BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: keberoxu
Date: 04 Jan 17 - 07:22 PM

The Associated Press reported on the admission, to a Turtle Hospital in the Florida Keys, of something like a dozen Kemp's Ridley sea turtles.

They were shipped by airplane from Massachusetts. They are described as "juveniles" who came to the Cape Cod area in warm weather as part of the seasonal shifts of the Gulf Stream. Then, when the Gulf Stream did another shift and the waters around Cape Cod suffered a drastic change of temperature, these dozen-or-so juveniles found themselves stranded in chilly water.

The words used for what happened to them are "cold stunning." A hospital spokesperson says that the admitted sea turtles are being treated for pneumonia with good food and antibiotic courses, and they are being kept in salt water at a temperature of 75 degrees F. Which is considerably warmer than is the water off of Cape Cod at the moment.

When the sea turtles are well enough to be released to the ocean, it will NOT be from Cape Cod.

Subject: A Cosmic Heads-up
From: Amos
Date: 23 Apr 12 - 01:06 PM

Be aware of the approach --culminating in early June -- of the cosmic spectacle known as The Transit of Venus, which hasn't occurred since the late 1700sd.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jan 12 - 07:42 AM

Newly discovered molecules in atmosphere may offset global warming

A newly discovered form of chemical intermediary in the atmosphere has the ability to remove pollutants in a way that leads to cloud-formation and could potentially help offset global warming.

The existence of these so-called Criegee biradicals, which are formed when ozone reacts with a certain class of organic compounds, was theorized over fifty years ago, but they have now been created and studied in the laboratory for the first time.

According to Science Daily, the discovery was made possible through the use of a third-generation synchrotron at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory which produces an intense, tunable light that enables scientists to differentiate between molecules which contain the same atoms but arranged in different combinations.

The Criegee biradicals — named after Rudolph Criegee, who postulated their existence in the 1950′s — turn out to react with pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, much more rapidly than expected to form sulphates and nitrates. "These compounds," Science Daily explains, "will lead to aerosol formation and ultimately to cloud formation with the potential to cool the planet."

One of the authors of the paper describing the discovery, Dr. Carl Percival of the University of Manchester, believes that the results "have a significant impact on our understanding of the oxidising capacity of the atmosphere and have wide ranging implications for pollution and climate change." He notes that since the compounds which form these molecules are organic in origin, it may mean that "the ecosystem is negating climate change more efficiently than we thought it was."

The scientists emphasize, however, that they're a long way off from being able to control the formation of Criegee biradicals themselves, which means that the best thing we can do is preserve the environment so that it can do its job.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 12 - 01:58 PM

The DARPA funded progect for the time cloak was made public last Wed.

The reason it works, if only for 43 trillionths of a second so far, is because time is possibly 3 dimensional.

Happy birthday Steven Hawking. you are 70 and still have a dog in the hunt at the experiments at Cern. Albert E had no tricks left in his bag at that age, but Steven is as relevant as ever. Psst, I think you made that big "mistake" on purpose just to get the rest of us to look in the right direction. Thanks.





This month I discovered how one could send data back in time as well as the future. It requires first physically placing one of a pair of quantum shared dualities in great numbers in a protected vessel on Earth and returning to a location many light years away. By effecting the other half of your quantum non local particles aboard your ship while traveling at near light speed directly away from Earth would send the message the maximum amount into Earths past.
Speed directly toward Earth and you would stimulate the Earth particle the maximum amount into the future. One could fine tune the direction and control how ar into the future or past you would communicate. The vessel would have many half paired photons that you could stimulate instantly at a distance that would correspond to numbers or letters.

The problem is the initial placement of the dommunication vessel of photons. You would have to physically put a "phone" someplace that you would like to call later.

If SETI were smart they would abandon radio waves and look for the "big phone" that works instantly even at a million light years.

Einstein called it spooky action at a distance but it is not spooky at all once you accept a z dimension and the 3D quality of time.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 22 Dec 11 - 01:44 PM

1,100-year-old Mayan ruins found in North Georgia

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the mountains of North Georgia believed to be at least 1,100 years old. According to Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine.

In 1999, University of Georgia archeologist Mark Williams led an expedition to investigate the Kenimer Mound, a large, five-sided pyramid built in approximately 900 A.D. in the foothills of Georgia's tallest mountain, Brasstown Bald. Many local residents has assumed for years that the pyramid was just another wooded hill, but in fact it was a structure built on an existing hill in a method common to Mayans living in Central America as well as to Southeastern Native American tribes.

Speculation has abounded for years as to what could have happened to the people who lived in the great Meso-American societies of the first century. Some historians believed that they simply died out in plagues and food shortages, but others have long speculated about the possibility of mass migration to other regions.

When evidence began to turn up of Mayan connections to the Georgia site, South African archeologist Johannes Loubser brought teams to the site who took soil samples and analyzed pottery shards which dated the site and indicated that it had been inhabited for many decades approximately 1000 years ago. The people who settled there were known as Itza Maya, a word that carried over into the Cherokee language of the region.

The city that is being uncovered there is believed to have been called Yupaha, which Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto searched for unsuccessfully in 1540. So far, archeologists have unearthed "at least 154 stone masonry walls for agricultural terraces, plus evidence of a sophisticated irrigation system and ruins of several other stone structures." Much more may still be hidden underground.

The find is particularly relevant in that it establish specific links between the culture of Southeastern Native Americans and ancient Mayans. According to Thornton, it may be the "most important archeological discovery in recent times."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 08:07 AM

San Francisco ordinance would cover naked bottoms

By Reuters
Thursday, September 8th, 2011 -- 11:08 pm

OAKLAND (Reuters) - In the San Francisco Bay area where tolerance is king, it is a rare politician willing to clamp down on citizens who let it all hang out.

But San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener stepped into that position earlier this week when he introduced an ordinance that would require nudists to cover their seats in public places and wear clothes in restaurants.

Public nudity, he explains, is legal in San Francisco and in recent years a group known informally as Naked Guys have shown unbridled enthusiasm for appearing in the nude.

"I see it pretty regularly, and unfortunately there are nudists who are not doing what they should," Wiener told Reuters.

The nudists, who expose themselves most often in the city's famous gay neighborhood, the Castro District, have got Wiener and others worrying about public health.

"I'm not a health expert, but I believe sitting nude in a public place is not sanitary," he said. "Would you want to sit on a seat where someone had been sitting naked? I think most people would say, 'No.'"

Wiener, who represents the Castro neighborhood, said he hears from merchants who fear the public displays may drive away customers, hurting the business' bottom lines.

That's particularly true in restaurants. He acknowledged that he has not seen any research establishing a health risk. "But when you have your orifices exposed in an eating establishment, a lot of people don't like it," he said.

California does have legislation against indecent exposure. But the law is lenient enough that it has barely affected San Francisco's current coterie of flaunters.

