BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jun 10 - 06:20 PM

There were already many anecdotal accounts of large crocodiles sighted far out at sea, but nothing confirmed. Now, for the first time, using sonar transmitters and satellite tracking, scientists now find that saltwater crocodiles actually do ride surface ocean currents for long-distance travel, enabling them to voyage from one oceanic island to another.

"Because these crocodiles are poor swimmers, it is unlikely that they swim across vast tracts of ocean," said researcher Hamish Campbell, a behavioral ecologist from University of Queensland in Australia. "But they can survive for long periods in saltwater without eating or drinking, so by only traveling when surface currents are favorable, they would be able to move long distances by sea."

Crocodile river travel

Working at the remote Kennedy River in northeastern Australia, the team of scientists Ñ which included the late Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter" Ñ tagged 27 adult seawater crocodiles with sonar transmitters, employing 20 underwater receivers deployed along a 39-mile-long stretch of the river (63 km) to track the reptiles' every move for more than 12 months. They found both male and female adult crocodiles undertook long-distance journeys, regularly traveling more than 30 miles (48 km) from their home area to the river mouth and beyond into open sea.

The scientists also discovered the "salties" always began long-distance travel within an hour of the tide changing, allowing them to go with the flow. They halted their journeys by hauling out onto the river bank or diving to the river bottom when the currents turned against them.

(LiveScience website)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jun 10 - 11:08 AM

"I fired [Douglas MacArthur] because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals," Truman said, reflecting on his decision to relieve the U.S. commander in Korea.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jun 10 - 03:41 PM

YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- Yakima fire officials say a rat that chewed through the electrical wiring of a jukebox is responsible for a $1 million fire that gutted the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 379. Investigators believe the rodent caught fire Wednesday morning and fled to its nest inside an old piano, where it ignited combustible material in the nest. The rat was found dead near the fire's point of origin.

Deputy Fire Marshal Ron Melcher says it's uncommon for rodents to cause fires. He says investigators had to study the building carefully to decide what happened because there was so much damage.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jun 10 - 12:22 PM

"You wouldn't think a sunken ship from 2000 years ago could hold the key to the success of a neutrino detection experiment, except perhaps in a Hollywood movie, or a NOVA special on Jacques Cousteau. But sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. Scientists with the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE), a neutrino observatory buried under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, hit the motherlode when archaeologists discovered a Spanish ship off the coast of Sardinia, filled with lead that dates back two millennia.

Yes, lead. Really, really old lead. That might not seem very exciting to you, but for CUORE scientists, it's a godsend. They use lead (also copper) as a shielding material for their neutrino detection materials. See, neutrinos -- dubbed "ghost particles" because they so rarely interact with everything (billions course through you every second) -- are extremely difficult to detect, in part because their signals can be obscured by things like cosmic rays, and the natural radioactivity in rocks, for example.

WATCH VIDEO: Another ship, the Odyssey Marine Exploration, is the best at finding deep-sea treasure. Kasey-Dee Gardner meets the crew and learns how they do it.CUORE is looking for an even rarer event, known as neutrinoless double-beta decay. Among other things, such an observation would provide a handy means of directly calculating the mass of a neutrino (which is very, very small -- so small that for decades physicists believed neutrinos had no mass).

Alas, there are also trace amounts of radioactivity in the very materials that are supposed to shield the experiments from interference -- the radioactive isotope lead-210, in the case of contemporary lead ingots. But if you have lead that is 2000 years old, that radioactive isotope has pretty much disappeared. Unfortunately, lead that old is quite a rare find. US scientists working on the IGEX experiment lucked out a few years ago when they snagged from 450-year-old lead from a sunken Spanish galleon.

That's why the discovery of this new sunken ship is so exciting to nuclear physicist Ettore Fiorini, who finessed some key financing from the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics so that archaeologists could salvage the vessel -- in return for for a bunch of that ancient lead. And there's rather a lot of it, apparently. While most such ships were merely lined with lead, this particular vessel was actually carrying lead as its cargo, so the find "multiplies by many times the quantity of ancient lead available in the world," according to Fiorini."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jun 10 - 11:31 AM

TSUKUBA, Japan --
Researchers in Japan have developed a computerized baby in an effort to inspire parents there to procreate.

The baby robot Yotaro is meant to address Japan's growing population problem.

Yotaro giggles, sneezes and even cries with a runny nose until you touch his warm silicone skin and calm him down.

Project leader Hiroki Kunimura knows a robot can't be human, but it's great if this robot triggers human emotions, making Japanese couples want to have their own baby.

"Yotaro's emotions are a computer program," Kunimura said. "The images, projected. The warm body temperature, just warm water. All of this to make him as human-like and baby-like as possible and get a woman's biological clock ticking."

Japan has a major population problem. The country has one of the world's lowest birth rates, coupled with the fastest aging population.

The government, desperate to produce more children, is now paying families $150 per month, per child until he or she reaches high school.

The university researchers believe robotic encouragement will work better than a government stipend.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Joe_F
Date: 23 Jun 10 - 09:43 PM

In the heart of London's swanky Chelsea neighborhood, a new 1980s-themed nightclub called Maggie's, named after...Margaret Thatcher, pays homage to a bygone era.... The...founders, Charlie Gilkes and Duncan Stirling, are only in their 20s.
Mr. Gilkes insists that Maggie's is not a "Tory club." Nevertheless, a visit will remind you of the Iron Lady's stance on everything from the Falklands to the trade unions as her famous speeches play on loudspeakers in the restrooms.
-- The Christian Science Monitor, June 28, 2010

It could be worse. It could be rock and roll.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jun 10 - 09:58 PM

Behavior breakthrough: Like animals, plants demonstrate complex ability to integrate information
June 24, 2010

A University of Alberta research team has discovered that a plant's strategy to capture nutrients in the soil is the result of integration of different types of information.

U of A ecologist J.C. Cahill says the plant's strategy mirrors the daily risk-versus-reward dilemmas that animals experience in their quest for food.

Biologists established long ago that an animal uses information about both the location of a food supply and potential competitors to determine an optimal foraging strategy. Its subsequent behavioral response is based on whether the food supply is rich enough to accept the risks associated with engaging in competition with other animals.
Cahill found plants also have the ability to integrate information about the location of both food and competitors. As a result, plants demonstrate unique behavioural strategies to capture soil resources.

Previous studies show plants alter the growth of their roots in relation to the placement of food or a competing plant. Cahill and his colleagues now show an integration of both location and competition information in plants. "This ability to integrate information is a level of complexity never seen in plants before," said Cahill. "This is something we assumed only happened with animals."

Using a mini-rhizotron camera, referred to by Cahill's team as a "camera on a stick," the researchers compared the root movement of potted plants in relation to various positions of nutrients and competing plants.

The roots of one plant in a pot where nutrients were evenly distributed occupied the entire breadth of the soil.

When two plants occupied a single pot and the nutrients were evenly distributed, the roots stopped growing laterally towards each other. There was complete segregation of the root systems; the plants avoided contact with one another. Cahill says in terms of risk versus reward, the plants avoided each other because the rewards were low.

But when nutrients were placed between two plants sharing a single pot, both plants grew their roots much closer towards each other. Cahill says in this case the rewards were high, and the plants risked increased competition.

The work of Cahill and his colleagues will be published June 24 in Science.

(Phys. Org)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jun 10 - 11:18 AM

Lungs grown in the lab have been experimentally transplanted into live animals.

By Nidhi Subbaraman
Thursday, June 24, 2010


http://www.technologyreview.com/

For the first time, researchers have built a functioning lung by growing cells on the skeleton of a donor lung. The engineered organ was transplanted in a live rat, where it exchanged carbon dioxide with oxygen in the blood--just as a normal lung would--for two hours. The study is the first proof that old lung scaffolds can be used as a scaffold on which new lung tissue can grow.


