BS: Random Traces From All Over

30 Aug 07 - 10:07 AM (#2136866)
Subject: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For those who feel the world is too defined, too ordered, and too local, I offer this entertainment: a thread in which to place short notes of completely random memes, bits of the unexpected, the irrelevant, the serendipitous and the sort of pieces of information that make you turn sharply to the left instead of continuing what you were looking at a moment ago. Here's an example:

It is interesting to note that when Diocletian issued his famous edict (referred to in Brother Lemert's letter) he believed that in burning the manuscripts of the alchemists he was destroying the source of the Egyptian gold supply. On this see "Demonology and Devil-Lore" in two volumes, by Moncure Conway, Vol. II, page 303.

A real "go-figger" sort of moment, huh?

Regards.


A

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30 Aug 07 - 11:08 AM (#2136898)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,Keinstein

Diocletian was trying to reform the economy of the Roman empire, and feared that if the alchemists succeeded in creating gold, its value would be lost and inflation would ensue.

Don't forget that Newton believed transformation of base metals to gold to be possible. Under the ancient system of four elements, every substance* was made up of a mixture of Earth, Air, Fire and Water where these were the 'ideal' versions of earth, fire, air and water. It should therefore be possible to rearrange the components to change one metal to another.

Newton rejected this system, but still believed that the fundamental elements were few, so the same argument applied. It was only via a 300 year diversion, through the 100-odd chemical elements, that Newton's few fundamental particles came to be known as quarks, and that no simple chemical reaction had the energy to provide the desired transformation.

As for Brother Lemert and Moncure Conway, I expect these are earlier or later alchemists, who are still around today, and still can't get their experiments to work except in a spiritual sort of way.

(*word used in the modern sense.)

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30 Aug 07 - 12:22 PM (#2136955)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A ricochet from another partt of the jungle altogether:

"On a warm winter afternoon in Guangzhou, I accompanied Chinese police officers on a factory raid in a decrepit tenement. Inside, we found two dozen children, ages 8 to 13, gluing and sewing together fake luxury-brand handbags. The police confiscated everything, arrested the owner and sent the children out. Some punched their timecards, hoping to still get paid. (The average Chinese factory worker earns about $120 a month; the counterfeit factory worker earns half that or less.) As we made our way back to the police vans, the children threw bottles and cans at us. They were now jobless and, because the factory owner housed them, homeless. It was "Oliver Twist" in the 21st century. " (NY Times columnist)

Thanks for the exposition on Diocletius. Makes a bit more sense in that context.

A

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30 Aug 07 - 12:34 PM (#2136965)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bee-dubya-ell

Ah, but there is a connection between your two posts, Amos. Both have to do with attempts to prevent counterfeiting.

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30 Aug 07 - 12:35 PM (#2136966)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And from Chinese Fagins to Christian saints in a single bound:

"THE stunning revelations contained in a new book, which show that Mother Teresa doubted God's existence, will delight her detractors and confuse her admirers. Or is it the other way around?

The private journals and letters of the woman now known as Blessed Teresa of Calcutta will be released next month as "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," and some excerpts have been published in Time magazine. The pious title of the book, however, is misleading. Most of its pages reveal not the serene meditations of a Catholic sister confident in her belief, but the agonized words of a person confronting a terrifying period of darkness that lasted for decades.

"In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss," she wrote in 1959, "of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing." According to the book, this inner turmoil, known by only a handful of her closest colleagues, lasted until her death in 1997...."

Zip! Pow! Kaaa ziiing!

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30 Aug 07 - 12:40 PM (#2136972)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

JAMARCUS MARSHALL, a 17-year-old high school sophomore in Mansfield, La., believes that no one should be able to tell him how low to wear his jeans. "It's up to the person who's wearing the pants," he said.

The reaction reminds some of the outrage engendered by zoot suit styles during the 1940s. Mr. Marshall's sagging pants, a style popularized in the early 1990s by hip-hop artists, are becoming a criminal offense in a growing number of communities, including his own.

Starting in Louisiana, an intensifying push by lawmakers has determined pants worn low enough to expose underwear poses a threat to the public, and they have enacted indecency ordinances to stop it.

Since June 11, sagging pants have been against the law in Delcambre, La., a town of 2,231 that is 80 miles southwest of Baton Rouge. The style carries a fine of as much as $500 or up to a six-month sentence. "We used to wear long hair, but I don't think our trends were ever as bad as sagging," said Mayor Carol Broussard.

An ordinance in Mansfield, a town of 5,496 near Shreveport, subjects offenders to a fine (as much as $150 plus court costs) or jail time (up to 15 days). Police Chief Don English said the law, which takes effect Sept. 15, will set a good civic image.

...Efforts to outlaw sagging in Virginia and statewide in Louisiana in 2004, failed, usually when opponents invoked a right to self-expression. But the latest legislative efforts have taken a different tack, drawing on indecency laws, and their success is inspiring lawmakers in other states.

In the West Ward of Trenton, Councilwoman Annette Lartigue is drafting an ordinance to fine or enforce community service in response to what she sees as the problem of exposing private parts in public.

...The American Civil Liberties Union has been steadfast in its opposition to dress restrictions. ...

School districts have become more aggressive ... Restrictions have been devised for jeans, miniskirts, long hair, piercing, logos with drug references and gang-affiliated clothing including colors, hats and jewelry.

Dress codes are showing up in unexpected places. The National Basketball Association now stipulates that no sports apparel, sunglasses, headgear, exposed chains or medallions may be worn at league-sponsored events. After experiencing a brawl that spilled into the stands and generated publicity headaches, the league sought to enforce a business-casual dress code, saying that hip-hop clothing projected an image that alienated middle-class audiences.
...


Not since the zoot suit has a style been greeted with such strong disapproval. The exaggerated boxy long coat and tight-cuffed pants, started in the 1930s, was the emblematic style of a subculture of young urban minorities. It was viewed as unpatriotic and flouted a fabric conservation order during World War II. The clothing was at the center of what were called Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles, racially motivated beatings of Hispanic youths by sailors. The youths were stripped of their garments, which were burned in the street.

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AIn't we just a touchy species, though?


A

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30 Aug 07 - 05:31 PM (#2137125)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Uncle_DaveO

As to Mother Teresa, two comments:

A number of religious figures, including Billy Graham and one of the "big name" Catholic saints (whose name my aging brain refuses to divulge at the moment) had their periods of great doubt. Join the parade, Mother Teresa!

This news about her doubts just goes to show that belief in a god is not necessary to a moral, a charitable, dare I say a "saintly" life? The kindness, the service, the charity, the virtue is, as the cliche says, "its own reward".

Dave Oesterreich

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30 Aug 07 - 06:14 PM (#2137151)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Q: How many tickets will you actually sell at the $10 rate?
A: We've sold 200,000 of them. We guarantee that on every flight there will always be at least 10 seats sold at $10. But even if you could fly for $100 one way to almost anywhere in the country, don't you think there would be a lot of demand for that? In our first month, 86 percent of our seats have been full. For a start-up, that's an amazing number."

(Skybus Airlies CEO in a PopSci interview)

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30 Aug 07 - 06:16 PM (#2137154)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Threats of eviction were not enough. Neither were hefty compensation offers or the colossal pit surrounding their house. Yang Wu and his wife, Wu Ping, residents of the central Chinese city of Chongqing, had made their decision: they were staying put, and no construction project or municipal order was going to dislodge them. By fighting city hall, the couple sparked a nationwide debate about a new law that promised private property protections unprecedented in the history of the People's Republic. Yang and Wu eventually gave up their fight — the house has since been demolished and the owners remunerated — but the legacy of their struggle continues to resonate, raising questions about the ramifications of China's new property legislation. Specifically, can this law ever be implemented successfully, and if so, what will its effects be? Regardless of the exact legal outcome, the law certainly constitutes a symbolic turning point in China's move from a socialist to a market economy.

(HBR on-line)

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30 Aug 07 - 11:29 PM (#2137326)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Rapparee

Cahokia is not only the largest prehistoric metropolis north of Mexico, it also has the largest prehistoric mound. Monks mound measures at least 291 m (955 feet) north-south and 236 meters (774.3 feet) east-west. Its height is between 28 meters (92 feet) and 30 m (99 feet). Research has revealed new puzzles, suggesting that it is a very complicated structure. Undoubtedly, the builders did some clever engineering to keep this and other mounds from collapsing. This should not be a surprise, because even the 5000 – 6000 years ago megalithic tombs of the Funnel Beaker culture in Central and North Europe exhibit special internal features designed to drain water away. In all, there are at least 104 mounds at Cahokia.

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30 Aug 07 - 11:49 PM (#2137336)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bert

"It's up to the person who's wearing the pants,"

Or as my Dad would have said. "As long as they cover their confusion"

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30 Aug 07 - 11:57 PM (#2137342)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

First I have ever heard it called that, Bert!

"Contrary to the assumption that ancient cities always grew outwards from a central point, the urban site of Tell Brak in north-eastern Syria appears to have emerged as several nearby settlements melded together, according to researchers' analysis of archaeological evidence.

Experts say that the findings lend support to the theory that early Mesopotamian cities developed as a result of grassroots organisation, rather than a mandate from a central authority.

The new study provides important details about Tell Brak, helping to make it "the first early city of which we have a picture about how it formed," comments Geoff Emberling at the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago, Illinois, US, who was not involved in this study but has done archaeological work at Tell Brak.

Located in north-eastern Syria, Tell Brak lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and can therefore be considered as an ancient Mesopotamian site. It is thought to have been settled as early as 6000 BCE, according to Harvard University researcher Jason Ur."

(New Scientist web site)

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31 Aug 07 - 12:06 AM (#2137353)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Not only are fractals beautiful, but they master key features of the "roughness" of nature and culture, including metal fractures, turbulence, financial markets and music. Such complexity is recognised as a key frontier but it can seldom be handled directly. It is often useful - and sometimes even sufficient at first - to begin by studying the roughness of things.

Plato's list of the sensations of man included heaviness, bigness, hotness, colour, pitch and roughness. Each of these developed into a chapter of physics, except for roughness, which remained a backwater. There was no agreed way of measuring it, and science can begin only when a notion is quantified.

Fractals have provided the first proper measure of roughness. Measurements proposed earlier failed because they implicitly assumed that roughness was an insignificant, mild disturbance when in fact it is wild and hard to deal with. The fractal geometry of roughness is set to expand rapidly and carve itself an increasingly central role."

Bernard Mandelbrot, writing in the New Scientist

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31 Aug 07 - 12:10 AM (#2137358)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bert

...several nearby settlements melded together...

Kinda like Greater London.

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31 Aug 07 - 12:14 AM (#2137361)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: The Fooles Troupe

"It is thought to have been settled as early as 6000 BCE,"

Musta been a hell of a sprint to there from the Garden of Eden then....

Oh, of course, it got wiped out in The Flood...


:-P

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31 Aug 07 - 12:24 AM (#2137373)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: The Fooles Troupe

""Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," and some excerpts have been published in Time magazine. The pious title of the book, however, is misleading. Most of its pages reveal not the serene meditations of a Catholic sister confident in her belief, but the agonized words of a person confronting a terrifying period of darkness that lasted for decades. "

Martin Luther went thru such self doubt and agony centuries ago.

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31 Aug 07 - 04:10 AM (#2137485)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,PMB

Futakuchi-onna are characterized as having two mouths, the regular one and another on the back of the head beneath the hair, where the woman's skull splits apart, forming lips, teeth, a tongue, creating an entirely-functional second mouth.

As if that weren't bad enough, the mouth begins the mumble spiteful and threatening things to itself, and demand food. If it is not fed, it will screech obscenely and cause the woman tremendous pain. Eventually the woman's hair begins to move like a pair of serpents, allowing the mouth to help itself to the woman's meals.

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31 Aug 07 - 10:03 AM (#2137646)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

– Thailand said today that it will drop its four-month digital blockade of YouTube, allowing its citizens to view the site without interference once again, because YouTube has agreed to take its own measures to prevent users in Thailand from viewing content that violates Thai law — specifically, anything deemed insulting to the country or its revered king.

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31 Aug 07 - 10:04 AM (#2137649)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The astonishingly handsome, road-weary man sitting beside me at the Howard Johnson's counter seemed larger than life but strangely unexcited about the forthcoming publication of his second novel, On the Road, years after he had composed it at white heat on a 120-foot-long, taped-together scroll of drafting paper. He told me he was hoping the book would bring him a little money and some recognition in literary circles for what he called his "spontaneous bop prose." Numerous publishers had rejected it, and even Viking Press had kept it on ice for two years, fearful of lawsuits as well as the consequences of bringing it out at a time when the novels of Henry Miller and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover were banned in the United States. The date Viking had finally selected was September 1957, fifty years ago this month. For all their caution, Jack's editors were as unprepared as he was for the book's profound and immediate impact. Who could have predicted that an essentially plotless novel about the relationship between two rootless young men who seemed constitutionally unable to settle down was about to kick off a culture war that is still being fought to this day?...

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31 Aug 07 - 10:09 AM (#2137655)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Vatican launched its chartered air service for pilgrims headed to Lourdes this week, but travelers on the way back had to dump their precious bottles of holy water. The headrests may be emblazoned with the Latin words for "I search for your face, oh Lord," but even those on a mission for God can't carry more than 100ml of liquid, holy or not, onto the plane. From The Telegraph:
Many hoped to ferry the water back to sick relatives.

Instead, dozens of plastic containers in the shape of the Madonna were left at security, while one man decided to drink all of his.

Monsignor Liberio Andreatta, the official on board from the Vatican's travel agency, did not even try to argue with the rules, to the dismay of the pilgrims.

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Render unto Caesar...

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31 Aug 07 - 10:12 AM (#2137656)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IBM today announced two major scientific achievements in the field of nanotechnology that could one day lead to new kinds of devices and structures built from a few atoms or molecules. Such Lilliputian, atomic-scale devices might be used as future computer chips, storage devices, sensors and for applications nobody has imagined yet. The work will be unveiled tomorrow in two reports being published by the journal Science. In the first report, IBM scientists describe major progress in probing a property called magnetic anisotropy in individual atoms. This fundamental measurement has important technological consequences because it determines an atom's ability to store information. Previously, nobody had been able to measure the magnetic anisotropy of a single atom.

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And unto God.... um....

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31 Aug 07 - 10:17 AM (#2137662)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

What to do with your sock monkey when he has been bad.

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31 Aug 07 - 10:35 AM (#2137678)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Atheist Madeline Murry O'Hare celebrated her certainty and was not troubled by religious dought. She was murdered along with two of her children but her remaing son William 'Bill' Murray claimed he had a vision and became a preacher who went on to direct the Evangelical American Freedom Coalition and is still in close contact with President Bush. He continues to this day to denigrate his mother's belief in atheism.