Weiner's proposed ordinance will next be assigned to a committee, and Wiener expects a public hearing within months. Clothing required.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 25 Aug 11 - 07:49 PM

Astronomers discover planet made of diamond

By Reuters
Thursday, August 25th, 2011 -- 6:45 pm

LONDON (Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Pulsars are tiny, dead neutron stars that are only around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) in diameter and spin hundreds of times a second, emitting beams of radiation.

In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet.

The measurements suggest the planet, which orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes, has slightly more mass than Jupiter but is 20 times as dense, Bailes and colleagues reported in the journal Science on Thursday.

In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center.

Its high density suggests the lighter elements of hydrogen and helium, which are the main constituents of gas giants like Jupiter, are not present.

Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.

"In terms of what it would look like, I don't know I could even speculate," said Ben Stappers of the University of Manchester. "I don't imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we're looking at here."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 03 Aug 11 - 10:15 AM

African crested rat uses poison trick to foil predators
By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News

A species of rat has evolved an ingenious method to foil any predators that try to eat it, scientists report.

They found that the African crested rat chews the roots and bark of a highly toxic tree, and then smears the lethal mixture on its specially adapted fur.

Any animals that attack receive a mouthful of potentially deadly poison.

It is the first time that this behaviour has been reported in a mammal, the researchers write in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Jonathan Kingdon, lead author of the paper, from the University of Oxford, said: "The need to deter predators has led to one of the most extraordinary defences known in the animal kingdom."

But the team, from the UK, Kenya and New York, are still puzzled by how the rodent is able to survive a dose of the toxin, which comes from the poison arrow tree (Acokanthera schimperi).

Traditionally, this poison has been used by hunters to kill elephants.

Deadly secret

The African crested rat (Lophiomys imhausi) is found in the north east of continent, and has long been thought to be poisonous: there have been several reports of domestic dogs that have dropped dead after trying to bite one.

But until now, nobody realised that it employed the help of a plant to make itself deadly.

When undeterred by predators, the rodent looks like a long-haired, grey rat.

However, when it is under attack from animals such as jackals, wild cats and leopards, it does not run off as it is extremely slow. Instead, it freezes, and then exposes a bold, black-and-white-striped tract of hairs that run down its flank - and it is this fur that is slathered in poison.

Professor Kingdon said: "The poison is an organic poison. We all have minute quantities of it in our bodies, and it controls the strength of the heart beat.

"But if you have too much, your heart beats so hard that you have a heart attack.

"It is the source of the deadly arrow poison that is used to kill elephants."

Toxic tactics

Closer analysis revealed that these hairs on the rat's flank have an unusual structure.

Professor Kingdon said: "It is of a structure that is completely unprecedented in any other animal. There is not another animal that has hairs shaped like the hairs on that tract."

Microscopy showed that the hairs on its back draw up the poison much like the wick of a candle, ensuring that each hair remains saturated with as large a dose of poison as possible.
African crested rat hair Microscopy revealed that the hair could "wick up" the poison

The rest of the rat's hairs have a more typical mammalian structure. The researchers noted that it does not apply the poison to these - only to its crest.

The team thinks that the elaborate display is enticing predators to bite the rat's most poison-laden spot.

"As the predator rushes in and tries to make its first bite, the rat ensures the flank is the first thing the predator encounters: it advertises this visually with its colouring," explained Professor Kingdon.

The tactic seems successful: if the predator does not die from their toxic encounter, it is unlikely to ever want to take a bite of the rat again.

The only animal, said Professor Kingdon, that uses a similar trick is the hedgehog. The prickly beast will sometimes kill a toad and bite into its glands, then smear this toxic mixture on its spikes.

However, the poison seems to boost any discomfort its spikes might cause, rather than have a lethal effect on its predator.

The researchers now want to find out more about this unusual evolutionary relationship between predator, plant and prey.

They are also keen to discover how and why this rat is able to withstand this poison when so many other animals cannot.

The team said this could have interesting medical implications.

Isolating the part of the poison that helps the heart beat and identifying the physiological components of the rat that prevents it from dying could help to lead to novel treatments for heart problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 30 Jul 11 - 07:54 AM

Scientists create DNA 'brain' in a test tube

By Muriel Kane
Friday, July 29th, 2011 -- 10:48 pm

A research team at the California Institute of Technology has created an artificial neural network which is capable of solving a puzzle that involves identifying which of four pioneering IT scientists -- Rosalind Franklin, Alan Turing, Claude Shannon, and Santiago Ramon y Cajal -- is described by a series of yes/no questions.

DNA molecules were used to form four artificial neurons in test tubes, with each strange of DNA being programmed to interact with other strands in a manner similar to the firing of natural neurons in living creatures. At its best, the network was able to answer questions even when it had only incomplete information.

As explained by Discovery.com, "They turned to molecules because they knew that before the neural-based brain evolved, single-celled organisms showed limited forms of intelligence. These microorganisms did not have brains, but instead had molecules that interacted with each other and spurred the creatures to search for food and avoid toxins. The bottom line is that molecules can act like circuits, processing and transmitting information and computing data."

The research was not undertaken merely for theoretical purposes. The same research team had recently shown that DNA logic gates could be used to calculate square roots, and Ars Technica notes that "DNA computing offers the potential of massively parallel calculations with low power consumption and at small sizes."

The technology has the potential of amplifying the human brain, since "DNA computing components can easily interact and cooperate with our bodies or other cells."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Jun 11 - 11:48 AM

How long can a person live without a pulse?

30 years or longer.

It turns out that a doctor has fused two heart assist units together which use a turning screw technolgy that does not crush blood cells like prior pulsing pumps thereby limiting complications like stroke and blood clots. The new heart has no pulse. It hums.

Cheney got half of this technology in his heart assist unit for one ventricle.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 05 Jun 11 - 06:11 PM

Scientists 'trap' anti-matter for record 16 minutes

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, June 5th, 2011 -- 3:42 pm

PARIS — Scientists said Sunday they had trapped and stored antihydrogen atoms for a record 16 minutes, a stunning technical feat that promises deeper insights into the mysteries of antimatter.

Particles and anti-particles annihilate each other in a small flash of energy when they collide.

At the moment of the big bang, nearly 14 billion years ago, matter and antimatter are thought to have existed in equal quantities. If that balance had persisted, the observable Universe we inhabit would never have come into being.

For unknown reasons -- and fortunately for us -- Nature seemed to have a slight preference for matter, and today antimatter is rare.

This asymmetry remains one of the greatest riddles in particle physics.

Ongoing low-energy experiments with hydrogen atoms could be a key step toward solving it.

"We can keep the antihydrogen atoms trapped for 1,000 seconds. This is long enough to begin to study them -- even with the small number that we can catch so far," said Jeffrey Hangst, spokesman for the ALPHA team conducting the tests at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva.

In the study, published in the journal Nature Physics, researchers report trapping some 300 antiatoms.

Scientists used CERN's high-energy accelerator to create the antihydrogen atoms, and then chilled them to near-zero temperatures.

The aim is to use laser and microwave spectroscopy to compare the immobilised particles to their hydrogen counterparts.

The same team succeeded last fall in trapping dozens of antimatter atoms and holding them in place for a fraction of a second, a world first at the time.

