atmosphere shrinkage [CNN]