It's been potpourri for the Science blog this week. We have news from everything between evolution to the secret of immortality, from life via diamonds to ... mutant pig-monkeys? I did say it was potpourri week. Let's get started with this week's Science Weekend Warrior!

In an effort to combine the spirit of the Christmas season with that of  concern for the environment, Tishman Speyer Properties, manager and co-owner of the Rockefeller Center in New York, has decided to go for a "greener" Christmas tree this year with the use of energy-saving light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Aside from that, Tishman Speyer has an alternative source of electricity for the Rockefeller Center complex.

Find out what it is after the jump!

As the saying goes, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. Well after the day we've had here at QJ Central, I hope everyone's hungry, because we've got breakfast for all ... as long as you don't mind your eggs scrambled.

So what's the dish? As many of you might've known already, QJ.NET keeps growing and coming into its own with each passing day. As we grow, so does our audience (hey, that's you!). For some time now, the site has been dragging its feet, and we practically have to get out and push it to your browsers sometimes. That's no fun for you, and we're tired of having to buy new shoes.

Today we saw the first (of two) changes to our server structure, including a new addition. But like a little boy on Christmas morning, that brand new bike doesn't put itself together, and Santa isn't always the greatest when it comes to reading the French instructions. The short of it is that things didn't go as planned, and we should've taken the proper precautions and made offerings to the server gods... may thine bandwidth bless thee and keep thee free from lag.

Everything seems to be in order now, and hopefully the change in loading speed has been noticed (if you can tell, let us know in the comments - we could use the affirmation right about now). We apologize for the huge, unanticipated outage today, but now that you're surfing the site a bit faster, hopefully you'll forgive us.

And there should be another dramatic boost to speed by the beginning of next week as we make another change to our setup. This will result in a few hours of downtime for DL.QJ.NET, but like Santa, the plan is for us to sneak in while most of you are asleep, so leave out some cookies. Both DL.QJ and the front pages will benefit from this shakeup, but the front pages should remain unaffected as far as downtime is concerned.

Thanks for sticking with us and being patient! Now who's up for some spicy Denver Omelettes?

In a recent official press release, NASA has announced that they will be offering their assistance to Santa Claus as he makes his annual global delivery today. In the announcement, they have noted that some of NASA's resources such as the Debris Imaging Radar System will be... ah, heck.

Here's the full announcement. It's best when you get to read the whole thing for yourself, and if you don't believe us, then feel free to NASA's official site.

RELEASE: 74-06

NASA's KSC Providing Assistance to Santa on Christmas Eve

The Debris Imaging Radar System, used during the night launch of NASA's space shuttle mission STS-116, is a new system at Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will now be made available to Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

Based on its success in identifying even the smallest amount of debris coming off the orbiter or the external tank, NASA has strong confidence the system will provide assistance in observing Santa's sleigh. Since the elves have the packages piled high, NASA can determine with great accuracy if any gifts planned for delivery fall off the sleigh. The radar system is capable of high-definition radar imagery, so the approximate shape, size and weight of the packages can be determined.

This could greatly help Santa recover the packages so that no child is disappointed by not receiving the presents the jolly fellow promised while he made the rounds in shopping malls before Christmas. The radar has an auto-track mode so that it can be left unattended on Christmas Eve and still perform its intended function. The system will be automatically activated once NASA's air traffic control radar located on north KSC has made radar contact with Santa's sleigh.

Also of assistance to Santa this year is the new Differential Global Positioning Satellite System ground station at the Shuttle Landing Facility. These new GPS antennas located near the control tower can help if there is an emergency. Since the sleigh is now GPS equipped, it can guide Santa to a landing within 10 feet of the runway's centerline, regardless of which end of the runway he needs to use.

Though Shuttle Landing Facility personnel will be on holiday leave, officials at the NASA Tower have agreed to provide the customary support by turning the landing lights on before they depart for Christmas, as well as turning on the TACAN radio homing beacon and the visual alternating green and white lighted rotating beacon.