But that was not long enough for the excitable particles to settle into the stable "ground" state needed for precise measurements.

The new benchmark extended this storage time 5,000 fold, making it possible to carry out crucial experiments.

Scientists will now look for "violations" or discrepancies in something called the charge-parity-time reversal (CPT) symmetry.

CPT says that a particle moving forward through time in our universe should be indistinguishable from an antiparticle moving backwards through time in a mirror universe.

According to this rule, hydrogen and antihydrogen, in other words, should have exactly the same spectral profile.

"Any hint of CPT symmetry breaking would require a serious rethink of our understanding of nature," Hangst in a statement.

"But half the universe has gone missing, so some kind of rethink is apparently on the agenda."

The absence of any solid theoretical prediction of how CPT-violation will occur -- or, indeed, if it will happen at all -- suggests to what extent the experiments will be breaking new ground.

The "C" of CPT involves swapping the electric charges of the particles. "P" for parity "is like looking in the mirror," CERN explained in a press release. And "T" means reversing the trajectory of time.

Measurements of trapped antihydrogen are due to get underway shortly, and could yield results before the end of the year.

"If you hit the trapped antihydrogen atoms with just the right microwave frequency, they will escape from the trap and we can detect the annihilation," Hangst said.

"It will be the first time anybody has interacted with antiatoms to probe their structure."

The ability to store bits of antimatter for a quarter of an hour -- far longer that researchers expected -- could also provide a new way to measure how they are influenced by gravity, Hangst added.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 May 11 - 12:00 PM

Wow!! If we ever get fiber-optics to the curb we couls actually see something approaching this...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 23 May 11 - 11:58 AM

New Internet tech transmits data at 26 terabytes per second

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, May 23rd, 2011 -- 11:07 am

In a dramatic breakthrough, scientists have learned how to use optical fiber to transmit data over a single laser at speeds that dwarf even today's fastest Internet connections.

Using techniques called "fast Fourier transform" and "orthogonal frequency division multiplexing," scientists at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany were able to stitch 300 individual data streams into colors beamed by a single laser, which were then picked apart at the other end.

The result of their experiment was a blazing fast transfer rate of 26 terabytes per second.

A terabyte is the equivalent of 1,000 gigabytes -- the measurement used to grade most consumer level computer hard drives.

A more complex version of the experiment was previously used to demonstrate the transmission of data at over 100 terabytes per second, but it required hundreds of lasers.

This latest research shows that similar speeds are possible with far less energy output.

Such bandwidth would enable an Internet user to download the entire library of congress in about 10 seconds, according to the BBC.

The experiment was outlined in the latest edition of the scientific journal Nature Photonics.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 16 May 11 - 10:42 AM

Stephen Hawking dismisses idea of a universal creator, calls heaven a 'fairy story'

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, May 16th, 2011 -- 9:08 am

LONDON (AFP) – British scientist Stephen Hawking has branded heaven a "fairy story" for people afraid of the dark, in his latest dismissal of the concepts underpinning the world's religions.

The author of 1988 international best-seller "A Brief History of Time" said in an interview with The Guardian published on Monday that his views were partly influenced by his battle with motor neurone disease.

"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he told the newspaper.

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

Hawking's stance on religion has hardened significantly in the nearly quarter century since the publication of his seminal work on the cosmos.

In "A Brief History of Time" he suggested that the idea of a divine being was not necessarily incompatible with a scientific understanding of the Universe.

But in his 2010 book "The Grand Design" he said a deity no longer has any place in theories on the creation of the universe in the light of a series of developments in physics.

Hawking has achieved worldwide fame for his research, writing and television documentaries despite suffering since the age of 21 from motor neurone disease that has left him disabled and dependent on a voice synthesiser.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 13 May 11 - 10:48 PM

California is to shut down 70 Sate Parks for budget reasons.

Merck wins FDA approval to sell the first Hepatitus C drug in a decade.

Hong Kong economy expands by 7.2% and risks overheating.

source: Bloomberg




Random musings of today.

The recent US presicents in a nutshell:

Johnson: Confused Rome with Washington but had a Texas sized change of heart and quit.

Nixon: Visionary, but those who knew how to feed his paranoia led him down the dark side.

Carter: Saw the problems, addressed them head on on without political prowess and was hated for the truth.

Reagan: A cross between McCarthy and the absent minded professor Fred McMurry

HGWRH Bush, More Saxon than Anglo, he played by WWII covert rules toward a new world order. We read his lips and they still seemed wimpy. He did however read the essay; The Art of War.

Clinton: Taught America the meaning of what jizz is. Gave the Free Market super capitalists an inch that soon turned into a parsec.

G W Bush: Swaggering kid who was going to outdo his wimpy dad. Did not even read the cliff note version of 'The Art of War'.
While claiming to be a decider he actually outsourced his outsourcing.

Barak Obama: Almost Vulcan in his emotional control. Performs a death defying balancing act in a very polarized and financially raped America.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 12 May 11 - 04:36 PM

Thousands of mini earthquakes have hit Maine USA this Spring.

They are the result of the crust springing back up after two miles of ice had depressed the crust thousands of years ago.

The funny thing about these quakes is that they are very shallow and as a result make loud explosive sounds like gun shots you can hear if you are near the epicenter.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 05:11 PM

"An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper with a spade when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to nearly all of neighboring Armenia. The fibre-optic cable near Tiblisi, Georgia, supplies about 90% of Armenia's internet so the woman's unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours. Large parts of Georgia and some areas of Azerbaijan were also affected. Dubbed 'the spade-hacker' by local media, the woman is being investigated on suspicion of damaging property. She faces up to three years in prison if charged and convicted."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 05:07 PM

Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study

By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, April 7th, 2011 -- 3:55 pm

WASHINGTON — Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.

Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.

"We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala," the study said.

Other research has shown greater brain activity in those areas, according to which political views a person holds, but this is the first study to show a physical difference in size in the same regions.

"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," said Ryota Kanai of the University College London, where the research took place.

"Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure."

The study was based on 90 "healthy young adults" who reported their political views on a scale of one to five from very liberal to very conservative, then agreed to have their brains scanned.

People with a large amygdala are "more sensitive to disgust" and tend to "respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions," the study said.

Liberals are linked to larger anterior cingulate cortexes, a region that "monitor(s) uncertainty and conflicts," it said.

"Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views."

It remains unclear whether the structural differences cause the divergence in political views, or are the effect of them.

But the central issue in determining political views appears to revolve around fear and how it affects a person.

"Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty," the study said.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 07 Apr 11 - 11:50 AM

Good catch Bobert

well what is it?

is it the anti-antitron, is it the POSERTRON masqurading as a quark, is it the ENVYTRON born of the competition between the LHC and Fermi ? My bets are on the envytron.

The particle Zoo is but a shadow of the condensed aspects of energy fields with their own discrete dimensions that exist simultaneously as relationships more than a seperate discrete particle.

