BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 10:24 PM

Biological species are often defined on the basis of reproductive isolation. Ever since Darwin pointed out his difficulty in explaining why crosses between two species often yield sterile or inviable progeny (for instance, mules emerging from a cross between a horse and a donkey), biologists have struggled with this question.

New research into this field by basic scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, published online Oct. 22 in Science Express, suggests that the solution to this problem lies within the "dark matter of the genome": heterochromatin, a tightly packed, gene-poor compartment of DNA found within the genomes of all nucleated cells.
"Speciation is one of the most fascinating, unsolved problems in biology," said Harmit Malik, Ph.D., an associate member of the Hutchinson Center's Basic Sciences Division and corresponding author of the paper.

Malik and first author Joshua Bayes, Ph.D., a former graduate student in the Malik lab, focused on understanding the cellular function of a particular fruit fly (Drosophila) gene dubbed Odysseus. The gene is so named because of its ability to cause havoc and male sterility when introduced into the genome of another species. Odysseus is a gene that is derived from a transcription factor, and it was long believed to be a protein that turned on expression of other genes in Drosophila testis.

Odysseus also had been previously shown to rapidly evolve in its DNA-binding domain. Based on this observation, Bayes and Malik reasoned that Odysseus must interact with some rapidly evolving DNA in the genome. They tested the hypothesis, first proposed by Malik and Hutchinson Center colleague Steven Henikoff, Ph.D., that such hybrid-sterility proteins may bind repetitive satellite DNA in heterochromatin. Such repeats are believed to evolve rapidly due to an "arms-race" for preferential transmission during the process of forming an egg, whereby only one of four chromosomes is non-randomly chosen to be included into the egg.

Consistent with this hypothesis, Bayes found that Odysseus proteins localize to heterochromatic DNA found next to centromeres and on gene-poor chromosomes, which leads to their decondensation. Dramatically, the hybrid-sterility-associated Odysseus from one species showed additional localization to the Y chromosome of the other species. Through experiments in cell lines and transgenic flies, Bayes further showed that Odysseus localization has rapidly evolved during recent evolution, evidence of the "arms-race" that drives rapid evolution of satellite DNA repeats. Altered expression and localization has profoundly deleterious consequences for the process of sperm formation, a process that remains a mystery and is under active study in the Malik lab.

The finding that rapidly evolving heterochromatin may underlie this phenomenon also ties in with other work in Malik's lab that explores how "mismatches" originating from rapid evolution of DNA and proteins could lead to chromosome segregation defects and aneuploidy events that are sometimes precursors in transitions to cancer.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Oct 09 - 10:26 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have created a nanoscale crystal device that, for the first time, allows scientists to confine both light and sound vibrations in the same tiny space.


"This is a whole new concept," notes Oskar Painter, associate professor of applied physics at Caltech. Painter is the principal investigator on the paper describing the work, which was published this week in the online edition of the journal Nature. "People have known how to manipulate light, and they've known how to manipulate sound. But they hadn't realized that we can manipulate both at the same time, and that the waves will interact very strongly within this single structure."

Indeed, Painter points out, the interactions between sound and light in this device—dubbed an optomechanical crystal—can result in mechanical vibrations with frequencies as high as tens of gigahertz, or 10 billion cycles per second. Being able to achieve such frequencies, he explains, gives these devices the ability to send large amounts of information, and opens up a wide array of potential applications—everything from lightwave communication systems to biosensors capable of detecting (or weighing) a single macromolecule. It could also, Painter says, be used as a research tool by scientists studying nanomechanics. "These structures would give a mass sensitivity that would rival conventional nanoelectromechanical systems because light in these structures is more sensitive to motion than a conventional electrical system is."

"And all of this," he adds, "can be done on a silicon microchip."

Optomechanical crystals focus on the most basic units—or quanta—of light and sound. (These are called photons and phonons, respectively.) As Painter notes, there has been a rich history of research into both photonic and phononic crystals, which use tiny energy traps called bandgaps to capture quanta of light or sound within their structures.
What hadn't been done before was to put those two types of crystals together and see what they are capable of doing. That is what the Caltech team has done.
"We now have the ability to manipulate sound and light in the same nanoplatform, and are able to interconvert energy between the two systems," says Painter. "And we can engineer these in nearly limitless ways."

The volume in which the light and sound are simultaneously confined is more than 100,000 times smaller than that of a human cell, notes Caltech graduate student Matt Eichenfield, the paper's first author. "This does two things," he says. "First, the interactions of the light and sound get stronger as the volume to which they are confined decreases. Second, the amount of mass that has to move to create the sound wave gets smaller as the volume decreases. We made the volume in which the light and sound live so small that the mass that vibrates to make the sound is about ten times less than a trillionth of a gram."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 10:24 AM

The scientific evidence supports the notion that humans evolved to be runners. In a 2007 paper in the journal Sports Medicine, Daniel E. Lieberman, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, and Dennis M. Bramble, a biologist at the University of Utah, wrote that several characteristics unique to humans suggested endurance running played an important role in our evolution.

Most mammals can sprint faster than humans — having four legs gives them the advantage. But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2-mile marathon.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 10:53 AM

A man who sneaked a bag of his feces into a San Diego courtroom during his home-invasion robbery trial, smeared it on his lawyer and threw it at jurors has been sentenced to 31 years in prison.

Superior Court Judge Frank Brown on Monday sentenced Weusi McGowan for robbery, burglary and two assault charges stemming from the feces-flinging incident during his January trial.

McGowan, who attorneys say suffers from mental illness, had asked for a mistrial because he believed jurors had seen him in restraints when he entered the courtroom.

Several days after his request was denied, McGowan pulled out a bag of excrement he had hidden in his clothing, rubbed it on his lawyer and tossed it at the jury, hitting one juror's computer case.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Oct 09 - 10:57 AM

Seven questions that keep physicists up at night

...While most panelists professed to sleep very soundly, here are seven key conundrums that emerged during the session, which can be viewed here.

Why this universe?

In their pursuit of nature's fundamental laws, physicists have essentially been working under a long standing paradigm: demonstrating why the universe must be as we see it. But if other laws can be thought of, why can't the universes they describe exist in some other place? "Maybe we'll find there's no other alternative to the universe we know," says Sean Carroll of Caltech. "But I suspect that's not right." Carroll finds it easy to imagine that nature allows for different kinds of universes with different laws. "So in our universe, the question becomes why these laws and not some other laws?"

What is everything made of?

It's now clear that ordinary matter â€" atoms, stars and galaxies â€" accounts for a paltry 4 per cent of the universe's total energy budget. It's the other 96 per cent that keeps University of Michigan physicist Katherine Freese engaged. Freese is excited that one part of the problem, the nature of dark matter, may be nearing resolution. She points to new data from experiments like NASA's Fermi satellite that are consistent with the notion that dark matter particles in our own galaxy are annihilating with one another at a measurable rate, which in turn could reveal their properties. But the discovery of dark energy, which appears to be speeding up the expansion of the universe, has created a vast new set of puzzles for which there are no immediate answers in sight. This includes the nature of the dark energy itself and the question of why it has a value that is so extraordinarily small, allowing for the formation of galaxies, stars and the emergence of life.

How does complexity happen?

From the unpredictable behaviour of financial markets to the rise of life from inert matter, Leo Kadananoff, physicist and applied mathematician at the University of Chicago, finds the most engaging questions deal with the rise of complex systems. Kadanoff worries that particle physicists and cosmologists are missing an important trick if they only focus on the very small and the very large. "We still don't know how ordinary window glass works and keeps it shape," says Kadanoff. "The investigation of familiar things is just as important in the search for understanding." Life itself, he says, will only be truly understood by decoding how simple constituents with simple interactions can lead to complex phenomena.

Will string theory ever be proved correct?

Cambridge physicist David Tong is passionate about the mathematical beauty of string theory â€" the idea that the fundamental particles we observe are not point-like dots, but rather tiny strings. But he admits it once brought him to a philosophical crisis when he realised he might live his entire life not knowing whether it actually constitutes a description of all reality. Even experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Planck satellite, while well positioned to reveal new physics, are unlikely to say anything definitive about strings. Tong finds solace in knowing that the methods of string theory can be brought to bear on less fundamental problems, such as the behaviour of quarks and exotic metals. "It is a useful theory," he says, "so I'm trying to concentrate on that."

What is the singularity?

For cosmologist and Perimeter Institute director Neil Turok, the biggest mystery is the one that started it all, the big bang. Conventional theory points back to an infinitely hot and dense state at the beginning of the universe, where the known laws of physics break down. "We don't know how to describe it," says Turok. "How can anyone claim to have a theory of everything without that?" Turok is hopeful that string theory and a related development known as the "holographic principle", which shows that a singularity in three dimensions can be translated into a mathematically more manageable entity in two dimensions (which may imply that the third dimension and gravity itself are illusory). "These tools are giving us new ways of thinking about the problem, which are deeply satisfying in a mathematical sense," he says.