He was also the person who presided over the marriage ceremony at my wedding.

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31 Aug 07 - 11:34 AM (#2137733)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

COngratulations on a really kinked link to fame, Donuel!! :D


A

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31 Aug 07 - 03:11 PM (#2137857)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I wanted an athiest wedding so this was my wife's idea of a compromise at the time. Little did we know he would go on to be a wealthy Falwellesque whacko.

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31 Aug 07 - 04:48 PM (#2137913)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

[¶16.] We hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Brown's motion for a new trial. There is adequate evidence in the record to support its conclusion that MCX was not telling the truth when she recanted her testimony. First, she was the victim of her father's sexual depravity. Then, her mother, Lawana Brown, who, having failed to protect her daughters from the sexual depredations of their father even though she was fully aware of his inclinations from her husband's own admissions, instead heaped upon MCX her scorn and rejection. After being rejected by her mother and shuffled from foster home, to group home, to state institution, and back again, MCX did the only thing she could to endeavor to win back the affection of her mother - tell a lie and hope to free her father from prison. This case does not present an issue of whether or not MCX chooses to be a victim, for she is victim twice over, but rather whether the district court properly concluded that, in truth, she was a victim. We hold the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that MCX was the victim of her father's incest. To MCX we offer our empathy, for this course of proceedings is quite common in cases such as this.

(From Brown Vs State of Wyoming

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31 Aug 07 - 05:22 PM (#2137938)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,Art Thieme

...Horses can actually sing, and whatever they manage to utter, it is folk music and can be packaged nicely and sold as such by the machinations of the music business and the Folk Alliance. This truth has been codified in many threads here at Mudcat. This, along with the amazing sales of PURE and HEALTHY bottled "actually tap" water continue to prove the old saying, "Fame is proof that people are gullible!"

Art Thieme

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01 Sep 07 - 12:20 AM (#2138165)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,Art Thieme

Don't let me the last word in this good thread.

I have been involved in a real form of alchemy my whole life long. I sang into the wind, and came home with the rent...

Art

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01 Sep 07 - 07:19 AM (#2138272)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: The Fooles Troupe

"Render unto Caesar... "

I only wish the American Taliban would be so submissive...

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01 Sep 07 - 04:17 PM (#2138525)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

BWS: Affairs of the heart and the spirit are matters of feeling or intuition. You're better off asking your pocket calculator about the meaning of life than asking thought; at least the calculator won't mislead you. The material world is thought's arena. Serious questions concerning the inner life are beyond the limited capacity of thought, which is restricted to ideas and opinions. Thought can recite poems about what life is, or offer scientific descriptions of what life may be, but in the end it will fail to arrive at the heart of the matter. Whatever you may "think" will never be Truth; at best it will be theory or speculation. In matters of the Spirit, trust your heart rather than the opinions of others, including mine.

Q: Are you implying that there are two minds?

BWS: Not at all. The subtle and gross minds are only aspects of the unmanifest Source, which is who we are in truth. The subtle mind is that aspect of mind that is in natural harmony with the physical universe. The gross, egocentric mind governs the life of the apparent "individual." Transformation occurs when the gross mind experientially encounters the intelligence and harmony of the eternal Source and is rendered subtle. Remember, these are just aspects of the one unmanifest Source from which they emerged.


(From the website of an Oscar-winning director turned guru)

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02 Sep 07 - 11:09 AM (#2138868)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Phil Cooper

Great Thread. Where else can you get alchemy, doubts of faith, and singing horses combined. Art, I heard that there was actually a talking horse (not Mr. Ed). If you asked if he wanted to eat oats, he would utter, from his back end, "just a few" in a fragrant whisper.

On the topic of destroying old alchemy works: I recall reading an account of some 19th century missionaries going to sub-Saharan Africa and getting the new converts to destroy all their sculptures, because they were idols. And, otherwise distrupting their lives. The missionaries were civilized, after all.

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02 Sep 07 - 12:02 PM (#2138909)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Metchosin

Having two left feet is sometimes expected, but two right?

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02 Sep 07 - 12:29 PM (#2138931)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Alice

RE the sagging pants...
Police have asked that the laws against sagging pants be repealed.
Criminals have a hard time running in the baggy pants, and it helps give the pursuing police
an edge when on the chase.

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04 Sep 07 - 10:05 PM (#2141126)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bill D

FLIES PREFER FIZZY DRINKS


Fruit flies like a splash of soda water in their drinks, according to UC Berkeley neuroscientist Kristin Scott and her colleagues. They discovered that the insect has specialized taste cells for carbonated water, probably to encourage them to binge on food with microorganisms like yeast and bacteria that give off carbon dioxide.


The full story is online at
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/08/29_fliesfizz.shtml

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05 Sep 07 - 09:41 AM (#2141457)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Rapparee

I'm glad that I'm not a famous music star!

Pop Stars More Than Twice As Likely To Die An Early Death

Science Daily — Rock and pop stars are more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to die an early death, and within a few years of becoming famous, reveals just published research.

The findings are based on more than 1050 North American and European musicians and singers who shot to fame between 1956 and 1999. This includes all the musicians featured in the All Time Top 1000 albums, selected in 2000, and covering rock, punk, rap, R&B, electronica and new age genres.

How long the pop stars survived once they had achieved chart success and become famous was compared with the expected longevity of the general population, matched for age, sex, ethnicity and nationality, up to the end of 2005.

In all, 100 stars died between 1956 and 2005. The average age of death was 42 for North American stars and 35 for European stars.

Long term drug or alcohol problems accounted for more than one in four of the deaths.

When compared with the rest of the population in the UK and the US, rock and pop stars were around twice as likely to die early and even more likely to do so within five years of becoming famous.

Some 25 years after achieving fame, European pop stars returned to the same levels of life expectancy as the rest of the population. But North American stars continued to experience higher death rates.

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05 Sep 07 - 10:20 AM (#2141492)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Mayor of Russian town fights inefficiency by banning phrases like 'I can't'
Published: Tuesday, September 4, 2007 | 8:12 PM ET
Canadian Press: BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA
MOSCOW (AP) - The mayor of a Siberian oil town has ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as "I don't know" and "I can't." Or look for another job.

Alexander Kuzmin, 33, who is mayor of Megion, has banned these and 25 other phrases as a way to make his administration more efficient, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"It's a suggestion to the staff that they should think before saying something," Oksana Shestakova said by telephone. "To say 'I don't know' is the same as admitting your helplessness."

To reinforce the ban, a framed list of the banned expressions has been hanging on the wall next to Kuzmin's office for the past two weeks, Shestakova said.

Some of the other prohibited phrases are "What can we do?" "It's not my job," "It's impossible," "I'm having lunch," "There is no money," and "I was away/sick/on vacation."

Kuzmin, a businessman who was elected mayor 1½ years ago, wants to "shake things up" in Megion, a town of 54,000 in the Khanty-Mansiisk region, the spokeswoman said.

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05 Sep 07 - 10:57 AM (#2141540)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Evolutionary Psychology vol 5, p 621
George Gallup, State University of New York, Albany

The first kiss can make or break a couple's relationship, suggests a new study.

A kiss may contain potentially important information about your kissing partner, says George Gallup at the State University of New York, Albany, US.

He surveyed 1041 students on their attitudes to kissing (Evolutionary Psychology, vol 5, p 612).

Some views verged on the predictable: women, for example, placed more emotional importance on a kiss, valuing kisses during and after sex, and throughout a relationship.

The men tended to see kissing as a means to an end – sex – and placed less importance on kissing as a relationship progresses. Just over half the men said they would have sex with someone without kissing, compared with 15% of women. And more men than women said that a good kiss was one with tongue contact, where the partner made moaning noises.

But Gallup says the first kiss a couple share could make or break the relationship. In a separate survey within the study, 59% of men and 66% of women reported on occasion finding themselves attracted to someone, only to lose interest after kissing them for the first time.

"The complicated exchange of information that occurs during a kiss may inform evolved, unconscious mechanisms about instances of possible genetic incompatibility," Gallup says.

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07 Sep 07 - 06:20 AM (#2143149)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: PMB

Funny what you get from google:

Stop treading on my dreams x2 Out out out delilah Out out out stay out of my ... Cranberries

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07 Sep 07 - 11:09 AM (#2143309)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

13:09 07 September 2007
NewScientist.com news service
David Robson

'Crowd quakes' could be predicted by CCTV analysis

   Pressure waves that travel through tightly-packed crowds on the verge of panic could warn of impending disasters, such as the stampede on Saudi Arabia's Jamarat Bridge during the Hajj of 2006, researchers say.

The team studied footage of the tragedy and found crowds can experience sudden changes like shock waves, turbulence, and even "crowd quakes" when built-up tension is suddenly released. They think CCTV analysis could spot and warn of dangerous tensions before such an event.

Dirk Helbing of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, analysed the Jamarat Bridge footage along with Anders Johansson of Dresden University of Technology, Germany, and HE Habib Al-Abideen from Saudi Arabia's Central Directorate for Holy Areas Development.
Compression wavesThe researchers used software to simplify the video and represent members of the crowd as moving patches of colour. They measured features such as the density, speed, and "pressure" of the crowd.

As might be expected, the stampede occurred because too many people were funnelled into too small an area. But the team's analysis uncovered new features that might give forewarning of similar disasters.

Previous research suggested crowds move in smooth flows like a fluid, without sharp changes in direction. But, in this study, once the density of the crowd reached more than seven people per square metre this principle broke down.

Sharp compression waves moved through the crowd, shifting people back and forth – like grain or sand when driven through a funnel, says Helbing. During this period, which lasted 20 minutes, each person was alternately moving or stationary, and the waves of movement travelled through the crowd every 45 seconds. ...

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07 Sep 07 - 12:10 PM (#2143349)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lower hemlines are coming back in fashion for spring and that could spell bad news for the U.S. stock market.

The higher the hemlines, the better the outlook for stocks, according to a popular, but frequently disputed, theory. When hemlines drop, watch out -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average is likely to fall, the theory goes.

The past few fashion seasons, short skirts have ruled and, this spring, stocks rallied.

The hemline theory proved on the money as the Dow hit 14,000 for the first time this summer, and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index set a record.

But in recent weeks, stocks have plunged following a jump in foreclosures on subprime home loans for borrowers with poor credit that hit bank credit lines and roiled the bond market.

At this week's fashion show extravaganza in New York, hemlines are markedly lower.

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11 Sep 07 - 10:46 AM (#2146399)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Battery out of juice? Urine luck: Sorry, just had to get that out of my system before I mentioned a new power source on the market that you'll want to recharge in private. Now on sale in Japan, NoPoPo (Non-Pollution Power) Aqua Batteries come in AA and AAA sizes and can be renewed three to five times by adding a few drops of urine (or other bodily fluids more painful, troublesome or embarrassing to produce for this purpose). And it's green -- the technology, I mean..."

From the 'Good Morning Silicon Valley' newsletter.

---

11 Sep 07 - 10:49 AM (#2146402)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And in New York, the three-story penthouse of the Hotel St. Pierre is available for interested buyers in the $70 million dollar range.

Rooms: 16.0
Bedrooms: 5
Bathrooms: 7.0
Library: Yes
Kitchen: Eat In
Outdoor space: Terrace
Woodburning fireplaces: 5
City views: Yes
River views: Yes
Park views: Yes
Air conditioning: Central Air

---

11 Sep 07 - 04:13 PM (#2146675)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And, just beyond the boundary of the Reality Adjustment Zone:

Apple sells 1 millionth iPhone
By Troy Wolverton
Mercury News
Article Launched: 09/11/2007 01:47:09 AM PDT



Apple sold its 1 millionth iPhone on Sunday, three weeks ahead of when it said it would and less than a week after slashing the price of the iconic device by a third, the company said Monday.

The milestone came 74 days after the company launched the device, its first cell phone. And it came earlier than previously predicted; Apple officials had forecast in July that iPhone sales would hit the 1 million mark by the end of this month.

"It took almost two years to achieve this milestone with iPod," company CEO Steve Jobs noted in a statement.

At a press event last week, Jobs announced that Apple was discontinuing a 4-gigabyte version of the iPhone and dropping the price of its 8-gigabyte version to $399 from $599. The company hoped to boost sales of the device over the holidays, Jobs said.

The move followed questions about demand for the iPhone. Sales from the initial weekend were running at a rate that was below some of the wilder estimates on Wall Street. And last week, consumer data from research firm iSuppli suggested that sales of the iPhone fell off sharply in July and were not on pace then to meet Apple's 1 million target.



Wow. "Creating your reality" may not work for Republicans, but it sure works for Stevey. Maybe that's because he's walked the walk and paid his dues in real time.

A

---

11 Sep 07 - 04:35 PM (#2146697)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And a bit beyond....


We brought the news to you first just a week ago and even made fun of it earlier today, but now it's official -- here in Frankfurt, Lamborghini just rolled out its first entry in the seven-figure car sweepstakes. To be dubbed Reventon, it's based on the Murcielago LP640, and it'll cost a breezy one-million euros. Only 20 are set to be constructed, and all have been already betrothed to high rollers who've reportedly ponied up more than $300,000 each as a deposit. Rumors had indicated the car was inspired by jet fighters, a prospect bourne out by the greenish dash cluster. It even has a gauge to track G forces, just in case you weren't busy enough making that sweeping left hander off the back straight on track day. The official rollout will take place at the show tomorrow. We'll be there...

Images of the one-million Euro Lamborghini can be viewed here.

---

11 Sep 07 - 11:17 PM (#2146950)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

When driving I have a secret ritual. It involves a Zen like control of the brake system. The object is to stop the car while retaining the sensation of forward motion with no sound or groan from the brakes or even the slightest sensation of the tires coming to a stop.

Techniques vary with the grade of the road and rate of stopping.
The greater the grade the more difficult a perfect stop will become.
Perfection is achieved in only one in a hundred stops but when I have a transitionless stop it is a thing of beauty like truely sensing the secret ceasation of the pendulum.

Should you actually hit a police car's bumper while practicing this discipline it would be wise to not expound on the intricacies of the transitionless stop.

---

11 Sep 07 - 11:55 PM (#2146982)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And above all DON'T tell the nice officer where the idea came form...

---

12 Sep 07 - 10:22 AM (#2147324)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bee

From Pharyngula:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/on_the_utility_of_mice.php

From a 16th-17th century bestiary by Edward Topsell that explains the importance and usefulness of various animals, including mice. Mice seemed to do everything.

A mouse can be skinned, cut in two, and placed over an arrow wound to help the healing process; if a mouse is beaten into pieces and mixed with old wine, the concoction will cause hair to grow on the eyelids; if skinned, steeped in oil, and rubbed with salt, the mouse will cure pains in the lungs; sodden mice can prevent children from urinating too much; mice that are burned and converted to powder are fine for cleaning the teeth; mouse dung, prepared in various manners, is useful for treating sciatica, headache, migraine, the tetters, scabs, red bunches on the head, gout, wounds, spitting of blood, colick, constipation, stones, producing abortions, putting on weight, and increasing lactation in women.