NASA will use the orbiter Discovery to mimic Santa's sleigh during the STS-116 landing currently planned for Friday, in order to test the ability to operate these two new systems in auto-track mode. If the orbiter is waved off to land on the West Coast, the Shuttle Training Aircraft will be used to simulate Santa's sleigh.

If Santa needs help, one of the primary radio frequencies normally used for communication in restricted airspace will still be monitored by the Air Force Eastern Range and also NASA security.

For more information about KSC's assistance to Santa, contact the KSC News Center at 321-867-2468.

In the meantime, you can track Santa's progress right here.

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the site, all the banners were snowing and consoles alight! As a holiday gift to all our readers, I'll end the poetry abuse right there. On behalf of the entire QJ.NET staff, I'd like to wish all of our readers a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, a cheerful Kwanzaa and any other yuletide tradition you might practice.

It has been quite a year for the gaming industry with the rounding out of the next-gen console list, and here's hoping some of you are lucky enough to find your favorite gadgets in your stockings tomorrow. But even if you don't, you can count on our fantastic writing team to keep you up to date on all the latest news and happenings over the holidays. They're sacrificing quite a bit of their own holiday time to keep the articles flowing over the next few days, so be sure to drop them a line and let them know you appreciate their unwavering commitment to keeping you in the loop! There's no rest for the wicked, and we've got that covered in spades.

Aside from sparing everyone from my pathetic attempt at poetry parody, we do have one small present for you guys in the form of a new feature! As many of you probably know, the QJ.NET Blog of Blogs is a compilation of every news story posted across the entire network, making it a one stop shop for all your news needs. But since not everyone will be interested in everything we cover, you can now make the Blog of Blogs (or as we lovingly call it, "the BoB") display just the news you want to read about.

All you have to do is register an account (for free of course) and then click on Blog of Blogs Settings at the top of the right-hand column. From there, you can select which subjects you want displayed on the BoB and voila! - a custom front page chock full of all the news you want to see!

Happy Holidays!

Given it's Christmas, we thought it was time to look back at the year and think things over. We say this as we remember all the violent-game-makes-violent-kids debates that have been springing up like fungus from the mouths of many a lawyer, a commentator and a news site, and see if it's really all that bad. Apparently, not quite.

Enter Gus Luna. Formerly an all-star soccer player, tae-kwon-do green belt, and the president of his 5th-grade class, Gus suddenly fell ill to brain cancer.

Now bedridden and home-schooled, Gus endures chemotherapy to cure the illness, along with exploratory brain surgery. Procedures that would normally be unbearable, if it weren't for his other constant companion (aside from his loving parents) - videogames.

"It would be really hard without this ... You never know what's going to happen next." as Gus commented on how the games helped him cope with the hospital's unfamiliar and oftentimes stressful atmosphere.

And for other patients in Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where Gus is hospitalized, it looks like they're getting a chance at his perks, in the from of the hospital's Fun Center. Built to be rolled around like hospital equipment (Wiimote=/=Defribillator) the Fun Centers are built exactly for this purpose - to help child patients recover from mentally stressful procedure like chemotherapy, at the same time putting anxious parents' minds at ease.

And for those asking who's behind the Fun Center program, our attention shifts to Don James of Nintendo Co. Ltd, who designed the Fun Center. Nintendo's currently supplying 3,500 of the 5,000-plus Fun Centers to 1,000 hospitals worldwide, which are in turn part of a program run by the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation.

Nintendo's Fun Center package includes a GameCube console, flat-screen monitor and DVD player. Did we mention that they're planning to release a Wii package for mid - 2007? *Drool*

For the guys who, like us, truly believe that something good comes out of responsible, controlled gaming, this be your good tidings for the season.

It was just a few days ago that we told you guys about the Mars photos that NASA picked up. And we were just like you, we were beginning to wonder what kind of natural beauty other planets could show to our eyes. And if you're assuming these are more Mars photos, probably of some ancient Martian civilization, think again.