What is reality really?

The material world may, at some level, lie beyond comprehension, but Anton Zeilinger, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, is profoundly hopeful that physicists have merely scratched the surface of something much bigger. Zeilinger specialises in quantum experiments that demonstrate the apparent influence of observers in the shaping of reality. "Maybe the real breakthrough will come when we start to realise the connections between reality, knowledge and our actions," he says. The concept is mind-bending, but it is well established in practice. Zeilinger and others have shown that particles that are widely separated can somehow have quantum states that are linked, so that observing one affects the outcome of the other. No one has yet fathomed how the universe seems to know when it is being watched.

How far can physics take us?

Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether the process of inquiry that has revealed so much about the universe since the time of Galileo and Kepler is nearing the end of the line. "I worry whether we've come to the limits of empirical science," says Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University. Specifically, Krauss wonders if it will require knowledge of other universes, such as those posed by Carroll, to understand why our universe is the way it is. If such knowledge is impossible to access, it may spell the end for deepening our understanding any further.

Turok says that's exactly why the Perimeter Institute exists, to harness the thinking of the world's brightest young minds in an unrestrained environment. By optimising conditions for creative thinking, it may be possible to avoid such an impasse.

"We're used to thinking of theoretical physics as accidental," says Turok. "We need to ask whether there's a more strategic way to speed up understanding and discovery."

(New Scientist article at link on title)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Oct 09 - 04:44 PM

Cosmic ray driven outflows from high redshift galaxies
Authors: Saumyadip Samui, Kandaswamy Subramanian, Raghunathan Srianand
(Submitted on 21 Sep 2009)

    Abstract: We study winds in high redshift galaxies driven by a relativistic cosmic ray (proton) component in addition to the hot thermal gas component. Cosmic rays (CRs) are likely to be efficiently generated in supernova shocks inside galaxies. We obtain solutions of such CR driven free winds in a gravitational potential of the NFW form, relevant to galaxies. Cosmic rays naturally provide the extra energy and/or momentum input to the system, needed for a transonic wind solution in a gas with adiabatic index $\gamma=5/3$. We show that CRs can effectively drive winds even when the thermal energy of the gas is lost due to radiative cooling. These wind solutions predict an asymptotic wind speed closely related to the circular velocity of the galaxy.

Furthermore, the mass outflow rate per unit star formation rate (eta_w) is predicted to be ~ 0.2-0.5 for massive galaxies, with masses $M \sim 10^{11}-10^{12} M_\odot$. We show eta_w to be inversely proportional to the square of the circular velocity. Magnetic fields at the $\mu$G levels are also required in these galaxies to have a significant mass loss. A large eta_w for small mass galaxies implies that CR driven outflows could provide a strong negative feedback to the star formation in dwarf galaxies. Further, our results will also have important implications to the metal enrichment of the IGM.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 12:50 PM

The World Resources Institute (WRI), a respected environmental think tank based in Washington DC, says China is on track to meet its main climate change target, which is a 20 per cent reduction in energy intensity – the amount of energy used per dollar of gross domestic product – by the end of next year. Cutting the energy intensity of the Chinese economy like this will put a brake on the growth of the country's carbon dioxide emissions

China is also making good progress towards its goal of generating 15 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, according to the report. By the end of the next decade it will have 150 gigawatts of wind power installed – over five times the current US level. One in 10 Chinese homes already has solar heaters, with the number growing by 20 per cent per year.

China's coal-fuelled power stations are also more efficient that those in the US. The thermal efficiency of US stations – the fraction of heat turned into electrical energy – plateaued at just under 33 per cent in the early 1960s. But the efficiency of China's stations has been rising steadily and now exceeds 35 per cent.

The WRI says that China's progress shows the country is serious about climate change and that its reluctance to set a cap on its emissions, a stance that has been much criticised in the US, should not be a barrier to international collaboration.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 01:31 PM

n 8 October an asteroid detonated high in the atmosphere above South Sulawesi, Indonesia, releasing about as much energy as 50,000 tons of TNT, according to a NASA estimate released on Friday. That's about three times more powerful than the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

However, the blast caused no damage on the ground because of the high altitude, 15 to 20 kilometres above Earth's surface, says astronomer Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Canada.

Brown and Elizabeth Silber, also of UWO, estimated the explosion energy from infrasound waves that rippled halfway around the world and were recorded by an international network of instruments that listens for nuclear explosions.

The explosion was heard by witnesses in Indonesia. Video images of the sky following the event show a dust trail characteristic of an exploding asteroid.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 02:55 PM

The Joint Council of Danish Muslims says that terrorism runs contrary to Islam, its values and basic principles and has condemned plans by two men arrested in the United States on charges of preparing attacks in Denmark.

"An attack on any target is the same as an attack on an entire society and its people. We are therefore relieved that the imminent terrorist attack seems to have been averted," the Council says in a release.

The Council's comments come following disclosures yesterday of the arrests in Chicago on October 3rd and 18th of an American - David Coleman Headley (né Daood Gilani), 49, and a Canadian - Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts in Denmark.

"The Joint Council of Muslims stresses that an act of this type would be directly against Islam's basic principles and core values. Any act of terrorism is and will always be incompatible with Islam," the Council says.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 03:34 PM

Female short-nosed fruit bats have been observed performing fellatio on their partners during copulation. Mating pairs spent more time copulating if the female did so.

Cynopterus sphinx live in south-east Asia. The males often roost with small groups of females.

Min Tan of the Guangdong Entomological Institute in Guangzhou, China, and colleagues captured 30 male and 30 female short-nosed fruit bats in Yuexiu Park in Guangzhou City and observed their mating behaviour in enclosures.

The bats copulate dorso-ventrally, with the male mounting the female from behind. During mating, the females reached over to lick the base of the male's penis in 14 of the 20 pairs that copulated.

The tip of the penis had already penetrated the female's vagina, and the males did not withdraw when the female licked the base of the penis.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 09:50 PM

An amazing, humbling, panoramic composite image of the Milky Way across the whole sky can be viewed here.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:14 AM

In April, NASA's space-based Swift satellite sent back a text message announcing that it had detected a gamma-ray burst, the remains of an extraordinarily violent explosion that ended the life of a distant star. Since then, astronomers using ground-based telescopes have been able to measure the spectrum of the burst's infrared afterglow and estimate its distance from Earth.

When you look at the stars, you are looking at light that comes from the past. This gamma-ray burst, officially GRB 090423, is, in fact, the most distant, and oldest object, yet detected in our universe; it is some 13.1 billion light-years away. In other words, this is the vestige of an explosion that took place a mere (when it comes to the life of the universe) 630 million years after the Big Bang.

Light coming to us from such a distance is stretched because the universe is expanding. The greater the stretching — called redshift — the more distant the object. The previous most-distant object, a galaxy, has a redshift of 6.96. GRB 090423 has a redshift of 8.2 and appears to observers as an extremely red point of light. When that explosion took place, the universe was more than nine times smaller than it is now.

It's one thing to explore such remote recesses of time in theory. It's something else again to witness their afterglow. And GRB 090423 is an invitation for all of us to unfetter our imaginations. We imagine looking outward from that distant point knowing that our own exploration still lies some 13 billion years in the future. NYT

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:44 PM

Mysterious radio blips that come from apparently empty regions of space may be the voices of long-dead stars.

Thirteen unexplained radio blips have turned up in radio telescope observations since the 1980s. They emerged in spots where there are no stars or galaxies to be seen, last anywhere from hours to days, and do not seem to repeat. The blips could be traces of a vast population of stellar corpses – neutron stars that roam the universe largely unseen, suggests a team led by Eran Ofek of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Most of the galaxy's estimated billion neutron stars are invisible. Some of the newly formed ones have been detected because their rapid rotation sends radio pulses our way multiple times per second. These are thought to fade with age.
Gassy burps

If each of the neutron stars produces a radio burst every few months, perhaps after absorbing interstellar gas, the close ones would be detected at the rate observed, the team calculates.

"Neutron stars are a good possibility as the explanation for these events," says Geoffrey Bower of the University of California, Berkeley, whose team found seven of the outbursts in archived data from the Very Large Array telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory near Socorro, New Mexico. "They are ubiquitous throughout the galaxy."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 06:42 PM

husband and wife team of American paleontologists has discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived 112 million years ago during the early Cretaceous of central Montana.
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The new dinosaur, a species of ankylosaur, is documented in the October issue of the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Ankylosaurs are the biological version of an army tank. They are protected by a plate-like armour with two sets of sharp spikes on each side of the head, and a skull so thick that even 'raptors' such as Deinonychus could leave barely more than a scratch.
Bill and Kris Parsons, Research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science, found much of the skull of the newly described Tatankacephalus cooneyorum resting on the surface of a hillside in 1997. Because the skull was 90% complete, it was possible to justify this fossil as a new species.