Lung tissue does not regenerate, so the only way to replace a damaged lung, for example in those with emphysema and cystic fibrosis, is by transplant. "But it's a difficult procedure and there aren't enough lungs to go around for transplants," says Laura Niklason, professor of anesthesiology and biomedicine at Yale University and the corresponding author on the study. Only about 10 percent of patients who have undergone a transplant survive after 10 years, with infection and organ rejection being major problems. Growing lungs by combining a donor lung seeded with a patient's own lung cells could decrease the chance of rejection, and potentially improve the success of lung transplants.

"I think this is a groundbreaking work," says Peter Lelkes, Calhoun Chair professor of cellular tissue engineering at Drexel University. "No one has dared and actually succeeded in implanting such a complex tissue-engineered organ and kept an animal alive."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 10:06 AM

Human lungs have also been allowed to heal for weeks , while still connected to the patients blood supply, outside the body.



?????????????????????????????


In mathmatics, have you ever heard of a Lee set? A full time surfer, who is also a cosmologist, diddled with a lee set by starting with a circle and then placing another circle perpendicular to the first which made a torus and kept adding more circles perpendicular to the last and expanding the lee set 246 times. Like helixes inside helixes it defies most people to see or understand the graphic representations of this phenomenal shape in our 3 dimensions.

What he discovered was that the intersections of thesecompounded lee sets corresponded to atomic particles in order, symettry and the paths they travel in bubble chambers.
Not just that, but it even showed where the gravitron and Higgs Boson would exist toward the outer perimeter of this pecular lee set.

Since particles are energy wave vectors of inter relationships as much as they are a particle, this discovery made by a surfer dude is a fascinating way to visualize a possible explanation of the hiearchy and existence of all matter. Proving it true is a risky and daunting undertaking but fascinating none the less.

With a little work I can show you the graphic representations and video with a little work later. Or watch it for yourself in Through the Wormhole narrated by Morgan Freeman episode 1.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Jun 10 - 12:27 PM

Abstract: An emerging class of theories concerning the functional structure of the brain takes the reuse of neural circuitry for various cognitive purposes to be a central organizational principle. According to these theories, it is quite common for neural circuits established for one purpose to be exapted (exploited, recycled, redeployed) during evolution or normal development and put to different uses, often without losing their original functions. Neural reuse theories hence differ from the usual
understanding of the role of neural plasticity (which is, after all, a kind of reuse) in brain organization along the following lines:

According to neural reuse, circuits can continue to acquire new uses after an initial or original function is established; the acquisition of new uses need not involve unusual circumstances such as injury or loss of established function; and the acquisition of a new use need not involve (much) local change to circuit structure (e.g., it might involve only the establishment of functional connections to new neural partners). Hence, neural reuse theories offer a distinct perspective on several topics of general interest such as: the evolution and development of the brain, including (for example) the evolutionary-developmental pathway supporting primate tool use andhuman language; the degree of modularity in brain organization; the degree of localization of cognitive function; and the cortical parcellation problem and the prospects (and proper methods to employ) for function to structure mapping. The idea also has some practical implications in the areas of rehabilitative medicine and machine interface design.

...

http://www.agcognition.org/papers/anderson_bbs_2010.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jun 10 - 01:39 PM

"...In antiquity the classic account of the eruption, and of a small part of its devastation, occurs in a pair of letters written by Pliny the Younger (61 ADÑc.112 AD) to his friend the historian Tacitus. In them he relates how his uncleÑin command of the Roman fleet in that part of the Bay of NaplesÑsailed into harmÕs way, both to acquire a better idea of the scope of this natural disaster and to reassure the populace under its shadow.

As it happens, that intrepid seaman was also called Pliny and is remembered today as an author rather than an admiral. The Elder PlinyÕs Natural History is one of the greatest books of ancient times, a massive compendium of scientific knowledge, travellerÕs tales, zoological observation and ÒBelieve it or NotÓ anecdote. (This genial encyclopedia takes up ten compact volumes in the Loeb Library, with Latin and English on facing pages, and still makes excellent bedside reading.) According to his nephew, the senior Pliny had Òa keen intelligence, astonishing concentration, and little need for sleep.. . . He used to say that there was no book so bad that it was not useful at some point. . . . He believed that any time not devoted to study was wasted.Ó

On the day of the eruption, the younger Pliny writes, Òmy uncle was at Misenum, where he held command of the fleet in person. Just after midday on 24 August [79 CE] my mother pointed out to him the appearance of a cloud of unusual size and appearance. He had relaxed in the sun, had then taken a cold dip, had lunched lying down, and was at his books. He asked for his sandals, and mounted to the place from which that remarkable phenomenon could best be observed. A cloud was issuing up from some mountain which spectators from a distance could not identify; it was later established to have been Vesuvius.Ó...

Full story on Pliny the Younger at all can be found on this page.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jun 10 - 11:52 AM

"What to do with all that intellectual firepower? Primp in the mirror, of course. Dolphins have passed the famed mirror self-recognition test, which bespeaks possession of an inner life and a concomitant concern with its packaging. When presented with a mirror, dolphins take the opportunity to check their teeth and body parts they can't normally see, like their anal slit.

Or why not become a slave to fashion? One day, a killer whale in Puget Sound started pushing a dead salmon around in the water. The other whales in her community thought that was "really cool," Dr. Whitehead said, "and within a few weeks, everybody had a dead salmon they were pushing around." By summer's end, the fad was over, and the behavior was never seen again.

Yes, brainy cetaceans love to play copycat. When a wild bottlenose dolphin was injured in Australia and taken into an aquarium for rehabilitation, the mammal learned from its captive tank mates the trick of using its tail to walk on the surface of the water. On being released back into the ocean, the dolphin continued to tail-walk, said Dr. Whitehead, "and soon the other wild dolphins started doing it, too." Cetaceans are master mimics. "One prominent chimp scientist admitted that dolphins ape humans better than apes do," said Dr. Whitehead.
..."

New York Times, 6-28-10

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jun 10 - 02:53 PM

"There was a time, not so long ago, when biologists swore black and blue that quantum mechanics could play no role in the hot, wet systems of life.

Since then, the discipline of quantum biology has emerged as one of the most exciting new fields in science. It's beginning to look as if quantum effects are crucial in a number of biological processes, such as photosynthesis and avian navigation which we've looked at here and here.

Now a group of physicists say that the weird laws of quantum mechanics may be more important for life than biologists could ever have imagined. Their new idea is that DNA is held together by quantum entanglement.

That's worth picking apart in more detail. Entanglement is the weird quantum process in which a single wavefunction describes two separate objects. When this happens, these objects effectively share the same existence, no matter how far apart they might be.

The question that Elisabeth Rieper at the National University of Singapore and a couple of buddies have asked is what role might entanglement play in DNA. To find out, they've constructed a simplified theoretical model of DNA in which each nucleotide consists of a cloud of electrons around a central positive nucleus. This negative cloud can move relative to the nucleus, creating a dipole. And the movement of the cloud back and forth is a harmonic oscillator.

When the nucleotides bond to form a base, these clouds must oscillate in opposite directions to ensure the stability of the stucture.

Rieper and co ask what happens to these oscillations, or phonons as physicists call them, when the base pairs are stacked in a double helix.

Phonons are quantum objects, meaning they can exist in a superposition of states and become entangled, just like other quantum objects.

To start with, Rieper and co imagine the helix without any effect from outside heat. "Clearly the chain of coupled harmonic oscillators is entangled at zero temperature," they say. They then go on to show that the entanglement can also exist at room temperature.

