BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Nov 08 - 06:33 PM

(I actually had a young lady in one of my classes come to me in hopes of getting a 'better' grade than C- on a paper she had written.)

"Oh", she said, "I'd do ANYTHING to improve this grade!"

"Does that mean you'd be willing to.....re-write the paper?", I asked.

She hemmed and hawed and indicated she "didn't really have time".

I suppose I know what she did have time for....guess I missed my chance.

(Oh...the prof graded on a modified curve. She got an 'A' in the class by one point! Boy, I'll bet she was glad she wasn't more insistent.)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Nov 08 - 01:47 PM

The deeply wierd aspect of DNA is that it can be exo encoded from one generation to the next. In other words it can cause certain abilities to be turned on for the next generation or not depnding upon outside influences.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Nov 08 - 05:51 PM

Tunnelling nanotubes: Life's secret network

* 18 November 2008 by Anil Ananthaswamy * Magazine issue 2682

Tunnelling nanotubes seem to play a major role in anything from how our immune system responds to attacks, to how damaged muscle is repaired   after a heart attack (Image: Paul McMenamin / UWA).

HAD Amin Rustom not messed up, he would not have stumbled upon one of
the biggest discoveries in biology of recent times. It all began in 2000, when he saw something strange under his microscope. A very long, thin tube had formed between two of the rat cells that he was studying. It looked like nothing he had ever seen before.

His supervisor, Hans-Hermann Gerdes, asked him to repeat the experiment.
Rustom did, and saw nothing unusual. When Gerdes grilled him, Rustom
admitted that the first time around he had not followed the standard protocol of swapping the liquid in which the cells were growing between
observations.

Gerdes made him redo the experiment, mistakes and all, and there they
were again: long, delicate connections between cells. This was something
new - a previously unknown way in which animal cells can communicate with each other.

Gerdes and Rustom, then at Heidelberg University in Germany, called the
connections tunnelling nanotubes. Aware that they might be onto
something significant, the duo slogged away to produce convincing evidence and eventually published a landmark paper in 2004 (Science, vol 303, p
1007).

A mere curiosity?

At the time, it was not clear whether these structures were anything
more than a curiosity seen only in peculiar circumstances. Since their
pioneering paper appeared, however, other groups have started finding nanotubes in all sorts of places, from nerve cells to heart cells. And far from being a mere curiosity, they seem to play a major role in anything from how our immune system responds to attacks to how damaged muscle is repaired after a heart attack.

They can also be hijacked: nanotubes may provide HIV with a network of
secret tunnels that allow it to evade the immune system, while some cancers could be using nanotubes to subvert chemotherapy. Simply put, tunnelling nanotubes appear to be everywhere, in sickness and in health. "The field is very hot," says Gerdes, now at the University of Bergen in Norway.

(New Scientist)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Nov 08 - 08:29 PM

Safe sex in a pill

Gay men who have unprotected sex could dramatically reduce their chances of catching HIV simply by taking a pill once a day. For the moment "pre-exposure prophylaxis" remains unproven and available to only a select few ˆ but if it works, the controversial strategy could prove a critical advance in the fight against AIDS.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.




Monkey gossip hints at social origins of language

Women may be fed up with being stereotyped as the chattier sex, but the cliché turns out to be true ˆ in macaque monkeys, at least. Researchers have found that female macaques make 13 times as many friendly noises as males during chit-chat between individuals. The finding adds weight to the theory that human language evolved to forge social bonds.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 11:17 AM

On the discovery of the purloined and sunken vessel "Cara Merchant", seized by William Kidd for itys treasure and abandoned by him off the Dominican Republic.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 10:03 AM

Researchers in Poland say they have solved a centuries-old mystery and identified the remains of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

A comparison of DNA from a skeleton in Poland and strands of the astronomer's hair found in a book in Sweden almost certainly confirm it is his skeleton.

Archaeologists found the skeleton in north-eastern Poland three years ago in a cathedral where Copernicus lived.

He worked in Frombork Cathedral on the Baltic Sea coast in the 16th Century.

Copernicus was one of the key proponents of the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun.

For many years he was a canon and only carried out his astronomical studies in his spare time. People had speculated about his final resting place for centuries.

Teeth DNA

Three years ago, archaeologists dug up a skull and partial remains of a man aged about 70, Copernicus' age when he died, near an altar at the cathedral.

Jerzy Gassowski, the leader of the archaeologists' team, said forensic facial reconstruction of the skull found that it bore a striking resemblance to existing portraits of the father of modern astronomy.

Scientists then matched the DNA from one of the skull's teeth and a femur bone with two strands of Copernicus' hair.

The hair was found in a book once owned by the astronomer now kept in Sweden's Uppsala University.

(BBC News)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 10:38 AM

60 more to go.

The US Intelligence services issued their outlook for the year 2025.
The US falls to the third or fourth spot behind super powers such as China, India and the Euro States.


Poor Mad Money Cramer had the timarity to ask the AIG CEO esactly where the $160 billion dollars that Paulson gave them is today.
AIG is sueing Cramer and asking for his employment to be terminated at CNBC.

(I suspect most of the money went to Goldman Sachs)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 09:48 AM

A sea slug that gains the ability to turn sunlight into energy from the algae it eats is arguably the first functional plant-animal hybrid found in nature.

READ THE STORY AND WATCH A VIDEO HERE: http://email.newscientist.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBfd80MQChN0mli0FQYf0Ek.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Nov 08 - 09:29 PM

Cyberchondria--The Self-Diagnosis of Illnesses Discovered on the Web

On Monday, Microsoft researchers published the results of a study of health-related Web searches on popular search engines as well as a survey of the company's employees.

The study suggests that self-diagnosis by search engine frequently leads Web searchers to conclude the worst about what ails them.

The researchers said they had undertaken the study as part of an effort to add features to Microsoft's search service that could make it more of an adviser and less of a blind information retrieval tool.

Although the term "cyberchondria" emerged in 2000 to refer to the practice of leaping to dire conclusions while researching health matters online, the Microsoft study is the first systematic look at the anxieties of people doing searches related to health care, Eric Horvitz said.

Mr. Horvitz, an artificial intelligence researcher at Microsoft Research, said many people treated search engines as if they could answer questions like a human expert.

"People tend to look at just the first couple results," Mr. Horvitz said. "If they find 'brain tumor' or 'A.L.S.,' that's their launching point."

Mr. Horvitz is a computer scientist and has a medical degree, and his fellow investigator, Ryen W. White, is a specialist in information retrieval technology.

They found that Web searches for things like headache and chest pain were just as likely or more likely to lead people to pages describing serious conditions as benign ones, even though the serious illnesses are much more rare.

For example, there were just as many results that linked headaches with brain tumors as with caffeine withdrawal, although the chance of having a brain tumor is infinitesimally small.

The researchers said they had not intended their work to send the message that people should ignore symptoms. But their examination of search records indicated that researching particular symptoms often led quickly to anxiousness.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 02:45 PM

An overworked protein that causes yeast to age when it neglects one of its functions may trigger ageing in mice too. If the same effect is found in people, it may suggest new ways to halt or reverse age-related disease.

As we get older, genes can start to be expressed in the wrong body tissues - a process that is thought to contribute to diseases like diabetes and Alzheimer's. But while sunlight or chemicals are known to cause limited DNA damage, how more widespread changes in gene expression come about has been unclear.