"This is the first member of Ankylosauridae to be found within the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Geologic Formation," said Bill Parsons, who characterized the fossil as a transitional evolutionary form between the earlier Jurassic ankylosaurs and the better known Late Cretaceous ankylosaurs.

The skull is heavily protected by two sets of lateral horns, two thick domes at the back, and smaller thickenings around the nasal region. "Heavy ornamentation and horn-like plates would have covered most of the dorsal surface of this dinosaur" said Bill Parsons.
"For years, Bill and Kris have been collecting fossils from a critical time in Earth's history, and their hard work has paid off," said Lawrence Witmer, professor of paleontology at Ohio University who was not involved with this study. "This is a really important find and gives us a clearer view of the evolution of armored dinosaurs. But this is just the first; I'm sure, of what will be a series of important discoveries from this team."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 11:02 AM

Dinosaurs weren't the only critters with spikes and horns to roam the Earth during the Cretaceous. Scientists have found a tiny fly with a three-pronged horn and spiky eyes preserved in a chunk of amber dating to roughly 100 million years ago. The fly has been named Cascoplecia insolitis (Casco meaning old and insolitis for strange, unusual) and is so bizarre that that it has been assigned to a new insect family, reports George Poinar, Jr. of Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Many insects, flies included, that have compound eyes also have three additional, simple eyes that sit atop their head. These simple eyes, known as ocelli, are thought to help insects keep their bearings during flight. In the newly discovered fly, the ocelli sit at the ends of each of the horn's three prongs. The eyes may have helped this "unicorn fly" detect approaching enemies as it crawled the surfaces of flowers looking for pollen, Poinar speculates.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 11:28 AM

The following, from an article in Science News, strikes me as something important, not for what it says but for some of its implications. I think it may be the tip of a huge iceberg, so to speak.

---

"Phantoms take many forms — headless horseman, ghost ships, murdered fathers — and they can even reach out and grab the living: many people who have had an arm or leg amputated feel the limb is still present. The phantom pain that often accompanies these limbs has been successfully treated by using visual feedback from mirrors to trick the brain. Now similar instances of mind over non-matter have been achieved without external help — amputees have learned to mentally manipulate their phantom limbs into anatomically impossible configurations through thinking alone, scientists report October 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It is very surprising that anybody — amputees or not — can learn impossible movements just by thinking about it," comments neuroscientist Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

Treatment of people with phantom limb pain usually requires starting a new conversation between the brain and the environment, typically accomplished through visual feedback, Ehrsson says.

The work suggests that people with a distorted body image — such as those with anorexia — may be able to alter their self-image by imagining a change to the body, says Lorimer Moseley of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Randwick, Australia. And those getting neural reconstructive surgery may be able to practice using their new body parts by simply imagining their use, says Moseley, who coauthored the work with colleague Peter Brugger of the University Hospital Zurich.

Seven people who had an arm that had been amputated above the elbow were encouraged to learn a particular arm movement that defies biomechanics — turning a hand that's bent 90 degrees at the wrist the last quarter of a full turn that the hand won't do. The study participants practiced by imagining that they were moving the phantom limb for five minutes per hour every day until they had achieved the impossible movement or had given up (this took one to four weeks depending on the individual). Four of the participants were successful in feeling the sensation of the impossible movement, the researchers report.

"This shows that body image is constructed in a dynamic manner — it can be changed," says V.S. Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. Previous work by Ramachandran and others has shown that the sensation of a perpetually clenched and painful wrist that often accompanies a phantom limb can be relaxed with a mirror-based therapy: the patient clenches and then unclenches the remaining hand while looking at a boxed mirror that makes it appear both arms are intact. By visualizing both hands unclenching, the patient feels a release in the phantom limb.

To corroborate that the individuals had really learned the new movement (after all, the scientists couldn't see the phantom limbs) the researchers had them perform a task known as left-right hand judgement before and after their training. The ability to twist the phantom wrist in a new way allowed the participants to react to this task faster than they could before they had learned the impossible move.

Each of the participants who achieved the impossible move also described developing a new wrist joint that allowed the impossible movement. And three of the four reported that moves that were previously possible for the phantom limb were now difficult with their new wrist.

Even though the new movements suggest that "I think, therefore I can" is the operating principle in phantom limbs, the fact that some movements became harder with the new wrist suggests that Newtonian physics still govern perceived motion, says Moseley. "We have an inbuilt sense of what's physically impossible and what is not," he says.

Even so, "Body image turns out to be extraordinarily plastic," says Ramachandran. "We think of ourselves as stable people with a stable body image — but we can inhabit a body that cannot exist in the physical world."
"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 11:50 AM

wow.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 10:13 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- Until Oct. 24, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover had gone more than six months without an episode of amnesia-like symptoms like those that appeared on four occasions earlier this year.


In these amnesia events, Spirit fails to record data from the day's activities onto the type of computer memory -- non-volatile "flash" memory -- that can retain the data when the rover powers down for its energy-conserving periods of "sleep." The reappearance of this behavior in recent days might delay the start of planned drives by Spirit geared toward extricating the rover from a patch of soft soil where its wheels have been embedded since April.

Spirit sent data Oct. 24 through Oct. 27 indicating that the rover was not using its flash memory. The rover also has alternate memory (volatile, random-access memory) where data can be saved for communicating to Earth if the communication session comes before the next sleep period. Spirit remains in communication with Earth, maintaining good power and temperatures.

"We still don't have information about what causes these amnesia events," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "If they are intermittent and infrequent, they are a nuisance that would set us back a day or two when they occur. If the condition becomes persistent or frequent, we will need to go to an alternate strategy that avoids depending on flash memory. We would only get data collected the same day and any unsent data from an earlier day would be lost. The total volume of data returned by the rover is expected to be about the same."

This week, an independent panel of robotics experts has been reviewing the rover team's tests and plans for getting Spirit away from the site called "Troy," where the rover's wheels broke through a crusty, dark surface layer and became embedded in bright, loose material that had been hidden underneath.
Spirit has worked on Mars for more than 69 months in what was originally planned as a three-month mission.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 11:47 AM

THE Ridgeway is the oldest continuously used road in Europe, dating back to the Stone Age. Situated in southern England, built by our Neolithic ancestors, it's at least 5,000 years old, and may even have existed when England was still connected to continental Europe, and the Thames was a tributary of the Rhine.

Once it probably ran all the way from Dorset in the southwest to Lincolnshire in the northeast, following the line of an escarpment — a chalk ridge rising from the land — that diagonally bisects southern England. Long ago it wasn't just a road, following the high ground, away from the woods and swamps lower down, but a defensive barrier, a bulwark against marauders from the north, whomever they may have been. At some point in the Bronze Age (perhaps around 2,500 B.C.), a series of forts were built — ringed dikes protecting villages — so the whole thing became a kind of prototype of Hadrian's Wall in the north of England.

The land here is downland, somewhere between moorland and farmland, hill after hill curving to the horizon in chalk slopes (the word down is related to dune). Here on these pale rolling hills, the plowed fields, littered with white hunks of rock, sweep away in gradations of color, from creamy white to dark chocolate. The grassland becomes silvery as it arches into the distance. The wind always seems to be blowing. The landscape is elemental, austere, with a kind of monumental elegance. The formal lines of the fields and hills not only speak of the severity of life in the prehistoric past, but would also match some well-tended parkland belonging to an earl. ...

(From the NY Times)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 12:58 PM

When the food gets scarce, it's every lion for itself.

In 1898, according to numerous accounts and no fewer than three Hollywood movies, two male lions went on a nine-month killing spree around the Tsavo area of Kenya, devouring between 28 and 135 workers building the Kenya-Uganda railway.

Now an analysis of bone and hair samples from the notorious duo has backed the theory that scarcity drives dietary specialisation, and shows that food preferences can diverge within cooperating groups.

By comparing the isotopic ratios of nitrogen and carbon in the lions' remains with that of contemporary lions, humans and herbivore prey, Justin Yeakel of the University of California, Santa Cruz, estimates the lions ate around 35 people.

The study also made a surprise finding. "One lion was consuming a lot of humans, and one was not," Yeakel says. He attributes 24 deaths to one cat, or 30 per cent of its diet, and 11 deaths to the other, just 13 per cent of its food.

By the late 19th century, elephants in the area had been hunted away, causing grasslands to become overgrown woodlands and the number of ungulate prey to decline.

Most lions probably left the region, but two turned man-eaters, Yeakel speculates. "People are a dangerous food to go after," he says. "One lion was able to figure out how to do it and wasn't afraid, the other was not."

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0905309106

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 01:23 PM

The ancient Peruvian Nazca people, famous for creating giant, elaborate lined images on a desert plateau that are visible from space, may have brought about their own destruction by cutting down trees that protected the land they lived on.