Seeing beyond our 4D existence is tricky business.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 06 Apr 11 - 07:50 PM

Fermi lab may have found new force of nature

By Agence France-Presse
Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 -- 6:19 pm


WASHINGTON – Data from a major US atom smasher lab may have revealed a new elementary particle, or potentially a new force of nature, one of the physicists involved in the discovery told AFP on Wednesday.

The physics world was abuzz with excitement over the findings, which could offer clues to the persistent riddle of mass and how objects obtain it -- one of the most sought-after answers in all of physics.

But experts cautioned that more analysis was needed over the next several months to uncover the true nature of the discovery, which comes as part of an ongoing experiment with proton and antiproton collisions to understand the workings of the universe.

"There could be some new force beyond the force that we know," said Giovanni Punzi, a physicist with the international research team that is analyzing the data from the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

"If it is confirmed, it could point to a whole new world of interactions," he told AFP.

While much remains a mystery, researchers agree that this is not the "God Particle," or the Higgs-boson, a hypothetical elementary particle which has long eluded physicists who believe it could explain why objects have mass.

"The Higgs-boson is a piece that goes into the puzzle that we already have," said Punzi. "Whereas this is something that goes a little bit beyond that -- a new interaction, a new force."

Punzi said the new observation behaves differently than the Higgs-boson, which would be decaying into heavy quarks, or particles.

The new discovery "is decaying in normal quarks," Punzi said. "It has different features," he added.

"One thing we know for sure -- it is not the Higgs-boson. That is the only thing we know for sure."

Physicists were to discuss their findings further in a meeting to be webcast at 2100 GMT.

For more than a year physicists have been studying what appears to be a "bump" in the data from the Illinois-based Fermi lab, which operates the powerful particle accelerator, or atom-smasher, Tevatron.

The Tevatron was once the most powerful machine in the world for such purposes until 2008 when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) became operational at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which goes by the acronym CERN.

The US machine began its work in the mid 1980s, and is scheduled for shutdown later this year when its funding runs dry.

"These results are certainly tantalizing," said Nigel Lockyer, director of Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, TRIUMF.

"It is too early to say for sure what the Fermilab team has observed," he added in an email to AFP.

"On the one hand, there is clear evidence for something unexplained, and on the other, there is a long list of alternative explanations for what might be causing this subtle observation," he said.

"My personal judgment is that this excitement is adding fuel to the fire for the next generation of results and discoveries that will be made at the LHC (in Europe) and elsewhere. We are so close to learning something profound."

Lockyer, a former spokesman for the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), which made the announcement, said there is another major experiment going on at Tevatron, a sister project known as D-Zero, which could help confirm the data in the coming months.

"They are both multipurpose detectors. They both have the capability of seeing this," he said, predicting a rush of opinions by theoretical physicists in the coming days, and more data that could shed more light on the finding by summer.

"It will become very much clearer in the next few months. You won't have to wait years."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 04:20 PM

All of humanity could shift to solar, wind energy in less than 25 years, policy study group claims

By Stephen C. Webster
Thursday, March 31st, 2011 -- 10:37 am

Humankind has the technology, resources and capabilities to adapt to and help avert serious climate change and the crunch of a dwindling energy economy, if only the political will can be mustered -- and it's not just idealistic progressives who are saying so anymore.

In a recent report, the British non-profit Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD) claimed that, with targeted investments by world governments, solar power could become humanity's main source of portable energy in 25 years or less.

The catch: "Spending priorities" must change -- something that seems remarkably difficult even in the U.S., ostensibly one of the world's most advanced democracies.

Starting with the assumption that hydrocarbon energy markets are dying and renewable energy tech is the inevitable future, the group calculated how much electricity humans consume today and how much growing populations are projected to consume by 2030.

What they found is that in 19 years from now, humanity will be consuming 724 exajoules (EJ) of energy annually. Today, that figure is about 39 percent less.

Figuring in the efficiency of today's solar and wind power tech, they were able to model what it would take to rapidly replace the current petroleum power infrastructure with renewables.

"We find that we can replace the entire existing energy infrastructure with renewables in 25 years or less," they wrote, "so long as [energy return on energy invested] of the mixed renewable power infrastructure is maintained at 20 [percent] or higher, by using merely 1% of the present fossil fuel capacity and a reinvestment of 10% of the renewable capacity per year."

IPRD researchers also claimed that "an annual contribution equal to 2% of the present energy fossil fuel capacity" would allow the mixed-tech energy infrastructure to grow along currently forecasted routes -- quite the opposite of the fearmongering so often broadcast by the more traditional energy industry.

This would ultimately allow a distributed, peer-based clean energy infrastructure to scale outwards, providing enough electricity for every person on the planet to live at "high human development requirements."

But it's not all sunshine and good news from the IPRD.

"As optimistic as our findings seem, it would be misleading if we didn't mention some of the potential roadblocks," they cautioned. "We observe four potential obstacles to this transition. Firstly, we note that world governments do not seem sufficiently motivated to support a timely overhaul of the global fossilfuel based economy nor the creation of one that will be cleaner and more secure. In particular, the U.S. government projects that renewables will only account for 14% of the world's total energy mix in 2035, with a minimum of 75% coming from fossil-fuels.

"We submit that sufficient political will and determination can overcome this resistance, just as in earlier eras when the stakes were set high enough—e.g., retooling the American automobile infrastructure for World War II armaments and racing to land a human on the moon."

Whether or not the American people are up to that challenge, however, is another question entirely.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 12:18 PM

Bobert
There are many exogenetic processes that activate certain genes when certain conditions are met. The nurture part of the equation can come into play 2 generatons later, such as in the case of famile causing the grandchildren to then have genes that will cause an increase in the efficiency of food digestion that would allow the grandchildren to thrive on less than half the food that the grandparents could. Unfortunately in society today that can lead to extreme obeisity while eating relatively very little.'This was found in certain native Indian populations.

Here is a random trace of my effot to illustrate the condition that the USA is now in...
The evil vampires are not in this picture, they are on holiday

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 08:17 AM

LONDON, Ontario, March 31 (UPI) -- Identical twins are not truly identical, a Canadian molecular geneticist at the University of Western Ontario in London says.

Dr. Shiva Singh said he made the discovery while studying schizophrenia and its relationship with heredity, Postmedia News reported.

"Our results have really forced everyone to rethink the idea that identical twins are actually identical," he said. "So this finding could be really revolutionary."

The accidental discovery came after Singh and fellow researchers sequenced the DNA of twins and their parents and found at least 1 million differences, the report said.

Singh said the number of genetic differences in twins appears to expand with age, although he didn't say whether the pair begin life as identical.

"The genome is very dynamic, not static. What you got from your parents is not what you have in the end," he said. "There is more to the story than that."

The findings could have major ramifications across the scientific spectrum, as identical twins have long been used in studies with one being a control subject and the other the variable. Singh said the new findings means both twins would have to be considered variables.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/03/31/Researcher-Identical-twins-not-identical/UPI-20161301571417/#ixzz1IB8wYyZa

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 09:34 PM

New discovery of lightning and anti matter.