To investigate, David Sinclair and colleagues at Harvard Medical School turned to yeast cells. These produce a dual-function protein called Sir2 that, while being involved in DNA repair, also helps keep certain genes switched off.

As yeast cells age, the protein can't do both jobs and neglects its role as a gene suppressor.

'Unifying pathway'
Now Sinclair's team has shown that SIRT1, the mammalian version of Sir2, also begins to neglect its gene-suppressor role in mice whose DNA is damaged, and that this may contribute to ageing.

This raises the hope that, if gene-suppressing proteins become similarly overworked in ageing people, they could become prime targets for drugs to keep us young.

This possibility is boosted by the team's finding that mice engineered to over-express the gene for SIRT1 were better at repairing DNA, more resistant to cancer, and maintained a more youthful pattern of gene expression.

"The most exciting thing is that this work may unify in a single molecular pathway what we know about ageing in different organisms such as yeast and mammals," says Maria Blasco of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, who works on mechanisms of cellular ageing.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Nov 08 - 10:41 PM

Happiness conference convenes in San Francisco

By Patricia Leigh Brown Published: November 27, 2008


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SAN FRANCISCO: The stock market has been on a roller coaster, banks are going under, unemployment is skyrocketing and foreclosed homes pepper the landscape. What better time for a happiness conference?

In this dopamine-laden city, where the pursuit of well-being is something of a high art, a motley array of scientists, philosophers, doctors, psychologists, navel-gazing Googlers and Tibetan Buddhists addressed the latest findings on the science of human happiness - or eudaemonia, the classical Greek term for human flourishing.

Planned before the current crises, the first American "Happiness and Its Causes" conference was equal parts Aristotle and Oprah. It brought together heavy hitters like Paul Ekman, the psychologist known for deciphering facial "microexpressions" that reveal feelings, and Robert Sapolsky, the Stanford biologist. They considered topics like "Compassion and the Pursuit of Happiness" and "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers."

The conference is the latest manifestation of the booming happiness industry, subject of a growing number of books, scholarly research papers and academic courses. The concept began in Sydney in 2006 and has since expanded, its profile raised by the Dalai Lama's participation in Sydney in 2007.

The two-day gathering in San Francisco this week, which cost $545, benefited a nonprofit group offering Buddhist teachings to prisoners. ..(Int. Herald Tribune)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Nov 08 - 11:45 AM

Trypillian Civilization

Archeological excavations show that as early as 5,000 B.C. these ancient agrarians settled in the forest steppe in areas of the upper Dniester river on the west with later settlements found up to the middle Dnipro on the East.

    Trypillian society was matriarchal, with women heading the household, doing agricultural work, and manufacturing pottery, textiles and clothing. Hunting, keeping domestic animals and making tools were the responsibilities of the men.

    It is little wonder then, that the primary deity of this ancient population was female. The Trypillian culture developed a rich symbolic system based on their religious beliefs of the Great Goddess as the powerful giver and regenerator of life and the wielder of death.

    Trypillian pottery contains elaborate symbolic forms with highly stylized pictures and patterns reflecting concepts of nature, life and the spiritual world. The tri-color designs of white, red and black are comprised of lines, spirals, crosshatched patterns, egg-shaped motifs and other symbols reflecting their ancient beliefs.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 02:42 PM

Single-Celled Giant Upends Early Evolution
Michael Reilly, Discovery News
        
Nov. 20, 2008 -- Slowly rolling across the ocean floor, a humble single-celled creature is poised to revolutionize our understanding of how complex life evolved on Earth.

A distant relative of microscopic amoebas, the grape-sized Gromia sphaerica was discovered once before, lying motionless at the bottom of the Arabian Sea. But when Mikhail Matz of the University of Texas at Austin and a group of researchers stumbled across a group of G. sphaerica off the coast of the Bahamas, the creatures were leaving trails behind them up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) long in the mud.

The trouble is, single-celled critters aren't supposed to be able to leave trails. The oldest fossils of animal trails, called 'trace fossils', date to around 580 million years ago, and paleontologists always figured they must have been made by multicellular animals with complex, symmetrical bodies.

But G. sphaerica's traces are the spitting image of the old, Precambrian fossils; two small ridges line the outside of the trail, and one thin bump runs down the middle.

At up to three centimeters (1.2 inches) in diameter, they're also enormous compared to most of their microscopic cousins.

"If these guys were alive 600 million years ago, and their traces got fossilized, a paleontologist who had never seen this thing would not have a shade of doubt attributing this kind of trace to the activity of a big, multicellular, bilaterally symmetrical animal," Matz said.

"This is a very important discovery," Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Polytechnic Institute said. "The fact that protists can make traces has important implications for how we interpret many trace fossils."

The finding could overturn conventional thinking on a mysterious time in the evolution of early life known as the Cambrian Explosion. Until about 550 million years ago, there were very few animals leaving trails behind. Then, within ten million years an unprecedented blossoming of life swarmed across the planet, filling every niche with hard-bodied, complex creatures.

"It wasn't a gradual development of complexity," Matz said. "Instead these things suddenly seemed to burst out of a magic box."

Charles Darwin first noticed the Cambrian Explosion and thought it was an artifact of a poorly preserved fossil record. The precambrian trace fossils were left by multicellular animals, he reasoned, so there must be some gap in fossils between the nearly empty Precambrian and the teeming world that quickly followed. But if the first traces were instead made by G. sphaerica, it would mean the Explosion was real; it must have been a diversification of life on a scale never before seen.

Genetic analysis of the water-filled G. sphaerica cells also reveals tantalizing clues that it could be the oldest living fossil on the planet.

"There's a 1.8 billion-year-old fossil in the Stirling formation in Australia that looks just like one of their traces, and with a discoidal body impression similar to these guys." Matz said. "We haven't proved anything, but we might be looking at the ultimate living macroscopic fossil."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 03:05 PM

"SOME people revel in a reputation as a Casanova and others proudly proclaim their chastity. But most of us probably prefer not to advertise our sexual proclivities. Still, if you think your attitudes to sex are a private affair consider this. Earlier this year, Lynda Boothroyd of the University of Durham, UK, and colleagues published a study showing that the majority of men and women were able to accurately judge whether a person would be a good bet for a committed relationship or were more interested in a fling, just by looking at a photograph of their face.

How exactly we make this assessment based on such minimal information is up for debate, though Boothroyd's study did yield one clue. She found that men who were judged to be more "masculine" and women who were considered more "attractive", were likely to be seen as more inclined towards casual sex - and to actually be so (Evolution and Human Behavior, vol 29, p 211).

This surprising talent for accurately reading people's attitude to sex has an obvious benefit - it allows us to hook up with a partner who is likely to want the same out of a sexual relationship as we do. It also raises the more fundamental question of why individuals have such widely varying attitudes to sex in the first place. The answer is not simply that beautiful people have more opportunity. So what does make one person sexually restrained and another outrageously promiscuous? And how much do our attitudes to sex depend on factors such as our culture, upbringing, personality, age and gender?