That's the verdict of new research into pollen remains in the Ica river valley in southern Peru, where the civilisation thrived for 500 years until the people started to disappear at the start of the 6th century AD.

The prevailing explanation for the Nazca people's demise is that a huge flood wiped out not only their settlements but also their delicate irrigation systems, leaving a desert where no one has lived since.

The new findings agree that the flood was what finished off the Nazca, but suggest the people would probably have survived it if they hadn't already cleared native huarango trees to make way for maize, cotton and beans.
Keystone chopped

With roots reaching as deep as 60 metres underground to seek out water, lifespans beyond 1000 years and leaves that trap airborne moisture, huarango trees (Prosopis pallida) were a "keystone" species that turned otherwise arid river banks in Peru into oases flanked by fertile flood plains. They also fertilised the otherwise poor soil by dropping leaves and fixing nitrogen.

Their extensive root systems physically anchored the oases in place, and protected them from periodic floods; their huge branches deflected the wind, which can be fiercer than 100 kilometres per hour. Once this protection was gone, the huge flood in around 500 AD destroyed the agricultural systems with which the Nazca people had replaced the huarango, turning the terrain into desert.

The civilisation is best known for the Nazca lines, a series of hundreds of enormous images including human figures, hummingbirds, fish, llamas, lizards, monkeys and spiders. They were created by scraping away red surface pebbles to reveal white rock beneath, and some are more than 200 metres across.

David Beresford-Jones of the University of Cambridge and Alex Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru, analysed 1.5-metre-deep profiles of pollen distribution in soil from Nazca oasis sites.

In the oldest, deepest layers, about 70 per cent of the pollen is from huarango trees. Around 1.2 metres down, pollen from crops such as maize and cotton joins that of the huarango, showing the beginnings of agricultural expansion.

And around a depth of 80 centimetres, corresponding to around 200 AD to 400 AD, the crop pollen starts to dominate, and huarango pollen rapidly diminishes, showing that most trees had been felled.

Suddenly, about 50 centimetres down, corresponding to about 500 AD when the flood occurred, the only pollen found is from Chenopodiaceae and Amaranthaceae families, the only plants able to colonise the arid, nutrient-depleted soil that remained after the deluge that doomed the Nazca.

Thereafter, the depleted soil could no longer support crops...


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18091-clearing-oasis-trees-felled-ancient-peru-civilisation.html

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 04:21 PM

There are 6500 kilomters of banks along the Yangtze.

More people live along those 6500 kilomters of bank than live in the whole United States, according to this page in The New Scientist.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 06:53 PM

The 10,000 km (6,200 mile) long Unity fiber optic cable, funded by Google and five East Asian communication companies, left Japanese shores on November 1st to be laid along the northern Pacific Ocean floor. The Japanese end of the cable is expected to be fused to the American end sometime around November 11th. The cable, which was announced in February of 2008 at a cost of around $300 million USD, has the theoretical capacity of 7.68 Tbps, but will be set at a capacity of about 4.8 Tbps (supposedly equivalent to about 75 million simultaneous phone calls) during its initial use. When Unity begins full operation sometime early next year, it is projected to increase internet traffic capacity between the two regions by over 20%, a wonderful boost to transpacific relations!"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 08:45 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- Pieces of amber containing parts of a spider's web have been found in East Sussex and dated back to the Cretaceous period 140 million years ago, which makes it the oldest spider's web known.


The pieces of amber (fossilized tree resin) were found last December by amateur fossil-hunting brothers Jamie and Jonathan Hiscocks on a beach near Bexhill-on-Sea in the South of England. Jamie Hiscocks told the BBC at the time that the pieces of amber were just lying on the beach for anyone to find and pick up. The beach is well-known for its fossilized dinosaur tracks.

The rare finding, believed to be the most significant amber deposit found in Britain, was analyzed by researchers at the University of Oxford. They discovered the amber contained spider web threads about a millimeter long and joined together in the roughly circular pattern of a web. The amber also contained insect droppings, plant matter, charred bark, burnt sap, and microbes. The samples also provide the earliest evidence of actinobacteria, which form soil by breaking down plant materials, a finding that will shed some light on how soil evolved.

The threads were identified as having been woven by an ancestor of today's common garden orb-weaving spider. Leader of the research team, paleobiologist Professor Martin Brasier, said orb-weaving spiders trap their prey with sticky droplets deposited on the thread, and the threads trapped in the amber had the characteristic droplets attached to them. Analysis of web and the other contents in the amber suggest the spider was feeding on the predecessors of flies, moths, bees, and wasps.

Brasier said that to his knowledge the threads were the earliest spider webs known. Coming from the base of the Cretaceous, the find is one of the oldest ambers with inclusions to be found anywhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 10:57 PM

Half a Man Is Better Than None
New York Times, October 31, 2009

Women in Siberia are lobbying to legalize polygamy, a Cambridge University anthropologist reports in The Guardian in London. The critical issue is demography. Population is falling and there are fewer men than women. Caroline Humphrey, the anthropologist, said: "Women say that the legalization of polygamy would be a godsend: it would give them rights to a man's financial and physical support, legitimacy for their children, and rights to state benefits." Meanwhile, some Russian nationalists claim that introducing polygamy in the country would provide husbands for "10 million lonely women" and fill Mother Russia's cradles.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Nov 09 - 01:22 PM

It's a common tale: Man meets penguin, penguin meets man, they fall in love. A German zoo has witnessed a bittersweet love affair between two very unequal partners.

"Old love never dies," the country song goes, "it just fades away." Well, maybe so, but occasionally it comes back, too. At least that's the case when it comes to an animal keeper in the southern German city of Münster and a penguin named Sandy.

This roller-coaster story of love started 13 years ago, when a one-year-old African penguin was transferred from a zoo in Nuremberg to the Allwetterzoo Münster. But rather than integrating herself into the penguin population, Sandy set her sights on her keeper. "At the beginning," Peter Vollbracht, 47, told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "we found it very funny. Normally you have to wear thick gloves to handle these penguins because they have really sharp beaks and can give you a good whack with their wings. But Sandy" -- as Vollbracht named her -- "would just sit on my boot or arm and ask to be petted."



Still, at a certain point, friendliness turned a bit into obsession. "There was nothing we could do about it," Vollbracht says. "I didn't choose her; she chose me. When I would get to work in the morning, she would be there waiting for me and call out to me. And when we did our daily penguin march for exercise, she would always jump to the front of the line to be next to me."

With Vollbracht around, Sandy completely ignored the zoo's other 80-plus penguins. "She didn't care about anyone else," Vollbracht says. "I was just her big penguin."

The atypical relationship was good for the zoo. Although most penguins shun human contact, Sandy let Vollbracht and others pet her. In addition to visiting schools, handicapped children and retirement homes, Sandy and Vollbracht made the rounds of Germany's leading talk and late-night entertainment shows. Sandy also landed a couple of parts in German films on her way to joining the top-tier of beloved animals -- like Berlin's celebrity polar bear, Knut -- in this animal-obsessed country.

But then everything changed.

'She Completely Wrote Me Off'

During the filming of a movie with Sandy in 2006, Vollbracht got sick and had to stay home from work for six weeks. But when he finally returned to the zoo, Sandy had found someone else. "If their partner is gone for a few weeks," Vollbracht says of these primarily monogamous birds, "they go back out on a partner hunt."

"After 10 years of having her on my arm," Vollbracht says with a wistful sigh, "she'd completely written me off." Sandy was now with Tom, a much younger penguin. "At the beginning," Vollbracht says, "it was weird. But, when all's said and done, it was better for her to lead a normal penguin life."

And that's exactly what she did. In 2008, after a few mating seasons of near misses, Tom and Sandy eventually started a family of their own with two chicks. But this September, Tom died of a bacterial infection. Since raising two chicks was "too much for her to handle on her own," they were placed in a foster nest. And Sandy was single again.

"After Tom died," Vollbracht says, "I came back to work from vacation, and it was like she'd flipped a switch. She was looking for someone, and I was there."

Now Sandy and Vollbracht are back together again and pleasing the crowds with their daily shows of affection. For Vollbracht, who has a wife and two children of his own to worry about, it's a bittersweet reunion. "It's nice for the zoo and to be followed around again," he says, "but I can't stay her partner forever." But finding her someone else might not be so easy, either. "We can't find her a partner," Vollbracht says. "She chooses, and it's her decision or nothing."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Nov 09 - 08:31 PM

"One of the most pressing economic and corporate governance issues of the day is how to determine fair pay packages for CEOs," said Venkat Venkatasubramanian, a professor of chemical engineering. "The proposed theory allows us to compute what the fair pay is for a CEO, including bonuses and stock options, under ideal conditions."

The ratio of CEO pay to the lowest employee salary has gone up from about 40-to-1 in the 1970s to as high as 344-to-1 in recent years in the United States. However, the ratio has remained around 20-to-1 in Europe and 11-to-1 in Japan, according to available data, he said.