Forget reaching out to the vastness of the stars to find out where those pics came from - all you gotta do to this season is step outside, and stick your tongue out. That's right - for the guys who've seen these for the first time, these are taken of a typical snow crystal using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) through 93x to 36,000x magnification.

We just thought you'd like to see these pics for Christmas, and wonder at the intricate complexity of snowflakes - the ammunition of choice for your next snowball fight. For the guys who'd like to see all eight magnification settings, click on the read link, and enjoy the pics. 

"Love of money is the root of all evil" as the wise man once said, and while old proverbs like this tend to be taken as just another cliche, we picked up this study that sheds more light on this seeming universal truth - that to a certain degree, the idea of money makes people tend to think on more stand alone level, or in layman's terms, more selfishly.

"In our experiments, the people who are reminded of money really worked hard toward their own goals. But that might not be conducive to a good interpersonal relationship," said Kathleen Vohs of the Carlson, who led the study at the School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

To reach this conclusion, Kathleen's team conducted nine separate experiments at their university involving 50 students. These 50 were then split into 2 groups: A control group with no concept of money, and another group who were constantly fed the concept of money in the tests. From there, the study conducted multiple tests on the latter group involving games, screensavers, props, and word puzzles that dealt with the topic of money as the group answered questionnaires that did not have anything to do with the money.

After the questionnaire, the experimenters then gave both groups a difficult question to answer, and instructed the subjects that they could ask him for help if they couldn't answer the questions. The group test group subjected to money messages tended to struggle with the problems longer before asking for help.

In another test, both groups had a young "undergrad" walk in during the experiment, asking for help on coding several data sheets. Surprisingly, the control volunteered an average of 42.5 minutes to help the undergrad, while the money group provided only about 25 minutes of their time. Some participants didn't help at all.

One other test involved a simulated accident, with another student staged to walk in, and accidentally spill the pencils she was carrying. The money group participants were observed to pick up less pencils. The big suprise here is that the numbers weren't affected by factors like socioeconomic status or gender.

“cooperation really goes down the drain when money is an issue.” Kathleen says after this exercise, taking note that MBA students are trained to work in teams. "If the team has a sales goal, then to the extent that money is really a big topic to that team, you’re likely to see that cooperation is going to be reduced.”
 
As for our personal take, with Christmas just a little more than a month away, we're hoping you guys could take this article as a reminder of what's left to work on come this holiday season. 'Tis the season for giving, remember? Remember Scrooge's three visitors...

Ever wondered what a snowflake actually looks like up close? Yeah, we've seen a bunch of pictures already where they look like some really fancy Christmas tree decor. But have you seen it really, really up close? Like, 300um close? Like that one above?

Yup, that's not some kind of bacteria or some artist's rendition of some old Grecian fallen pillar. That's a real to goodness snowflake zoomed in. It's spectacular, ain't it? But they do look kinda creepy. Imagine one falling on your head on one crisp winter morn...that big. Kinda takes the romanticism out of it, right? Anyhow, they're still a pretty bunch.

So what are snowflakes exactly? They're an aggregate of ice crystals that forms while falling in and below a cloud. When they get together, they form snow. That's some neat factoid for you right there. At least now, there's more than just what meets the eye with these falling white stuff.

El Nino conjures images of disasters from both ends of the catastrophe spectrum since it either brings torrential rains or scorching drought. But apprently, even El Nino-induced clouds have their silver lining.

El Nino typically appears every three to seven years which then results into the higher-than-normal warming of the equatorial parts of the Pacific Ocean. This, in turn, causes droughts in some places and  floods in others. Now, weather forecasters predict that the El Nino may also have a calming effect on the rest of the Atlantic hurricane season which peaks in late September and ends in November.

According to National Geographic, the phenomenon also suppresses the formation of potentially dangerous weather systems in the Atlantic Ocean. The Colorado State University meteorologists say that the El Nino is expected to reappear this Fall. As such, they expect no major hurricanes this October.

El Nino (roughly translated as "The Boy"), first used in 1892, got its name because it was most noticeable around Christmas.