That's possible because phonons have a wavelength which is similar in size to a DNA helix and this allows standing waves to form, a phenomenon known as phonon trapping. When this happens, the phonons cannot easily escape. A similar kind of phonon trapping is known to cause problems in silicon structures of the same size.

That would be of little significance if it had no overall effect on the helix. But the model developed by Rieper and co suggests that the effect is profound.

Although each nucleotide in a base pair is oscillating in opposite directions, this occurs as a superposition of states, so that the overall movement of the helix is zero. In a purely classical model, however, this cannot happen, in which case the helix would vibrate and shake itself apart.

So in this sense, these quantum effects are responsible for holding DNA together.

The question of course is how to prove this. They say that one line of evidence is that a purely classical analysis of the energy required to hold DNA together does not add up. However, their quantum model plugs the gap. That's interesting but they'll need to come up with something experimentally convincing to persuade biologists of these ideas.

One tantalising suggestion at the end of their paper is that the entanglement may have an influence on the way that information is read off a strand of DNA and that it may be possible to exploit this experimentally. Just how, they don't say.

Speculative but potentially explosive work. "

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053: The Relevance Of Continuous Variable Entanglement In DNA

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 04:09 PM

WASHINGTON — Preservation scientists at the Library of Congress have discovered that Thomas Jefferson, even in the act of declaring independence from England, had trouble breaking free from monarchial rule.

In an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote the word "subjects," when he referred to the American public. He then erased that word and replaced it with "citizens," a term he used frequently throughout the final draft.

The Library released news of the struck word for the first time on Friday.

Fenalla France, a research chemist at the Library, said her lab made the discovery last year by using hyperspectral imaging, using a high resolution digital camera that compiles a series of images to highlight layers of a document. Some of those invisible layers — like erased text and even fingerprints — pop into view on a computer screen.

In switching from "subjects" to "citizens," France said it appears Jefferson used his hand to wipe the word out while the ink was still wet. A distinct brown smudge is apparent on the paper, although the word "subjects" is not legible without the help of the digital technology.

"This has been a very exciting development," France said, calling the findings "spine-tingling."

Historic, handwritten documents reveal clues about the past that word processors cannot illuminate, said James Billington, librarian of Congress.

"It shows the progress of his mind. This was a decisive moment," Billington said. "We recovered a magic moment that was otherwise lost to history."

Accompanied by police escort, the document was unveiled outside its protective case for the first time in 15 years on Friday morning for an additional round of hyperspectral imaging. It normally can only be viewed through a 130-pound oxygen-free safe.

Donning a pair of white researchers' gloves, Maria Nugent, director of the Library of Congress' top treasures collection, slowly lifted a piece of off-white corrugated cardboard to reveal the rough draft of the Declaration, which includes handwritten corrections by both John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.

"That's a pretty good editorial committee," said Billington, who was present for the procedure.

The rough draft was written on two sheets of white legal-sized paper, on both the back and front sides of the sheets.

The document was returned to the library's vault on Friday after the testing.

(Google news)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jul 10 - 12:57 PM

After years of research, the National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech hope to demonstrate by next year a prototype vehicle that would allow a blind person to drive independently. The technology, known as "nonvisual interfaces," is based on Virginia Tech's third-place entry into the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge, a competition funded by the Defense Department for driverless vehicles. It uses sensors to relay information to a blind person about his or her surroundings. "We're exploring areas that have previously been regarded as unexplorable," said Dr. Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, during a press conference in Daytona Beach, Fla. "We're moving away from the theory that blindness ends the capacity of human beings to make contributions to society."

Maurer has been talking about building a car for the blind since launching the research institute of his Baltimore-based organization a decade ago. "Some people thought I was crazy and they thought, 'Why do you want us to raise money for something that can't be done?' Others thought it was a great idea," he said. Advocates for the blind, who consider driving a car a goal on par with landing on the moon, acknowledge that years of testing will be required before society accepts blind drivers regardless of how good the technology is. Various options are being considered: One uses a vibrating vest to direct drivers, another uses compressed air to create a map of objects that surround a vehicle. "The results will be demonstrated next January on a modified Ford Escape sport utility vehicle at the Daytona International Speedway before the Rolex 24 race," the Associated Press reported.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 10:48 AM

"Biologists from the University of Leeds have built a computer-controlled replica of a three-spined stickleback fish to study how the behavior of individual fish might influence the movement of others. The so-called 'Robofish' was able to recruit single fish into a group, and cause fish in groups of up to ten to turn in the same direction as itself. The researchers claim that Robofish is the first robotic fish to 'interact convincingly' with a school of fish and convince the whole group to make a sharp turn."

SlashDot

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 05:09 PM

In the heavyweight championship bout of the animal kingdom, a giant crocodile defeated a shark in a TKO - and then enjoyed a victory seafood dinner.

Two boats full of tourists got the photo opportunity of a lifetime after the 16-foot crocodile's decisive win on a river in Australia's Kakadu National Park Saturday morning, the country's Northern Territory News reported.

"Nearly 100 people saw it all...and they were jumping for joy," tour guide David Cameron told the newspaper. "They said this had made their Kakadu trip."

The loser, a bull shark that had meandered up the aptly named South Alligator River in search of food, was about 10 feet long before it was bitten in half. The croc had the home-field advantage because the seagoing shark was swimming through fresh water at the time of the attack.

Cameron, a former park ranger, told the newspaper it's not the first time he's seen the two species fight for a berth at the top of the food chain.

"With the wildlife here, you just don't know what you'll get to see," he said. "That's the beauty of it."



Read more here at the Daily News

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jul 10 - 09:38 AM

Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Why Our Universe Must Have Been Born Inside a Black Hole
A small change to the theory of gravity implies that our universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born.

"Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe." So concludes Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.

The idea that new universes can be created inside black holes and that our own may have originated in this way has been the raw fodder of science fiction for many years. But a proper scientific derivation of the notion has never emerged.

Today Poplawski provides such a derivation. He says the idea that black holes are the cosmic mothers of new universes is a natural consequence of a simple new assumption about the nature of spacetime.


MIT Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25430

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 10 - 07:50 PM

This is a verbatim quote from a web site promoting designer windows and window reatments:

"If you вre thinking to coiffe up your window or meet poverty to add new elements for a completely different look, what better way to do that than to ingest window treatments? If utilised effectively, window treatments can provide efficient reddened and concealment control, create the deceit of space, conceal structural defects and create a full new environs in any Atlantic in your house."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 14 Jul 10 - 07:58 PM

"This is a verbatim quote from a web site promoting designer windows and window reatments:"

I sincerely hope that it's not based in an English speaking country.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 10 - 10:27 AM

Even scientists can get upset once in a while, as witness this post from a Physics Blog discussing entanglement, quantum mechanics, and Einstein:

""Bell singlehandedly devised the experiment that proved Einstein wrong." IDIOT

Relativity prohibits superluminal velocity information transfer. *Instantaneous* collapse of the volume of an entangled state - even if it encompasses the entire univierse - transfers no information until data sets are compared. Comparison is limited to lightspeed propagation. Both Relativity and QM emerge unscathed.

A stream of linearly polarized photons is directed into a freqency-halving crystal. Two streams of entangled photons emerge at half the frequency, in opposite directions, and with classically orthogonal linear polarizations (conservation of momentum). QM tells us the entangled state is a superposition of classical states (each photon is a 50-50 sum and difference of both linear polarizations) until somebody looks. Upon observation, the wavefunction *instantaneously* collapses and the pair of entangled photons will be seen to have orthogonal polarizations... WHEN THE TWO OBSERVERS COMPARE NOTES.