Using the new analysis method, Venkatasubramanian estimated that the 2008 salaries of the top 35 CEOs in the United States were about 129 times their ideal fair salaries. CEOs in the Standard & Poor's 500 averaged about 50 times their fair pay, raising questions about the efficiency of the free market to properly determine fair CEO pay, he said.

"You might ask why a chemical engineer is concerned with economics and CEO salaries," Venkatasubramanian said. "Well, it turns out that the same concepts and mathematics used to solve problems in statistical thermodynamics and information theory also can be applied to economic issues, such as the determination of fair CEO salaries."

A key idea in his theory is the economic interpretation of the concept of entropy.
"There have been many attempts to find a suitable interpretation of entropy for economic systems without much success," Venkatasubramanian said. "Just as entropy is a measure of disorder in thermodynamics and uncertainty in information theory, what would entropy mean in economics?"

Venkatasubramanian identified entropy as a measure of "fairness" in economic systems, revealing a connection between statistical thermodynamics, information theory and economics.

"As we all know, fairness is a fundamental economic principle that lies at the foundation of the free and efficient market system," he said. "It is so vital to the proper functioning of the markets that we have regulations and watchdog agencies that break up and punish unfair practices such as monopolies, collusion and insider trading. Thus, it is eminently reasonable, indeed reassuring, to find that maximizing fairness, or maximizing entropy, is the condition for achieving economic equilibrium."

Using the new theory, the ideal pay distribution is determined to be "lognormal," a particular way of characterizing data patterns in probability and statistics.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Nov 09 - 08:48 PM

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 2005, a gigantic, 35-mile-long rift broke open the desert ground in Ethiopia. At the time, some geologists believed the rift was the beginning of a new ocean as two parts of the African continent pulled apart, but the claim was controversial.

Now, scientists from several countries have confirmed that the volcanic processes at work beneath the Ethiopian rift are nearly identical to those at the bottom of the world's oceans, and the rift is indeed likely the beginning of a new sea.

The new study, published in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the highly active volcanic boundaries along the edges of tectonic ocean plates may suddenly break apart in large sections, instead of little by little as has been predominantly believed. In addition, such sudden large-scale events on land pose a much more serious hazard to populations living near the rift than would several smaller events, says Cindy Ebinger, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study.

"This work is a breakthrough in our understanding of continental rifting leading to the creation of new ocean basins," says Ken Macdonald, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and who is not affiliated with the research. "For the first time they demonstrate that activity on one rift segment can trigger a major episode of magma injection and associated deformation on a neighboring segment. Careful study of the 2005 mega-dike intrusion and its aftermath will continue to provide extraordinary opportunities for learning about continental rifts and mid-ocean ridges."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Nov 09 - 04:33 PM

Low-level seismic rumbles appear to foreshadow many quakes. Yet not always: the 2008 Sichuan quake in China (pictured) came out of the blue. These rumbles may not be precursors but aftershocks - readjustments at a fault following a larger event, in some cases centuries earlier.

Seth Stein of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and colleagues analysed the rate of fault slip in various tectonic settings. At plate boundaries, motion rapidly "reloads" a fault with new stress and changes conditions there, so tremors that can be clearly identified as aftershocks typically end within a decade, they found. Far away from plate boundaries, however, fault reloading is much slower, and aftershocks can continue for hundreds of years. The New Madrid fault in Missouri, for instance, may be experiencing aftershocks from a quake in the early 1800s (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08502).

Seismic activity away from plate boundaries "tells you more about where large quakes were than where the next one will be", says Stein.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 04 Nov 09 - 04:49 PM

Colorado ski town legalizes pot
AP

DENVER – The Colorado ski town of Breckenridge has voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana.

Early returns Tuesday night showed the proposal winning with 72 percent of the vote. The measure would allow adults over 21 to have up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

The measure is largely symbolic because pot possession remains a state crime for people without medical clearance. But supporters said they wanted to send a message to local law enforcement to stop busting small-time pot smokers.

The vote comes as communities nationwide are struggling with how to enforce pot laws at a time when medical marijuana has surged in popularity.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 06 Nov 09 - 10:52 AM

German study finds babies cry in their native tongue

Published: 6 Nov 09 15:00 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20091106-23083.html

German scientists have found newborns cry in their mother tongue, signalling that they begin learning the sounds of language while still in the womb.

A study of infants just days old released this week showed the hearing of foetuses is restricted to only the “melodies and intonation of the respective language" due to amniotic fluid. But that means babies can imitate these characteristics immediately after birth.

"The sense of hearing is the first sensory system that develops," Angela Friederici at the Max Planck Institute said in a statement.

Scientists recorded 30 German and 30 French babies between just two and five-days-old at maternity wards to compare their “cry melodies.”

The German babies cried with a falling intonation, while the French babies wailed with rising tones – mirroring the different intonation patterns of each language, the researchers found.

"In French, a lot of words have stress at the end, so that the intonation rises, while in German, it is mostly the opposite," Friederici said in the statement.

According to the researchers, the evolutionary basis of this linguistic behaviour precedes spoken language.

"The imitation of melodic patterns developed over millions of years and contributes to the mother-child bond," Friederici said.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, the Centre for Pre-language Development and Developmental Disorders (ZVES) at the University Clinic Würzburg, and the Laboratory of Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. It was published in “Current Biology” on Thursday.

It followed previous work by Friederici that found language intonation was already ingrained in the crying melodies of four-month-old babies.

The Local ([e-mail])

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 06 Nov 09 - 11:02 AM

Experts map the body's bacteria

Scientists have developed an atlas of the bacteria that live in different regions of the human body.

Some of the microbes help keep us healthy by playing a key role in physiological functions.

The University of Colorado at Boulder team found unexpectedly wide variations in bacterial communities from person to person.

The researchers hope their work, published in Science Express, will eventually aid clinical research.

They say that it might one day be possible to identify sites on the human body where transplants of specific microbes could benefit health.

The study was based on an intensive analysis of the bacteria found at 27 separate sites on the bodies of nine healthy volunteers.

Not only did the bacterial communities vary from person to person, they also varied considerably from one site on the body to another, and from test to test - but some patterns did emerge.

What is healthy?

Lead researcher Dr Rob Knight said: "This is the most complete view we have yet of the microbial side of ourselves, one that our group and others will be adding to over the coming years.

"The goal is to find out what is normal for a healthy person, which will provide a baseline for further studies to look at people with diseased states."

There are an estimated 100 trillion microbes living on or inside the human body.

They are thought to play a key role in many physiological functions, including the development of the immune system, digestion of key foods and helping to deter potentially disease-causing pathogens.

The researchers took four samples from each volunteer over a three-month period - usually one to two hours after they had showered.

They used the latest gene sequencing and computer techniques to draw up a profile of the microbes found at each specific site.

Most sites showed big variations in the bacteria they harboured from test to test even within the same individual.

However, there was less variation in the bacteria found in the armpits and soles of the feet - possibly because they provide a dark, moist environment.

The least variation of all was found in the mouth cavity.

Skin sites in the head area, including the forehead, nose, ear and hair, were dominated by one specific type of bacteria.

Sites on the trunk and legs were dominated by a different group.

Researcher Dr Noah Fierer said: "We have an immense number of questions to answer.

"Why do healthy people have such different microbial communities?

"Do we each have distinct microbial signatures at birth, or do they evolve as we age? And how much do they matter?"

Transplant test

The researchers disinfected the forearms and foreheads of some volunteers, and "inoculated" both sides with bacterial communities from the tongue.

The tongue bacteria lasted longer on the forearms than foreheads.

Dr Elizabeth Costello, who also worked on the study, said: "It may be that drier areas of the skin like forearms make generally more hospitable landing pads for bacteria."

A previous study by the same examined the bacteria on 102 human hands.

In total, they identified more than 4,200 species of bacteria, but only about five were shared by all 51 participants.

Dr Knight said understanding the variation in human microbial communities held promise for future clinical research.

"If we can better understand this variation, we may be able to begin searching for genetic biomarkers for disease," he said.

"Because our human genomes vary so little but our repertoire of microbial genes vary so much, it makes sense to look for variations that correlate with disease at specific locations."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Nov 09 - 07:41 PM

(Phys.org)


We've all experienced a "good cry"—whether following a breakup or just after a really stressful day, shedding some tears can often make us feel better and help us put things in perspective. But why is crying beneficial? And is there such a thing as a "bad cry"? University of South Florida psychologists Jonathan Rottenberg and Lauren M. Bylsma, along with their colleague Ad J.J.M. Vingerhoets of Tilburg University describe some of their recent findings about the psychology of crying in the December issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.


The psychologists analyzed the detailed accounts of more than 3000 recent crying experiences (which occurred outside of the laboratory) and found that the benefits of crying depend entirely on the what, where and when of a particular crying episode. The researchers found that the majority of respondents reported improvements in their mood following a bout of crying. However, one third of the survey participants reported no improvement in mood and a tenth felt worse after crying. The survey also revealed that criers who received social support during their crying episode were the most likely to report improvements in mood.