Among the first researchers to take a scientific look at sexual attitudes were evolutionary psychologists Jeffry Simpson of Texas A&M University and Steven Gangestad from the University of New Mexico. Back in 1991, they devised a questionnaire to measure people's level of sexual unrestrictedness, which they dubbed sociosexuality (see questionnaire). They found that certain attitudes and behaviours co-vary - people who tend to have more sexual partners are also likely to engage in sex at an earlier point in a relationship, are more likely to have more than one sexual partner at a time, and tend to be involved in relationships characterised by less investment, commitment, love and dependency.

Men tend to score high on the sociosexuality scale more often than women, and evolutionary biologists say there are good reasons for this. Although men often invest considerably in their offspring, all they actually have to do to father a child is have sex, so there has been strong evolutionary pressure for men to be open to short-term relationships. Women, on the other hand, bear the heavy costs of pregnancy and breastfeeding, and in every culture they tend to do the bulk of childcare. So they are best off being choosy about sexual partners, or they might get left holding the baby.

Of course, it is not that simple. Women can be as sexually unrestrained as men. In fact, there is a huge overlap in the sociosexuality scores of men and women, with more variation within the sexes than between them. Some researchers are now trying to explain these subtleties in terms of biology and evolution.

Take the fact that women's interest in casual sex can vary wildly over time. A hint that these short-term sexual encounters might have biological and evolutionary advantages comes from the timing of them. Several studies have shown that women are more likely to fancy a fling around the time they are ovulating - although there is no suggestion that this is a conscious decision. Not only that, says David Schmitt of Bradley University, Illinois, women show a shift in preference to men who look more masculine and symmetrical - both indicators of good genes. Women may have a dual strategy going, suggests Schmitt. "Humans infants need a lot of help, so we have pair-bonding where males and females help raise a child, but the woman can obtain good genes - perhaps better genes than from the husband - through short-term mating right before ovulation."

That's not all. Schmitt has collected data on the sexual behaviour of men and women from 48 countries across the world and found that while men's sociosexuality peaks in their late 20s, women are most likely to be unfaithful to their partners when in their early 30s. "That's exactly the point where the odds of conceiving start to drop at a bigger rate, and it's also the point where the odds of having a child with a genetic problem or birth defect start to go up," he says. Of course plenty of women have babies much later, but Schmitt suggests that women's increased sociosexuality at around this time reflects an evolved reproductive strategy that maximises the chances of their conceiving and bearing a healthy child."

(New Scientist)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 03:11 PM

Wow--a unicellular organism that can trace its family tree back 1.8 billion years!?!! Amazing.

Must have been a really good design, huh? ;>)



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 08 - 07:14 PM

A typical day in Zambia in 20078:

"Yesterday I was to take one of my friends Chipasha to see her sister Mulenga who was said to be ill in Mpongwe.....or at least this was what I thought we were doing.....first of all another sister Gloria and a brother Mpondu "from this side" turned up to go on this trip as well.....off we set for Luanshya the first town on the way to Mpongwe....police road blocks are always easier if you have a truck full of locals so no delays there...then we had to stop at Shoprite in Luanshya so presents could be bought for the people "on the other side"...this turned out to be soap so I started wondering where we actually might be going....the usual hordes of vegetable/fruit/roses etc etc sellers were hanging around shoprite as well and it is orange season at the moment....so extended negotiations took place about a bag of oranges for the musungu ( me ).....after a short while the truck could be extricated from this rabble and off we went again.....

Mpongwe turned out to be a collection of
tiny shops selling basic goods in the front of a huge market selling everything known to man off the main road somewhere near the Kafue River and seemingly in the middle of nowhere....now what !

So I said do any of you know exactly where we will find your sister.....well she could be here and she could be there and Eddie her brother said to so and so when he bumped into Gloria the other day in Kitwe that Mulenga was in hospital in Mpongwe....I see so where are we going now ?.....the best thing would be to find Lucky or Eddie or Marjorie or Chluba ( other brothers and sisters )...one of them might know !

Now put all this in the context of no phones....so off we go out of Mpongwe to a village that no-one seems sure how to get to....a few km's down the road I am instructed to turn right onto a track....fine it looked like there could be a village somewhere....no wrong track after lots of questions in Bemba....go right and then somewhere else....eventually we found the village which consisted of a series of thatched mud brick houses and what appeared to be a communal cooking area and a sitting area....like magic Lucky appeared and I was given a block of wood to sit on while extensive greetings were made and the word sent out to see where Eddie ,Chluba and Marjorie might be...a while later all of them turned up...don't ask me how because apparently Eddie had been at the Mpongwe market.

The soap in the Shoprite bags was ceremoniously handed over.....after a while it transpired that no-one knew where Mulenga actually was....she certainly was not in hospital in Mpongwe because there isn't one and it was thought that the Chief had organised for her to go to a "healing" house....so we had better all go and see the chief for instructions....this was another trip into another small community on the other side of the main road....no difficulties finding the way this time because now we had another four brothers and sisters plus a cousin to help with directions....on arrival at the chief's house two officials in GRZ uniforms told me where precisely I could park the truck...it turned out the chief was a lady and we were ushered in....she was sitting on a mat under a shelter with a couple of assistants at her side...all of us made the traditional greetings by kneeling on the mat in front of the lady and clapping hands a few times while she said her greetings in Bemba.

....then we were all offered blocks of wood to sit on in a radius around the lady and then she very politely asked how she could help....yes it turned out that Mulenga was in a "healing" house near Maiseti which was some 30 km's back towards Luanshya.....it would not be a problem to find it.....all we had to do was ask just before the settlement on the main road....now came the question of what "compensation" the lady chief must have....10 pin was agreed on ( US$2 ).....goodbyes were said and off goes the total crew towards Maisiti....this time the back of the truck is full of people as well.....at the outskirts of Maiseti questions are asked about how to find the "healing" house...lo and behold a "professional" guide complete with a bicycle carrying a rear mud flap with 62 on it appears....he will guide us to the house...the road into the village was very narrow and I would doubt if a Toyota FWD had been in there for a while....children appeared from everywhere so by the time we eventually found the "healing" house we had quite a collection!....then the guide wanted 500 kwacha so a collection of all the miscellaneous change around the place was taken up...so off he went.

The "healing" house had it's own cooking place and an outside area for sitting....Mulenga was there and there was great jubilation between all the sisters and brothers....I tried to stay out of things at this stage....not possible...a chair was extracted out of the house and bought for the musungu to sit on....trying to take everything in the youngest female was the one doing the cooking...nshima plus fish as it turned out....the "healing lady" was busy braiding the hair of another lady who just happened to be there and every now and again with great ceremony she instructed one of the boys standing around to light a cigarette for her from the cooking fire....she would take a few puffs and then put it in a safe place for next time....then Chipasha decided that it might be a good time to take out her braids while there was assistance so Chluba and her cousin who happened to come along as well got stuck into that....during the hour or so we were there various people dropped in including a photographer who was supposed to take some photos of the "healing" lady but she wasn't ready so he disppeared again....

Suddenly it was time to go so everybody got back in the truck and off we went into Maiseti to the bus station so the sisters and brothers "on that side" could go back to Mpongwe.....

And so back to Kitwe and a cold white wine.
This is the first time I have got into what I call "proper" Africa and I just wanted to share it with you.....it is a totally different perspective to my copper smelting life....we had a near riot last week following the contract negotiations but that is another story....for later !!"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 07:32 PM

Bank 'robber' actually a cardboard cutout
Published: Nov. 29, 2008 at 12:28 AM

SOMERVILLE, N.J., Nov. 29 (UPI) -- It appears the 'robber' spotted by police inside a bank in Somerset County, N.J., was actually a cardboard figure, authorities say.