Two observers are 50 miles separated. Lightspeed is about a foot/nsec so they are about 260 micro-lightseconds apart. A linearly polarized photon stream enters a frequency-halving crystal centered between them, one million photons/second. There is lots of time between arrivals at both ends to measure polarization angle of each arriving photon all by itself. Relativity would be drastically falsified if communication at 260 times lightspeed, the first observed photon telling its entangled partner what polarization it must have, occurred.

Unknown to the observers, it is a three part experiment. It runs to spec for both, or there is a ten microsecond optical delay line that can be inserted into either arm so one observer sees one of two entangled photons first. Let 'er rip for billions of photons, 1/3 randomly assinged into each circumstance on the fly.

Each isolated observer now has billions of measured polarizations. So? Each has a long list of numbers that conveys exactly zero information - not even Morse code. When they compare datasets, polarizations and arrival times, data becomes information and Bell's Inequality reigns.

Comparison of datasets - even for one entangled pair - cannot propagate faster than lightspeed. QM obtains and relativity is not violated.

You are ineducable for not reading the literature, then and now. You are foul for chronically blowing it out your bum, post after post. Ignorance can be educated, stupidity is forever. Get educated or go away...."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 11:43 PM

Single star count ups odds of ET
17:48 16 July 2010
New Scientist


Solitary suns like ours are not as rare as we once thought, boosting the likelihood that there are other life-friendly solar systems in the universe.

"It is not always easy to tell if a star has a companion, since they are often too close together to distinguish as separate objects with a telescope. But astronomers can look for other clues, such as periodic changes in the star system's light spectrum caused by the motion of the stars as they orbit one another.

Previous surveys had suggested that most systems containing a star the same mass as our sun have two or more stars orbiting each other, in contrast to our solar system. Now that has been thrown into doubt.

When Deepak Raghavan of Georgia State University in Atlanta and colleagues looked at 454 sun-like stars, they found that 56 per cent were single like our sun and just 44 per cent had a stellar companion. Their study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Stable singles

The team's finding is at odds with a survey completed in 1991, which found that the majority of systems containing a sun-like star were multiple star systems. So why the conflicting results?

One point is that the 1991 survey was based on a smaller sample. Also, its authors assumed that some stars in the sample had companions that were below the survey's detection threshold. This may have led them to overestimate the number of companion systems, suggests Raghavan's team.

Single stars provide a stable planetary system, which makes them suitable for life. Planets can form in multiple star systems, but the gravity of the additional stars can hurl planets into their parent star, says John Chambers of the Carnegie Institution for Science based in Washington DC, who was not involved in the study.

Stellar companions may also interfere with the formation of comets in the outer reaches of a planet-forming disc, Chambers says, thereby eliminating a potential source of water for rocky planets through comet impacts."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jul 10 - 04:52 PM

July 16, 2010

A well-preserved tomb of an ancient Mayan king has been discovered in Guatemala by a team of archaeologists led by Brown University's Stephen Houston. The tomb is packed with of carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, who may have been sacrificed at the time of the king's death.

The team uncovered the tomb, which dates from about 350 to 400 A.D., beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz in May. The news was made public yesterday during a press conference in Guatemala City, hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, which authorized the work.

Before making the actual discovery, Houston said the team thought "something odd" was happening in the deposit they were digging. They knew a small temple had been built in front of a sprawling structure dedicated to the sun god, an emblem of Maya rulership. "When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of 'caches' Ñ blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight."

Then on May 29, 2010, Houston was with a worker who came to a final earthen layer. "I told him to remove it, and then, a flat stone. We'd been using a small stick to probe for cavities. And, on this try, the stick went in, and in, and in. After chipping away at the stone, I saw nothing but a small hole leading into darkness."
They lowered a bare light bulb into the hole, and suddenly Houston saw "an explosion of color in all directions Ñ reds, greens, yellows." It was a royal tomb filled with organics Houston says he'd never seen before: pieces of wood, textiles, thin layers of painted stucco, cord.

"When we opened the tomb, I poked my head in and there was still, to my astonishment, a smell of putrification and a chill that went to my bones," Houston said. "The chamber had been so well sealed, for over 1600 years, that no air and little water had entered."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jul 10 - 12:44 PM

"When the news arrived of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, there was a big rush to reach California. At the time of Marshall's discovery, the state's non-Indian population numbered about 14,000. By the end of 1849, it had risen to nearly 100,000, and it continued to swell to some 250,000 by 1852.

The Western man, by braving the dangers of the overland route, might expect, if the Indians allowed him to pass unmolested, and he had sufficient stamina to endure the privations of the route over the Rocky Mountains and the passes of the Sierras, to reach California some time within a year. Many new routes were opened into California as a result of the Gold Rush. With an estimated 140,000 emigrants arriving in California via the California Trail between 1849 and 1854, routes were continually modified, tested or even abandoned.

His Eastern brother preferred the route by sea, via Cape Horn. There was a great development of the shipping industry after the discovery of gold in California. The sailing vessel was almost the only means of transportation. The voyage generally occupied about six months, which might be extended indefinitely should an accident to the vessel necessitate a visit to Rio Janeiro, Valparaiso, or Callao, while on route, for repairs, water, or provisions. Companies were formed, and vessels were bought and chartered. The between decks were fitted up with berths for sleeping quarters and the hold was reserved for water and provisions, any spare room being utilized for such freight as the passengers were able to ship and of the character likely to be most needed on arrival in California, generally provisions, household effects, lumber, and other building material.

Urged on by that pioneering spirit which seemed inherent in the blood of the American, and invited by the prolific soil and genial climate of these distant possessions, and a prospect of a new and enlarged field for commercial pursuits, large numbers of people migrated thither around Cape Horn. In spite of all of these difficulties, it has been estimated that as many as 25,000 persons made the sea journey to California in the aftermath of the gold discovery, or about as many as lived in the whole territory before 1848. These numbers were dwarfed by those who opted for travel by land. The round voyage to and from San Francisco would occupy about a year, but the larger part of the vessels that went to San Francisco in the first year of the gold excitement never returned. On their arrival there the officers and crews generally deserted the ships and started for the mines. As no sailors were to be had, the ship had to lie in the harbor uncared for and often without the services of a shipkeeper, and many of them were used as a foundation on which the present city of San Francisco was laid. Using a good ship as a foundation for a city appears rather odd, but here there has been seen an old condemned canal-boat or barge used for a bulkhead, and, with the help of dirt filling, making a fair appearance. In San Francisco many craft belonging to the companies who had no use for the vessels after they had landed their passengers and their belongings safely were hauled as far on shore as was possible, and after their usefulness for places of residence was ended, they were still further removed from tidewater by the filling in all around them, and there some of their bones remained.

The clipper ship, Andrew Jackson, Capt. Williams, from New York, arrived in San Francisco the afternoon of 25 March 1860 in the unprecedented time of 89 days and 7 hours, beating the quickest voyage of the clipper ship Flying Cloud. The Andrew Jackson was not an extreme clipper, having been built with a view for carrying as well as sailing. The clipper ship Flying Cloud, under command of Capt. Josiah P. Creesey, had made the shortest passages made under sail to San Francisco - one in 89 days and 13 hours in 1851, and a second voyage in a few hours more. The shortest homeward passage was made by the Northern Light in 79 days and a few hours to Boston.