---

12 Sep 07 - 03:40 PM (#2147623)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Mars rover starts long-awaited drive into giant crater

After three months of delays, the Mars rover Opportunity has made its first tentative dip into a deep crater called Victoria
19:44 12 September 2007

---

12 Sep 07 - 03:42 PM (#2147627)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Male chimpanzees will risk serious injury to provide females with the "forbidden fruit" that they crave, reveals a study of chimps in western Africa.

The males advertise their prowess and impress potential mates by stealing papaya from local farms, researchers found.

Kim Hockings at the University of Stirling, UK and colleagues spent two years observing the behaviour of a chimpanzee group living in wild forest surrounding a farming village in the Republic of Guinea. They noticed several of the male chimps in the group ventured repeatedly into the crop fields, even though farmers tried beating them away with sticks.

The males sought a special treat that they could not find in the forest – papaya fruit. And before scrambling to take this forbidden fruit, the animals showed signs of nervousness, such as scratching their bodies, which indicates they understood the dangers of getting caught. "They won't get killed, but they're clearly nervous," explains Jim Anderson at the University of Stirling, a study co-author.

The risky theft of papaya, however, appears to have a sweet reward. Researchers found this out when they followed three adult male chimps that had stolen papaya and watched what happened when the animals returned to join their group.

Currying favour
It turns out that the males often offered up their booty to females – and when they did, they gave it to females of reproductive age about 90% of the time. One particular female that was extremely willing to mate with the males after receiving papaya got more than 50% of the stolen fruit offerings.

---

12 Sep 07 - 03:58 PM (#2147649)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Metchosin

My daughter recently visitied the city of Nanaimo and noticed a newly constructed retirement home. Obviously not much thought had been given the name or perhaps it had. LOL The new retirement complex is called Hecate Gardens, she assumed after Hecate Strait on the west coast here. However, the Greek goddess Hectate is usually associated with graveyards and death.

---

13 Sep 07 - 09:09 AM (#2148241)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For the first time since record keeping began in 1960, the number of deaths of young children around the world has fallen below 10 million a year, according to figures from the United Nations Children's Fund being released today.

---

13 Sep 07 - 10:00 AM (#2148272)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IT MIGHT seem like an esoteric achievement of interest to only a handful of computer scientists, but the advent of quantum computers that can run a routine called Shor's algorithm could have profound consequences. It means the most dangerous threat posed by quantum computing - the ability to break the codes that protect our banking, business and e-commerce data - is now a step nearer reality.

Adding to the worry is the fact that this feat has been performed by not one but two research groups, independently of each other. One team is led by Andrew White at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the other by Chao-Yang Lu of the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei. Both groups have built rudimentary laser-based quantum computers that can implement Shor's algorithm - a mathematical routine capable of defeating today's most common encryption. ...

---

14 Sep 07 - 10:40 AM (#2149107)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Here's a headline I instantly related to for some reason:

Warm dark matter solves mystery of giant black holes
.19:12 13 September 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Stephen Battersby



The gas filament in the image above is shown at a later time in a simulation of warm dark matter. Warm dark matter forms dense filaments in which stars of different sizes form. Some would be small stars that burn slowly, so a few pure stars formed in these filaments could still be shining today (Illustration: Science)

In a simulation of cold dark matter, the filaments fragment into numerous, nearly spherical halos. One large star forms in the middle of each large halo. These large stars burn fast and die young, so that no pure hydrogen-helium stars survive today (Illustration: Science) Dark matter may be made of fast, lightweight particles – contrary to the most widely accepted theory, according to a new computer simulation. That could explain the peculiarly pure chemical makeup of some stars in the Milky Way, and the enormous mass of black holes that live at the hearts of large galaxies.

Because dark matter reveals itself only by its gravity, astronomers have few clues to its nature. The most popular model is cold dark matter: heavy subatomic particles that tend to move very slowly.
Another possibility is warm dark matter: lighter particles that move faster. The rapid motion of these particles smoothes out the small dense knots of matter that would otherwise form in the cores of galaxies, and there are hints that such dense knots are indeed missing.

Liang Gao and Tom Theuns of Durham University in the UK have built a computer simulation to compare the behaviour of cold and warm dark matter in the early universe. At first the two varieties behave alike, collapsing under gravity into a network of filaments that crisscross the universe.

But cold dark matter then coalesces into blobs, or haloes (see image bottom right), while warm dark matter does not (see image below right). The random motion of its particles smoothes out these blobs, so warm dark matter filaments just keep collapsing and getting denser until there is a narrow tube of matter typically 10,000 light years long with the mass of 10 million Suns....

---

27 Nov 07 - 12:15 PM (#2203227)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Classic military jet fighters up for sale

H&H Auctions has announced that it will offer eight jet-powered De Havilland Venoms and Vampires in a rare sale by tender. A Vampire fighter, two Vampire trainers and five Venom fighter/bombers in operating condition are available for purchase individually or as a collection.


A

---

27 Nov 07 - 04:51 PM (#2203407)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

We are going to look for dark matter with a new instrument that will see 23 octaves up into the gamma ray spectrum and look for the tell tale decay evidence of these possibly invisible particles that wave REALLY fast (10 to 100 giga electron volts). We are using tungsten layers to slow and stop the possible dark matter and then count up the data.

IF we can't quantify dark matter whis way we might have to look to other theories such as interacting dimensional explanations or rethink the possible wavelength of dark matter.

Google the GLAST satellite.
We will also use the LHC Large Hadron Collider for a possible peek at dark matter.

---

27 Nov 07 - 04:53 PM (#2203409)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

thanks to admin for being consciencious.
So there who would have thought you would get thanks for a thankless job for always doing too much or not enough.

---

27 Nov 07 - 06:46 PM (#2203508)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Art Thieme

Yes---and no...Six of one--half doz. of another...Yin and yang...Things is what is...Dust to dust...bottom line...final word.

Art

---

27 Nov 07 - 08:06 PM (#2203560)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

RECREATING THE WORLD INSIDE YOUR HEAD. The first use of
individualized virtual-reality sounds in a functional MRI (fMRI)
environment to reproduce a naturalistic acoustic experience for
studying brain function might provide a better explanation of the
*cocktail party* effect-the process by which we try to make sense
of a conversation at a crowded party even as several other potentially
distracting conversations proceed at the same time. New brain scans
using fMRI are helping researchers to understand how the brain
segregates objects in space when a person hears, but not necessarily
sees, multiple sources of sound. At Kourosh Saberi's
([e-mail]) lab at the University of California, Irvine, human
subjects are exposed to several sounds.

Sometimes the sounds come from different locations near the subject, while sometimes several sounds come from a single location. When looking at fMRI scans
showing areas of enhanced blood flow, which provides 2-mm-resolution
maps of brain activity, the U.C. Irvine scientists report two main
results.

First, no specific brain region accounts exclusively for
identifying auditory motion, in contrast to the visual cortex which
does have specific motion-sensing regions.

And second, spatial auditory information seems to be processed in a neural region,
called the Planum Temporale, in a way that can facilitate the
segregation of multiple sound sources.

(ASA meeting talk 2aPP8,
http://www.acoustics.org/press/)

---

29 Nov 07 - 10:33 AM (#2204682)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Male antelopes play hard to get
11:15 29 November 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi

Women have a reputation for being choosy when it comes to mates, but a study of African topi antelopes shows that males can be discriminating too. The study found that some males fight off advances from aggressive females that they have already mated with, so that they can pursue newer mates.

"When biologists talk about the 'battle of the sexes' they often tacitly assume that the battle is between persistent males who always want to mate and females who don't," says Jakob Bro-Jørgensen at the Zoological Society of London, UK.

But previously, researchers had observed female gorillas interfering with copulating pairs to compete for the male. Now, Bro-Jørgensen has observed such behaviour among the African topi antelope (Damaliscus lunatus) in Kenya.

Competitive mating

Herds of African topi can number in the thousands. Typically females travel in large groups to mating hotspots – called leks – where about 10-20 males guard small territories, each measuring about 30 metres in diameter. Smaller males that fail to grab some of this prime real estate miss out on being able to participate in the intense mating, or lekking, that takes place.

Bro-Jørgensen, who has observed the African topi for a decade, analysed the mating habits of 98 females. They could be distinguished from one another by physical traits, such as natural markings on their horns, and scars on their ears.

The females are typically in oestrus for only one day a year. During that brief time they compete with other fertile females to mate with the fittest males as frequently as possible to ensure conception.

On average, the females mate with four males 11 times during this day. This is possible because the actual sexual act takes only a few seconds, says Bro-Jørgensen.

Disruptive females

He also observed that when a female saw a desirable male about to mate with another, she often charged at the couple with her horns. As a result, the male was sometimes forced to mate with the aggressor. But the researchers also noted that if the male had already mated with the aggressive female, he would fight her off.

The researchers suggest that the males get picky because they want to conserve their sperm and mate with as many females as possible, and thus maximise their chances of bearing offspring. Bro-Jørgensen says that he has seen a male topi antelope copulate 36 times in just one day, leaving the animal "totally exhausted", and possibly with depleted sperm.

---

29 Nov 07 - 03:15 PM (#2204925)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

From the number of "Amos posts" it appeared for a while that he might be just playin' with hisself in this thread.

Special for Amos:

Take WARNING

John

---

29 Nov 07 - 03:35 PM (#2204954)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Now John, be fair. Since this thread is dedicated to Random Notes, it is only logical I should post to it often, being, myself, often quite random.

As for that slanderous reference link, I assure you the material presented their is QUITE inaccurate. These Victorians were not speaking science. They were talking some foreign language, cognitively speaking.


A

---

29 Nov 07 - 05:31 PM (#2205060)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Amos - Did you do the voice for that one?

V e r y  S w a v e and D E - B O N E R

John

---

29 Nov 07 - 08:56 PM (#2205194)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

According to the FBI announcement, the individuals identified as part of Bot Roast II are as follows:

Ryan Brett Goldstein, 21, of Ambler, Pennsylvania, was indicted on 11/01/07 by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for botnet related activity which caused a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack at a major Philadelphia area university. In the midst of this investigation the FBI was able to neutralize a vast portion of the criminal botnet by disrupting the botnet's ability to communicate with other botnets. In doing so, it reduced the risk for infected computers to facilitate further criminal activity. This investigation continues as more individuals are being sought.

Adam Sweaney, 27, of Tacoma, Washington, pled guilty on September 24, 2007 in U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, to a one count felony violation for conspiracy fraud and related activity in connection with computers. He conspired with others to send tens of thousands of email messages during a one-year period. In addition, Sweaney surreptitiously gained control of hundreds of thousands of bot controlled computers. Sweaney would then lease the capabilities of the compromised computers to others who launched spam and DDoS attacks.

Robert Matthew Bentley of Panama City, Florida, was indicted on 11/27/07 by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Florida for his involvement in botnet related activity involving coding and adware schemes. This investigation is being conducted by the U.S. Secret Service.

Alexander Dmitriyevich Paskalov, 38, multiple U.S. addresses, was sentenced on 10/12/2007 in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida, and received 42 months in prison for his participation in a significant and complex phishing scheme that targeted a major financial institution in the Midwest and resulted in multi-million dollar losses.

Azizbek Takhirovich Mamadjanov, 21, residing in Florida, was sentenced in June 2007 in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida, to 24 months in prison for his part in the same Midwest bank phishing scheme as Paskalov. Paskalov established a bogus company and then opened accounts in the names of the bogus company. The phishing scheme in which Paskolov and Mamadjanov participated targeted other businesses and electronically transferred substantial sums of money into their bogus business accounts. Immigrations Customs Enforcement, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the Panama City Beach Police Department were active partners in this investigation.

John Schiefer, 26, of Los Angeles, California, agreed to plead guilty on 11/8/2007 in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, to a four felony count criminal information. A well-known member of the botnet underground, Schiefer used malicious software to intercept Internet communications, steal usernames and passwords, and defraud legitimate businesses. Schiefer transferred compromised communications and usernames and passwords and also used them to fraudulently purchase goods for himself. This case was the first time in the U.S. that someone has been charged under the federal wiretap statute for conduct related to botnets.

Gregory King, 21, of Fairfield, California, was indicted on 9/27/2007 by a federal grand jury in the Central District of California on four counts of transmission of code to cause damage to a protected computer. King allegedly conducted DDoS attacks against various companies including a web based company designed to combat phishing and malware.

Jason Michael Downey, 24, of Dry Ridge, Kentucky, was sentenced on 10/23/2007 in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, to 12 months in prison followed by probation, restitution, and community service for operating a large botnet that conducted numerous DDoS attacks that resulted in substantial damages. Downey operated Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network Rizon. Downey stated that most of the attacks he committed were on other IRC networks or on the people that operated them. Downey's targets of DDoS often resided on shared servers which contained other customer's data. As a result of DDoS to his target, innocent customers residing on the same physical server also fell victim to his attacks. One victim confirmed financial damages of $19,500 as a result of the DDoS attack

Secure Computing's prinicipal research scientist Dmitri Alperovitch was quite happy about the news.

"We welcome this news and applaud the FBI's efforts and law enforcement worldwide in attempting to cleanup the cesspool of malware and criminality that the botmasters have promoted," Alperovitch said in a press release. "Since botnets are at the root of nearly all cybercrime activities that we see on the Internet today, the significant deterrence value that arrests and prosecutions such as these provide cannot be underestimated."

---

01 Dec 07 - 11:04 AM (#2206267)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Most Sensitive Ruler Ever
[26 November 2007]
Australian researchers have invented a technique that, for the first time, measures lengths as accurately as the laws of physics allow.
Read about it on Physorg.com.

Portable Nuclear Reactor
[21 November 2007]
The portable nuclear reactor is the size of a hot tub. It's shaped like a sake cup, filled with a uranium hydride core and surrounded by a hydrogen atmosphere.
Read about it in the Santa Fe Reporter.

Neuromemory Chip
[19 November 2007]
Physicists at Tel Aviv University in Israel are aiming to create a hybrid biological-solid state memory that could be linked to conventional computer hardware to create cyborg machines.
Read about it in the EE Times.

3-D TV from Wormholes
[19 November 2007]
A version of the wormholes that have long inspired science fiction writers could one day be used in the home to provide invisible cables to wire up electronics or provide three dimensional images.

---

It is good to see the science boys are hard at it.

A

---

01 Dec 07 - 12:48 PM (#2206328)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Graveyard shift linked to cancer risk

Scientists suspect flipping body's light-dark cycle leaves workers vulnerable

The Associated Press
updated 6:52 p.m. CT, Thurs., Nov. 29, 2007

LONDON - It was once scientific heresy to suggest that smoking contributed to lung cancer. Now, another idea initially dismissed as nutty is gaining acceptance: the graveyard shift might increase your cancer risk.

Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will classify shift work as a "probable" carcinogen.

That will put shift work in the same category as cancer-causing agents like anabolic steroids, ultraviolet radiation, and diesel engine exhaust.

If the shift work theory proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of the working population in developed countries work night shifts.

[Questions:]

Is partying all night considered work? We could have a lot of people affected.

Quite obviously, in my town there will be an immediate demand for a law requiring all places of business to close at sundown.

(But only Walmart will be affected here, and it's okay to pick on minorities - unless they're religious.)

John

---

02 Dec 07 - 08:39 AM (#2206738)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn't betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas's reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society's transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic's translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

Several of the translation choices made by the society's scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a "daimon," which the society's experts have translated as "spirit." Actually, the universally accepted word for "spirit" is "pneuma " — in Gnostic literature "daimon" is always taken to mean "demon."

Likewise, Judas is not set apart "for" the holy generation, as the National Geographic translation says, he is separated "from" it. He does not receive the mysteries of the kingdom because "it is possible for him to go there." He receives them because Jesus tells him that he can't go there, and Jesus doesn't want Judas to betray him out of ignorance. Jesus wants him informed, so that the demonic Judas can suffer all that he deserves."

(NY Times)

---

There have been many instances of treason across the centuries since then. Many far more dramatic, involving thousands of lives, and millions of shekels. Sorta odd this one keeps pulling down the headlines, huh?


A

---

02 Dec 07 - 09:02 AM (#2206750)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Google said last week that it was going to invest millions in developing its own energy business. Google described its goal as "RE < C" — renewable energy that is cheaper than coal — adding: "We're busy assembling our own internal research and development group and hiring a team of engineers ... tasked with building one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal." That could power all of San Francisco.

Its primary focus, said Google.org's energy expert, Dan Reicher, will be to advance new solar thermal, geothermal and wind solutions "across the valley of death." That is, so many good ideas work in the lab but never get a chance to scale up because they get swallowed by a lack of financing or difficulties in implementation. Do not underestimate these people.

Last week, I also met with two groups of M.I.T. students who blew me away. One was the M.I.T. Energy Club, which was founded in 2004 by a few grad students discussing energy over beers at a campus bar. Today it has 600-plus members who have put on scores of events focused on building energy expertise among M.I.T. students and faculty, and "fact-based analysis," including a trip to Saudi Arabia.

Then I got together with three engineering undergrads who helped launch the Vehicle Design Summit — a global, open-source, collaborative effort, managed by M.I.T. students, that has 25 college teams around the world, including in India and China, working together to build a plug-in electric hybrid within three years. Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. I thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, "will demonstrate a 95 percent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave" and provide "200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better." The Linux of cars!

They're not waiting for G.M. Their goal, they explain on their Web site — vds.mit.edu — is "to identify the key characteristics of events like the race to the moon and then transpose this energy, passion, focus and urgency" on catalyzing a global team to build a clean car. I just love their tag line. It's what gives me hope:

"We are the people we have been waiting for.""


(NY Times editorial)

---

02 Dec 07 - 09:51 AM (#2206775)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(A young man finds himself addicted to Facebooking" and recovers...he writes:)

"All this started to add up, and scare me, over the summer. I interned in Washington at a company where most employees had Facebook profiles. Naturally, I "friended" many of them. One day my boss made some comments about my personal status and movie interests, creeping me out. He had broken the cardinal, if unwritten, rule of Facebook etiquette: Never hint that you know anything about someone's profile. Voyeurism must be anonymous (which might be why Beacon caused such a stir).

I'm in recovery now, having realized that the last thing I want is for people to find out about me the things that I used to find out about them. I have removed loads of personal information from Facebook, de-tagging myself from pictures, abandoning the "status update" as a narrative of my private life and walling myself off from Beacon's grasp. These days, I'm finding myself with time on my hands. Best of all, beating my addiction has opened up a novel way to get to know people: face to face."

The writer is a sophomore at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

---

03 Dec 07 - 09:26 AM (#2207486)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Church of Coltrane

A San Francisco church believes that the music of jazz legend John Coltrane is divine.

Sunday services at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco are part revival meeting, part jam session.

Franzo Wayne King, right, started the church shortly after Coltrane's death in 1967, under the name Yardbird Temple. Followers worshiped the legendary jazz saxophonist as an incarnation of God. Now, the church practices Christianity, and sees Coltrane as its patron saint.
...

(Photo essay on the CofC can be found here.)

---

03 Dec 07 - 11:12 AM (#2207560)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue
Fossil May Shed New Light on the Creatures

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 3, 2007; Page A01

A high school student hunting fossils in the badlands of his native North Dakota discovered an extremely rare mummified dinosaur that includes not just bones but also seldom seen fossilized soft tissue such as skin and muscles, scientists will announce today.

The 25-foot-long hadrosaur found by Tyler Lyson in an ancient river flood plain in the dinosaur-rich Hell Creek Formation is apparently the most complete and best preserved of the half-dozen mummified dinosaurs unearthed since early in the last century, they said.

The discovery of a mummified dinosaur in North Dakota reveals fossilized soft tissue, such as skin and muscles, providing scientists with new clues about the size, body mechanics and appearance of the 25-foot long hadrosaur.

Much scientific investigation remains to be done, and no peer-reviewed studies of it have yet been published, but the discovery appears to be yielding tantalizing new clues about the size, body mechanics and appearance of the reptilian beasts that ruled the Earth millions of years ago, said paleontologists studying the specimen.

"He looks like a blow-up dinosaur in some parts," said Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in England who is leading the inquiry. "When you actually look at the detail of the skin, the scales themselves are three dimensional. . . . The arm is breathtaking. It's a three-dimensional arm, you can shake the dinosaur by the hand. It just defies logic that such a remarkable specimen could preserve."

Although it is described as "mummified," the 65 million-year-old duckbilled dinosaur that scientists have named Dakota bears no similarity to the leather-skinned human mummies retrieved from ancient tombs in Egypt. Time long ago transformed Dakota's soft tissue into mineralized rock, preserving it for the ages. ...


(From The Washington Post)

A

---

03 Dec 07 - 11:59 AM (#2207602)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

...As you read this, somewhere a man is purchasing the Chasey Lain Cyberskin ... well, I can't write the rest of the name of this device in the newspaper. Suffice to say that the object in question is molded directly from the naughty bits of a porn star named Chasey Lain for the purpose of sexual congress.

I know this is happening because I sold such devices while working in an adult store in Tempe, Ariz. – reportage, if you will, for an upcoming book, "America Unzipped."

I also sold vibrators, dildos, foam breasts, dozens of different gizmos to many more people than you might think. So, when David Levy makes the case that sometime in the future (he thinks it'll be about 40 years from now) people will have sex with robots, I say you can bank on it.

In "Love + Sex With Robots," Levy seems to expect lots of resistance to this idea, but we have been fantasizing about it at least since the days of "Pygmalion." The robot in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" is still one of the sexiest females in movie history. An artist named Hajime Sorayama has been creating fetishized renderings of "gynoids" for a while now, and if any one of them ever did come to "life" there'd be a line of eager devotees waving credit cards outside the gynoid factory. Web sites like The Fembot Chronicles already pant at the prospect. And, as was recently reported in these pages, San Marcos-based Abyss Creations has been providing silicone love for about a decade in the form of life-size dolls costing upward of $6,500. ...

---

I guess this is like hiring strike-breakers when the union gets uppity or somp'n....(ducks and exits stage right).


A

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04 Dec 07 - 08:18 AM (#2208195)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,strad

Sex with robots! Brings back memories of the past!

---

04 Dec 07 - 10:28 AM (#2208306)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

So far, the fabrication and assembly of nano-objects with specific shapes and sizes that can act as elementary components for movable nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) is only at the conceptual stage.

New research results coming from South Korea now offer the first step toward the realization of sophisticated nanomachines, designed to perform specific tasks, with overall dimensions comparable to those of biological cells.

"We have fabricated freestanding gold nanogears smaller than 500 nm in overall size and 60-70 nm in thickness and assembled them tooth to tooth without damage" Dr. Dong Han Ha tells Nanowerk. "This is the first case to our knowledge in which freestanding nanocomponents with precisely designed shape and size are fabricated and assembled. The freestanding nanogears with one center hole surrounded by six teeth were obtained reproducibly by selectively etching the chemically synthesized single-crystalline gold nanoplates using gallium focused ion beam (FIB). The fabrication process is very simple and it takes only 10-20 s to fabricate a nanogear under real time monitoring."

Ha is a Principal Researcher in the Division of Advanced Technology at the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS). Together with his colleagues from KRISS he has demonstrate that blunt AFM tips on stiff cantilevers are effective for the nondestructive manipulation of ductile and flat nano-objects having large contact areas with the substrate.

The findings have been reported in the November 20, 2007 online edition of Nanotechnology ("Manipulation of freestanding Au nanogears using an atomic force microscope").

---

05 Dec 07 - 10:21 AM (#2209106)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NASA's Mars rover Spirit has freed itself from the loose soil it had been stuck in for about two weeks, but over the next month it will have to navigate similarly treacherous terrain to reach a safe spot to ride out the coming Martian winter.

Spirit got stuck in the sandy soil, nicknamed "Tartarus" after an underworld dungeon in Greek mythology, in mid-November.

But on 28 November, it clambered out, after a series of short drives in which rover managers drove it first in one direction and then in another, "switchbacking" out of the troublesome spot.

Now, the rover will try to drive about 25 metres to the northern edge of Home Plate, a 90-metre-wide raised plateau that it has been exploring for months. That region boasts relatively steep, northern-tilting slopes that would maximise the sunlight falling on the rover's solar panels during winter in the planet's southern hemisphere (see Mars rover Spirit to head north for the winter).
But Spirit is likely to hit more rough patches on its way to its destination. "During the next few weeks, Spirit's journey to 'Winter Haven 3' is expected to be no less difficult, requiring the rover to manoeuvre across a sandy, rocky valley along the western edge of Home Plate," states an update on the rover website.

---

05 Dec 07 - 10:49 AM (#2209138)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A neutron star has been clocked travelling at more than 1500 kilometres per second. It joins the ranks of other fast moving neutron stars, deepening the puzzle over how these dense stellar corpses are accelerated to such astonishing velocities.
Neutron stars are the city-sized spheres that remain after stars are destroyed in supernova explosions. They are incredibly dense – a teaspoonful of neutron star material would weigh a billion tonnes.
Many neutron stars are now known to travel at speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second, with one shown in 2005 to be moving at 1100 km/s (see Fastest pulsar set to escape the Milky Way). Some others have been estimated as travelling faster than 1500 km/s but with less certain measurements: their speeds were measured in an indirect way, based on observations of their effect on the gaseous medium that they move through.

---

05 Dec 07 - 11:07 AM (#2209154)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Magneto Stars are really neato.

---

05 Dec 07 - 03:22 PM (#2209347)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"As part of General Electric's ecomagination campaign, the engineers behind this project dreamt up a way to transform one of the oldest and most powerful forms of transportation in the planet into an energy efficient marvel. Introducing, the Hybrid Locomotive!

Here is an interesting fact: According GE, a 207-ton locomotive during the course of one year is enough to power 160 households for a year. So why not capture that energy? That's what they thought as well and what they came up with was quite ingenious.

Take a 4,400 horsepower locomotive, add lead-free rechargeable batteries (essentially a 1,000 pound molten-salt cell), and a fuel-efficient high horsepower diesel locomotive, and you end up with quite a package. Every time the engine brakes, the dynamic energy is transferred into the batteries, thus becoming an extra 2,000 horsepower that is available for use by the operator when needed. The outcome of this? A fuel consumption reduction of about 15% and an emissions cut of a whopping 50% compared to locomotives operating today.

Best part? The first one goes into operation in 2010.
+ GE Ecomagination website

A

---

06 Dec 07 - 12:15 PM (#2209803)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Picture-sorting dogs show human-like thought
06 December 2007


... It seems dogs can place photographs into categories the same way humans do, an ability previously identified only in birds and primates.

Friederike Range at the University of Vienna, Austria, and colleagues trained dogs to distinguish photographs that depicted dogs from those that did not. "We know they can categorise 'food' or 'enemies' from experience," says Range, "but this is the first time we've taught them an abstract concept - 'a dog' - and shown they can transfer this knowledge to a new situation."

In the training phase, four dogs were simultaneously shown photographs of a landscape and of a dog, and were rewarded if they selected the latter using a paw-operated computer touch-screen. When the computer-savvy dogs were shown unfamiliar landscape and dog photos they continued to identify those containing dogs.

---

06 Dec 07 - 12:54 PM (#2209845)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- The number of Americans who fell behind on their mortgage payments rose to a 20-year high in the third quarter as borrowers were unable to refinance or sell their homes.

The share of all home loans with payments more than 30 days late, including prime and fixed-rate loans, rose to a seasonally adjusted 5.59 percent, the highest since 1986, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. New foreclosures hit an all-time high for a second consecutive quarter.

The surge in foreclosures is expanding the inventory of unsold homes and contributing to the decline in housing demand. Sales of new and previously owned homes probably will drop to 5.09 million next year, 32 percent below the 2005 peak of 7.46 million, according to Frank Nothaft, chief economist of Freddie Mac, the second largest U.S. mortgage buyer. About 40 percent of lenders have increased standards for their most creditworthy borrowers, according to a Federal Reserve study in October.

---

06 Dec 07 - 01:58 PM (#2209877)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos, its as simple as this:

When the Parasite (banks) saw that they were about to kill their host (the public)
they sought to keep their victim barely alive
so they could continue to feed.
A very smart parasite indeed.

---

06 Dec 07 - 02:08 PM (#2209885)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I'll not beat about the Bush. What this country needs is another think tank. The ASSO Institute. I will humbly be the director.

Not that the ones we have aren't good at hair brained schemes and creating fortune factories for Defense Contractors. Yes the think tanks we have are already great at proposing 2nd century empire solutions for the 21st century but I believe with all my heart, all we need is just one more.

Why?! For one thing I could use a real job, but the main reason would be to show the rest of us exactly how full of crap the other think tanks are.*

Like a casino or stockbroker they make money comin or goin, whether they win or lose. A think tank could dream up a PNAC scheme and once it royally screws up they could analyze why it doesn't work.

The beauty of the system is that there is no bottom line, No One is respondsible and NO ONE will be held accountable. Same goes for the administration. OK name one person who has been held accountable - with the exception of George Slam Dunk Tenet. We all know how severely he was punished. In fact I heard he almost cried at his million dollar retirement party.

In the ASSO Institute the letters won't stand for anything. Only the sound of it counts.