Research to date has not always produced a clear picture of the benefits of crying , in part because the results often seem to depend on how crying is studied. The authors note several challenges in accurately studying crying behavior in a laboratory setting. Volunteers who cry in a laboratory setting often do not describe their experiences as being cathartic or making them feel better. Rather, crying in a laboratory setting often results in the study participants feeling worse; this may be due to the stressful conditions of the study itself, such as being videotaped or watched by research assistants. This may produce negative emotions (such as embarrassment), which neutralize the positive benefits usually associated with crying.

However, these laboratory studies have provided interesting findings about the physical effects of crying. Criers do show calming effects such as slower breathing, but they also experience a lot of unpleasant stress and arousal, including increased heart rate and sweating. What is interesting is that bodily calming usually lasts longer than the unpleasant arousal. The calming effects may occur later and overcome the stress reaction, which would account for why people tend to remember mostly the pleasant side of crying.

Research has shown that the effects of crying also depend on who is shedding the tears. For example, individuals with anxiety or mood disorders are least likely to experience the positive effects of crying. In addition, the researchers report that people who lack insight into their emotional lives (a condition known as alexithymia) actually feel worse after crying. The authors suggest that for these individuals, their lack of emotional insight may prevent the kind of cognitive change required for a sad experience to be transformed into something positive.
Source: Association for Psychological Science

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Nov 09 - 11:36 AM

As a former hypnotist I was witness to the dynamic mind body training that can be remarkable.

I have seen blisters form through suggestion. I have seen a 3cm plantar war shrink to.5cm in an hour.
-------------------------------

In the 1990 film Mindwalk the director missed great opportunities in the performance. When the script is transcribed however we can see interconnectedness at play...

while touring St. Micheal's in France....

Sonia: You see you think of atomic particles as some kind of billiard balls or grains of sand but for physicists, particles have no independent existence. A particle is a set of relations that reach outward to connect with other things. I can't think of a metaphor for it.
Paul:   What are these other things, please?
Sonia:: They are interconnections with yet other things which also turn out to be other interconnections… Like a tree is not alone but is connected to the soil and the water and the insects and animals and of course connected to a star which is our sun. You see in atomic physics we do not end up with other things at all, the essential nature of matter is not in objects but in interconnections.
Paul:   I see. No man is an Island. (He plays a major third on the church organ) AH HA! Everybody knows that chord, a major third is the most basic of harmonies and carries with it a very distinctive feeling, no? And yet its individual notes carry none of that feeling. Therefore the essence of the chord lies in its relationships. And all the relationships between time and pitch make the melody. (Paul then plays the beginning of Beethoven's 5th.) I get it…Relationships make Music !
Sonia: Relationships make matter
Paul    Music of the Spheres.
Sonia As Kepler said.
Paul    Like Shakespeare said before him.
Sonia And Pythagoras before him. Now this vision of a Universe arranged in a series of sounds and relationships is not a new discovery. Today physicists are simply saying that what we call an object or particle is only an approximation, like a metaphor. At a sub atomic level it dissolves into a series of interconnections like waves… like wind, like chords of music.
Paul: That's a Beautiful metaphor Sonia.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Nov 09 - 02:20 PM

The current state of the art of developing Invisibility Cloaks, a field which has recently started winning prizes for breakthroughs in the application of physics. Hogwarts, hre we come!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Nov 09 - 03:27 PM

"The Telegraph reports that the Japanese trawler Diasan Shinsho-maru has capsized off the coast of China, as its three-man crew dragged their net through a swarm of giant jellyfish (which can grow up to six feet in diameter and travel in packs) and tried to haul up a net that was too heavy. The crew was thrown into the sea when the vessel capsized, but the three men were rescued by another trawler. Relatively little is known about Nomura's jellyfish, such as why some years see thousands of the creatures floating across the Sea of Japan on the Tsushima Current, but last year there were virtually no sightings. In 2007, there were 15,500 reports of damage to fishing equipment caused by the creatures. Experts believe that one contributing factor to the jellyfish becoming more frequent visitors to Japanese waters may be a decline in the number of predators, which include sea turtles and certain species of fish. 'Jellies have likely swum and swarmed in our seas for over 600 million years,' says scientist Monty Graham of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. 'When conditions are right, jelly swarms can form quickly. They appear to do this for sexual reproduction.'"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 03:47 PM

Using tissue grown in a laboratory, researchers have engineered fully functional replacement penises. The organs were made for rabbits, but the technique may someday be useful for people.

"This technology has considerable potential for patients requiring penile construction," wrote researchers in a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Leading the team was Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest University's Institute of Regenerative Medicine. Atala is best known for developing a technique in which cells are taken from an organ and sprayed onto a frame made of collagen, the primary structural protein in animal tissue. The structure is then bathed with growth-stimulating compounds and kept in an oven that duplicates the body's temperature and chemical composition.

Given these starting conditions, natural biology does the rest. The cells divide and arrange themselves in natural, working configurations.

Atala's group has already implanted lab-grown bladders, grown from the patients' own tissue, in seven men. Bladders are just one of dozens of organs being engineered by the group, from every part of the body — but in some organs, it's been difficult to find the right starting mix of different cell types, and reconstruction has proved challenging. The penis is one such organ.

In earlier studies, the researchers grew segments of the penis' main structures, called corpus cavernosa. These lie along the shaft of the penis, and are made from a complex, sponge-like arrangement of different cell types. But when implanted in rabbits whose corpus cavernosa had been removed, the tissue failed to become erect.

This time, they used a different mix of growth factors, and grew entire corpus cavernosa, rather than pieces of them. It worked: The next penises responded normally to electrical and chemical stimuli, and — more importantly — to biological imperative. When given the chance to have sex, eight were able to ejaculate, and four became fathers.

Oddly, the procedure seemed to make the rabbits randier than usual.

"Most control rabbits did not attempt copulation after introduction to their female partners," wrote the researchers. "All rabbits with bioengineered neocorpora attempted copulation within one minute of introduction." (Wired)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 03:55 PM

Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research.

"It's been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more violent and aggressive," says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. "But we've found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive."

Baumeister's team used two separate procedures to investigate the effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to list which two other people they would like to work with on a task. They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others.

In the second, people taking a personality test were given false feedback, telling them they would end up alone in life or surrounded by friends and family.

Aggression scores increased in the rejected groups. But the IQ scores also immediately dropped by about 25 per cent, and their analytical reasoning scores dropped by 30 per cent.

"These are very big effects - the biggest I've got in 25 years of research," says Baumeister. "This tells us a lot about human nature. People really seem designed to get along with others, and when you're excluded, this has significant effects."

Baumeister thinks rejection interferes with a person's self-control. "To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this, and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example - and instead, you behave impulsively."

Baumeister presented his results at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society in Blackpool, Lancashire, UK

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Nov 09 - 06:42 PM

I guess the stem cell vs. religious anti stem cell debate is now moot.

Afterall when god fearing WASP evangelical men have a chance to grow themselves a new gigantic penis...stem cells are just god's will.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:24 AM

Because monkeys had been shown to use mirrors to locate food, Donald M. Broom of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues decided to check for a similar sort of so-called assessment awareness in pigs. They began by exposing seven 4-to-8-week-old pigs to five-hour stints with a mirror and recording their reactions. The pigs were fascinated, pointing their snouts toward the mirror, hesitating, vocalizing, edging closer, walking up and nuzzling the surface, looking at their image from different angles, looking behind the mirror. When the mirror was placed in their pen a day later, the glass-savvy pigs greeted it with a big ho-hum.

Next, the researchers put the mirror in the enclosure, along with a bowl of food that could not be directly seen but whose image was reflected in the mirror. They then compared the responses of the mirror-experienced pigs with a group of mirror-naïve pigs. On spotting the virtual food in the mirror, the experienced pigs turned away and within an average of 23 seconds had found the food. But the naïve pigs took the reflection for reality and sought in vain to find the bowl by rooting around behind the mirror. No doubt the poor frustrated little pigs couldn't wait to get home, crack open a beer and turn on the TV.

---

If we can teach pigs the difference between illusory images of reflection and real substance, why can't we teach the same awareness to children, or even adults of our own species?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 10:41 AM

IF LIFE is to be found beyond our home planet, then our closest encounters with it may come in the dark abyss of some extraterrestrial sea. For Earth is certainly not the only ocean-girdled world in our solar system. As many as five moons of Jupiter and Saturn are now thought to hide seas beneath their icy crusts.

To find out more about these worlds and their hidden oceans, two ambitious voyages are now taking shape. About a decade from now, if all goes to plan, the first mission will send a pair of probes to explore Jupiter's satellites. They will concentrate on giant Ganymede and pale Europa, gauging the depths of the oceans that almost certainly lie within them.