It has long been a mystery why lightning should be hotter than the sun at a staggering 50,000 F.

Careful measurements have found that lightning is somehow splitting particles that produce positrons which in turn annihilates its opposite twin the electron.

To think we are witnessing a small amount of anti matter blowing up.

5 years ago I was burned on one side of my face by a lightning bolt.
The heat while brief was phenomenal.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Mar 11 - 07:22 PM

everything is this big

The information reveals everything

Everything is information

Everything (the big IT) is bit by bit 0 or 1
new infromation creates surprise or disorder so information breeds chaos and entropy.

Achieving your ultimate understading to the zenith of complete wisdom will lead to its entire destruction.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 06 Mar 11 - 10:00 AM

NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

Aliens exist, and we have proof.

That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover's findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

"I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth," Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. "This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible."

Hoover discovered the fossils by breaking apart the CI1 meteorite, and analyzing the exposed rock with a scanning-electron microscope and a field emission electron-scanning microscope, which allowed him to detect any fossil remains. What he found were fossils of micro-organisms, many of which he says are strikingly similar to those found on our own planet.

"The exciting thing is that they are in many cases recognizable and can be associated very closely with the generic species here on earth," said Hoover. Some of the fossils, however, are quite odd. "There are some that are just very strange and don't look like anything that I've been able to identify, and I've shown them to many other experts that have also come up stump."

In order to satisfy the inevitable hoard of buzz-killing skeptics, Hoover's study and evidence were made available to his peers in the scientific community in advance of the study's publications, giving them a chance to thoroughly dissect his findings. Comments from those who decided to sift through the evidence will be published online, alongside the study.

"Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5,000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis," writes Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Dr. Rudy Schild, who serves as the Journal of Cosmology's editor-in-chief. "No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting, and never before in the history of science has the scientific community been given the opportunity to critically analyze an important research paper before it is published."

Needless to say, if Hoover’s conclusions are found to be accurate, the implications for human life will be staggering. Here’s to hoping that he’s right.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 04 Mar 11 - 07:56 AM

Surgeon creates new kidney on TED stage

LONG BEACH, California – A surgeon specializing in regenerative medicine on Thursday "printed" a real kidney using a machine that eliminates the need for donors when it comes to organ transplants.

"It's like baking a cake," Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine said as he cooked up a fresh kidney on stage at a TED Conference in the California city of Long Beach.

Scanners are used to take a 3-D image of a kidney that needs replacing, then a tissue sample about half the size of postage stamp is used to seed the computerized process, Atala explained.

The organ "printer" then works layer-by-layer to build a replacement kidney replicating the patient's tissue.

College student Luke Massella was among the first people to receive a printed kidney during experimental research a decade ago when he was just 10 years old.

He said he was born with Spina Bifida and his kidneys were not working.

"Now, I'm in college and basically trying to live life like a normal kid," said Massella, who was reunited with Atala at TED.

"This surgery saved my life and made me who I am today."

About 90 percent of people waiting for transplants are in need of kidneys, and the need far outweighs the supply of donated organs, according to Atala.

"There is a major health crisis today in terms of the shortage of organs," Atala said. "Medicine has done a much better job of making us live longer, and as we age our organs don't last."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jan 11 - 07:21 PM

Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's grey matter.


"Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day," says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study's senior author. "This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing."

Previous studies from Lazar's group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced mediation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.

For the current study, MR images were take of the brain structure of 16 study participants two weeks before and after they took part in the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. In addition to weekly meetings that included practice of mindfulness meditation Ð which focuses on nonjudgmental awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind Ð participants received audio recordings for guided meditation practice and were asked to keep track of how much time they practiced each day. A set of MR brain images were also taken of a control group of non-meditators over a similar time interval.

(PhysOrg)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jan 11 - 02:26 PM

Prepare for the Landings!!!!!!

(Click to learn more...)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 19 Jan 11 - 08:48 PM

University researchers create networked flying robots that build complex structures

By Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 -- 4:35 pm

Imagine a future where massive, flying robots assemble complex structures like skyscrapers or houses, with all the machines working as one, coordinated through a wireless network and custom algorithm.

Granted, a similar process already takes place today on a much smaller scale, albeit guided by human pilots.

But with the potential for human error eliminated, construction times could be drastically reduced. Ultimately, a hyper-streamlined system could result in thousands of construction jobs being eliminated and a surge in urban sprawl.

Such an invention, properly scaled upward, would be simply revolutionary -- and that radical vision, scarcely imagined even in science fiction, took its first step toward becoming a reality in 2011.

University of Pennsylvania PhD candidate Daniel Mellinger, in a project by the school's GRASP Lab (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception), created a set of flying, networked robot builders that can quickly and accurately assemble structures made out of magnetic rods.

The only input required from a human equipped with such a system would be her choice of blueprint: the drones handle everything else.

The robotic helicopters, equipped with a specialized grabbing mechanism for Mellinger's latest demonstration, were shown last year to be dexterous enough to do mid-air flips, pass through windows, perch on vertical surfaces and swarm in predefined patterns.

While it was just a small-scale project, it was likely to go down as one of the first to truly show the potential of hive-mind robotic assistants.

"I think this work is a first step in autonomous aerial robotic assembly," Mellinger told Raw Story. "I think it is reasonable to say that in the near future we can have large-scale aerial robots autonomously building structures that are useful to humans."

VIDEO

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 11 - 01:13 PM

Swearing off the Net for One Season.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 16 Jan 11 - 05:56 PM

Roman rise and fall 'recorded in trees'
By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

An extensive study of tree growth rings says there could be a link between the rise and fall of past civilisations and sudden shifts in Europe's climate.

A team of researchers based their findings on data from 9,000 wooden artifacts from the past 2,500 years.

They found that periods of warm, wet summers coincided with prosperity, while political turmoil occurred during times of climate instability.

The findings have been published online by the journal Science.

"Looking back on 2,500 years, there are examples where climate change impacted human history," co-author Ulf Buntgen, a paleoclimatologist at the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape, told the Science website.

Ring record

The team capitalised on a system used to date material unearthed during excavations.
Continue reading the main story
"Start Quote

    Distinct drying in the 3rd Century paralleled a period of serious crisis in the western Roman empire"

End Quote Ulf Buntgen

"Archaeologists have developed oak ring width chronologies from Central Europe that cover nearly the entire Holocene and have used them for the purpose of dating artefacts, historical buildings, antique artwork and furniture," they wrote.

"Chronologies of living and relict oaks may reflect distinct patterns of summer precipitation and drought."

The team looked at how weather over the past couple of centuries affected living trees' growth rings.

During good growing seasons, when water and nutrients are in plentiful supply, trees form broad rings, with their boundaries relatively far apart.

But in unfavourable conditions, such as drought, the rings grow in much tighter formation.

The researchers then used this data to reconstruct annual weather patterns from the growth rings preserved in the artefacts.

Once they had developed a chronology stretching back over the past 2,500 years, they identified a link with prosperity levels in past societies, such as the Roman Empire.