Just because every other think tank is Republican the ASSO Institute will not be Democrat. In fact we will take a page from Homeland Security and the new director of all Intelligence agencies and declare ourselves the centralized command of all other think tanks...whether we do anything or not.

---

07 Dec 07 - 08:37 AM (#2210450)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Dolphins wave weed to attract a mate

06 December 2007
Emma Young
New Scientist issue 2633

While men might try flowers, smart clothes or cars to impress the opposite sex, male Amazon river dolphins carry weed.

Object-carrying has been reported throughout the dolphin's range in Brazil, Venezuela and Bolivia, but what had been thought to be play behaviour now appears - exceptionally among mammals - to have a sexual function.

Tony Martin of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK, and Vera da Silva of the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Amazonas, Brazil, have studied the dolphins for three years in the Brazilian Amazon and are now convinced it is a sexual display. Only humans and chimps do anything remotely similar, says Martin. "It's so unusual that many of my colleagues were sceptical when I first suggested the idea, but now I think the evidence is overwhelming," he says.

---

Hey, some of my friends have been doiong that since college...


A

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07 Dec 07 - 10:00 AM (#2210519)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ANd for Ole SPaw, this delicat epiece of advanced research:

Humid balls help Rockies hit fewer home runs

16:46 06 December 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Bob Holmes

   When the Colorado Rockies baseball team reached the World Series last October, many analysts gave part of the credit to the humid room where the team stores its baseballs. But a new analysis by a pair of physicists suggests that the humidor's effect is not what baseball experts had thought.

The Rockies' home field in Denver is 1600 metres above sea level, far higher than any other team in the Major Leagues.

Denver has always had a reputation as a hitter's heaven and a pitcher's hell, because batted balls travel further in the thin, dry air. As a result, hits that would fall harmlessly into a fielder's glove at other parks are more likely to clear the fences for a home run, leading teams to average more than two extra runs per game compared to other cities.

In an attempt to compensate for this, in 2002 the Rockies began storing baseballs in a humidified room before games. They reasoned that the balls would absorb more moisture and thus not fly as far. The strategy has worked, reducing the average runs per game from nearly seven per team to less than six

---

07 Dec 07 - 06:34 PM (#2210908)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

What We Eat In One Week

This web page tells the story in pictures of what typically gets eaten in one week by families in many different nations around the world.

Some surprises and a vivid profile of human habits.


A

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07 Dec 07 - 08:10 PM (#2210986)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

No too many surprises there, Amos. But a few "curiosities."

Note that they don't say that they tried to find "representative families."

The two US families shown would indicate that US families don't consume soft drinks, while the Mexican family of 4 shows 11 L of what looks like Coca Cola per week? (Of course not as many 'tater chips as the US family). That's a nasty "un-Amurrican" kind of propoganda.

The German family seems to have one of the highest weekly bills, but is that really 44 bottles of "beverage" per week for 4 people (2 adults)? (They must be musicians(?).)

The pictures aren't clear enough to zoom in on much more detail, so identifications of some things are a little ambiguous. I don't find either of the US families "unusual," but our two adults and four cats spend about $300 per month on groceries and aren't particularly deprived. (The cats account for about $30 per month of that for litter and food.)

John

---

07 Dec 07 - 09:21 PM (#2211013)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Yeah, we come in WAY under those cost points, so I wonder what their research method was.

Nice pictures, though.



A

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07 Dec 07 - 09:42 PM (#2211025)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos I once watched a PBS special on the Amazon and they featured the cultural peculiarity of the men there having sex with the female river dolphins. It was rather graphic. They didn't mention waving weeds though.

---

10 Dec 07 - 11:59 AM (#2212528)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Faint galaxies spotted in the early universe
20:49 28 November 2007
NewScientist.com news service
David Shiga


Tiny galaxies that may be the first building blocks of galaxies like the Milky Way have turned up in an extremely long exposure of the early universe, reveal new observations by one of the world's largest telescopes.

Because light takes time to travel to us, we see the most distant objects as they were billions of years ago, when the universe was just a small fraction of its present age of 13.7 billion years.
Now, a marathon observation with the 8.2-metre Antu telescope, part of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) observatory in Paranal, Chile, has provided an unprecedented view of tiny galaxies that were present just 2 billion years after the big bang.
...The telescope did not make a traditional image of the strip, but measured the spectrum of light coming from each part of it, for a total observation time of 92 hours. This is the most concentrated observation the VLT has ever made of such a small patch of sky, Rauch says.

The long exposure revealed 27 faint galaxies whose size and brightness suggests they are between 1 and 10% as massive as our own Milky Way galaxy.

Some even more distant galaxies have been observed previously, appearing as they were just 500 million years after the big bang.
But those objects are bigger than the 27 newly discovered galaxies and they also churn out stars at up to 100 times the rate of the new finds. That suggests they may be the precursors of giant elliptical galaxies, the largest galaxies in the modern universe, Rauch says.
The newly discovered objects, on the other hand, are much smaller and are about 20 times more numerous than their larger cousins, based on the number found in the small patch of sky Rauch's team observed. Rauch says theory suggests these smaller objects would have merged over time to produce middleweight galaxies more like our own Milky Way.

"These small things may be just forming their first stars for the first time," Rauch told New Scientist.

---

10 Dec 07 - 12:17 PM (#2212543)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Intergalactic particle beam is longest yet found
17:29 07 December 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Stephen Battersby


Colossal black holes at the centres of active galaxies power jets of matter that stretch far into space (Illustration: NASA)Tools Related ArticlesSun-like stars get a kick out of death
04 December 2007
Magnetic cocoons power energetic cosmic rays
22 October 2007
Jets of matter clocked at near-light speed
12 June 2007
Search New Scientist
Contact us
Web LinksGiant Metrewave Radio Telescope
Effelsberg radio telescope
Very Large Array
Bagchi et al. abstract

An intergalactic particle beam stretching for more than a million light years is the longest ever seen. According to the team that discovered this record breaker, it could help reveal how such jets of matter bind themselves together.

Jets are seen all over the cosmos squirting out of many different types of object, including stars that are just beginning to form. The most powerful ones come from the cores of active galaxies, where gas falling towards a giant black hole generates a mixture of heat, high-energy particles and magnetic fields. In some cases, these elements combine to spit out narrow columns of hot gas laced with high-energy particles, which drill though the galaxy and on out into space.
The latest discovery emerges from a large elliptical galaxy called CGCG 049-033, which is about 600 million light years away. ...


...The jet they saw is nearly 1.5 million light years long, twice the length of the previous record holder. If this jet sprang instead from the centre of the Milky Way, it would loom over us like a skyscraper and would stretch halfway to the Andromeda galaxy.

---

13 Dec 07 - 10:33 AM (#2214525)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ANd NOW, they're dicking around closer to home, witht he Milky Way its own self!

"We call it home, but the Milky Way can still surprise us. It does not have just one halo of stars, as we thought, but two. The finding calls into question our theories for how our galaxy formed.
Daniela Carollo at the Torino Observatory in Italy and her colleagues were measuring the metal content and motion of 20,000 stars in the Milky Way, observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, when they made their discovery.

They found that the halo can be divided into two distinct regions, rotating in opposite directions, and containing stars of different chemical composition. "We really weren't expecting to see anything like this," says Carollo.

The team found that the inner halo is flattened and extends out to about 4.6 x 1017 kilometres from the galactic centre, rotating at 20 kilometres per second, in the opposite direction at about 70 kilometres per second."

---

So much for the "No-Spin Zone", Mister O'Reilly.


A

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13 Dec 07 - 06:32 PM (#2214865)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Texas Court of Appeals for the Sixth Appellate District at
Texarkana took an important step today toward protecting the rights of
Internet bloggers in Texas to write anonymously. In an opinion issued
by Justice Jack Carter in Essent v. Doe, the court of appeals joins a
broad consensus of state and federal courts in insisting that
plaintiffs present sufficient evidence to show they could win at trial
before gaining access to information identifying anonymous speakers
whom they wish to sue for wrongdoing.

The case arose from a blog about the Paris Regional Medical Center in
Paris, Texas, which included analysis of problems at the hospital (http://the-paris-site.blogspot.com
). Claiming a concern for patient privacy, Essent, the operator of the
Medical Center, sued for defamation, and immediately sought discovery
to identify the employees who, Essent claimed, were revealing
confidential patient information in the course of criticizing abuses
at the hospital. The Doe, represented by James Rodgers of the Moore
Law Firm in Paris, sought to block discovery but District Judge Scott
McDowell upheld the request. However, the Court of Appeals has now
reversed and remanded the case to give the hospital a chance to submit
evidence for consideration under the proper legal standard.

In ruling, the court recognized that although Internet anonymity can
be abused, the right to speak anonymously online is protected by the
First Amendment. That right cannot be denied absent real evidence
supporting the plaintiff's claims of wrongdoing. Otherwise, the very
threat of litigation will have a serious chilling effect on anonymous
speech. The court also agreed with rulings in other states that
declare an anonymous blogger has "standing" to oppose discovery even
though the discovery demand is directed to a third-party Internet
hosting service, and that a blogger has the right to appeal if their
request for anonymity is denied.

The decision is not a perfect one. Unlike last month's decision of the
Arizona Court of Appeals in Mobilisa v. Doe, and the 2001 ruling of
the New Jersey Appellate Division in Dendrite v. Doe, the Texas Court
of Appeals did not add an explicit balancing step, under which, for
example, the danger of retaliation against an employee whistleblower
can be considered in deciding whether the plaintiff has put in enough
evidence of wrongdoing. This case may well present a realistic
possibility of such retaliation. So far as I have been able to
determine, the balancing step was not proposed to the Texas court.

---

16 Dec 07 - 10:45 AM (#2216475)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Here's a wunnerful site rich with nostalgia on the remarkable history of computer development, The Computer History Museum. The talk by Woz is mind-boggling. The man is Hero made manifest! :D


A

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16 Dec 07 - 12:03 PM (#2216512)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

OYAGER 2 REACHES THE HELIOSPHERE. Like its sister craft, Voyager 1
several years ago, Voyager 2 has now flown far enough out into the
solar system to encounter the heliosphere, where the wind of solar
particles meets the interstellar medium. We already know that the
surface of this boundary zone is irregular in shape because of
earlier measurements by Voyager 1.

(http://www.aip.org/pnu/2006/split/778-1.htm

Voyager 1 is currently about 9.8 billion miles from Earth and traveling out at a
speed of 38,000 miles per hour. Voyager 2 is about 7.8 billion
miles away and traveling at about 35,000 miles per hour. Voyager 1
might be faster, further, and earlier, but Voyager 2's plasma
measuring instrument is functioning, unlike Voyager 1's.

Voyager 2 confirms that the boundary layer is irregular and has found that the
temperature just beyond the boundary is some ten times cooler than
expected. (Results reported at this week*s meeting of the American
Geophysical Union in San Francisco.)

---

17 Dec 07 - 09:55 PM (#2217757)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 17, 2007; A01

It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.

Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction.

The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.

"This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be," said Paul Rabinow, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies science's effects on society. "Evolutionary processes are no longer seen as sacred or inviolable. People in labs are figuring them out so they can improve upon them for different purposes." ...

For the balance of this article, Clicke Ye Here

A

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17 Dec 07 - 11:54 PM (#2217811)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

It's been fully 20 years, I believe, since it is claimed that Russian scientists were able to replicate by constructing from elemental molecules, the complete structure of the smallpox virus.

Evidence is not conclusive, but is very persuasive, that this was actually done with the results claimed. (Reported in some detail in Technology Review, but it's been too long ago for me to have citations handy.)

There have been several claims of similar "built-from-ground-up" simple viral and protviral structures having biological (infectious) capabilities. Such claims seldom are contested, since serious researchers consider them more in the category of "parlor magic" than as having serious potential - in the absence of any intent to use them maliciously.

On researcher claims to have been "back-tracking" viral infections that appear to have infected ancestors during our (and other related creatures') evolution, using DNA changes that were quite probably caused by them, and has had some success in reconstructing viral agents that no longer exist, but that may have had sufficient effect on once-living ancestors to have altered our own DNA and that of other closely related creatures. ... ... ...

John

---

18 Dec 07 - 01:12 PM (#2218235)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 18, 2007; Page A03

A jet of highly charged radiation from a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy is blasting another galaxy nearby -- an act of galactic violence that astronomers said yesterday they have never seen before.

Using images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other sources, scientists said the extremely intense jet from the larger galaxy can be seen shooting across 20,000 light-years of space and plowing into the outer gas and dust of the smaller one.


This composite image shows the jet from a black hole at the center of a galaxy striking the edge of another galaxy, the first time such an interaction has been found. X-rays from Chandra (colored purple), optical and ultraviolet (UV) data from Hubble (red and orange), and radio emission from the Very Large Array (VLA) and MERLIN (blue) show how the jet from the main galaxy on the lower left is striking its companion galaxy to the upper right. The jet impacts the companion galaxy at its edge and is then disrupted and deflected, much like how a stream of water from a hose will splay out after hitting a wall at an angle. (Chandra X-ray Center, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

The smaller galaxy is being transformed by the radiation and the jet is being bent before shooting millions of light-years farther in a new direction.

"What we've identified is an act of violence by a black hole, with an unfortunate nearby galaxy in the line of fire," said Dan Evans, the study leader at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. He said any planets orbiting the stars of the smaller galaxy would be dramatically affected, and any life forms would likely die as the jet's radiation transformed the planets' atmosphere.

---

18 Dec 07 - 02:40 PM (#2218308)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Astronauts Mark 100th Station Spacewalk
Space.com - 1 hour ago
By Robert Z. Pearlman

Two US astronauts stepped outside the International Space Station this morning, making the 100th spacewalk dedicated to the ongoing assembly of the orbiting outpost.

---

20 Dec 07 - 11:48 AM (#2219702)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An astronaut aboard the international space station found out his 90-year-old mother died Wednesday after she was hit by a freight train.

Dan Tani, a crew member aboard Expedition 16, cannot return to Earth for her funeral; he is expected to return in January.

---

Boy, not showing up for his own mother's funeral because of the demands of his job is pretty...I dunno...callous, wouldn't you say? He could at least drop in.



A

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20 Dec 07 - 08:26 PM (#2220040)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists have created a nanoscale device that is capable of detecting one quadrillionth of a gram of biological matter, or about the size of certain viruses. In the future, the sensor may be able to detect influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), bird flu, and other viruses.

The sensor was created by researchers from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, and is described in a recent edition of Optics Letters.

The sensor is a hexagonal array of tiny cavities, each 240 nanometers in diameter, carved into a very thin slab of silicon using a beam of electrons. It has a total sensing area of about 40 micrometers square, making it one of the smallest sensors of its type.

When a laser beam is directed into the crystal, it interacts with the crystal such that only a particular part of the light's spectrum is transmitted. But when a particle is trapped in one of the nanocavities, the transmitted spectrum changes slightly. A detector measures the altered spectrum.