The cutout kept police officers at bay for about 90 minutes Thursday night, The (Newark) Star-Ledger reported. Officers showed up in force outside the PNC Bank in Montgomery Township about 8:40 p.m. when the bank's alarm went off, county prosecutor Wayne Forrest said.

They thought they saw at least one person through the bank's blind-covered windows, prompting them to seal off the area to traffic and evacuate people from three nearby apartment buildings.

When efforts to make contact with the "intruder" with bullhorns failed, officers tried to phone inside the building, Forrest said.

Finally, a SWAT team went inside, only to learn the "person" officers had seen was actually a full-size cardboard figure, the prosecutor said.

© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 02 Dec 08 - 10:59 PM

2,700-year-old marijuana stash found

By THE CANADIAN PRESS
               
OTTAWA – Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.

"To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent," says the newly published paper, whose lead author was American neurologist Dr. Ethan B. Russo.

Remnants of cannabis have been found in ancient Egypt and other sites, and the substance has been referred to by authors such as the Greek historian Herodotus. But the tomb stash is the oldest so far that could be thoroughly tested for its properties.

The 18 researchers, most of them based in China, subjected the cannabis to a battery of tests, including carbon dating and genetic analysis. Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success.

The marijuana was found to have a relatively high content of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, but the sample was too old to determine a precise percentage.

Researchers also could not determine whether the cannabis was smoked or ingested, as there were no pipes or other clues in the tomb of the shaman, who was about 45 years old.

The large cache was contained in a leather basket and in a wooden bowl, and was likely meant to be used by the shaman in the afterlife.

"This materially is unequivocally cannabis, and no material has previously had this degree of analysis possible," Russo said in an interview from Missoula, Mont.

"It was common practice in burials to provide materials needed for the afterlife. No hemp or seeds were provided for fabric or food. Rather, cannabis as medicine or for visionary purposes was supplied."

The tomb also contained bridles, archery equipment and a harp, confirming the man's high social standing.

Russo is a full-time consultant with GW Pharmaceuticals, which makes Sativex, a cannabis-based medicine approved in Canada for pain linked to multiple sclerosis and cancer.

The company operates a cannabis-testing laboratory at a secret location in southern England to monitor crop quality for producing Sativex, and allowed Russo use of the facility for tests on 11 grams of the tomb cannabis.

Researchers needed about 10 months to cut red tape barring the transfer of the cannabis to England from China, Russo said.

The inter-disciplinary study was published this week by the British-based botany journal, which uses independent reviewers to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of all submitted papers.

The substance has been found in two of the 500 Gushi tombs excavated so far in northwestern China, indicating that cannabis was either restricted for use by a few individuals or was administered as a medicine to others through shamans, Russo said.

"It certainly does indicate that cannabis has been used by man for a variety of purposes for thousands of years."

Russo, who had a neurology practice for 20 years, has previously published studies examining the history of cannabis.

"I hope we can avoid some of the political liabilities of the issue," he said, referring to his latest paper.

The region of China where the tomb is located, Xinjiang, is considered an original source of many cannabis strains worldwide.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 08:42 AM

Santa's all well and good, but darker things have always lurked in Austria's woods. Take the Krampus, a towering, hairy creature with a long, long tongue, goat's head and horns and cloven feet. Krampus is no dancing Greek satyr. Instead, he roams rural Austria clad in chains and carrying a stick, terrifying misbehaving children on Dec. 5, the night before St. Nicholas' Day.

Depending on who you believe, Krampus is very old indeed. Some say the tradition stems back to the pre-Christian era, and that the Krampus known and feared by Austrians today is a version of an ancient god incorporated into Christian holidays.


There's no doubt that today the frightening figure is an integral part of Christmas celebrations in some parts of Austria and Hungary (where the local version is spelled Krampusz). Krampus brings punishment back to the Christmas holiday, threatening naughty children with more than a lump of coal in their stocking.

The modern tradition goes something like this: On Dec. 5, the day before St. Nicholas arrives with his sack of gifts, local men dress up in goat and sheep skins, wearing elaborate hand-carved masks. They make the rounds of village houses with children. When the kids open the door, they're frightened by Krampus-clad men waving switches at them and ringing loud cowbells. In some towns, kids are made to run a Krampus-gauntlet, dodging swats from tree branches.


Krampus gets his name from "Krampen," the old German word for claw. The ceremony was widely practiced until the Inquisition, when impersonating a devil was punishable by death. In remote mountain towns the tradition survived in violation of the church's edicts. In the 17th century Krampus made a comeback as part of the Christmas celebrations, paired with St. Nicholas as the jolly fellow's dark alter ego.

In the mid-1950s, well-meaning educators feared that the frightening apparition might scar children for life. One anti-Krampus pamphlet distributed in Vienna was earnestly entitled "Krampus is an Evil Man." As with most old traditions, Krampus has been somewhat commercialized and toned down. Today the tradition often devolves into a mid-winter bacchanal, where scaring kids takes a back seat to heroic bouts of drinking. The town of Schladminger is home to a sort of Krampus convention, with more than a thousand goat-men roaming the town's streets, harassing the town's young women.


Der Spiegel

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 09:26 AM

"Now, I don't want to idealize this. To claim that scientists are free of bias, ambition or desires would be ridiculous. Everyone has pet ideas that they hope are right; and scientists are not famous for humility. (Think of the opening sentence of "The Double Helix," James Watson's account of his and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA: "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." Those words could be said of many who have not gone on to win a Nobel prize.) " Olivia JUdson, NYT

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Dec 08 - 10:01 PM

chrb writes:

"The Association of Space Explorers, a non-profit group of people who have completed at least one Earth orbit in space, has presented a report to the United Nations titled Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response. The UN will now meet in February to discuss the issue and try to define a global political framework for dealing with asteroid-based threats to the Earth."



science.slashdot.org

Science: Doctor Performs Amputation By Text Message
Posted by samzenpus on 07:50 PM December 3rd, 2008

"Vascular surgeon David Nott performed a life-saving amputation on a boy in DR Congo following instructions sent by text message from a colleague in London. The boy's left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous; there were just 6in (15cm) of the boy's arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound. 'He had about two or three days to live when I saw him,' Nott said. Nott, volunteering with the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade and contacted Professor Meirion Thomas at London's Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before. 'I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it,' Nott said."


(Both from SlashDot)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Dec 08 - 10:52 AM

A Swiss solar-powered car delivering an environmental message has ended a 17-month, 52,000-kilometre around-the-world trip.
The small two-seater, carrying chief United Nations climate official Yvo de Boer, glided up to a building in the Polish city of Poznan, where delegates from some 190 countries are working toward a new treaty to control climate change.

"This is the first time in history that a solar-powered car has travelled all the way around the world without using a single drop of petrol," said Louis Palmer, the 36-year-old Swiss schoolteacher and adventurer who made the trip.

The vehicle, which hauls a trailer of solar cells, began its 38-country odyssey in the city of Lucerne and is capable of travelling up to 90km/h.

Developed by scientists at Swiss universities, the so-called "solar taxi" covers 300 kilometres on a fully charged battery. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has been among the passengers.