"Wet and warm summers occurred during periods of Roman and medieval prosperity. Increased climate variability from 250-600 AD coincided with the demise of the western Roman empire and the turmoil of the migration period," the team reported.

"Distinct drying in the 3rd Century paralleled a period of serious crisis in the western Roman empire marked by barbarian invasion, political turmoil and economic dislocation in several provinces of Gaul."

Dr Buntgen explained: "We were aware of these super-big data sets, and we brought them together and analyzed them in a new way to get the climate signal.

"If you have enough wood, the dating is secure. You just need a lot of material and a lot of rings."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 11:06 PM

Bring back the Woolly Mammoth!!

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 07:23 PM

Liquids have long been known to exhibit a rapid change in properties near a point called the glass transition temperature, where the viscosity of the liquid Ñ its Òthickness,Ó or resistance to flow Ñ becomes very large. But MIT professor Sow-Hsin Chen and his co-researchers have found a different transition point at a temperature about 20 to 30 percent higher, which they call the dynamic crossover temperature. This temperature may be at least as important as the glass transition temperature, and the viscosity at the dynamic crossover temperature seems to have a universal value for a large class of liquids (called glass-forming liquids) that includes such familiar substances as water, ammonia and benzene.

At this new transition temperature, Òall the transport properties of the liquid state change drastically,Ó Chen says. ÒNobody realized this universal property of liquids before.Ó The work, carried out by physics professor Francesco Mallamace of the University of Messina, Italy (who is a research affiliate at MIT) and four of his students from Messina, along with Chen, an MIT professor emeritus of nuclear science and engineering, and Eugene Stanley, a physics professor at Boston University, was published on Dec. 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This is very basic research and Chen says it is too early to predict what practical applications this knowledge could produce. ÒWe can only speculate,Ó he says, because Òthis is so new that real practical applications havenÕt really surfaced.Ó But he points out that one of the most widely used building materials in the world, concrete, flows as a liquid-like cement paste during construction, and a better ability to understand its process of transition to solid form might be significant for improving its durability or other characteristics.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Jan 11 - 01:28 PM

China has flown their first stealth military airplane 10 years ahead of schedule today.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 11:06 PM

+6
3

A few things I have learned by word of mouth over the last couple weeks are;

The element Cerium when combined with CO2 and over 2000 degree heat will produce fuel more efficiently than Ethanol production.
The efficiency of ethanol production is less than 1%
The Cerium method is durrently 1% effective and if scaled up would become much better. btw the Cerium is not degraded in the process and does not require replacement.


Place your investment bets on Panasonic.
They are about to reveal a silicon point battery sytem which is a staggering 30% better/stronger and longer lasting than lithium.
The upper limit of this kind of battery is about 70% more powerful than any battery today! (this tip is not an insider trading infraction) Sadly it is a Japanese invention and not American.
South Korea will be involved in part of the manufacturing.

LG makes the cheapest 3D TV that uses regular concentric polarized glasses that you see at the theatre. It is so far the best buy.



If you have any experience in the future's market check out chocolate.
The Irory Coast which is the largest choclate bean supplier is in political turmoil near civil war and may interrupt the supply of chocolate beans for the world.

The bird and fish die offs are a world wide phenomenon and not limited to the USA. Th ere are three seperate natural factors which are respondsible for the massive die offs, while man's effect on the atmosphere is a contributing factor.
more on this on my blog.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jan 11 - 02:43 PM

Pope Says God Was Behind Big Bang
By REUTERS 8:47 AM ET
God's mind was behind scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe was created by chance, Pope Benedict said.

...well, I should think so!!! Unless it was Lucifer's date night.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 28 Dec 10 - 10:00 PM

Study: Conservatives have larger 'fear center' in brain

By Daniel Tencer
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010 -- 5:43 pm

Political opinions are considered choices, and in Western democracies the right to choose one's opinions -- freedom of conscience -- is considered sacrosanct.

But recent studies suggest that our brains and genes may be a major determining factor in the views we hold.

A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives' brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other "primitive" emotions. At the same time, conservatives' brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate -- the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.

If the study is confirmed, it could give us the first medical explanation for why conservatives tend to be more receptive to threats of terrorism, for example, than liberals. And it may help to explain why conservatives like to plan based on the worst-case scenario, while liberals tend towards rosier outlooks.

"It is very significant because it does suggest there is something about political attitudes that are either encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that our brain structure in some way determines or results in our political attitudes," Geraint Rees, the neurologist who carried out the study, told the media.

Rees, who heads up UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, was originally asked half-jokingly to study the differences between liberal and conservative brains for an episode of BBC 4's Today show that was hosted by actor Colin Firth. But, after studying 90 UCL students and two British parliamentarians, the neurologist was shocked to discover a clear correlation between the size of certain brain parts and political views.

He cautions that, because the study was carried out only on adults, there is no way to tell what came first -- the brain differences or the political opinions.

But evidence is beginning to accumulate that figuring out a person's political proclivities may soon be as simple as a brain scan -- or a DNA test.

In a study published in October, researchers at Harvard and UC-San Diego found that a variant of the DRD4 gene predisposes people to being liberal, but only if they had active social lives as adolescents. The "liberal gene" has also been linked to a desire to try new things, and other "personality traits related to political liberalism."

For his part, actor Colin Firth, who hosted the BBC show that revealed the results of the brain scans, has said he wants to see brain scans on politicians to find out if they are telling the truth about what they believe.

Questioning the "liberal" credentials of the head of Britain's Liberal Democratic party, Nick Clegg, Firth said: "I think we should have him scanned."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 10 - 10:24 PM

The grim results arrive before next month's milestone, when the oldest baby boomers will turn 65. America's baby boomer generation of 79 million people adds up to a little more than a quarter of the U.S. population, the center reports.

Over the next 19 years, about 10,000 people will turn 65 each day, the survey reports, resulting in a grayer America by 2030. By that year, 18% of the nation's population will be over the age of 65, compared with 13% now.

The Pew survey did not examine why the baby boomer generation has a gloomy outlook. Some believe it's a result of being middle-aged, a time when people experience more psychological stresses and demands. Others experts blame the lackluster economy.

Taylor said there were two other theories posed by outside experts. First, some experts blame challenges to baby boomers that other generations have not had to face. Because the boomer generation is so large, members have historically faced tremendous competition in the workplace from their peers.

"They had a tougher fight to get jobs and crawl up the ladder," he said.

Another theory is that the idealistic boomers experienced their prime during their youth in 1960s when they fought for civil and women's rights. Now, they may be finding they were unable to complete the societal reforms they had envisioned.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 10 - 11:14 AM

A childhood mystery made plain:

"This is where donkeys and camels brought bags of frankincense resin to waiting ships for transport to Mesopotamia, India, and China. Khor Rori dates at least to 300 B.C. and flourished until the fourth century A.D. The old sea gate leading from the stone fortress remains, opening onto a sandy path where the frankincense was set on its journey, a luxury item fit for royalty. Biblical scholars believe this is one of the reasons frankincense was chosen as a gift for the Christ child. Frankincense and myrrh, also a resin that comes from a tree, were used as perfumes and anointing oils, and these lands of Oman are referenced in both the Bible and the Quran.