It must be conceded that any vessel, however fast, must be highly favored by winds and weather to be able to cover nearly 16,000 miles in so short a time. There were a number of short passages made to San Francisco other than the phenomenal ones of the Flying Cloud and Andrew Jackson. One hundred and twenty days might fairly be considered the average. But the Westward Ho, Comet, Surprise, Swordfish, Young America, Firelight, Reporter, and others made the voyage inside of 100 days. The long passages were made by vessels leaving here in midsummer; the short ones were almost invariably by ships leaving New-York between Nov. 30 and March 1. There were, of course, many long and tedious voyages, when the elements conspired against all progress, where the ship could not get past Cape St. Roque and would be compelled to go back to the equator and try it again. Light winds, no trades where trades ought to be, calms, and counter currents often added many days to the passage of some of the fastest ships, to the untold anxiety of shippers and owners, and occasionally to the great worriment of the underwriters.

Sailing ships traditionally favored the Cape Horn route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, although rounding the cape by sail was hazardous. The strong currents and unpredictable winds in the Strait of Magellan were a considerable object to sailing ships, frequently more so than the storms and unfavorable winds of rounding Cape Horn. Steam navigation through the Strait of Magellan began in 1840. Under the Treaty of 1881 between Argentina and Chile delimiting Tierra del Fuego and the Straits of Magellan "Magellan's Straits are neutralized forever, and free navigation is guaranteed to the flags of all nations. To insure this liberty and neutrality no fortifications or military defenses shall be erected that could interfere with this object." Should some future conflict interrupt passage through the Panama Canal, maritime traffic between Atlantic and Pacific would again seek the old established routes around Cape Horn, through the Beagle Channel or via the Straits of Magellan. ..."

From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/panama-canal-horn.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jul 10 - 07:34 PM

(CNN) -- Imagine a star so luminous that it would burn the Earth up if it were anywhere near, a star that outshines the sun as much as the sun outshines the moon. A monster even in the abyss of space.
The star is not some scientist's celestial dream. Astronomers used a Very Large Telescope -- the instrument's official name -- to detect the most massive star discovered to date. In scientific lingo, it's a "hypergiant."
Led by Paul Crowther, professor of astrophysics at England's University of Sheffield, the team of astronomers studied two young clusters of stars, NGC 3603 and RMC 136a.
R136a1, found in the RMC 136a cluster, is 10 million times brighter than the sun and is the heaviest star ever found, Crowther said Wednesday, with a mass that is roughly 265 times more than the sun. It was born even heavier, with a solar mass of 320. Astronomers previously thought 150 to be the upper limit.
Several of the stars studied had surface temperatures of 40,000 degrees, more than seven times hotter than the sun.

R136a1 is rare and resides in another galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its home is more than 165,000 light years away from Earth's Milky Way galaxy. As such, said Crowther, it is not visible to the naked eye, nor with a rooftop telescope.
"Owing to the rarity of these monsters, I think it is unlikely that this new record will be broken any time soon," Crowther said.

Crowther's team used the sophisticated infrared equipment on the Very Large Telescope in a European Southern Observatory facility in Chile as well as data collected from the Hubble Space Telescope to detect the colossal star. The telescope is considered the world's "biggest eye on the sky" and is 8 meters (26 feet) in diameter.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jul 10 - 11:43 AM

"Thomas Ryan of Provide Security's making it public knowledge that social networking sites aren't just annoying: they're also potentially major security threats. Ryan set up a fake Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter account for "Robin Sage," a person who doesn't exist and never has -- but we can assure you she's really, really hot. Robin billed herself as a graduate of MIT and a prestigious New Hampshire prep school, and quickly made hundreds of connections across all three sites, without ever offering any proof of her existence or the connections she espoused. Even more stunning, "Robin" was befriending military, government and intel people on Facebook and Linked In (where she dubbed herself a "hacker"), and hackers on Twitter. Ryan's findings state that the military and intel "friends" Robin made freely share information and documents with her, as well as inviting her to various conferences. Interestingly, it turns out the only group that was in anyway resistant to Robin were the MIT-associated people... but we knew they were all whip-smart already. Moral? Next time you accept the request of a beautiful, intelligent hacker who wants to come over and view your secret dossiers, you should probably think twice." Engadget

---

Someday we will learn not to buy maps and believe we are buying land...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jul 10 - 05:25 PM

Solar-powered process could decrease carbon dioxide to pre-industrial levels in 10 years
July 22, 2010 By Lisa Zyga


In the Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo (STEP) carbon capture process, the sunÕs visible light and heat are used to capture large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it to solid carbon for storage or carbon monoxide for fuel generation. Image copyright: Stuart Licht, et al. ©2010 American Chemical Society.

(PhysOrg.com) -- By using the sun's visible light and heat to power an electrolysis cell that captures and converts carbon dioxide from the air, a new technique could impressively clean the atmosphere and produce fuel feedstock at the same time. The key advantage of the new solar carbon capture process is that it simultaneously uses the solar visible and solar thermal components, whereas the latter is usually regarded as detrimental due to the degradation that heat causes to photovoltaic materials. However, the new method uses the sunÕs heat to convert more solar energy into carbon than either photovoltaic or solar thermal processes alone.


The new process, called Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo (STEP) carbon capture, was recently suggested theoretically by a team of scientists from George Washington University and Howard University, both in Washington, DC. Now, in a paper just published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, the scientists have experimentally demonstrated the STEP process for the first time.

ÒThe significance of the study is twofold,Ó Stuart Licht, a chemistry professor at George Washington University, told PhysOrg.com. ÒCarbon dioxide, a non-reactive and normally difficult-to-remove compound, can be easily captured with solar energy using our new low-energy, lithium carbonate electrolysis STEP process, and with scale-up, sufficient resources exist for STEP to decrease carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels within 10 years.Ó

As the scientists explain, the process uses visible sunlight to power an electrolysis cell for splitting carbon dioxide, and also uses solar thermal energy to heat the cell in order to decrease the energy required for this conversion process. The electrolysis cell splits carbon dioxide into either solid carbon (when the reaction occurs at temperatures between 750¡C and 850¡C) or carbon monoxide (when the reaction occurs at temperatures above 950¡C). These kinds of temperatures are much higher than those typically used for carbon-splitting electrolysis reactions (e.g., 25¡C), but the advantage of reactions at higher temperatures is that they require less energy to power the reaction than at lower temperatures.
The STEP process is the first and only method that incorporates both visible and thermal energy from the sun for carbon capture. Radiation from the full solar spectrum - including heat - is not usually considered an advantage in solar technologies due to heatÕs damage to photovoltaics. Even in the best solar cells, a large part of sunlight is discarded as intrinsically insufficient to drive solar cells as it is sub-bandgap, and so it is lost as waste heat."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jul 10 - 05:34 PM

A three-dimensional printer for printing FOOD!.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Jul 10 - 09:11 AM

Maybe this is a better spot to place this musing...

Introduction to the thought experiment.

Some of us can read and write music. Some of us may perform music better than those who read and write music. And some of us experience music more deeply than the rest, but may be unaware they are different. Depending on the wiring of your mind you might see music in color or see music in perfect pitch colors, or maybe feel music in an enhanced 3-D that flows from mind to body in pure dance. While we are talented differently, no one, not even the genius, can have every talent possible any more than one may have every perspective and point of view in the universe.

The interplay of musical sound and light that forms in our mostly visual brains is at the heart of our humanness. In our minds we can transform pictures in new ways as simply as we change a tune for the better. This is our unique talent which allows us to ride upon a thought experiment that sometimes reveals the mysteries of the universe to us in remarkable ways.

When Einstein was stuck mathematically when trying to integrate time and space the simple thought experiment of seeing the town square clock as if upon a beam of light racing away from the clock at the speed of light showed him that time virtually stops at the speed of light. The clock reads 12 continually if you were the light beam but to people in the town square the clock keeps ticking away.