A few years later, an even more audacious mission will head towards Saturn to sniff the polar sea spray of its snow-white moon Enceladus. It will also visit Titan, which has perhaps the most astonishing extraterrestrial landscape in our solar system. To explore this giant moon, the spacecraft will send out two seemingly antique contraptions: a hot-air balloon to fly over the deserts and mountains, and a boat that will float on a sea of liquid hydrocarbons.

This plan for ocean exploration was announced in February, when the science chiefs of NASA and the European Space Agency decided to press ahead with the planning stages of both missions. Jupiter is the destination that tops the schedule, probably because the Europa Jupiter System Mission relies on well-tested space technology. The plan is for EJSM to lift off in early 2020, in two pieces. NASA's contribution, the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO), and ESA's Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter (JGO) will be launched within a month of each other and plot parallel courses for Jupiter, arriving after six years. They will then engage in a complex dance, visiting various moons before each probe homes in on its prime target.

JEO has the tougher task. It will have to spend a long time in the inner reaches of Jupiter's radiation belts, where it will come under intense bombardment by high-energy electrons that would quickly disable an ordinary spacecraft. Though JEO will be built using electronics hardened against radiation, it will have to be clad in aluminium armour to survive in this hostile region.

When it finally goes into orbit around Europa, JEO's instruments will explore not just the moon's surface, but its depths too. The first hints that this moon's crust hides a liquid water ocean came from Voyagers 1 and 2, which saw a flat landscape criss-crossed with cracks when they flew by in 1979. This was confirmed in the 1990s by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Galileo also found that Europa distorts Jupiter's magnetic field, which could be accounted for by an electrically conducting layer below the moon's ice. Most planetary scientists see this as compelling evidence for a subsurface sea of salt water.

JEO will map the magnetic field of Europa in even finer detail, and also measure the shape of its gravitational field. Putting the two together will give us further insights into the moon's structure - especially the thickness of its ice crust and the depth of its ocean....

(New Scientist)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:42 AM

laser-powered robotic climber has won $900,000 in a competition designed to spur technology for a future elevator to space.

Building a space elevator would require anchoring a cable on the ground near Earth's equator and deploying the other end thousands of kilometres into space. The centrifugal force due to Earth's spin would keep the cable taut so that a robot could climb it and release payloads into orbit.

Though building a space elevator might require an initial investment of billions of dollars, proponents say once constructed, it would make for cheaper trips into space than is possible using rockets. But huge technological hurdles must first be overcome, including how to supply power to the robotic climber.

To that end, NASA offered $2 million in prize money in a competition called the Power Beaming Challenge, in which robotic climbers, powered wirelessly from the ground, attempt to ascend a cable as fast as possible.

Now, a robotic climber has made a prize-winning ascent worth $900,000, making it the first to win money in the competition, which has occurred annually since 2005.

Ted Semon, a volunteer with the Spaceward Foundation, a non-profit that organised the competition, and author of the Space Elevator Blog, says the feat shows space elevators are one step closer to getting off the ground. "We've done a lot here to demonstrate that this technology is possible," he told New Scientist. "This is just enormously exciting."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 01:37 PM

BOGOTA — The son of the late notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar is back in the public eye 15 years after fleeing Colombia for a life of anonymity as an architect in Argentina.

The former Juan Pablo Escobar is appearing in a documentary titled "Sins of My Father," premiering later this month in Argentina and Amsterdam. In the film, he asks forgiveness of the sons of two politicians his father ordered assassinated.

Juan Pablo Escobar changed his name to Sebastian Marroquin after his father was killed by police in 1993.

Marroquin tells The Associated Press his father's fortune is gone. He says he wasn't involved in the world's largest cocaine-smuggling operation and his family has been unjustly persecuted.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 01:46 PM

What's causing spacecraft to mysteriously accelerate? The Rosetta comet chaser's fly-by of Earth on 13 November is a perfect opportunity to get to the bottom of it.

The anomaly emerged in 1990, when NASA's Galileo spacecraft whizzed by Earth to get a boost from our planet's gravity and gained 3.9 millimetres per second more than expected. And the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft had an unexpected increase of about 1.8 millimetres per second during a previous fly-by of Earth in 2005.

Scientists have ruled out various mundane explanations like atmospheric drag or the effect of deviations in Earth's shape. This has led some to propose that exotic new physics is involved, such as modifications of Einstein's general relativity, the currently accepted theory of gravity.

Comet-chaser clue

All eyes are now on Rosetta, which is set to swing by Earth again at 0745 GMT on 13 November. It is en route to a comet, and will travel around 2500 kilometres above our planet's surface at over 13 kilometres per second. If it gains an extra 1.1 millimetres per second relative to Earth, it would vindicate a formula that reproduces the anomalies seen so far.

The formula, published in 2008 by ex-NASA scientist John Anderson and his team, hints that Earth's rotation may be distorting space-time more than expected and thus influencing nearby spacecraft, though no one can explain how. General relativity predicts that spinning bodies distort the fabric of surrounding space, but the expected amount is far too small to explain the observed anomalies.

"I am definitely looking forward to this one," says Anderson, who is working with members of the Rosetta team to watch for an anomaly.

However, any anomaly will not be immediately obvious because the expected change is tiny. "I anticipate a few days or weeks before we know if an anomaly occurred," he says.

Curiously, Rosetta's 2007 flyby of Earth produced no anomaly. That might be because of its much higher altitude, about 5300 kilometres above Earth's surface, Anderson says. He suggests the effect may get weaker with distance from Earth: "There is most likely some dependence on distance – we just do not know what it is."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 05:19 PM

The more gravity the slower time is, relative to a distant observer moving faster than us.
The greater the speed the slower time goes etc.

As we watch a body at high speed away from our gravity well...
it seems only obvious to me that we would see it seemingly moving faster over "time" compared to our faster time down here since we are movin slow and on top of a large gravitational mass. It would also stand to reason that the acceleration would be a constant but very small unless speeds very near the speed of ight were achieved.

What have I missed? Why do assume an unknown force is causing our robotic spacecraft to accelerate ever so slightly?

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 06:10 PM

The magnitude of 1.8mm/sec is anomalous compared to the gradient of the gravity well, I believe.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 09 - 11:27 PM

PhysOrg.com) -- The kelp forests off southern California are considered to be some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on the planet, yet a new study indicates that today's kelp beds are less extensive and lush than those in the recent past.

The kelp forest tripled in size from the peak of glaciation 20,000 years ago to about 7,500 years ago, then shrank by up to 70 percent to present day levels, according to the study by Rick Grosberg, professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology and the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis, with Michael Graham of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory and Brian Kinlan at UC Santa Barbara.

Kelp forests around offshore islands peaked around 13,500 years ago as rising sea levels created new habitat and then declined to present day levels. The kelp along the mainland coast peaked around 5,000 years later.

This transition from an extensive island-based kelp system to a mainland-dominated system coincided with conspicuous events in the archaeological record of the maritime people in the region, suggesting that climate-driven shifts in kelp ecosystems impacted human populations that used those resources.

Understanding the past history of a population is crucial to understanding its genetics in the present, Grosberg said.

"Kelp is interesting because it disperses only over short distances," Grosberg said. "Populations can become genetically isolated from one another even if they are quite close together."

"We wanted to know how connected the coastal kelp populations were since the last glacial maximum," he said.

On land, scientists can reconstruct the history of a forest or grassland from fossilized pollen or leaves. But kelp do not make pollen, and marine sediments do not preserve a good record of the plants.

The researchers used depth charts of the southern California coastline and information from sediment cores on past nutrient availability to reconstruct potential kelp habitat as sea levels changed over the last 20,000 years.

"We could reconstruct changes in kelp cover at a scale of 500 years and determine how fragmented or connected the populations were," Grosberg said.
People have lived off the produce of kelp forests when resources on land dwindled, and those changes are recorded in shell middens and other traces. That archaeological record can now be compared with the ecological history to get a more complete picture of California's coast.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 10:26 AM

Here's an apple that landed far from the tree. A dim star just 13 light years from Earth was born in a cluster 17,000 light years away.

Discovered in 1897, Kapteyn's Star is the 25th nearest star system to our sun, but it is no local, says Elizabeth Wylie-de Boer of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra.

The cool star's composition is tricky to study, but astronomers can look at 16 other stars in the same "moving group", all of which orbit the galaxy backwards and are very old. The odd motion marks them as members of the Milky Way's ancient population of halo stars.

Of the stars, 14 had the same abundance of elements – such as sodium, magnesium, zirconium, barium – as Omega Centauri, the galaxy's most luminous globular cluster. The cluster emits a million times more light than the sun.

"It's long been thought that Omega Centauri is the left-over nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way," says Wylie-de Boer, whose paper will appear in the Astronomical Journal. "During the merger, the outer regions of this dwarf galaxy were stripped."