In a dim cave in the mountains of Jebel al Qamra, not far from the Yemen border, I got the real story from a kindly, smooth-faced Muslim named Mohammed Mahaad Saheel bin Baafee. I asked why the wise men might have brought frankincense to Jesus. "To ward off evil spirits and snakes," he told me in Arabic. Plausible? Indeed.

For generations, Mohammed's family has tapped frankincense resin from the trees on their tribal land, scarred, rocky mountain faces that drop to the emerald waters of the Arabian Sea, offering expansive vistas of some of the most beautiful and desolate landscape in the world.

On a hot, dry day in December, Mohammed took me on a scraggly walk through his frankincense trees, a species called Boswellia sacra. These trees are also found in Yemen and Somalia. The conditions of the southern Oman coast are ideal for growing frankincense trees, which can reach 16 feet in height. Monsoon rains during the summer months and hot, desert conditions during the rest of the year help produce what is considered some of the finest and most expensive frankincense in the world. A 3.36-ounce bottle of Omani Amouge perfume with frankincense costs about $350.

To collect resin, Mohammed uses a metal blade to nick the tree, allowing droplets of white, milky sap to bleed slowly onto the bark. He will return in 10 days to collect the gum resin, which will have started to harden. The resin pellets are then spread on the ledge of a cave for four months to dry more completely, forming rocks that are sorted by hand.

Silver, clear frankincense is the highest quality grade, and it is usually reserved for the Great Leader, making it difficult for Westerners to acquire. Brown, muddy frankincense is the cheapest and most widely available. The bigger and whiter the rock, the better. Omanis harvest frankincense twice a year and believe that frankincense resin from the fall, after the summer rains, is the best."

SLate

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 10 - 09:24 PM

The term ÒconsciousÓ was first introduced into academic discourse by the Cambridge philosopher Ralph Cudworth in 1678, and by 1727, John Maxwell had distinguished five senses of the term. The ambiguity has not abated.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Dec 10 - 05:16 PM

December 8, 2010 2:25 PM Text Size: A . A . A SpaceX launched its Dragon capsule into space for the first time this morning at 10:43 am from Kennedy Space Center.

The capsule circled the earth twice and came back down in the Pacific several hundred miles west of Southern California.

The flight marks the first time a private firm's spacecraft re-entered Earth's atmosphere from orbit.

NASA has selected SpaceX and another company, Orbital Sciences, to each develop an orbital vehicle that can resupply the International Space Station after the Space Shuttle retires next year. SpaceX intends to build capsules that can deliver people, not just cargo,

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Dec 10 - 11:51 AM

Scientists who have studied the genetic past of an Icelandic family now claim the first Americans reached Europe a full five centuries before Columbus bumped into an island in the Bahamas during his first voyage of discovery in 1492.

Researchers said today that a woman from the Americas probably arrived in Iceland 1,000 years ago, leaving behind genes that are reflected in about 80 Icelanders today.

The link was first detected among inhabitants of Iceland, home to one of the most thorough gene-mapping programs in the world, several years ago.

Initial suggestions that the genes may have arrived via Asia were ruled out after samples showed they had been in Iceland since the early 18th century, before Asian genes began appearing among Icelanders.

Investigators discovered the genes could be traced to common ancestors in the south of Iceland, near the Vatnajˆkull glacier, in around 1710.

"As the island was practically isolated from the 10th century onwards, the most probable hypothesis is that these genes correspond to an Amerindian woman who was taken from America by the Vikings some time around the year 1000," Carles Lalueza-Fox, of the Pompeu Fabra university in Spain, said.

Norse sagas suggest the Vikings discovered the Americas centuries before Columbus got there in 1492.

A Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, in the eastern Canadian region of Terranova, is thought to date to the 11th century.

Researchers said they would keep trying to determine when the Amerindian genes first arrived in Iceland.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 10 - 08:37 PM

Bioengineers discover how particles self-assemble in flowing fluids

December 13, 2010 By Matthew Chin and Wileen Wong Kromhout


(PhysOrg.com) -- From atomic crystals to spiral galaxies, self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature. In biological processes, self-assembly at the molecular level is particularly prevalent.

Phospholipids, for example, will self-assemble into a bilayer to form a cell membrane, and actin, a protein that supports and shapes a cell's structure, continuously self-assembles and disassembles during cell movement.

Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have been exploring a unique phenomenon whereby randomly dispersed microparticles self-assemble into a highly organized structure as they flow through microscale channels.

This self-assembly behavior was unexpected, the researchers said, for such a simple system containing only particles, fluid and a conduit through which these elements flow. The particles formed lattice-like structures due to a unique combination of hydrodynamic interactions.

The research, published online today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by UCLA postdoctoral scholar Wonhee Lee and UCLA assistant professor of bioengineering Dino Di Carlo.

A simple microfluidic "filter" structure converts microparticle streams with smaller interparticle spacings to trains of larger spacing. The channel width is about half the diameter of a human hair at the expansion.

The research team discovered the mechanism that leads to this self-assembly behavior through a series of careful experiments and numerical simulations. They found that continuous disturbance of the fluid induced by each flowing and rotating particle drives neighboring particles away, while migration of particles to localized streams due to the momentum of the fluid acts to stabilize the spacing between particles at a finite distance. In essence, the combination of repulsion and localization leads to an organized structure.

Once they understood the mechanism, the team developed microchannels that allowed for "tuning" of the spatial frequency of particles within an organized particle train. They found that by simply adding short regions of expanded channel width, the particles could be induced to self-assemble into different structures in a controllable and potentially programmable way.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 10 - 04:33 PM

"There's something exciting afoot in the world of cosmology. Last month, Roger Penrose at the University of Oxford and Vahe Gurzadyan at Yerevan State University in Armenia announced that they had found patterns of concentric circles in the cosmic microwave background, the echo of the Big Bang.

This, they say, is exactly what you'd expect if the universe were eternally cyclical. By that, they mean that each cycle ends with a big bang that starts the next cycle. In this model, the universe is a kind of cosmic Russian Doll, with all previous universes contained within the current one.

That's an extraordinary discovery: evidence of something that occurred before the (conventional) Big Bang.

Today, another group says they've found something else in the echo of the Big Bang. These guys start with a different model of the universe called eternal inflation. In this way of thinking, the universe we see is merely a bubble in a much larger cosmos. This cosmos is filled with other bubbles, all of which are other universes where the laws of physics may be dramatically different to ours.

These bubbles probably had a violent past, jostling together and leaving "cosmic bruises" where they touched. If so, these bruises ought to be visible today in the cosmic microwave background.

Now Stephen Feeney at University College London and a few pals say they've found tentative evidence of this bruising in the form of circular patterns in cosmic microwave background. In fact, they've found four bruises, implying that our universe must have smashed into other bubbles at least four times in the past.