This brings me to the point of a recent thought experiment I had which was as spontaneous and enjoyable as hearing a new symphony in my head. First thing needed was darkness so that the light from within could be seen. Like booting up a computer I closed my eyes and pictured the immediate environment until It felt like I could see everything in the dark. The next step was to open my eyes in the totally dark room and still mentally see everything clearly in the muted tones of night vision, whether they were really visible or not. To go where you want to go in this state is as easy as driving. Just step on the gas…

Every thought experiment must have a clear destination or question well beforehand like the time I asked about a future power source and I envisioned a circle in a triangle. While I knew the image was symbolic I am embarrassed to say that it took years later to interpret the single circle and the triangle as Lithium and Hydrogen or as Lithium hydride batteries. The thought experiment yesterday was directed at reconciling surprising cosmological discoveries into a dynamic flowing picture of the universe!

I sought to include all the surprises such as the acceleration of our space time universe and dark matter and energy, as well as tiny and massive black holes and every other cosmological teaser that exists today as a loose strand of knowledge in the tapestry puzzle of the cosmos. What I saw was beautiful and simple within a framework of musical vision, only if you consider the idea of infinite fractal dualities simple.

If this were a joke, this would be when Spaw would now awaken with an intense Eureka moment of discovering he had incredible intestinal cramps and had to reach the bathroom in seconds from his bed 20 feet away. This is not a joke however and the effort of now describing the dynamic picture I saw will require eloquence beyond my use of language, so bear with me even if you think I am just full of shit or maybe on to something important.

What you bring to the table in response to what I have to describe is most important. For example it took Professor Szilard to have first read H.G. Wells book describe something called the atomic bomb to then become the first person to understand many years later when the neutron was discovered that an envisoned chain reaction of these neutrons would actually make H.G.Wells' science fiction atomic bomb a reality.

What I saw was dimensions enclosed within dimensions as simply as a sheet of paper enclosed within all the air around it in the room with the air touching the paper at every surface, and the room enclosed within a building that surrounds every wall of the room, yet it was a cosmic space picture with familiar features of galaxies and black holes.

The boundaries between these dimensions were like a turbulent mirror which allowed most of the stuff in its dimension to be reflected back yet allow tiny parts to pass through. The dimensions were not like parallel branes but more like various yet similar fractal dimensions that differed only slightly as the scale in size varied from one to the next.

As black holes swallowed up bright matter and sent it hurtling into another dimension with the power of immense gravity, that other dimension (which touches every part of our dimension like the air around the sheet of paper) grew in mass equally to the amount of mass leaving our dimension. As the black holes became more numerous over time, more dark matter and energy resided in the other enclosing dimension which gave it more gravitational persuasion over our dimension and began to cause our dimension to accelerate toward every point in which it is surrounded by the dark energy mass dimension.

Instability built up over a near infinite period of time until the other dimension exploded back into the other nearly empty dimension through a weak spot as if the cosmic pendulum stopped and began to swing the other way.

This great cosmic breathe or undulating pulse of the universe was envisioned a bit like progeny being born while the prior version passed away. Like a Klien bottle, one dimension passes into another as inside and outside are same, yet within another Klien bottle.   The dynamic image of the thought experiment however was like a multiverse in which each bubble universe might sometimes burst making more but smaller bubbles on a smaller fractal scale dimension like foam on an infinite beach with countless bubbles of sizes that were clearly seen, all the way down to the microscopically invisible. Some of the bubbles were even able to combine and make a larger bubble from two or more bubbles.

Let me pause here and acknowledge the usual warnings against using human perceptions to make sense of other dimensions such as the quantum scale which can be viewed as a smaller dimension where things seemingly do not make "everyday" sense or obey laws that are familiar to our day to day life and bodies. It does begin to make sense when you envision a person looking at the quantum scale dimension yet seeing its alien time scale of eons pass in our nanosecond. This is why sub atomic particles sometimes seem as though they could be anywhere in a possibility cloud but only when we look are they seen to be in a particular position.

For me what I think was seen were a finite number of dimensions that dynamically influenced one another in an ebb and flow between themselves and that time was not a dimension in itself for everything there is, but was different and special for each dimension depending upon its mass and scale.
The less mass and the smaller dimension the more impossibly fast time would become. It seemed that the spooky action at a distance was a result of the turbulent mirror between dimensions where virtual particles pass to and fro. There was no big bang in the dream image but rather the breathe like ebb and flow between two similar dimensions at various time scales.

I could continue to describe the image of the thought experiment with more simplicity, and probably more succinctly at another time in a different state of mind but I will stop here and see what you might bring to the table and listen to your perspective and possibly the connections you see in this dynamic model with physics, cosmology and consciousness, or if it can be entirely dismissed as magical thinking like the fictional inventions of H.G.Wells.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Jul 10 - 03:00 PM

amos post:
"Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Why Our Universe Must Have Been Born Inside a Black Hole
A small change to the theory of gravity implies that our universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born.

"Accordingly, our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe." So concludes Nikodem Poplawski at Indiana University in a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time.
" ...


I wrote and illustrated this exact concept in depth 12 years ago!

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Jul 10 - 03:11 PM

PS it was actually one of the few musings that I sold.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jul 10 - 03:35 PM

Brilliance unsung is the true engine of civilization, Donuel. Carry on. Consider yourself lucky you weren't exposed!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Jul 10 - 10:53 AM

Released: 7/26/2010 6:00 AM EDT
Source: Methodist Hospital, Houston

Newswise — The Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center today opened the country's most advanced hybrid, robotic operating room. The new suite integrates advanced robotics, imaging and navigation with surgery to offer patients the least invasive and safest surgical and interventional treatments for cardiovascular disease.

"The new suite is perfectly designed for advanced procedures like the percutaneous valve, in which we will replace a patient's diseased cardiac valve through a tiny puncture hole in the groin," said Dr. Alan Lumsden, chair of cardiovascular surgery at Methodist. "The crystal clear 3D imaging we'll have in this new room will enable us to maneuver the valve into place and position it much more accurately and precisely than ever before. This is vitally important in such an advanced technique."

As medicine becomes less invasive for the patient, the new hybrid, robotic OR blurs the lines between an operating room and a catheterization lab. It houses a highly flexible robotic system, the Siemens Artis Zeego, which makes it easy for physicians to visualize a patient's internal organs from all angles, reducing the need for exploratory surgery and improving diagnostic capabilities without incisions.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 26 Jul 10 - 10:23 PM

Researchers discover how key enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA
July 25, 2010 by Pam Frost Gorder Researchers discover how key enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA

Researchers have long known that humans lack a key enzyme -- one possessed by most of the animal kingdom and even plants -- that reverses severe sun damage.

For the first time, researchers have witnessed how this enzyme works at the atomic level to repair sun-damaged DNA.

The discovery holds promise for future sunburn remedies and skin cancer prevention.

In the early online edition of the journal Nature, Ohio State University physicist and chemist Dongping Zhong and his colleagues describe how they were able to observe the enzyme, called photolyase, inject a single electron and proton into an injured strand of DNA. The two subatomic particles healed the damage in a few billionths of a second.

"It sounds simple, but those two atomic particles actually initiated a very complex series of chemical reactions," said Zhong, the Robert Smith Associate Professor of Physics, and associate professor in the departments of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. "It all happened very fast, and the timing had to be just right."

Exactly how photolyases repair the damage has remained a mystery until now.

"People have been working on this for years, but now that we've seen it, I don't think anyone could have guessed exactly what was happening," Zhong said.

He and his colleagues synthesized DNA in the lab and exposed it to ultraviolet light, producing damage similar to that of sunburn, then added photolyase enzymes. Using ultrafast light pulses, they took a series of "snapshots" to reveal how the enzyme repaired the DNA at the atomic level.

Ultraviolet (UV) light damages skin by causing chemical bonds to form in the wrong places along the DNA molecules in our cells.

