Amazing Photo of Jupiter's Moon Europa

Jupiter is 390 million miles (630 million kilometres) from Earth, so that makes the following photo of its moon Europa all the more amazing:

Click HERE for an extra large, zoomable version (source The Register)

Its an old picture taken by the Galileo probe, stitched together from separate pictures taken between 1995 and 1998, but it has been enhanced using near-infra-red green and violet filters for the first time.

It's thought that Europa has a 100 km thick watery layer to it, the upper part being a frozen crust, and the lower part is thought to be a liquid ocean. Magnetic detections suggest a salty conductive watery layer, and it appears to be mobile, so it's not frozen to the sea floor. The massive gravitational pull of nearby Jupiter is likely to be causing tidal flexing of the ice and keeping it from freezing solid. It occasionally kicks out 200 km tall plumes of water too.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is a planned European Space Agency mission to fly by Jupiter's icy moons Europa, Callisto and Ganymede to probe them further for possible signs of life.

Tobacco Smoking is Becoming Extinguished

If you've ever watched a loved one dying from lung cancer then it's not something you'll be able to forget in a hurry. It may be of some comfort to you to know that the practice of smoking tobacco is fast becoming a thing of the past, though.

According to a report in The Guardian, Tobacco industry figures in the 1940s showed well over half the over-16s in the UK were smokers, with the proportion rising to nearly two-thirds of men. The proportion of women smokers did not peak until the late 1960s. When the ONS started collating figures in 1974, 45% of Britons smoked, 52% of men and 41% of women.

If we take a look at the statistics in a 2014 report by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSIC) published by the ONS then we can see the following trends since 1980.

The first graph shows smoking by age group in 1980 (light blue) versus in 2010 (dark blue) showing that smoking in adults overall has dropped from 40% to 20% during that period.:

The second graph shows the number of smokers dropping from about 35% in 1982 to under 20% by 2010, whilst the number of people who have never smoked rises from just over 40% to about 55%:

The HSIC report sites several possible reasons for this, not least being the increasing unaffordability of tobacco products, but today the BBC News site contained a story showing the number of countries that now enforce the displaying of health warnings on packets of cigarettes:

Plus also the rise of the size and prominence of health warnings on packets of cigarettes from being tiny almost illegible text to full packet sized horror show pictures:

And there's one further piece of encouragement in those HSIC stats, namely that young people in the 16-19 age bracket are in fact now less likely to smoke than all other adults age groups, excepting those over 60 who have perhaps realised that life is very finite and worth keeping hold of and started quitting in their droves:

Design of the Year Awards - Volkswagen's 313 mpg super-efficient car

The Design of the Year Awards winner was Volkswagen's new XL1 super-efficient car which uses just 0.9 litres per 100 km, or 313 mpg, and this high mpg figure correlates to a very low carbon dioxide emissions value of just 21 g/km.

For comparison, a VW Polo 1.2 TDI BlueMotion, which is considered a green super-mini, does a comparatively wasteful 74.3mpg.

The story is somewhat blighted by the fact that the XL1 has been effectively banned from the US because it's too efficient! If that's true, then it's pretty scandalous.

Time Magazine's 25 Best Inventions of 2014

Time Magazine has released its 25 Best Inventions of 2014 list.

Among the entries are:

• The Real-Life Hoverboard
• The Supersmart Spacecraft
• A Reactor that Could Realize Nuclear Fusion
• Wireless Electricity
• 3-D-Printed Everything
• Watches that Redefine Smart
• The Smartphone that Puts Privacy First
• The Cooler that Powers Your Party
• The Chip that Stops Your Slouching
• The Car that Makes Electric Enticing
• The Tablet that Replaces Laptops
• The Ring that Alerts You in Style
• The Pillbox that Gets Personal
• Bananas that Prevent Blindness
• The Wheel that Gives Bikers a Boost
• The Seamless Sign-Language Translator
• The Filter that Fights Ebola
• The Selfie Stick (and Hairbrush)
• The AC that Lowers Your Energy Bills
• The Prison Room that Helps Inmates Relax
• The Tablet Toy that Gets Physical
• The Coaching Basketball
• Wrappers You Can Eat
• Screens that Showcase Digital Art
• Action Figures that Empower Girls

Twenty Years Since the IRA Ceasefire

It's twenty years since the IRA's historic ceasefire. If you think that the threat to life in Britain from terrorism is an issue today, cast your mind back to the dark days of what became euphemistically known as The Troubles.

The Troubles began in the late 1960s and is deemed by many to have ended with the Belfast "Good Friday" Agreement of 1998. Atrocities were committed on all sides, by the Irish republican IRA, the Unionist loyalist paramilitaries and the British forces stationed in the province.

A breakdown on Wikipedia lists an estimated three and a half thousand deaths from The Troubles during this period. Whilst there are sporadic outbreaks of violence today, casualties in these sorts of numbers are thankfully now a thing of the past:

Responsibility for killing
Responsible party	No.
Republican paramilitary groups	2058
Loyalist paramilitary groups	1026
British security forces	363
Persons unknown	79
Irish security forces	5
Total	3531

Source: Wikipedia

A story on the BBC News website shows some harrowing 'before' images of Belfast during the conflict, alongside some mercifully peaceful 'now' images from today's Belfast streets for comparison:

Source: BBC News

Meanwhile, it is now 40 years since the Birmingham Pub Bombings in 1974, in which 21 people were killed an 182 people injured, in what remains the worst ever terrorist attack on English soil. Another BBC News article shows some harrowing images and tells some of the stories of those who survived that night:

Source: BBC News

Whatever threat you believe is posed to us by terrorism today, it pales into insignificance by comparison to the dark days of the 1960's, 70's, 80's. and 90's. If somebody tells you that these are violent times compared to a safe and secure yesteryear, be sure to point this out to them. We're light years away from where we were back then.

Cancer Survival Figures 'Double' Since 1970s

Cancer Research UK announced in 2010 that Survival rates for some cancers have doubled over the past four decades. People with breast, bowel and ovarian cancers, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, are now twice as likely to survive for at least 10 years than in the 1970s. Cancer Research UK's figures show leukaemia survival is now four times as high, although the charity warned there was still much work to do.

Source: Cancer Research UK 2010

And that improvement trend is continuing. As of October 2014, the Office For National Statistics (ONS) reported that most people diagnosed with cancer in England in recent years are surviving for longer, according to the latest statistics. Eighty per cent of those with breast, prostate and skin cancer are living for five years after diagnosis. The figure is 90% for testicular cancer.

Meanwhile, Cancer Research UK's current projections for the mortality rates from all cancers also shows a promising trend, namely that whilst mortality rates were relatively stable between the early 1970's and the early 1990's, they started to decline in the early 1990's and the current projections suggest that this decline in mortality rates will continue:

Source: Cancer Research UK

It's by no means party time yet, of course. That's why we should all be ploughing everything we can into charities like Cancer Research UK and individual causes that are rasing money on behalf of them, such as the wonderful Tash's Bashes from personal experience. 

And here's why:

Always Look for the Helpers