---

21 Dec 07 - 09:27 AM (#2220285)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Dolphins speak a contextual language
21 December 2007
Emma Young
Magazine issue 2635
Listen to dolphins whistling to each other and you could be forgiven for thinking that they are having a conversation. Now we're a bit nearer to understanding what they might be saying, thanks to a project that has distinguished nearly 200 different whistles dolphins make and linked some of them to specific behaviours.

Liz Hawkins of the Whale Research Centre at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, eavesdropped on bottlenose dolphins living off the western coast of Australia for her three-year study.

"This communication is highly complex, and it is contextual, so in a sense, it could be termed a language," says Hawkins, who presented her work at a meeting of the Society for Marine Mammalogy in Cape Town, South Africa, this month

---

22 Dec 07 - 12:10 AM (#2220720)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a stunning rare case of a triple merger of galaxies. This system, which astronomers have dubbed 'The Bird' - albeit it also bears resemblance with a cosmic Tinker Bell - is composed of two massive spiral galaxies and a third irregular galaxy.


The galaxy ESO 593-IG 008, or IRAS 19115-2124, was previously merely known as an interacting pair of galaxies at a distance of 650 million light-years. But surprises were revealed by observations made with the NACO instrument attached to ESO's VLT, which peered through the all-pervasive dust clouds, using adaptive optics to resolve the finest details.

Underneath the chaotic appearance of the optical Hubble images - retrieved from the Hubble Space Telescope archive - the NACO images show two unmistakable galaxies, one a barred spiral while the other is more irregular.

The surprise lay in the clear identification of a third, clearly separate component, an irregular, yet fairly massive galaxy that seems to be forming stars at a frantic rate.

"Examples of mergers of three galaxies of roughly similar sizes are rare," says Petri VŠisŠnen, lead author of the paper reporting the results. "Only the near-infrared VLT observations made it possible to identify the triple merger nature of the system in this case."

---

22 Dec 07 - 01:20 AM (#2220726)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Scientists say asteroid could hit Mars

Space rock has 1-in-75 chance of Red Planet smash-up in January

By Alicia Chang
The Associated Press
updated 9:01 p.m. CT, Thurs., Dec. 20, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Mars could be in for an asteroid hit.

A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1-in-75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday.
"These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to the Tunguska object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb that wiped out 60 million trees.

Scientists tracking the asteroid, which is halfway to Mars, initially put the odds of impact at 1 in 350 and increased the chances this week after analyzing the data. Scientists expect the odds to diminish again early next month after getting new observations of the asteroid's orbit, Chesley said.

"We know that it's going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there's a possibility of an impact," he said.

If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it'll likely aim near the equator, close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004. The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the potential impact zone. Speeding at 8 miles (12.8 kilometers) a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona.

In 2004, fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.

"Unlike an Earth impact, we're not afraid, but we're excited," Chesley said.

The initial version of this report briefly misstated the chances of a collision with Mars.

© 2007 The Associated Press.

---

22 Dec 07 - 01:24 AM (#2220727)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Related Item?

Small asteroids pose big new threat

Supercomputer provides new clues about infamous Tunguska explosion
By Charles Q. Choi
Space.com
updated 12:50 p.m. CT, Wed., Dec. 19, 2007

The infamous Tunguska explosion, which mysteriously leveled an area of Siberian forest nearly the size of Tokyo a century ago, might have been caused by an impacting asteroid far smaller than previously thought.

The fact that a relatively small asteroid could still cause such a massive explosion suggests "we should be making more efforts at detecting the smaller ones than we have till now," said researcher Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.

The explosion near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River on June 30, 1908, flattened some 500,000 acres (2,000 square kilometers) of Siberian forest. Scientists calculated the Tunguska explosion could have been roughly as strong as 10 to 20 megatons of TNT — 1,000 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Wild theories have been bandied about for a century regarding what caused the Tunguska explosion, including a UFO crash, antimatter, a black hole and famed inventor Nikola Tesla's "death ray." In the last decade, researchers have conjectured the event was triggered by an asteroid exploding in Earth's atmosphere that was roughly 100 feet wide (30 meters) and 560,000 metric tons in mass — more than 10 times that of the Titanic.

The space rock is thought to have blown up above the surface, only fragments possibly striking the ground.

Now new supercomputer simulations suggest "the asteroid that caused the extensive damage was much smaller than we had thought," Boslough said. Specifically, he and his colleagues say it would have been a factor of three or four smaller in mass and perhaps 65 feet (20 meters) in diameter.

The simulations run on Sandia's Red Storm supercomputer — the third fastest in the world — detail how an asteroid that explodes as it runs into Earth's atmosphere will generate a supersonic jet of expanding superheated gas. This fireball would have caused blast waves that were stronger at the surface than previously thought.
At the same time, previous estimates seem to have overstated the devastation the event caused. The forest back then was not healthy, according to foresters, "and it doesn't take as much energy to blow down a diseased tree than a healthy tree," Boslough said. In addition, the winds from the explosion would naturally get amplified above ridgelines, making the explosion seem more powerful than it actually was. What scientists had thought to be an explosion between 10 and 20 megatons was more likely only three to five megatons, he explained.

All in all, the researchers suggest that smaller asteroids may pose a greater danger than previously believed. Moreover, "there are a lot more objects that size," Boslough told SPACE.com.

NASA Ames Research Center planetary scientist and astrobiologist David Morrison, who did not participate in this study, said, "If he's right, we can expect more Tunguska-sized explosions — perhaps every couple of centuries instead of every millennia or two." He added, "It raises the bar in the long term — ultimately, we'd like to have a survey system that can detect things this small."

Boslough and his colleagues detailed their findings at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Dec. 11. A paper on the phenomenon has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Impact Engineering.

© 2007 Space.com.

---

22 Dec 07 - 01:35 PM (#2220976)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An Anniversary of Note


On December 22, 1989, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opened after nearly 30 years Ñ effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.

---

23 Dec 07 - 12:12 PM (#2221385)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A report in BMC Biology uses genetic evidence to show that there may be at least six species of giraffe in Africa.

Currently giraffes are considered to represent a single species classified into multiple subspecies.

The study shows geographic variation in hair coat colour is evident across the giraffe's range in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting reproductive isolation.

"Using molecular techniques we found that giraffes can be classified into six groups that are reproductively isolated and not interbreeding," David Brown, the lead author of the study and a geneticist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), told BBC News.

---

24 Dec 07 - 05:17 PM (#2222092)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Female monkeys may shout during sex to help their male partners climax, research now reveals.

Without these yells, male Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) almost never ejaculated, scientists found.

Female monkeys often utter loud, distinctive calls before, during or after sex. Their exact function, if any, has remained heavily debated.

---

24 Dec 07 - 05:32 PM (#2222100)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

e wreckage of a pirate ship abandoned by Captain Kidd in the 17th century has been found by divers in shallow waters off the Dominican Republic, a research team claims.

The underwater archaeology team, from Indiana University, says they have found the remains of Quedagh Merchant, actively sought by treasure hunters for years.

Charles Beeker of IU said his team has been licensed to study the wreckage and convert the site into an underwater preserve for the public.

It is remarkable that the wreck has remained undiscovered all these years given its location, just 70 feet off the coast of Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic in less than 10 feet of seawater.

"I've been on literally thousands of shipwrecks in my career," Beeker said. "This is one of the first sites I've been on where I haven't seen any looting. We've got a shipwreck in crystal clear, pristine water that's amazingly untouched. We want to keep it that way, so we made the announcement now to ensure the site's protection from looters."

The find is valuable because of what it could reveal about William Kidd and piracy in the Caribbean, said John Foster, California's state underwater archaeologist, who is participating in the research.

Historians differ on whether Kidd was actually a pirate or a privateer Ñ a ship or captain paid by a government to battle the enemy. After his conviction of piracy and murder charges in a sensational London trial, he was left to hang over the River Thames for two years.

Historians write that Kidd captured the Quedagh Merchant, loaded with valuable satins and silks, gold, silver and other East Indian merchandise, but left the ship in the Caribbean as he sailed to New York on a less conspicuous sloop to clear his name of the criminal charges.

---

24 Dec 07 - 06:59 PM (#2222140)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Los Angeles is on track to end the year with fewer than 400 homicides for the first time in nearly four decades -- a hopeful milestone for a city so long associated with gangs, drive-by shootings and sometimes random violence.

With 386 killings recorded as of this morning, the city has experienced one-third the number of homicides it did in 1992. The last year with a comparably low figure was 1970, when Los Angeles had a million fewer residents, guns were far less prevalent and street gangs were a much smaller part of life in urban neighborhoods.

---

27 Dec 07 - 10:55 AM (#2223214)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

How many physical constants does it take to describe the Universe? The answer, according to a team of physicists in Brazil, is just two.
The two can be chosen, according to taste, from a list of three: the speed of light, the strength of gravity, and Planck's constant, which relates the energy to the frequency of a particle of light, say George Matsas of the São Paulo State University and his colleagues.

---

30 Dec 07 - 09:43 PM (#2225234)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep
By Alexis Madrigal12.28.07 | 12:00 AM
>http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation

A nasal spray of a key brain hormone cures sleepiness in sleep-
deprived monkeys. With no apparent side effects, the hormone might be
a promising sleep-replacement drug.

In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers,
Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate
sleepiness.

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called
orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys,
allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.
The discovery's first application will probably be in treatment of the
severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.

The treatment is "a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the
new study shows it to be relatively benign," saidJerome Siegel, a
professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. "It
reduces sleepiness without causing edginess."

Orexin A is a promising candidate to become a "sleep replacement"
drug. For decades, stimulants have been used to combat sleepiness, but
they can be addictive and often have side effects, including raising
blood pressure or causing mood swings. The military, for example,
administers amphetamines to pilots flying long distances, and has
funded research into new drugs like the stimulant modafinil (.pdf) and
orexin A in an effort to help troops stay awake with the fewest side
effects. ...

---

01 Jan 08 - 12:07 PM (#2226188)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Measuring Covert Attention

ScienceDaily (Dec. 31, 2007) Ñ The person you're speaking with may be looking at you, but are they really paying attention" Or has the person covertly shifted their attention, without moving their eyes" Dr. Brian Corneil, of the Centre for Brain and Mind at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada has found a way of actually measuring covert attention.


"Our results demonstrate for the first time that covert attention can be measured in real-time via recordings of muscle activity in the neck," says Corneil, an assistant professor of physiology & pharmacology and psychology. "This finding may fundamentally change how attention is measured, grounding it in an objective and straightforward technique."

Until now, measuring attention was based on indirect measures of changes in reaction time, or stimulus detection. In furthering our understanding of how the brain works, Corneil has discovered that neck muscles are recruited during covert orienting, even in the absence of eye movements. This finding could help in assessing the effectiveness of therapies for stroke or other neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease.
His research "Neuromuscular consequences of reflexive covert orienting" is posted on the Advance Online Publication of "Nature Neuroscience".

The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers at Queen's University and the University of Toronto, with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Human Frontier Science Program.

---

03 Jan 08 - 10:05 AM (#2227409)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Britain: XL to the Rescue
               
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: January 3, 2008

When the meal a man was cooking at his aunt's house in Hartlepool caught fire this week, he grabbed the nearest thing from a pile of laundry to put it out: his aunt's billowing, powder blue, size XL underpants. He ran them under the faucet and tossed them onto the flames, smothering the fire and saving the kitchen, according to a spokesman for the local fire brigade. The fire official said that using a large, wet cloth to cover a grease fire was a sound principle and that with underwear, "clearly it depends on what size you are."

---

03 Jan 08 - 01:53 PM (#2227621)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos, DARPA has not only found a (nasal spray) cure for sleep so soldiers can fight non stop, they have also found a cure for conscience, common sense and love.

---

03 Jan 08 - 04:09 PM (#2227723)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

, they have also found a cure for conscience, common sense and love.


Surely this should be credited to the Executive Branch?



A

---

03 Jan 08 - 04:45 PM (#2227764)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Darpa actually started an exchange market for betting on terrorist activities. They actually guide the creation of video war games to lend the game as practical experience for future soldiers.
DARPA is wierd and wicked or a wonderful place depending upon how human you are. In whort its the kind of place where Poindexter can excel.

---

03 Jan 08 - 08:46 PM (#2227901)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MOEBAS ANTICIPATE CLIMATE CHANGE   A new experiment shows that
amoebas will slow their motion in synch with periodic adverse
changes in their environment, and will, as if in anticipation, even
slow down when the adverse condition is not delivered. A team of
scientists from Hokkaido University and the ATR Wave Engineering
Laboratories in Japan cultured the single-celled slime mold Physarum
polycephalum (a member of the amoeba clan) in a bed of oat flakes on
agar. Every ten minutes the air was made slightly cooler and drier,
which had the effect of slowing the movement of the amoebas down a
narrow lane. Then more favorable air would be restored and the
motion continued as before. After several cycles, the amoebas
slowed even when the adverse conditions did not materialize. Later
still, when the organisms have been tricked into anticipating
impending climate change several times, they refrain from slowing
without an actual change in conditions. One of the researchers,
Toshiyuki Nakagaki from Hokkaido ([e-mail]),
cautions that amoebas do not have a brain and that this is not
example of classic *Pavlovian* conditioned response behavior.
Nevertheless, it might represent more evidence for a primitive
sensitivity or *intelligence* based on the dynamic behavior of the
tubular structures deployed by the amoeba. (Saigusa et al.,
Physical Review Letters, 11 January 2008; journalists can obtain the
article from www.aip.org/physnews/select)

---

03 Jan 08 - 10:59 PM (#2227971)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Must-see meteor shower Friday morning

The notoriously unpredictable Quadrantids may end up being 2008's best

By Joe Rao
Space.com
updated 11:37 a.m. CT, Thurs., Jan. 3, 2008

The Quadrantid meteor shower is due to reach maximum in Friday's predawn hours. The Quadrantids are notoriously unpredictable, but if any year promises a fine display, this could be it.

Indeed, this may end up being the best meteor shower of 2008.

The Quadrantid (pronounced KWA-dran-tid) meteor shower provides one of the most intense annual meteor displays, with a brief, sharp maximum lasting but a few hours. The timing of peak activity favors Western Europe and eastern North America. Weather permitting, skywatchers in rural locations could see one or two shooting stars every minute during the peak.

Each year, many factors combine to make the peak of this display difficult to observe.