Palmer said he lost only two days to breakdowns during the journey.

"This car runs like a Swiss clock," he said.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Dec 08 - 01:50 PM

Brain imaging reveals the substance of placebos. Expectation alone triggers the same neural circuits and chemicals as real drugs.

"Placebos are supposed to be nothing. They're sugar pills, shots of saline, fake creams; they're given to the comparison group in drug trials so doctors can see whether a new treatment is better than no treatment.

But placebos aren't nothing. Their ingredients may be bogus, but the elicited reactions are real. "The placebo effect is in some way the bane of the pharma industry's existence because people have this nasty habit of getting better even without a specific drug," says David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine.

It all boils down to expectation. If you expect pain to diminish, the brain releases natural painkillers. If you expect pain to get worse, the brain shuts off the processes that provide pain relief. Somehow, anticipation trips the same neural wires as actual treatment does.

Scientists are using imaging techniques to probe brains on placebos and watch the placebo effect in real time. Such studies show, for example, that the pleasure chemical dopamine and the brain's natural painkillers, opioids, work oppositely depending on whether people expect pain to get better or worse. Other research shows that placebos can reduce anxiety.

The first brain imaging study to show what happens in the brain during the placebo effect was not necessarily aiming to do so. Its goal was to use brain scans to study what happens when people take apomorphine, which is a drug for Parkinson's disease, a condition marked by a lack of dopamine. The drug brings quick relief but is infamous for its unpleasant side effects of dizziness and nausea. Led by neurologist Raúl de la Fuente-Fernández of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the project used PET scans to monitor the activity of the brains of Parkinson's patients the same day patients took the drug. PET scans are tools to identify where the brain is activated and which brain chemicals are involved in a task.

But patients in the study experienced so many side effects from the drug that the researchers had to cancel the PET scans. De la Fuente-Fernández wondered whether the combination of undergoing PET scans and worry over side effects made some patients react to the drug more strongly than they should have. So he changed the protocol. On scanning days, investigators gave the drug in several injections rather than a single dose. Participants knew that one dose was placebo, but not which one.

That simple adjustment reduced side effects, kept the trial going and led to a Science paper in 2001 showing that placebos trigger dopamine release through the same circuitry as Parkinson's drugs. This finding was "serendipity, just serendipity," says de la Fuente-Fernández."

... . Science News

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 03:06 PM

Before the Big Bang???


ABHAY ASHTEKAR remembers his reaction the first time he saw the universe bounce. "I was taken aback," he says. He was watching a simulation of the universe rewind towards the big bang. Mostly the universe behaved as expected, becoming smaller and denser as the galaxies converged. But then, instead of reaching the big bang "singularity", the universe bounced and started expanding again. What on earth was happening?

Ashtekar wanted to be sure of what he was seeing, so he asked his colleagues to sit on the result for six months before publishing it in 2006. And no wonder. The theory that the recycled universe was based on, called loop quantum cosmology (LQC), had managed to illuminate the very birth of the universe - something even Einstein's general theory of relativity fails to do.

Einstein's relativity fails to explain the very birth of the universe
LQC has been tantalising physicists since 2003 with the idea that our universe could conceivably have emerged from the collapse of a previous universe. Now the theory is poised to make predictions we can actually test. If they are verified, the big bang will give way to a big bounce and we will finally know the quantum structure of space-time. Instead of a universe that emerged from a point of infinite density, we will have one that recycles, possibly through an eternal series of expansions and contractions, with no beginning and no end.

LQC is in fact the first tangible application of another theory called loop quantum gravity, which cunningly combines Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum mechanics. We need theories like this to work out what happens when microscopic volumes experience an extreme gravitational force, as happened near the big bang, for example. In the mid 1980s, Ashtekar rewrote the equations of general relativity in a quantum-mechanical framework. Together with theoretical physicists Lee Smolin and Carlo Rovelli, Ashtekar later used this framework to show that the fabric of space-time is woven from loops of gravitational field lines. Zoom out far enough and space appears smooth and unbroken, but a closer look reveals that space comes in indivisible chunks, or quanta, 10-35 square metres in size.

In 2000, Martin Bojowald, then a postdoc with Ashtekar at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, used loop quantum gravity to create a simple model of the universe. LQC was born.

Bojowald's major realisation was that unlike general relativity, the physics of LQC did not break down at the big bang. Cosmologists dread the singularity because at this point gravity becomes infinite, along with the temperature and density of the universe. As its equations cannot cope with such infinities, general relativity fails to describe what happens at the big bang. Bojowald's work showed how to avoid the hated singularity, albeit mathematically. "I was very impressed by it," says Ashtekar, "and still am."

Jerzy Lewandowski of the University of Warsaw in Poland, along with Bojowald, Ashtekar and two more of his postdocs, Parampreet Singh and Tomasz Pawlowski, went on to improve on the idea. Singh and Pawlowski developed computer simulations of the universe according to LQC, and that's when they saw the universe bounce. When they ran time backwards, instead of becoming infinitely dense at the big bang, the universe stopped collapsing and reversed direction. The big bang singularity had truly disappeared (Physical Review Letters, vol 96, p 141301).

But the celebration was short-lived. When the team used LQC to look at the behaviour of our universe long after expansion began, they were in for a shock - it started to collapse, challenging everything we know about the cosmos. "This was a complete departure from general relativity," says Singh, who is now at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. "It was blatantly wrong."

Ashtekar took it hard. "I was pretty depressed," he says. "It didn't bode well for LQC." However, after more feverish mathematics, Ashtekar, Singh and Pawlowski solved the problem. Early versions of the theory described the evolution of the universe in terms of quanta of area, but a closer look revealed a subtle error. Ashtekar, Singh and Pawlowski corrected this and found that the calculations now involved tiny volumes of space.

It made a crucial difference. Now the universe according to LQC agreed brilliantly with general relativity when expansion was well advanced, while still eliminating the singularity at the big bang. Rovelli, based at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France, was impressed. "This was a very big deal," he says. "Everyone had hoped that once we learned to treat the quantum universe correctly, the big bang singularity would disappear. But it had never happened before."

Physicist Claus Kiefer at the University of Cologne in Germany, who has written extensively about the subject, agrees. "It is really a new perspective on how we can view the early universe," he says. "Now, you have a theory that can give you a natural explanation for a singularity-free universe." He adds that while competing theories of quantum gravity, such as string theory, have their own insights to offer cosmology, none of these theories has fully embraced quantum mechanics.

If LQC turns out to be right, our universe emerged from a pre-existing universe that had been expanding before contracting due to gravity. As all the matter squeezed into a microscopic volume, this universe approached the so-called Planck density, 5.1 × 1096 kilograms per cubic metre. At this stage, it stopped contracting and rebounded, giving us our universe.

The pre-existing universe was squeezed into a microscopic volume

"You cannot reach the Planck density. It is forbidden by theory," says Singh. According to Bojowald, that is because an extraordinary repulsive force develops in the fabric of space-time at densities equivalent to compressing a trillion solar masses down to the size of a proton. At this point, the quanta of space-time cannot be squeezed any further. The compressed space-time reacts by exerting an outward force strong enough to repulse gravity. This momentary act of repulsion causes the universe to rebound. From then on, the universe keeps expanding because of the inertia of the big bounce. Nothing can slow it down - except gravity.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 11:42 PM


Wind, water and sun beat other energy alternatives, study finds

Stanford Report, December 10, 2008

BY LOUIS BERGERON


Wind power is the most promising alternative source of energy, according to Mark Jacobson.