This study has revealed that photolyase breaks up those errant bonds in just the right spots to cause the atoms in the DNA to move back into their original positions. The bonds are then arranged in such a way that the electron and proton are automatically ejected out of the DNA helix and back into the photolyase, presumably so it could start the cycle over again and go on to heal other sites.

All plants and most animals have photolyase to repair severe sun damage. Everything from trees to bacteria to insects enjoys this extra protection. Only mammals lack the enzyme.

Humans do possess some enzymes that can undo damage with less efficiency. But we become sunburned when our DNA is too damaged for those enzymes to repair, and our skin cells die. Scientists have linked chronic sun damage to DNA mutations that lead to diseases such as skin cancer.

Now that researchers know the mechanism by which photolyase works, they might use that information to design drugs or lotions that heal sun damage, Zhong said.

Normal sunscreen lotions convert UV light to heat, or reflect it away from our skin. A sunscreen containing photolyase could potentially heal some of the damage from UV rays that get through.

Perhaps ironically, photolyase captures light of a different wavelength -- visible light, in the form of photons -- to obtain enough energy to launch the healing electron and proton into the DNA that has been damaged by UV light.

Researchers knew that visible light played a role in the process -- hence the term "photo" in the enzyme's name -- but nobody knew exactly how, until now.

Provided by The Ohio State University (news : web)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jul 10 - 12:14 PM

From the NYT:

"A thousand physicists working at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., reported in Paris on Monday that they had not found the "God particle," yet. But they are beginning to figure out where it is not.

Its mass — in the units preferred by physicists — is not in the range between 158 billion and 175 billion electron volts, according to a talk by Ben Kilminster of Fermilab at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris.

And so the most intensive particle hunt in the history of physics goes on.

Over the last decade physicists working on two separate experiments at Fermilab have combed the debris from a thousand trillion (1 with 15 zeros) collisions of protons and anti-protons looking for signs of the Higgs boson, which is said to be responsible for imbuing some other elementary particles with mass. Rumors fanned by a blogger that the Higgs, dubbed the "God particle," by former Fermilab director Leon Lederman in a book of the same name, had been detected reached all the way to Gawker last week and focused attention on the Paris conference, which also featured a speech by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

The new results, combining the data from two separate Fermi experiments, DZero and C.D.F., narrow the range in which the Higgs, if it exists, must be hiding. Physicists had previously concluded that it must lie somewhere between 115 billion and 200 billion electron volts. By comparison a proton, the anchor of ordinary matter, weighs in at about a billion electron volts.

"

Well ... I dunno ... but does anyone see a small bit of charming irony in the assertion that the one thing learned about the Higgs boson is that it does NOT have a mass between 158 billion and 175 billion eV? This is the "God" particle--the "particle", if such it is, that imparts mass. If it is, then does it not seem odd to be trying to pin down the number of the mass it inherently imparts on itself? And, is anyone asking how it does that? Is it a chicken or an egg?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jul 10 - 02:49 PM

"....A passage comes to mind that I first discovered in Yates' Art of Memory, from the Phaedrus of Plato. Socrates is repeating the speech of an Egyptian king named Thamus to Theuth, the god who has just invented writing:

[T]his invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves will discourage the use of their memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.

"

---

(This sentiment has probably been echoed with the advent of the pencil, cheap paper, the printing press, changeable underwear, the typewriter, the radio, the television, the pocket calculator, the personal computer and the video game. Is it "true"? A.)


(Quote is from this interesting essay "In Defense of Memory".

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jul 10 - 01:12 PM

"Porsche has announced that it will make a production version of its 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid concept car.

The car, which was first shown off this year at the Geneva Auto Show, can accelerate to 60 miles per hour in under 3.2 seconds, and reach a top speed of 198 miles per hour. It pairs an electric motor with an eight-cylinder engine. Drivers will be able to putter along for 16 miles using electricity alone. In ordinary hybrid mode, the car can get 94 miles per imperial gallon (about 78 mpg). For the highest performance, select Sport Hybrid or Race Hybrid mode. The latter includes a "push-to-pass" button that delivers a surge of power from the battery.

With Porsche getting in on the electric-powered action, one wonders how up-starts like Fisker and Tesla will manage. ..."


(MIT Technology Review)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 10:10 AM

A quantum memory may be all scientists need to beat the limit of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, according to a paper published in Nature Physics. According to a group of researchers, maximally entangling a particle with a quantum memory and measuring one of the particle's variables, like its position, should snap the quantum memory in a corresponding state, which could then be measured. This would allow them to do something long thought verboten by the laws of physics: figure out the state of certain pairs of variables at the exact same time with an unprecedented amount of certainty.

Our ability to observe particles at the quantum level is currently limited by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Heisenberg noticed that when someone measured one variable of a particle, such as its position, there were some other variables, like momentum, that could not be simultaneously measured with as much precision—there was a small amount of uncertainty applied to one or both of the measurements.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 07:47 PM

Many species naturally make small amounts of hydrocarbons. Now researchers at the startup LS9, based in South San Francisco, CA, have described the genes and enzymes responsible for this production of alkanes, the major components of fuels such as diesel. The findings, reported in the current issue of the journal Science, have allowed the researchers to engineer E. coli bacteria that can secrete alkane hydrocarbons capable of being burned in diesel engines.


LS9 had previously reported using bacteria to produce hydrocarbon fuel, but this is the first time the researchers have revealed how they did it. "This is the first characterization of these enzymes. Virtually nothing was known about what enzymes were responsible, and how do they do it," says Frances Arnold, a professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering, and biochemistry at Caltech. Arnold was not involved in the LS9 work. The discovery "opens up a whole new set of possibilities," she says. "These reactions are very interesting. Nature has made a few versions of them. Now, in the laboratory, we can make many more versions, so your imagination can run wild."

Any commercial applications Arnold and others discover, however, will likely require a licensing agreement with LS9, which has filed for a patent for its discovery.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Aug 10 - 07:50 PM

From Phys.Org:

"Your perceptions of others reveal so much about your own personality," says Dustin Wood, assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest and lead author of the study, about his findings. By asking study participants to each rate positive and negative characteristics of just three people, the researchers were able to find out important information about the rater's well-being, mental health, social attitudes and how they were judged by others.
The study appears in the July issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Peter Harms at the University of Nebraska and Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis co-authored the study.

The researchers found a person's tendency to describe others in positive terms is an important indicator of the positivity of the person's own personality traits. They discovered particularly strong associations between positively judging others and how enthusiastic, happy, kind-hearted, courteous, emotionally stable and capable the person describes oneself and is described by others.


"Seeing others positively reveals our own positive traits," Wood says.
The study also found that how positively you see other people shows how satisfied you are with your own life, and how much you are liked by others.


In contrast, negative perceptions of others are linked to higher levels of narcissism and antisocial behavior. "A huge suite of negative personality traits are associated with viewing others negatively," Wood says. "The simple tendency to see people negatively indicates a greater likelihood of depression and various personality disorders." Given that negative perceptions of others may underlie several personality disorders, finding techniques to get people to see others more positively could promote the cessation of behavior patterns associated with several different personality disorders simultaneously, Wood says.
This research suggests that when you ask someone to rate the personality of a particular coworker or acquaintance, you may learn as much about the rater providing the personality description as the person they are describing. The level of negativity the rater uses in describing the other person may indeed indicate that the other person has negative characteristics, but may also be a tip off that the rater is unhappy, disagreeable, neuroticÑor has other negative personality traits.