Peak intensity is exceedingly sharp: meteor rates exceed one-half of their highest value for only about eight hours (compared to two days for the August Perseids). This means that the stream of particles that produce this shower is a narrow one — apparently derived within the last 500 years from a small comet. As viewed from mid-northern latitudes, we have to get up before dawn to see the Quadrantids at their best. This is because the radiant — that part of the sky from where the meteors emanate — is down low on the northern horizon until about midnight, rising slowly higher as the night progresses. The growing light of dawn ends meteor observing usually by around 7 a.m. So, if the "Quads" are to be seen at all, some part of that eight-hour active period must fall between 2 and 7 a.m. In one out of every three years, bright moonlight spoils the view. Over northern latitudes, early January often sees inclement/unsettled weather.

It is not surprising then, that the Quadrantids are not as well-known as some of the other annual meteor showers, but 2008 may prove to be an unusual exception.

Exception this year

According to the International Meteor Organization, maximum activity this year is expected on Friday at 1:40 a.m. ET. [05:40 in London?]

For those in the eastern United States, the radiant will be about one-quarter of the way up in the east-northeast sky. The farther to the north and east you go, the higher in the sky the radiant will be. To the south and west the radiant will be lower and the meteors will be fewer.

From Western Europe, the radiant will soar high in the east as the peak arrives just as morning twilight intervenes.

Quadrantid meteors are described as bright and bluish with long silvery trains. Some years produce a mere handful, but for favorably placed observers, this could be a shower to remember; at greatest activity, Quadrantid rates will likely range from 30 to 60 per hour for eastern parts of the U.S. and Canada, to 60 to 120 per hour for Western Europe.

Across central and western parts of North America, the shower's sharp peak will have already passed and meteor activity will be rapidly diminishing by the time the radiant has a chance to get very high in the northeastern sky. Nonetheless, hourly rates of perhaps 15 to 30 may still be seen.

The moon will be a waning crescent, not rising until after 4 a.m. and will add very little light to the sky.

History and mystery

Adolphe Quetelet of Brussels Observatory discovered the shower in the 1830s, and shortly afterward it was noted by several other astronomers in Europe and America.

The meteors are named after the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis, the Mural or Wall Quadrant (an astronomical instrument), depicted in some 19th-century star atlases roughly midway between the end of the Handle of the Big Dipper and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco. (The International Astronomical Union phased out Quadrans Muralis in 1922.)

Meteor showers are generally caused by debris from comets. Most of the "shooting stars" result from bits the size of sand grains, which vaporize as they streak through Earth's atmosphere.

The parentage of the Quadrantids was long a mystery, however. Then Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., noticed that the orbit of 2003 EH1 — a small asteroid discovered in March 2003 — ''falls snug in the shower.'' He believes that this 1.2-mile-wide (2 kilometers) chunk of rock is the source of the Quadrantids; possibly this asteroid is the burnt-out core of the lost comet C/1490 Y1.

© 2007 Space.com.

Almost time to go outside and look up.

John

---

04 Jan 08 - 02:52 AM (#2228015)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The possibility of an asteroid walloping the planet Mars this month is whetting the appetites of Earth-bound scientists, even as they further refine the space rock's trajectory.

The space rock in question Ñ Asteroid 2007 WD5 Ñ is similar in size to the object that carved Meteor Crater into northern Arizona some 50,000 years ago and is approaching Mars at about 30,000 miles per hour (48,280 kph).

Whether the asteroid will actually hit Mars or not is still uncertain.

Such an impact, researchers said, would prove an awesome opportunity for planetary science since NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and a flotilla of other spacecraft are already in position to follow up any impact from orbit.

"An impact that we could witness/follow-up with MRO would be truly spectacular, and could tell us much about the hidden subsurface that could help direct a search for life or life-related molecules," said John Rummel, NASA's senior scientist for astrobiology at the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters.

---

04 Jan 08 - 03:53 AM (#2228027)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

First reports above in this thread put the odds of an impact at 1 chance in 75. There was much excitement when refinements of the calculations raised the odds to about 4.39%, but later calculations as of 03JAN08 predicted a significantly lower 4.35% chance of an impact.

John

---

04 Jan 08 - 04:02 AM (#2228030)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,Darowyn

One of the alchemists who were reputed to have succeeded in transmuting base metal to gold was the Canon of Bridlington Priory. I never met anyone in Bridlington who had ever heard of him.

"George Ripley [1415?-1490] was one of the most important of English alchemists. Little is known about him, but it is supposed that he was a Canon at the Priory of St Augustine at Bridlington in Yorkshire during the latter part of the 15th century, where he devoted himself to the study of the physical sciences and especially alchemy. To acquire fuller knowledge he travelled in France, Germany and Italy, and lived for some time in Rome, and there in 1477 was made a chamberlain by Pope Innocent VIII. In 1478 he returned to England in possession of the secret of transmutation. He pursued his alchemical work, and is reputed to have given vast sums to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Rhodes to defend them from the Turks. But his labours becoming irksome to the abbot and other canons, he was released from the order, and joined the Carmelites at Boston, where he died in 1490."

The people who run Brid are still easy to irk, and the old gatehouse of the Priory is still home to them! They go by the name of "The Lords Feoffees" (pronounced Fifis)
Cheers
Dave

---

04 Jan 08 - 10:00 AM (#2228215)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

What note is the Universe tuned to?

The remants of the big bang has a resonant frequency of b flat 16 octaves below middle C.

I have several CDs of music decoded from radio frequencies picked up by Voyager's planatary fly bys. Earth is noisy but Jupiter is a gas.

---

04 Jan 08 - 10:07 AM (#2228220)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

This summer I said here: Buy Apple stock at 126
Last week it topped over 200

My reccomendation today 04 Jan 08 - 10:00 AM is SELL

I think it will suffer innocently from the coming recession sell off.

---

04 Jan 08 - 12:26 PM (#2228342)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SAN FRANCISCO — California sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, challenging its recent decision to block California rules curbing greenhouse-gas emissions from new cars and trucks.

Under the federal Clean Air Act, California has the right to set its own standards on air pollutants, but must receive a waiver from the E.P.A. to do so. The environmental agency broke with decades of precedent last month and denied California a waiver to move forward with its proposed limits on vehicular emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

In a statement announcing the lawsuit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "It is unconscionable that the federal government is keeping California" from adopting new standards.

California officials argue that the agency had no legal or technical justification for blocking the new standards. The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said when announcing the decision that a new federal fuel-economy mandate would be more efficient in curbing pollution than the state standards.

The lawsuit also challenges the agency's contention that California is not uniquely affected by global warming and so lacks the "compelling and extraordinary" conditions that would allow it to regulate greenhouse-gas pollutants.

Mary D. Nichols, thechairwoman of the Air Resources Board, the state agency charged with putting California's 2002 law on vehicular emissions into practice, said the suit was filed quickly because "the states didn't want to sleep on their rights."

California regulators, Ms. Nichols added, have just calculated that in 2016, the state's standard would reduce carbon dioxide output by 17.2 million metric tons, more than double the 7.7 million metric tons that would be eliminated under the new federal fuel-economy standard.

California's cumulative reductions from 2009 through 2016 would be 58 million tons, she said — triple the reductions the federal standards would provide.

---

04 Jan 08 - 12:44 PM (#2228351)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Mistery
of Alchymists,
Composed by Sir Geo: Ripley
Chanon of Bridlington.

When Sol in Aries and Phoebus shines bright,
The Elements reviving the new Year springing
The Son by his Vertue gives Nature & Light,
And moysture refresheth all things growing:
In the season of the Yeare when the Sun waxeth warme,
Freshly and fragrante the Flowers doe grow,
Of Natures subtill working we cannot discerne,
Nor yet by our Reason we can it not know,
In foure Elements is comprehended things Three,
Animalls, Vegetabills, Mineralls must be,
Of this is our Principle that we make our Stone,
Quality and Quantity is unknowne to many one.
   Quality (Father) would I faine know,            Son.
Of what nature it is and what it hath in his kinde.
   As Colours divers which on the ground do grow,      Father.
Keep well this secret (Son) and marke it in thy minde.
   Without Proportion (Father) how should I it know,      Son.
This working now is far from my minde
   Nature and kinde (Son) together do grow,            Father.
Quality by waight (Son) shalt thow never finde.
   To Separate Elements (Father) I must needes know,      Son.
Either in Proportion which be more or less.
   Out of our Principle foure Elements thou shalt draw,      Father.
Thou shalt neede nothing else that needefull is;
Our Principle in quality is so perfectly mixed,
By vertue of the Son and his quality,
So equally Joyned, so well mixed may be.
   This Principle (Father) is but one thing,            Son.
Good (Father) tel me where it doth grow.
   In every place (Son) you shall him well finde;         Father.
By Tast and by Colour thou shalt him well know;
Fowle in the Ayer with it doe fly,
And Fishes doe swim there with in the Sea,
With Reason of Angels you may it diserne,
Both Man and Woman to governe,
With our fixed Body (Son) we must thus begin.
Of him make Mercury and Water cleare,
Man and Woman is them within,
Married together by vertue of our Fire,
The Woman in he working is full wild,
Be well aware she goe not out;
Till she have conceived and borne a Chylde,
Then all his kin on him shal lout;
In their workes they be unstable,
The Elements they be so raw;
And their Colour so variable,
As sometyme like the head of a Crow,
When he is black ye may well like,
Putrefaction must go beforne,
After Blacke he wilbe White,
Then Thank ye God the Chyld is borne.
This Chyld is both King and Emperour,
Through his region both far and neere;
All the World doth him honour,
By the vertue he hath taken of the Fire:
His first Vertue is White and pure,
As any Christall shining cleere,
Of White tincture then be you sure;
By vertue taken of our Fire,
His first Vesture that is so White,
Betokeneth his Virginity,
A similitude even thereto like,
And according to the Trinity:
Our Medicen is made of things Three,
Against which the Philosophers cannot say nay,
The Father, the Sone in one degree,
Corpus, Spiritus & Anima.
...

(Balance of this compelling Alchemical Epic can be found here.


A

---

04 Jan 08 - 05:43 PM (#2228593)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Plantstones' could help lock away carbon
05 January 2008
Rachel Nowak
Magazine issue 2637

ONE way to cut greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere may be to exploit a particular talent some plants have of locking away carbon. All we need to do is choose the right strains of crops to grow, and they will sequester carbon for us for millennia.
That's the idea of two agricultural scientists in Australia, who say the trick is to grow grasses such as wheat and sorghum, which lock up large amounts of carbon in so-called plantstones, also known as phytoliths. These microscopic balls of silica, which form around a plant's cells as they take the mineral up from the soil, may help to strengthen the plant and protect it from disease.

As phytoliths form, they also lock up carbon by trapping scraps of plant material. They are practically indestructible, so once the plant dies they enter the soil where they may sequester carbon for thousands of years...

---

04 Jan 08 - 11:00 PM (#2228762)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

But Amos, growing enough of anything widespread enough to be an effective capture agent will just be seen as a new source of material for ethanol production, which inevitably will re-release any carbon extracted. You KNOW how capitalists are when they see an opportunity.

John

---

09 Jan 08 - 10:27 AM (#2232049)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

'Maverick' sunspot heralds new solar cycle
19:30 07 January 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Maggie McKee

A sunspot with a magnetic field pointed in the opposite direction from others seen previously in the Sun's northern hemisphere appeared on Friday (top, labelled 0981), signalling the start of solar cycle 24.
A new 11-year solar cycle has officially begun, now that a sunspot has been found with a magnetic field pointing in the opposite direction from those in the previous cycle. But researchers are still divided over how active – and potentially damaging to Earth's satellites and power grids – the new cycle will be.
Sunspots are relatively cool regions where magnetic fields from within the Sun have risen up and broken through its surface. They vary in number – going from a minimum to a maximum and back to a minimum again – about every 11 years, the same timescale on which the Sun's magnetic poles reverse direction.
But predicting when the cycles will begin and end and how many sunspots they will produce is a tricky business, says David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, US. For example, he had predicted that the new sunspot cycle, cycle 24, would be quite active. Since active cycles usually start earlier than average, he expected the cycle's first sunspot to appear a year ago – but it was only observed on Friday, 4 January.

"I'm happy to see this spot," he told New Scientist late on Friday. "For more than the last year, I come in every morning and look at the pictures from SOHO [the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite] and say, 'No, not yet.' And today, someone beat me into work and said, 'Go take a look – I think there's a spot."
The spot – along with a couple of previous magnetic hints that cycle 24 was underway – suggests the Sun is at or near solar minimum, a time when sunspots in the new cycle outnumber the old.

Just when solar max will occur is up for debate, with some research teams predicting 2011 and others 2012. "The bigger the cycle, the shorter the time it takes to get there," says Hathaway. "A number of us believe it's going to be a big cycle and hence it will peak earlier."

---

09 Jan 08 - 12:57 PM (#2232152)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

PSYCHOPATHS IN THE WHITE HOUSE???

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html

starts with great John Lennon quote.

---

10 Jan 08 - 10:15 AM (#2232960)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW YORK — A judge said Wednesday that he was leaning toward allowing Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit over his being fired by CBS to proceed.

"I concluded there was enough in the complaint (by Rather) to continue with discovery (pretrial research)," state Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman said at a hearing on CBS' motion to dismiss the case.

The judge did not issue a final ruling on CBS' motion, but he suggested the parties try to agree on the scope of pretrial discovery _ just in case _ and told them to return to court Jan. 23 for a conference.

Rather, whose last months at CBS were clouded by a disputed story on President Bush's Vietnam-era military service, says his employers made him a "scapegoat" to placate the White House after questions arose about the story.

The lawsuit names CBS Corp., former CBS parent Viacom Inc., CBS President Leslie Moonves, Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. It seeks $20 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages.

Rather, 75, said after attending the hearing in Manhattan's state Supreme Court that he was pleased by the judge's statements.

"Allowing the case to go forward with discovery will put us on the road to finding out what really happened involving big corporations and powerful interests in Washington and their intrusions into newsrooms, which is the reason I'm here," Rather said. "That is the red, beating heart of this case."

---

10 Jan 08 - 10:18 AM (#2232964)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Troubled pop tart Britney Spears skipped Los Angeles with her boyfriend on Wednesday night and flew here to avoid a planned intervention by her family later this week, sources close to her said.

Pals said she hopped a private jet in Van Nuys with paparazzo boyfriend Adnan Ghalib and took off for Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, where the couple landed last night.

Where they went from there wasn't immediately known.

Britney got spooked by published reports her family planned to have cops haul her out of her home and take her to a hospital for the second time in a week, if necessary, friends said.

---

12 Jan 08 - 01:37 PM (#2234806)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces -- Curing Alzheimers?
From: Amos

New Alzheimer's treatment works in minutes
By Jonathan M. Gitlin | Published: January 10, 2008 - 03:43PM CT

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/01/10/new-alzheimers-treatment-works-in-minutes

Alzheimer's disease is a growing concern among our aging populations.
As people live longer lives, diseases of old age become increasingly
common. Perhaps, as with obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and other
common modern maladies, there are also lifestyle or environmental
factors at play. Alzheimer's, unlike those ailments of the body, has
had little in the way of useful therapeutics, instead only offering
the promise of an inevitable mental decline.