Some of the cast-off stars ended up near the Sun, with one landing a mere 13 light years from Earth.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 10:47 AM

On the night of August 30, 1872, the schooner Nettie Cushing collided with the much larger passenger steamer Metis. The bow of the Nettie Cushing cut deep into the Metis, inflicting a fatal wound. Eighty-five people were rescued from the sinking vessel by boats that rushed to the scene, but sixty-seven souls perished in the storm-tossed sea. The circumstances of this tragic loss of life were repeated on the night of February 11, 1907, when the three-masted schooner Harry Knowlton collided with the passenger steamer Larchmont. Captain George McVey of the Larchmont gave the following account of the incident:

    We left Providence at 7 o'clock. A brisk northwest wind was blowing, and we were off Watch Hill at about 11 o'clock. I had gone below to look over the passengers and freight, leaving a good pilot and quartermaster in the pilot house. I returned to the pilot house, passing through there on my way to my room. Everything was O. K. in the pilot house as I stepped into my room and prepared to retire for the night. Suddenly I heard the pilot blowing danger, and I hurried into the pilot house. There was a schooner on the port and her crew seemed to have lost control of her. Without warning she luffed up and before we had an opportunity to do a thing headed for us. The quartermaster and pilot put the wheel hard aport, but the schooner was sailing along under a heavy breeze, and in a moment she had crashed into our port side, directly opposite the smokestack.

The turbulent waters soon separated the two vessels, which both began taking on water. The schooner, with its crew manning her pumps, was able to stay afloat until it reached a point a few miles west of Watch Hill, where the crew abandoned ship and rowed ashore in a lifeboat. Those aboard the steamer were not as fortunate. Most passengers had retired for the evening, and so those who were able to reach the lifeboats were not properly clothed to face the freezing temperatures. Of the estimated 157 passengers and crew on the steamship, only nineteen survived, and many of these were severely frostbitten and had to have fingers, hands and even limbs amputated.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 11:28 AM

lock Island, R. I., Feb 12, 1907 - About 150 persons went to their death in Block Island Sound last night as a result of a collision between the three-masted schooner Harry Knowlton and the Joy Line steamer Larchmont, inbound from Providence to New York.

It is estimated that, including the crew, there were nearly 200 persons on board the steamer when she sailed from Providence. Of these only nineteen appear to have survived the disaster, ten members of the crew and nine passengers. Forty-eight bodies have been recovered. Those who survived the accident follow.

Awakened from slumbers in their staterooms, the unfortunate passengers were at the mercy of the fates. Many, it is believed, went down with the ship. Others, temporarily thankful that they had escaped drowning, prayed that they might be relieved of the terrible pain caused by their frozen bodies, and one man, a passenger whose name could not be learned, plunged a knife into his throat, and ended his suffering.

Survivors' Plight Pitiable.
The few who survived were in a pitable [sic] condition. In almost every case their arms and legs hung helplessly as they were lifted out of the boats in which they reached shore.

During the day forty-eight bodies came ashore, either in boats or thrown up by the sea. Only six of the forty-eight bodies were identified.

An investigation of the wreck will be instituted by the United Etates [sic] steamboat inspectors of the Providence district.

Passenger List in Safe.

Owing to the condition of the survivors of the tragedy [sic], it was impossible to get their estimate of the loss of life. The steamship officials estimate that about 150 passengers and a crew of 50 were on
board the steamer when she left Providence last night. Taking the estimated figures of the steamship officials as a basis, there are still 138 persons to be accounted for.

The only positive evidence of the steamer's victims is lying at the bottom of Block Island Sound. The list of passengers and crew, handed to the purser just before the steamer left Providence, was locked in a safe, and it was not recovered.

The cause of the accident has not been satisfactorily explained. It occurred just off Watch Hill about 11 o'clock last night, when the three-masted schooner Harry Knowlton, bound from South Amboy for Boston with a cargo of coal, crashed into the steamer's port side amidships. Capt. George McVey, of the Larchmont, declares that the Knowlton suddenly swerved from her course, luffed up into the wind, and crashed into his vessel.

Capt. Haley, of the Knowlton, asserts that the steamer did not give his vessel sufficient sea room and that the collision occurred before he could atke [sic] his schooner out of the path of the oncoming steamer.

Steamer Sank Quickly.
The steamer, with a huge hole torn in her side, was so seriously damaged that no attempt was make to run for shore, and she sank to the bottom in less than half an hour. The Knowlton, after she had backed away from the wreck, began to fill rapidly, but here crew manned the pumps and kept her afloat until she reached a point off Quenochontaug [sic], where they put out in the lifeboat and rowed ashore. There were no fatalities on the schooner, but the men suffered from the extreme cold.

There was no comparison, however, between their experiences and those of the passengers and crew of the steamer. A majority of those on the Larchmont had retired for the night, and when the collision occurred there were few on board, with the exception of the crew, who were propared for the weather which prevailed. They hurried from the warm staterooms to the deck of the steamer and into a zero atmosphere.

Cold Killed Thinly Clad.
Literally chilled to the bone, many rushed headlong below to secure more clothing, while [sic] others, barefooted, bare-headed, and clad only in night gowns, stood on the decks, fearing that to go below would mean certain death. It now appears that the loss of life was heaviest among those who had retired for the night. Despite the efforts which were make to leave no one on board, it would appear to be impossible that of the 200 souls on board none were left behind. Those who had no opportunity to clothe themselves succumbed long before they reached shore, and even those who were fortunate enough to be fully dressed endured suffering and frost bites of a serious nature.

Was Sidewheel Steamer.
The Larchmont, a sidewheel steamer, which was only put into the Joy Line service during the present season, left her dock in Providence last night with a heavy cargo of freight and a passenger list estimated at from 150 to 200. A strong northwest wind was blowing as the steamer plowed her way down through the eastern passage of Narragansett Bay, but the full effect of the gale which was blowing out in the sound was not felt until the Larchmont rounded Point Judith. Then the sidewheeler pointed her nose into the very heart of the gale and continued down through Block Island Sound without any unusual incident until she was well abeam of Watch Hill and within five or six miles of Fishers Island.

Capt. George McVey, who had remained in the pilot house until the vessel had been straightened out on her course, was preparing to retire after a turn around his ship, when he was startled by several blasts of the steamer's whistle. He rushed into the pilot house, where the pilot and quartermaster pointed out a three-masted schooner sailing eastward before a strong wind.

Schooner Headed Straight:
The schooner, which proved to be the Harry Knowlton, coal laden, from South Amboy for Boston, had been bowling along on her course when she seemed to suddenly luff up and head straight for the steamer. Again several blasts were sounded on the steamer's whistle, the pilot and quartermaster at the same moment whirling the wheel hard-a-port in a mad endeavor to avoid collision.

But as the Larchmont was slowly veering around in response to her helm, the schooner came on with a speed that almost seemed to equal the gale that had been pushing her toward Boston, Even before another warning signal could be sounded on the steamer's whistle, the schooner crashed into the port side of the Larchmont, and the impact of the big vessel was so terriffic [sic] that the big clumsy bow of the sailing craft forced its way more than half the breadth of the Larchmont. When the force of the impact had been spent, the schooner temporarily remained fast in the steamer's side, holding in check for a moment the in-rushing water.

Water Rushes in Hole.
But the pounding sea soon separated the vessels, and as they backed away the water rushed into the gaping hole in the steamer with a velocity that could only mean the swift doom of the passenger vessel.

There were no water-tight compartments to be closed, and therefore the flood could not be confined to the damaged section, and it poured in over the cargo and down into the hold. As the water struck the boiler room clouds of steam arose and panic-stricken passengers, all of whom had been thrown from their bunks when the collision occcurred [sic], were at first under the impression that a fire had broken out on board.

Unfortunately, the point of collision was in that part of the steamer where was located the signaling apparatus connecting the engineroom with the pilothouse. Capt. McVey, standing in the pilothouse could not communicate with his subordinate officers below decks, and therefore was unable to determine the extent of the damage. The quartermaster was hurried below to make an investigation.

Passengers Rush to Decks.
The passengers meanwhile rushed to the decks. Few of them had waited to clothe themselves. Their fear was so great that the first penetrating blast of the zero temperature was disregarded, but the suffering from the cold and water soon became so intense that personal was forgotten in a genral [sic] effort to keep the blood in circulation. Those who had not stopped to clothe themselves now found it impossible to return below and do so.

Their rooms were flooded soon after they had been deserted, and the steamer, floundering around in the high seas that are feared by all Sound navigators, was sinking with a repidity that sent terror to the hearts of the officers and crew. Those men were prompt in answering Capt. McVey's call to quarters. While some of the seamen held back the frantic passengers by brute strength, others were proparing to lower the lifeboats and rafts. There was no time to think of the comfort of any one. Even before the boats were cut away, Capt. McVey knew that the list of victims would be greater than those who survived....