Again, this is an extraordinary result: the first evidence of universes beyond our own.

"


From MIT

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 10:02 PM

Japan team says stem cells made paralysed monkey jump again


Agence France-Presse
First Posted 18:41:00 12/08/2010

Filed Under: Science (general), Health, Health treatment, Diseases, Research, Animals

TOKYO - Japanese researchers said Wednesday they had used stem cells to restore partial mobility in a small monkey that had been paralysed from the neck down by a spinal injury.

"It is the world's first case in which a small-size primate recovered from a spinal injury using stem cells," professor Hideyuki Okano of Tokyo's Keio University told AFP.

Okano's research team, which earlier helped a mouse recover its mobility in a similar treatment, injected so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into a paralysed marmoset, he said.

The team planted four types of genes into human skin cells to create the iPS cells, according to Kyodo News.

The injection was given on the ninth day after the injury, considered the most effective timing, and the monkey started to move its limbs again within two to three weeks, Okano said.

"After six weeks, the animal had recovered to the level where it was jumping around," he told AFP. "It was very close to the normal level."

"Its gripping strength on the forefeet also recovered to up to 80 percent."

Okano called the research project a major stride to pave the way for a similar medical
technique to be used on humans.

Scientists say the use of human embryonic stem cells as a treatment for cancer and other diseases holds great promise, but the process has drawn fire from religious conservatives and others who oppose it.

Embryonic stem cell research is controversial because human embryos are destroyed in order to obtain the cells capable of developing into almost every tissue of the body.

---

This is a major advance in therapeutic use of stem cells.

Lotsa hope for issues like MS, etc.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Dec 10 - 07:29 PM

*
    * PhysOrg.com

Theoretical physics breakthrough: Generating matter and antimatter from the vacuum
December 8, 2010

Under just the right conditions -- which involve an ultra-high-intensity laser beam and a two-mile-long particle accelerator -- it could be possible to create something out of nothing, according to University of Michigan researchers.




The scientists and engineers have developed new equations that show how a high-energy electron beam combined with an intense laser pulse could rip apart a vacuum into its fundamental matter and antimatter components, and set off a cascade of events that generates additional pairs of particles and antiparticles.

"We can now calculate how, from a single electron, several hundred particles can be produced. We believe this happens in nature near pulsars and neutron stars," said Igor Sokolov, an engineering research scientist who conducted this research along with associate research scientist John Nees, emeritus electrical engineering professor Gerard Mourou and their colleagues in France.

At the heart of this work is the idea that a vacuum is not exactly nothing.

"It is better to say, following theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, that a vacuum, or nothing, is the combination of matter and antimatter -- particles and antiparticles. Their density is tremendous, but we cannot perceive any of them because their observable effects entirely cancel each other out," Sokolov said.

Matter and antimatter destroy each other when they come into contact under normal conditions.

"But in a strong electromagnetic field, this annihilation, which is typically a sink mechanism, can be the source of new particles," Nees said, "In the course of the annihilation, gamma photons appear, which can produce additional electrons and positrons."

A gamma photon is a high-energy particle of light. A positron is an anti-electron, a mirror-image particle with the same properties as an electron, but an opposite, positive charge.

The researchers describe this work as a theoretical breakthrough, and a "qualitative jump in theory."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Dec 10 - 07:24 PM

Today's Facts
1696 - Connecticut Route 108, third oldest highway in Connecticut laid out to Trumbull.
1724 - Tumult of Thorn Ð religious unrest was followed by the execution of nine Protestant citizens and the mayor of Thorn (Toruń) by Polish authorities.
1732 - The Royal Opera House opens at Covent Garden, London.
1776 - Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general.
1787 - Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the US Constitution.
1862 - US Civil War: Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
1900 - Max Planck, in his house at Grunewald, on the outskirts of Berlin, discovers the law of black body emission.
1917 - The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.
1930 - W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, The Fox Trappers. The broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.
1940 - The first prototype Fairey Barracuda flew
1941 - Attack on Pearl Harbor Ð The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Because of the time difference due to the International Date Line, the events of December 8 occurred while the date was still December 7 to the east of this line.
1946 - A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia kills 119 people, the deadliest hotel fire in U.S. history.
1949 - The government of Republic of China moves from Nanking to Taipei.
1962 - Prince Rainier III of Monaco revises the principality's constitution, devolving some of his power to advisory and legislative councils.
1963 - Instant replay is used for the first time in a Army-Navy game.
1965 - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054.
1966 - A fire at an army barracks in Erzurum, Turkey kills 68 people.
1970 - The first ever general election on the basis of direct adult franchise is held in Pakistan for 313 National Assembly seats.
1971 - Pakistan President Yahya Khan announces formation of a Coalition Government at Centre with Nurul Amin as Prime Minister and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as Vice-Prime Minister.
1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" as they leave the Earth.
1975 - Indonesia invades East Timor.
1982 - In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.
1983 - An Iberia Airlines Boeing 727 collides with an Aviaco DC-9 in dense fog while the two airliners are taxiing down the runway at Madrid Barajas International Airport, killing 93 people.
1987 - Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shoots both pilots and himself.
1987 - Alianza Lima air disaster. A plane crashed killing all Alianza Lima team in Ventanilla, Callao, Peru.
1988 - Spitak Earthquake: In Armenia an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale kills nearly 25,000, injures 15,000 and leaves 400,000 homeless.
1988 - Yasser Arafat recognizes the right of Israel to exist.
1990 - The Rookie directed by Clint Eastwood was released
1993 - The Long Island Rail Road massacre: Passenger Colin Ferguson murders six people and injures 19 others on the LIRR in Nassau County, New York.
1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
1999 - The RIAA files a lawsuit against the Napster file-sharing client, on charges of copyright infringement.
2003 - The Conservative Party of Canada is officially recognized after the merger of the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
2005 - The World's Fastest Indian directed by Roger Donaldson was released
2005 - Rigoberto Alpizar, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 924 who allegedly claimed to have a bomb, is shot and killed by a team of U.S. federal air marshals at Miami International Airport.
2006 - A tornado struck Kensal Green, North West London, seriously damaging around 150 properties.
2007 - The Hebei Spirit oil spill began in South Korea after a crane barge being towed by tug collided with the Very Large Crude Carrier, Hebei Spirit.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 03:50 PM

"In 2007, Kazakhistan President Nazarbayev's son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, celebrated his 41st birthday in grand style. At a small venue in Almaty, he hosted a private concert with some of Russia's biggest pop-stars. The headliner, however, was Elton John, to whom he reportedly paid one million pounds for this one-time appearance. (Note: The British Ambassador relayed a slightly different story, with an unknown but obviously well-heeled friend arranging and paying for Sir Elton's gig.)"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Dec 10 - 02:18 PM

People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level, according to this piece in the Medical Daily. "In addition, fear of death is most common among women than men, which affects their children's perception of death. In fact, 76% of children that report fear of death is due to their mothers avoiding the topic. Additionally, more of these children fear early death and adopt unsuitable approaches when it comes to deal with death."