Cap’n Crunch sails into obscurity

Cap’n Crunch sails into obscurity

Quaker Oats

By Ryan MacClanathan, business producer at msnbc.com

The Soggies have finally won: Cap’n Crunch is quietly sailing into retirement.

Long derided by health experts for its high sugar content – a single serving contains 12 grams – the cereal is no longer being actively marketed by Quaker, DailyFinance reports. It appears parent company PepsiCo is forcing the good Cap’n to walk the plank.

Cap’n Crunch was once the No. 1 breakfast cereal, but pressure from the White House and health activists is having an effect on how PepsiCo and other food companies peddle their products to kids. Sales of the cereal were down 6.8 percent in 2010.

Last year, PepsiCo vowed to reduce added sugar per serving by 25 percent and saturated fat by 15 percent in its products over the next 10 years.

"PepsiCo is no longer marketing Cap’n Crunch cereal directly to children. In a sense, you could say that they have retired Cap’n Crunch, and that’s a good thing," Jennifer Harris, of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, told DailyFinance. "Unfortunately, children continue to view hundreds of ads per year for high-sugar cereals from General Mills, Kellogg’s and Post Foods."

The critics have a point: Children cereals contain 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber and 60 percent more sodium when compared with adult cereals, according to the Rudd Center research. The average preschooler has viewed more than 500 television ads for such cereals.

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Cassini Spacecraft Photos Show Saturn’s ‘Blue Moon’ in All Its Glory

 

 

Cassini Spacecraft Photos Show Saturn’s ‘Blue Moon’ in All Its Glory
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 24 December 2010
06:54 am ET

A NASA spacecraft has snapped some of the best-ever pictures of Saturn’s moon Rhea, yielding clues about the satellite’s recent tectonic rumblings.

NASA’s Cassini probe captured the images — some of which shine bright in blue-and-green false color —on two recent flybys of Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon. The photos show dramatic fractures cutting through craters on Rhea’s surface, suggesting the satellite’s interior churned and rumbled not too long ago, scientists said. [New Cassini photo of Rhea]

The pictures also reveal that Rhea bears a closer resemblance to another Saturn moon, Dione, than previously thought, researchers said.

"These recent, high-resolution Cassini images help us put Saturn’s moon in the context of the moons’ geological family tree," Cassini team member Paul Helfenstein of Cornell University said in a statement. "Since NASA’s Voyager mission visited Saturn, scientists have thought of Rhea and Dione as close cousins, with some differences in size and density. The new images show us they’re more like fraternal twins, where the resemblance is more than skin deep. This probably comes from their nearness to each other in orbit."

Looking for rings

Cassini scientists designed the two flybys — which took place in November 2009 and March 2010 — in part to search for a ring thought to encircle Rhea, researchers said. The photos were released this week.

During the March flyby, the Cassini spacecraft made its closest approach to Rhea’s surface so far, swooping within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of the moon. Based on the probe’s observations, scientists have now concluded that Rhea — which is 949 miles (1,528 km) across — doesn’t currently have a faint ring above its equator.

The two recent close encounters nonetheless yielded unique views of other features on the moon, researchers said. Some images, for example, show a web of bright, wispy fractures resembling features that were first spotted on another part of Rhea by NASA’s two Voyager spacecraft in 1980 and 1981.

At that time, scientists thought the wispy markings on the trailing hemispheres of Rhea and its neighboring moon Dione were possible cryovolcanic deposits, or the residue of icy material erupting from volcanoes. Trailing hemispheres are the sides of moons that face backward in their orbit around a planet.

The low resolution of Voyager’s images prevented a closer inspection of these regions, however. But since July 2004, Cassini’s cameras have captured pictures of the trailing hemispheres of both satellites several times, at much higher resolution.

These images have shown that the wispy markings are actually exposures of bright ice along the steep walls of scarps, or long cliff lines. The features actually result from tectonic activity, not cryovolcanism, researchers said.

Recent tectonic rumblings

In November 2009, Cassini’s cameras captured Rhea’s trailing hemisphere with unprecedented resolution. Scientists combined images taken about one hour apart to create a 3-D image of the moon’s terrain, revealing a set of closely spaced troughs.

The 3-D image also shows uplifted blocks interspersed through the terrain that cut through older, densely cratered plains. While the cratered plains imply that Rhea has not experienced much internal activity since its early history — as that would have repaved the moon — the new photos suggest that some regions have ruptured in response to tectonic stress more recently, researchers said.

Troughs and other fault topography cut through several large craters, for example. These big craters are not too scarred with smaller craters, indicating that they are comparatively young. In some places, material has moved downslope along the scarps and accumulated on the flatter floors, researchers said.

A mosaic of the March 2010 flyby images shows bright, icy fractures cutting across the surface of the moon, sometimes at right angles to each other. A false-color view of the entire disk of the moon’s Saturn-facing side reveals a slightly bluer area, likely related to different surface compositions or to different sizes and fine-scale textures of the grains making up the moon’s icy soil, researchers said.

Making better maps

The new images have also helped scientists make better maps of Rhea, including the first cartographic atlas of features on the moon complete with names approved by the International Astronomical Union.

And the mapping work will go on. Cassini will continue to chart the terrain of Rhea and other Saturnian moons with ever-improving resolution, especially for terrain at high northern latitudes, until 2017, researchers said.

"The 11th of January 2011 will be especially exciting, when Cassini flies just 47 miles (76 km) above the surface of Rhea," said Thomas Roatsch, a Cassini imaging team scientist based at the German Aerospace Center Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin. "These will be by far the best images we’ve ever had of Rhea’s surface — details down to just a few meters will become recognizable."

 

 

Via Space.com

2010 Another Year Older, Another Year Closer To Death

so yeah here we are in 2010 the world is still here and we are another your closer to 2012 oh my oh my the dreaded 2012 is closer, lets all run around like chickens with there heads cut off.  if the world ends, then the world ends and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it but shoot life the bird one last time.

so what’s gone on since my last entry???? not a whole hell of a lot. as a stated and as you all are well aware of is that the new year happened its a start of a new decade, yes a new decade that’s what 10 means a decade.  so out side of that i have had yet another crappy as birthday like all the others back on the 13th of this month, but at least i am not old yet, I’ll be old when i hit 30 so i still have one more year.

since it was a new year and it been about a year in a half since my last format/reinstall of my OS i figured id do that, i also decided on taking apart my computer piece by piece to dust it out, i also took the time to rig up a little cooling unite thing for it seeing as how it was getting on the almost to hot range, and wouldn’t you know it it has kept it about 40 degrees cooler so yay! me.

I’ve been playing a lot of my Final Fantasy 11 game and have made it very far… most of my jobs have yet to be leveled at all, cept for my Dragoon 70, Warrior 40, Dancer 25, Thief 25, Red Mage 43, Black Mage 20, White Mage 10, Paladin 69.  yes that’s all the same character. this game you can play every aspect of the game with one character. the only thing i wish i could do is pull myself away from the game long enough to get back into my forums because i feel like i am failing my friends there, and i feel like i am failing my cats because i am not spending a lot of time with them….well not as much time as id like

that’s that i guess just a little summery of what’s been going on with me…like anyone gives a fuck