The best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

And "clean coal," which involves capturing carbon emissions and sequestering them in the earth, is not clean at all, he asserts.

Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability. His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. The paper with his findings will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science but is available online now. Jacobson is also director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford.

"The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful," Jacobson said. "Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels." He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.

The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.

To place the various alternatives on an equal footing, Jacobson first made his comparisons among the energy sources by calculating the impacts as if each alternative alone were used to power all the vehicles in the United States, assuming only "new-technology" vehicles were being used. Such vehicles include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and "flex-fuel" vehicles that could run on a high blend of ethanol called E85.

Wind was by far the most promising, Jacobson said, owing to a better-than 99 percent reduction in carbon and air pollution emissions; the consumption of less than 3 square kilometers of land for the turbine footprints to run the entire U.S. vehicle fleet (given the fleet is composed of battery-electric vehicles); the saving of about 15,000 lives per year from premature air-pollution-related deaths from vehicle exhaust in the United States; and virtually no water consumption. By contrast, corn and cellulosic ethanol will continue to cause more than 15,000 air pollution-related deaths in the country per year, Jacobson asserted.

Because the wind turbines would require a modest amount of spacing between them to allow room for the blades to spin, wind farms would occupy about 0.5 percent of all U.S. land, but this amount is more than 30 times less than that required for growing corn or grasses for ethanol. Land between turbines on wind farms would be simultaneously available as farmland or pasture or could be left as open space.

Indeed, a battery-powered U.S. vehicle fleet could be charged by 73,000 to 144,000 5-megawatt wind turbines, fewer than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II and far easier to build. Additional turbines could provide electricity for other energy needs.

"There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession," Jacobson said. "Well, putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power."

Jacobson said that while some people are under the impression that wind and wave power are too variable to provide steady amounts of electricity, his research group has already shown in previous research that by properly coordinating the energy output from wind farms in different locations, the potential problem with variability can be overcome and a steady supply of baseline power delivered to users.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 11:46 PM

ESO 45/08 - Science Release
4 December 2008
For Immediate Release

Students Discover Unique Planet

Three undergraduate students, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, have discovered an extrasolar planet. The extraordinary find, which turned up during their research project, is about five times as massive as Jupiter. This is also the first planet discovered orbiting a fast-rotating hot star.


The students were testing a method of investigating the light fluctuations of thousands of stars in the OGLE database in an automated way. The brightness of one of the stars was found to decrease for two hours every 2.5 days by about one percent. Follow-up observations, taken with ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile, confirmed that this phenomenon is caused by a planet passing in front of the star, blocking part of the starlight at regular intervals.

According to Ignas Snellen, supervisor of the research project, the discovery was a complete surprise. "The project was actually meant to teach the students how to develop search algorithms. But they did so well that there was time to test their algorithm on a so far unexplored database. At some point they came into my office and showed me this light curve. I was completely taken aback!"

The students, Meta de Hoon, Remco van der Burg, and Francis Vuijsje, are very enthusiastic. "It is exciting not just to find a planet, but to find one as unusual as this one; it turns out to be the first planet discovered around a fast rotating star, and it's also the hottest star found with a planet," says Meta. "The computer needed more than a thousand hours to do all the calculations," continues Remco.

The planet is given the prosaic name OGLE2-TR-L9b. "But amongst ourselves we call it ReMeFra-1, after Remco, Meta, and myself," says Francis.

The planet was discovered by looking at the brightness variations of about 15 700 stars, which had been observed by the OGLE survey once or twice per night for about four years between 1997 and 2000. Because the data had been made public, they were a good test case for the students' algorithm, who showed that for one of stars observed, OGLE-TR-L9, the variations could be due to a transit — the passage of a planet in front of its star. The team then used the GROND instrument on the 2.2 m telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory to follow up the observations and find out more about the star and the planet.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Dec 08 - 11:50 PM

Pictures and explanations of the damage incurred by the electrical fault in the Large Hadron Collider.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 12:12 AM

The BBC report that archaeologists have found what could be Britain's oldest surviving human brain. The team, excavating a York University site, discovered a skull containing a yellow substance which scans showed to be shrunken, but brain-shaped. Brains consist of fatty tissue which microbes in the soil would absorb, so neurologists believe the find could be some kind of fossilised brain. More tests will now be done to establish what it is actually made of. The skull was discovered during an exploratory dig at Heslington Eastin, an area of extensive prehistoric farming landscape of fields, trackways and buildings dating back to at least 300 BC."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 12:14 AM

"Researchers in Nevada are reporting that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for powering cars and trucks. Their study has been published online in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Growers produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee around the world each year. Scientists estimate that spent coffee grounds can potentially add 340 million gallons of biodiesel to the world's fuel supply."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 01:55 PM

A lovely quote from Tobin Harshaw writing in the NY Times:

"In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, "pragmatists" of all stripes–Alan Dershowitz, Richard Posner–lined up to offer tips and strategies on how best to implement a practical and effective torture regime; but ideologues said no torture, no exceptions. Same goes for the Iraq War, which many "pragmatic" lawmakers–Hillary Clinton, Arlen Specter–voted for and which ideologues across the political spectrum, from Ron Paul to Bernie Sanders, opposed. Of course, by any reckoning, the war didn't work. That is, it failed to be a practical, nonideological improvement to the nation's security. This, despite the fact that so many willed themselves to believe that the benefits would clearly outweigh the costs. Principle is often pragmatism's guardian. Particularly at times of crisis, when a polity succumbs to collective madness or delusion, it is only the obstinate ideologues who refuse to go along. Expediency may be a virtue in virtuous times, but it's a vice in vicious ones."



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Dec 08 - 01:56 PM

Sorry--Harshaw is quoting The Nation's Christopher Hayes in the above.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Dec 08 - 11:47 AM

To close reef a modern double topsail, the upper half is merely furled. No so simple the old style single sails. Most of them had three reefs, some four. The yard was lowered to the cap (or lower masthead). The sail was then gathered in fold by means of clewlines and buntlines. Next, the reef tackle was manned, both sides and the outer edges or leech being hauled to the proper reef earring. This earring was lashed to the yard arm. The reef points were tied around the sail, which was then hoisted reefed. This operation sometimes took hours of heartbreaking labor in foul weather.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 04:55 PM

The Yawn Explained: It Cools Your Brain
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
        
Dec. 15, 2008 -- If your head is overheated, there's a good chance you'll yawn soon, according to a new study that found the primary purpose of yawning is to control brain temperature.

The finding solves several mysteries about yawning, such as why it's most commonly done just before and after sleeping, why certain diseases lead to excessive yawning, and why breathing through the nose and cooling off the forehead often stop yawning.

The key yawn instigator appears to be brain temperature.

"Brains are like computers," Andrew Gallup, a researcher in the Department of Biology at Binghamton University who led the study, told Discovery News. "They operate most efficiently when cool, and physical adaptations have evolved to allow maximum cooling of the brain."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 05:58 PM

December 15, 2008, 4:35 pm

Officer Is Indicted in Toppling of Cyclist

By John Eligon AND Sewell Chan

Updated, 5:13 p.m. | A police officer who was caught knocking a man
off his bicycle in Times Square over the summer in a video that was
distributed widely on YouTube has been indicted by a grand jury,
according to lawyers involved in the case.