Raters in the study consisted of friends rating one another, college freshmen rating others they knew in their dormitories, and fraternity and sorority members rating others in their organization. In all samples, participants rated real people and the positivity of their ratings were found to be associated with the participant's own characteristics.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Aug 10 - 10:16 AM

GROW BACK BROKEN TEETH
Scientists in France have made a gel that is applied to tooth roots that still have a blood supply (no root canals) that causes teeth to grow back.

NEW ZEALAND scientists have made bionic legs that free people from wheel chairs. While the legs seem slow, the benefit to wheel chair bound people includes better bowel and urinary function.

Human trials of stem cell research for the purpose of healing spinal chord injuries are now going forward. A few setbacks delayed ongoing reasearch such as cyst formation but research is now back on track.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 03 Aug 10 - 02:33 PM

NEw Scientist reports:

"An unusually complex magnetic eruption on the sun has flung a large cloud of electrically charged particles towards Earth. When the cloud hits, which could be anytime now, it could spark aurorae in the skies around the poles and pose a threat to satellites – though probably not a particularly severe one.

On 1 August, a small solar flare erupted above sunspot 1092. It would not have raised many eyebrows, except that a large filament of cool gas stretching across the sun's northern hemisphere also chose that moment to explode into space.

Despite being separated by hundreds of thousands of kilometres, the two events may be linked. Images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory hint at a shock wave travelling from the flare into the filament. "These are two distinct phenomena but they are obviously related," says Len Culhane, a solar physicist at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London.

Satellite threat
Filaments are gigantic tubes of magnetism that fill up with solar gas and hang in the atmosphere of the sun. This particular one spanned 50 times the diameter of our planet before it burst. It then spilled its contents into space, producing a cloud of electrically charged particles known as a coronal mass ejection.

When the cloud hits our planet, as will happen any day now, satellites could be affected. A gust of solar particles in April may have been responsible for putting Intelsat's Galaxy 15 permanently out of action.

In the grand scheme of solar things, this is not a big eruption. The sun is currently rousing from an unusually extended period of quiet. "If the solar activity continues to rise, then in three to four years this will be seen as a comparatively normal event," says Culhane.
"

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 10 - 08:00 PM

Acientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) have found a new way to make beating heart cells from the body's own cells that could help regenerate damaged hearts. Over 5 million Americans suffer from heart failure because the heart has virtually no ability to repair itself after a heart attack. Only 2,000 hearts become available for heart transplant annually in the United States, leaving limited therapeutic options for the remaining millions.

In research published in the current issue of Cell, scientists in the laboratory of GICD director Deepak Srivastava, MD, directly reprogrammed structural cells called fibroblasts in the heart to become beating heart cells called cardiomyocytes. In doing so, they also found the first evidence that unrelated adult cells can be reprogrammed from one cell type to another without having to go all the way back to a stem cell state.

The researchers, led by Masaki Ieda, MD, PhD, started off with 14 genetic factors important for formation of the heart and found that together they could reprogram fibroblasts into cardiomyocyte-like cells. Remarkably, a combination of just three of the factors (Gata4, Mef2c, and Tbx5) was enough to efficiently convert fibroblasts into cells that could beat like cardiomyocytes and turned on most of the same genes expressed in cardiomyocytes. When transplanted into mouse hearts 1 day after the three factors were introduced, fibroblasts turned into cardiomyocyte-like cells within the beating heart. ...

(Phys Org)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 10 - 05:58 PM

elebrity superstar Julia Roberts recently announced a religious conversion to Hinduism. Roberts became a Hindu while filming her new movie "Eat Pray Love" in India. While researching and filming the story Roberts experienced a spiritual awakening and returned home a Hindu.

Roberts stars in the big screen adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's travel memoir, "Eat Pray Love," a story about a woman's travel to India as part of a spiritual pilgrimage to learn about yoga, meditation and life in an ashram.

Roberts, whose parents are Baptist and Catholic, is now a confirmed Hindu who goes to the temple in LA along with her cameraman husband Daniel Moder and their children to Òchant, pray and celebrate on a regular basisÓ.

Roberts has also adopted the Hindu belief in reincarnation, and she hopes her next life will be a "quiet" one.

Roberts says, "Golly, I've been so spoiled with my friends and family in this life. Next time I want to be just something quiet and supporting."

Other celebrities who have practiced Hinduism include former Beatle George Harrison, and celebrated author J.D. Salinger.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 10 - 07:22 PM

The Kama Sutra is now available as an audio book for the benefit of commuters and other victims of the Puritan ethic. Oh, my, imagine the complications!!



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 11:02 AM

Did the Scots invent modern civilization? Did England actually have an Enlightement? An interesting hoistorical analysis of the Enlightenment and the changes it wrought.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 11:37 AM

Ancient planetary systems are orbiting a large fraction of white dwarf stars
Authors: B. Zuckerman, C. Melis, B. Klein, D. Koester, M. Jura
(Submitted on 14 Jul 2010)
Abstract: Infrared studies have revealed debris likely related to planet formation in orbit around ~30% of youthful, intermediate mass, main sequence stars. We present evidence, based on atmospheric pollution by various elements heavier than helium, that a comparable fraction of the white dwarf descendants of such main sequence stars are orbited by planetary systems. These systems have survived, at least in part, through all stages of stellar evolution that precede the white dwarf. During the time interval (~200 million years) that a typical polluted white dwarf in our sample has been cooling it has accreted from its planetary system the mass of one of the largest asteroids in our solar system (e.g., Vesta or Ceres).

Usually, this accreted mass will be only a fraction of the total mass of rocky material that orbits these white dwarfs; for plausible planetary system configurations we estimate that this total mass is likely to be at least equal to that of the Sun's asteroid belt, and perhaps much larger. (arXiv.org)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 01:52 PM

STICKS and stones may break your bones, but words might make you more likely to get arthritis. Not as catchy as the original, but it seems social rejection could trigger diseases linked to inflammation.

Psychologist George Slavich of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues asked 124 volunteers to give speeches and perform mental arithmetic in front of a panel of dismissive observers. Saliva analysis showed they exhibited elevated levels of two inflammation markers. A quarter of the volunteers then played a computer game in which other players were instructed to exclude them.

Functional MRI scans showed this triggered increased activity in two brain regions associated with rejection. Participants with the highest inflammatory responses showed the greatest increases in brain activity (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009164107).

Understanding the role the brain plays in conditions linked to inflammation - such as asthma, arthritis, cardiovascular disease and depression - will help in the development of new treatments to combat them, says Slavich.

(Reported in New Scientist)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 03:12 PM

"If there was a breakthrough moment, it came in 2004, after our first research participant, Matt, had the sensor implanted. Matt had suffered a spinal cord injury from an accident. We turned on the BrainGate system and we could see right away that his brain was active. Moreover, the activity of his brain cells changed as he imagined different movements, like moving his hand left or moving his hand right. With that information, we could translate his brain activity so that he could control a cursor motion on a computer screen.

What was so astounding was that we saw the movement part of the brain get active, even though there was no movement possible. We saw that simply imagining a motion, he could activate this part of the brain. " A Conversation With John P. Donoghue: "Connecting Brains to the Outside World" (NYT)

This is a really telling moment; imagining motion produces brain activity of the same sort as commanding the motion through a working nervous system.

What is really compellling to me about this observation is the question, "Where is the imagining part of the brain?" -- or is the imagining part something else?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Aug 10 - 04:24 PM

It seems to me that the Olympic competitions indicate the enviorment of our planet and human decision making better than weather reports.
The Bejing olympics demonstrated how bad the air has become.
The UK Olympic park is now being built on a radioactive waste dump site which shows how bad the stewardship of the land has become.
I suggest the future olympics be held on floating platforms in the sea in the center of the Pacific Ocean where there is a floating conglomerate of plastic garbage that slowly swirls in the doldrums. It is believed to be larger than the state of Texas.