The officer, Patrick Pogan, has been instructed to report to State
Supreme Court in Manhattan for the unsealing of the indictment, his
lawyer, Stuart London, said.

David Rankin, a lawyer for the bicyclist, Christopher Long, said the
office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau,
informed him around 3 p.m. that a grand jury had voted to indict Officer
Pogan. Mr. London and Mr. Rankin both said they did not know the
specific charges, and Mr. Morgenthau's office declined to comment.

It is believed that prosecutors were seeking felony charges of filing
false records in connection with the police report that Officer Pogan
filed after arresting Mr. Long. Officer Pogan, who was stripped of his
gun and badge in July after the video emerged, also could be charged
with a misdemeanor count of assault.

......



Prof. F: We are being more and more under the thumb of Big Brother's
cameras. What I find interesting is the effect of what I call "Little
Brother". With no bystander video, odds are Mr. Long would have been
held and likely convicted.

But from Rodney King & Mark Fuhman on, the public has been learning what
police reporters have known for years: cops will nonchalantly commit
perjury if they think they can get away with it; and further, many
arrests are used to cover up police abuse.

It's a small sea change, but I see it growing over time.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 07:54 PM

Cold Sore Virus Linked To Alzheimer's Disease: New Treatment, Or Even Vaccine Possible

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2008) — The virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the insoluble protein plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease sufferers, University of Manchester researchers have revealed.

They believe the herpes simplex virus is a significant factor in developing the debilitating disease and could be treated by antiviral agents such as acyclovir, which is already used to treat cold sores and other diseases caused by the herpes virus. Another future possibility is vaccination against the virus to prevent the development of the disease in the first place.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterised by progressive memory loss and severe cognitive impairment. It affects over 20 million people world-wide, and the numbers will rise with increasing longevity. However, despite enormous investment into research on the characteristic abnormalities of AD brain - amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles - the underlying causes are unknown and current treatments are ineffectual.

Professor Ruth Itzhaki and her team at the University's Faculty of Life Sciences have investigated the role of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1) in AD, publishing their very recent, highly significant findings in the Journal of Pathology.

Most people are infected with this virus, which then remains life-long in the peripheral nervous system, and in 20-40% of those infected it causes cold sores. Evidence of a viral role in AD would point to the use of antiviral agents to stop progression of the disease.

The team discovered that the HSV1 DNA is located very specifically in amyloid plaques: 90% of plaques in Alzheimer's disease sufferers' brains contain HSV1 DNA, and most of the viral DNA is located within amyloid plaques. The team had previously shown that HSV1 infection of nerve-type cells induces deposition of the main component, beta amyloid, of amyloid plaques. Together, these findings strongly implicate HSV1 as a major factor in the formation of amyloid deposits and plaques, abnormalities thought by many in the field to be major contributors to Alzheimer's disease.

The team had discovered much earlier that the virus is present in brains of many elderly people and that in those people with a specific genetic factor, there is a high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

The team's data strongly suggest that HSV1 has a major role in Alzheimer's disease and point to the usage of antiviral agents for treating the disease, and in fact in preliminary experiments they have shown that acyclovir reduces the amyloid deposition and reduces also certain other feature of the disease which they have found are caused by HSV1 infection.

Professor Itzhaki explains: "We suggest that HSV1 enters the brain in the elderly as their immune systems decline and then establishes a dormant infection from which it is repeatedly activated by events such as stress, immunosuppression, and various infections.

"The ensuing active HSV1 infection causes severe damage in brain cells, most of which die and then disintegrate, thereby releasing amyloid aggregates which develop into amyloid plaques after other components of dying cells are deposited on them."

Her colleague Dr Matthew Wozniak adds: "Antiviral agents would inhibit the harmful consequences of HSV1 action; in other words, inhibit a likely major cause of the disease irrespective of the actual damaging processes involved, whereas current treatments at best merely inhibit some of the symptoms of the disease."

The team now hopes to obtain funding in order to take their work further, enabling them to investigate in detail the effect of antiviral agents on the Alzheimer's disease-associated changes that occur during HSV1 infection, as well as the nature of the processes and the role of the genetic factor. They very much hope also that clinical trials will be set up to test the effect of antiviral agents on Alzheimer's disease patients.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 08 - 08:02 PM

2000mg of Niacin per day is an effective means of curtailing Alzheimer plaque formation in humans.

Too much is toxic to the liver and 1000 is too little to do much good. If I were you I would by the flush free B3 Niacin and take 4 a day.

I have been doing this for about 9 months now at the behest of my physician.

This claim is based on NIH research that is not yet cleared for humans but has shown to be a 78% cure for Alzheimers in rat studies.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Dec 08 - 09:05 PM

And now, for some off-topic:

"If programming languages were religions"
(Inspired by "If programming languages were cars")


C would be Judaism - it's old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.

Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of "goto hell" was abandoned.

C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It's so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you'll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.

C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it.

Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it's not a language at all; others say that it's the only language that makes sense.

Haskell would be Taoism - It is so different from other languages that many people don't understand how can anyone use it to produce anything useful. Its followers believe that it's the true path to wisdom, but that wisdom is beyond the grasp of most mortals.

Erlang would be Hinduism - It's another strange language that doesn't look like it could be used for anything, but unlike most other modern languages, it's built around the concept of multiple simultaneous deities.

Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

Lua would be Wicca - A pantheistic language that can easily be adapted for different cultures and locations. Its code is very liberal, and allows for the use of techniques that might be described as magical by those used to more traditional languages. It has a strong connection to the moon.

Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.

Python would be Humanism: It's simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code.

COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.

APL would be Scientology - There are many people who claim to follow it, but you've always suspected that it's a huge and elaborate prank that got out of control.

LOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.

Visual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist...

(From this Geek Blog

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Dec 08 - 09:21 PM

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday December 17, @01:26AM
from the glimmer-of-fur dept.

A new study of 86 galaxy clusters in the early universe has provided independent confirmation of the existence of dark energy. In its absence, gravity's pull should have caused the number of clusters to increase by a factor of 50 over the last 5.5 billion years. What is observed is a factor of 10 increase.
"Together with earlier observations... the new data strengthen the suspicion — but do not prove — that dark energy is a weird antigravity called the cosmological constant that was hypothesized and then abandoned by Albert Einstein as a 'blunder' almost a century ago. If that is true, the universe is fated to empty itself out eventually, and all but the Milky Way's closest neighbors will eventually be out of sight. ... Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins and the Space Telescope Science Institute, said: 'If this was a fox hunt and dark energy was the fox, I think they have closed off another escape route. But there is still a lot of terrain left for the fox, and we've seen little more than a glimmer of fur.'"

(From SlashDot)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Dec 08 - 11:47 PM

...Instead of being driven to extinction by death from above, dinosaurs might have ultimately been doomed by death from below in the form of monumental volcanic eruptions.

The suggestion is based on new research that is part of a growing body of evidence indicating a space rock alone did not wipe out the giant reptiles.

The Age of Dinosaurs ended roughly 65 million years ago with the K-T or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, which killed off all dinosaurs save those that became birds, as well as roughly half of all species on the planet, including pterosaurs.

The prime suspect in this ancient murder mystery is an asteroid or comet impact, which left a vast crater at Chicxulub on the Yucatan coast of Mexico.

Another leading culprit is a series of colossal volcanic eruptions that occurred between 63 million to 67 million years ago.

These created the gigantic Deccan Traps lava beds in India, whose original extent may have covered as much as 580,000 square miles (1.5 million square kilometers), or more than twice the area of Texas. ...

Full story here.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 08 - 10:58 AM

ULTRACOLD MOLECULES
Whatâ•˙s new-first ever accumulation of molecules in large numbers and
at a temperature near absolute zero. Using lasers to slow a gas of
particles down to near stillness is by now a standard method for
measuring the subtle properties of atoms. Steven Chu, nominated to be
the Secretary of Energy, won a Nobel Prize for pioneering this subject.
Cooling molecules in this same way is difficult since molecules, made of
two or more atoms, have complicated internal motions. But this year
several labs succeeded in first cooling atoms and then, at a temperature
close to absolute zero, getting them to combine into molecules. Labs at
NIST/Colorado (Science, 10 Oct) and at the University of Innsbruck (PRL,
26 Sep) got atoms to pair up into molecules and collect in high
densities at very low temperatures inside traps. The NIST experiment
produces molecules from rubidium and potassium atoms (publication in
Science). Innsbruck researchers first placed rubidium atoms in an
optical lattice before condensing them into molecules.
Background at http://www.aip.org/pnu/2008/split/875-1.html; figure
http://www.aip.org/png/2008/306.htm; PRL text and overview at
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v1/24

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Dec 08 - 12:31 AM

In around 1611, a boatload of European settlers crossed the Atlantic Ocean, headed for the four-year-old colony at Jamestown. Attached to some of their cargo on that trip of many months was a lead tag, marked "Yames Towne". That tag was recovered from the bottom of a well by archaeologists in 2006. In June 2007, as part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis took that same lead tag into low-Earth orbit - whereupon it crossed the same vast ocean in a matter of minutes. The idea? To commemorate the early settlers' spirit of adventure by letting the tag fly in the company of latterday adventurers: astronauts. The tag is now back in the Archaearium, the Virginia museum housing the items excavated from historic Jamestown. (Image: NASA)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Dec 08 - 01:22 AM

The last time Napolean was exiled, physicians surgically removed his penis. At the present time there are three owners of Napliean's penis. DNA tests could determine if any of them match the DNA of Napolean. If there is a match, the real question is who the owners of the other two penis' would sue for penile forgery.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Dec 08 - 11:36 AM

"In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.

This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: "I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." But the survey suggested that Americans just weren't buying that.

The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn't actually believe what they were saying, could they?

So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.

And they didn't stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go." (NYT 12-26-08)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Dec 08 - 12:24 PM

It seems I am the only one to make editorial comment on this thread so forgive me if by doing so I make a mistake of ettiquette.

I think of the 30% who consistently need to remain willfully ignorant and unwilling to be open minded enough to accept a certain universality of most religious messages, the primary message being do unto to others as you would wish they would do unto you. The staunch believers have a strong need to be right and seem to stand against something more than they stand for something. No logical argument will change their need to exclude, harm or worst of all, kill those they have chosen as their opposition.
Perhaps pharmaceuticals might one day provide a treatment for that kind of linier psychoses.


Christ was not a Christian. Furthermore he would have most likely felt that being called a Christian would be as repugnant, egotistical and antithetical to his rebellion against hate and corrupt Imperialism as Martin Luther king would feel being called a Kingian.

PS I hereby change the English word Atheist to "ATHEIAN" - purely for aesthetic reasons. ;<}
_______________________


In the news:

Republican Congressman Baynor is advertising in classified ads to have any accredited economists who will call for continued deregulation of the financial sector and condemn any further bail out legislation and stimulus plans, to contact him at once.
(this might be a good time to make a Trojan Horse and contact him at once, if you get my meaning wink wink - yaknowwhatimean)


The application to become a holding bank which allows them to get bail out funds, has 6 questions and is 2 pages long.
Credit card companies and GMAC are now holdng banks getting bailed out.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Dec 08 - 11:56 AM

Some "new" strains of mushrooms have been found to have antibiotic and anti viral qualities that may help bridge the widening gap of effective medicines and the growing immunity of microbes to existing antibotics.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Dec 08 - 01:28 PM

DOnuel:

It is always useful to know where a story comes from, if you don't mind annotating the source.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Dec 08 - 12:09 AM

Mushroom documentary from SCI channel the 'Brink' December 26 & 29

Baynor story - MSNBC
Holding Bank application R. Maddow show. You can also print out a copy of the application online.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Jan 09 - 12:06 PM

" A new paper was published today in the journal Science on the hypothesis that a comet impact wiped out the Clovis people 12,900 years ago. ...The new evidence is a layer of nanodiamonds at locations all across North America, at a depth corresponding to 12,900 years ago, none earlier or later. The researchers hypothesize that the comet that initiated the Younger Dryas, reversing the warming from the previous ice age, fragmented and exploded in a continent-wide conflagration that produced a layer of diamond from carbon on the surface. While disputing the current hypothesis, NASA's David Morrison allows, "They may have discovered something absolutely marvelous and unexplained"... (From Slashdot. Original article from The Washington Post).


A

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

Researchers have discovered the atomic structure of a powerful "molecular motor" that packages DNA into the head segment of some viruses during their assembly, an essential step in their ability to multiply and infect new host organisms.

The researchers, from Purdue University and The Catholic University of America, also have proposed a mechanism for how the motor works. Parts of the motor move in sequence like the pistons in a car's engine, progressively drawing the genetic material into the virus's head, or capsid, said Michael Rossmann, Purdue's Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences.

The motor is needed to insert DNA into the capsid of the T4 virus, which is called a bacteriophage because it infects bacteria. The same kind of motor, however, also is likely present in other viruses, including the human herpes virus.

"Molecular motors in double-stranded DNA viruses have never been shown in such detail before," said Siyang Sun, a postdoctoral research associate working in Rossmann's lab.

Findings are detailed in a paper appearing … in the journal Cell [abstract]. The lead authors are Sun and Kiran Kondabagil, a research assistant professor at Catholic University of America working with biology professor Venigalla B. Rao.

"This research is allowing us to examine the inner workings of a virus packaging motor at the atomic level," Rao said. "This particular motor is very fast and powerful."

Other researchers have determined that the T4 molecular motor is the strongest yet discovered in viruses and proportionately twice as powerful as an automotive engine. The motors generate 20 times the force produced by the protein myosin, one of the two proteins responsible for the contraction and strength of muscles.

(Foresight magazine)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Jan 09 - 04:33 PM

If you live in the northern hemisphere, this is probably not your favourite month. January tends to dispirit people more than any other. We all know why: foul weather, post-Christmas debt, the long wait before your next holiday, quarterly bills, dark evenings and dark mornings. At least, that is the way it seems. For while all these things might contribute to the way you feel, there is one crucial factor you probably have not accounted for: the state of mind of your friends and relatives. Recent research shows that our moods are far more strongly influenced by those around us than we tend to think. Not only that, we are also beholden to the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends - people three degrees of separation away from us who we have never met, but whose disposition can pass through our social network like a virus.

Indeed, it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work. ...

(Ful article at New Scientist).