One reason for the lack of effective Alzheimer's drugs has been our
understanding of the mechanisms involved in how the disease works. The
widely accepted view has been that certain proteins that are present
in nerve cells begin to aggregate together, forming lesions. Potential
therapies often focus on a neurotransmitter, acetylcholine (ACh), and
often have unpleasant side effects.

More recently, neuroscientists have been looking not at the neurons,
but the cells that surround them as an important component of the
disease. Glial cells are most of the cells in the brain that aren't
neurons, and they fulfill a range of specialized functions from
forming myelin to housekeeping in the brain. Some glia envelope
neuronal synapses, the junctions between nerves where
neurotransmitters signal from one to another, and it's these cells
that are now increasingly thought to be critical in Alzheimer's.

What's surprising is the involvement of a molecule we thought we knew
quite well. Most scientists working in biomedical research would be
familiar with a cytokine called Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF)-α. TNFα
is a signaling protein that is deeply involved in inflammation, and
drugs that act on the TNFα pathway are increasingly being used as
treatments for autoimmune diseases. But as it turns out, in the brain
TNFα is used by glial cells as a gliotransmitter, and increased levels
of TNFα in the brain, outside of the normal physiological levels,
results in impairment of synaptic function.

And that appears to provide a therapeutic avenue, thanks to those new
TNFα drugs we have developed. The Journal of Neuroinflammation carries
a case report of the rapid mental improvement of an Alzheimer's
patient following spinal infusion of a drug called etanercept.
Etanercept is a protein drug that binds to TNFα and neutralizes it.
Within just two hours of initial treatment with the drug, the patient
showed marked improvement on a range of cognitive tests, and following
a short series of repeat treatments, continued to improve. The authors
of the study have been using this treatment for several years now, and
have published other case studies also showing a remarkable mental
improvement.

While this case report gives cause for optimism, it must be noted that
the research is still preliminary; double-blind trials have not been
performed, and the case reports don't examine biomarkers of
Alzheimer's disease. Nevertheless, given the possibility of reversing
this terrible disease, it seems a foregone conclusion those double-
blind trials are in the works.

---

14 Jan 08 - 03:33 PM (#2236349)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - Republican Bobby Jindal was sworn in on Monday as governor of Louisiana to become the first Indian-American elected head of a U.S. state.

The Oxford-educated conservative vowed in a speech at the state capitol to clean up Louisiana's notorious political corruption and to speed up the state's recovery from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

"In our past, too many of our politicians looked out for themselves," said Jindal, who is the state's first non-white governor since Reconstruction in the 1870s. "We must win a war on corruption and incompetence in government."

Jindal, 36, was in his second term as a U.S. congressman when won the governorship in an October election in his second try for the office.

---

15 Jan 08 - 09:27 AM (#2236897)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"If Idoya could talk, she would have plenty to boast about.
On Thursday, the 12-pound, 32-inch monkey made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity.

She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan.

It was the first time that brain signals had been used to make a robot walk, said Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University whose laboratory designed and carried out the experiment."
The complete story is really interesting -- one small step for a robtoic servomechanism, one huge leap for primate-kind.


A

---

15 Jan 08 - 10:38 AM (#2236946)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Channeling Robert Stack: Residents of Stephenville, Texas are staring ominously at the night skies after several dozen reports of UFO sightings last week. Witnesses -- including a pilot -- all claim they saw what appeared to be a massive craft with strange flashing lights, traveling lower and faster than an airplane. Others say they spotted jet fighters chasing after the object.

As expected, federal officials say there is a "logical explanation," such as light reflecting off passing planes, for the Jan. 8 incident. But residents of this town, about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth, remain unconvinced. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts," pilot Steve Allen was quoted as saying.

(WaPo)

---

15 Jan 08 - 11:49 AM (#2237017)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Monday, January 14, 2008; Page A08

Right around noon today, if all goes as planned, a spacecraft called Messenger will swoop past the planet Mercury and begin two days of unprecedented picture-taking and data-collecting.


The flyby, the first visit to Mercury in more than 33 years by an emissary from Earth, will mark a key moment in a NASA mission that will ultimately place the first satellite into orbit around the tiny planet that sits closest to the sun.

The planetary science community is eagerly awaiting images and information that should shed light on some of the enduring mysteries about the planet -- such as where in the solar system it was formed and why its hard metal core is so large and its outer rock crust so scant, compared with those of Earth and the other rocky planets.

"Mercury is a difficult place to get to, and it's taken a long time to get back," said principal investigator Sean Solomon, who has worked on the mission for more than 11 years. "But now we're in place to learn things about one of our few sister rocky planets, and we're ready for some real surprises."

The desk-size spacecraft was launched in 2004 and has taken a circuitous path to Mercury, swinging twice by Venus and once by Earth for gravity assists. Messenger will make two more passes by Mercury to let the planet's gravity slow it down enough for it to swing into orbit in 2011.

---

16 Jan 08 - 09:29 AM (#2237644)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,bairn of brid

There is a window in bridlington priory dedicated to sir george riply showing him with some of his alchemical nessesitys.

Feoffee is pronounced using every vowel,fifee is the french way but both are right
you say tomato etc
have you been on the brid ghost walk?

---

17 Jan 08 - 10:58 AM (#2238435)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

14:37 17 January 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Andy Coghlan


A cloned human embryo has been produced for the first time from a man's skin cell, raising the prospect that such embryos could be made to provide stem cells tailored to any patient.

Only one cloned human embryo has been made before, reported by a team at Newcastle University, UK, in 2005. But it was made by cloning human embryonic stem cells that are not routinely available from patients, and so would not be practical.

The embryo newly created from a skin cell potentially gets round this problem. The ultimate aim is to make temporary embryos from which human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) could be extracted – these are the cells in embryos from which all tissues of the body originate.

Once obtained, these could be turned into tissue for treating the patient without any fear of rejection, as the cells originated from the patient.

But Stemagen, the company in La Jolla, California, US, which reported the breakthrough on Thursday, says its researchers did not manage to extract any stem cells from their cloned embryos. ...

---

18 Jan 08 - 05:08 PM (#2239528)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

An ad-hoc committee of alumni, undergrads, and *** staff has begun laying the groundwork for a 50th Anniversary Celebration of first Smoot Painting. As Ollie Smoot '62 will attest, neither he nor the others on the bridge that evening had the faintest clue that their measurement deeds that night would become the stuff of legend.

Even Google Earth now can supply any distance on the globe calibrating in Smoots.

In any event, on Saturday October 4, 2008, the icon of this treasured *** tradition will be back on campus to celebrate a day of community service, civic recognition, and just plain fun. The day will be capped by a festive '50s party hosted by the *** Museum. More details will be become available around Reunion time in June.

---

18 Jan 08 - 05:58 PM (#2239588)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

What are Smoots, then, good John?


A

---

18 Jan 08 - 06:26 PM (#2239617)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

A rat heart was cleaned with detergent until all that was left was a white ligament organ devoid of all living cells. Baby rat heart cells were placed on the dead heart and grew into a fully functioning heart.

The implications for growing organs in this manner are monumental.

---

18 Jan 08 - 06:33 PM (#2239624)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

WHAT HAS NEVER BEEN SAID ON TV


All you will hear about the economy is that the sub prime crises is to cause for the US economic down turn/recession/collapse.

BULL SHIT

It was the 2,000 billion dollar Bush war that we had to borrow money for and then wasted by inflating profits for defense contractors like Halliburton.

We could have 5 sub prime crises and be OK if we had not invaded the middle east.

People like nations do not die from the flu virus, they die from the immune system going too far resulting in destroying our own lungs in an attempt to destroy a tiny virtually invisible enemy.

It bears repeating...

People like nations do not die from the flu virus, they die from the immune system going too far resulting in destroying our own lungs in an attempt to destroy a tiny virtually invisible enemy.

People like nations do not die from the flu virus, they die from the immune system going too far resulting in destroying our own lungs in an attempt to destroy a tiny virtually invisible enemy.

But then again I'm not as smart as the pundits and I could be wrong.

---

18 Jan 08 - 09:17 PM (#2239740)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Around 1958, one of the fraternities was looking for a "pledge activity" and selected "a new standard of measurement." One of the pledges (who really was named Smoot) was selected as the standard for length/distance. The "newbies" were given the task of "calibrating" the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge across the Charles River in "Smoots" and duly marked "10 Smoot" intervals in very long-lasting paint on the bridge.

The tradition of "Re-Smooting" the bridge at approximately annual intervals has persisted until the present time, and "Mr Smoot" apparently will be attending his 50th class reunion soon.

As with all standards based on "physical samples" there is some indication of a moderate amount of "flexibility" in the precise length of "one Smoot" as markings from various years don't necessarily match up exactly.

The traditional re-marking almost died when the city decided it was a recognized "tradition" and declared that "smooters" would not be charged with vandalism, thereby removing the possibility of "being caught and prosecuted;" but fortunately the tradition appears to have survived.

John

---

18 Jan 08 - 09:41 PM (#2239749)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Thank you, John. That is perhaps the st profoundly frivolous and trivial gem I have encountered ever.


A

---

19 Jan 08 - 12:00 AM (#2239796)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Amos -

Is that a challenge?

John

---

19 Jan 08 - 12:07 AM (#2239800)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Oh, no, thanks very much! I was just chastising myself!!! LOL


A

---

21 Jan 08 - 05:13 PM (#2241586)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

A brief video at MSNBC is titled "Cow Pictures." (A brief ad also runs.)

I can't say that the glamour shots of the subjects were a particular stimulus for me, but there are apparently numerous professional photographers who specialize in taking livestock pictures.

Pause for thought: One "spokesperson" states that

"There are more pictures of purebred beef cattle taken in the US each year than of graduating high school seniors."

Immediate reaction (subject to later reflection):

"Why not? A good cow brings a better price than most ....

John

---

22 Jan 08 - 01:03 AM (#2241782)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Thailand's parliament reopened Monday, marking the end of 16 months of military rule and the return of democracy.


Samak Sundaravej, leader of the People Power Party, which won the December election, arrives at Thailand's parliament Monday.

Newly elected lawmakers in immaculate white ceremonial uniforms attended the opening in the sumptuous surroundings of the Thai parliament building in Bangkok.

The return of parliamentary rule follows elections in December in which the People Power Party (PPP), the party of deposed Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, won nearly half the seats in the lower house.

---

22 Jan 08 - 06:05 PM (#2242396)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

How UFOs and Bigfoot Could Save Earth

By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist

posted: 22 January 2008 02:21 pm ET

These days green is big. The environmental movement has been around for decades, but issues such as global warming, recycling, and saving the planet have never been so much in the spotlight. Though many corporations have arrived late in the game (cynics might suspect they saw another type of green in "green marketing"), many New Agers and believers in the mysterious and paranormal have long incorporated environmentalism into their beliefs.

Among people who claim to have been abducted or contacted by space aliens, messages about world peace and warnings of impending environmental disaster are common.

One popular belief is that UFO sightings are simply glimpses of the benevolent aliens watching over us, monitoring our destructive ways. We should work to save the planet, the thinking goes, but if we can't, our savior space brothers will intervene just before the world destroys itself, either through environmental pollution or global nuclear war. Once that happens, we Earthlings will see the error of our ways, ushering in a new era of peace, love, and global consciousness..... (Click link above foe details).


A

---

23 Jan 08 - 02:35 PM (#2243009)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The YEar of the Private Commercial Spaceship

Published: January 23, 2008
Burt Rutan took the cloak off of his new spacecraft on Wednesday.

Mr. Rutan, the creator of SpaceShipOne, the first privately-financed craft to carry a human into space, traveled to New York to show detailed models of the bigger SpaceShipTwo and its carrier airplane, WhiteKnightTwo.

"2008 will really be the year of the spaceship," said Sir Richard Branson, the British serial entrepreneur, at the heavily attended press conference at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Sir Richard, who founded a company, Virgin Galactic, that promises to take tourists on brief trips to the edge of space, was there to show off the sleek pod of a spacecraft and its spidery carrier plane.

WhiteKnight, a three-fuselage, four-engine plane in its new incarnation, will ferry the smaller spacecraft high into the sky and release it. The spacecraft pilot then fires the craft's rocket engine, which burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a rubber-based solid fuel, and shoots the vehicle upward to an altitude of more than 62 miles, the realm of black sky.

Once there, the pilot is to activate the craft's innovative feathered wing, which rotates into a position that greatly increases aerodynamic drag and slows the craft for a glider landing back on earth.

In 2004, SpaceShipOne earned Mr. Rutan and his backer, Paul Allen, the $10 million Ansari X Prize when it carried a pilot to the edge of space twice in five days. Since then, Mr. Rutan has been working on the follow-up vehicle for Sir Richard, under his customary heavy secrecy.

Officials at the press conference said that the WhiteKnight aircraft is 70 percent complete and that SpaceShipTwo is 60 percent complete. Test flights of the planes could occur this year. Passenger flights are not expected to begin before late 2009 or 2010.

But Will Whitehorn, the president of Virgin Galactic, said that the company would not yet set a date for the startup of commercial flights, which will depend not just on testing and manufacturing but also on government approval. "We don't want to make promises that we can't meet," Mr. Whitehorn said. "We're in a race with nobody, apart from a race with safety."

Mr. Rutan said that the new space travel system would have to be "hundreds" of times safer than present space flight, which he put at the level of safety of the early commercial aircraft of the 1920s.

---

23 Jan 08 - 04:05 PM (#2243070)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Weight of Hawaiian volcanoes may rupture earth's crust
By John Timmer | Published: January 23, 2008 - 12:11PM CT

The basic outlines of the geology that produced the Hawaiian Islands are pretty well known. The current islands sit on top of a plume of hot material from the mantle that works its way through the oceanic crust, building massive volcanoes that gradually ride the Pacific plate away from the source of magma. But many of the details of the system are not well understood. Given that geologic activity there can spawn tsunamis that affect the entire Pacific basin, closing the gaps in our understanding seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

A paper that will be released later today by Nature attempts to do just that. It took a year's worth of seismic data, containing about 45,000 events, and used it to build a model of the internals of the big island of Hawaii at a resolution of one cubic kilometer—the resulting model contained nearly a million individual objects. They then validated this model against a set of over a thousand earthquakes recorded at the Kilauea volcano.

With the model in hand, they explored the strains and movements that would be expected to occur given known properties of the volcanic rock and oceanic crust. The authors say the resulting model reveals significant deformation of the oceanic crust and helps explain various features of the big island, including an area of rifts and an aseismic zone. Perhaps the most striking feature, however, is what happens at the edge of the volcanic masses: the underlying crust is deformed to the point of rupture, opening up a path to the mantle.

---

23 Jan 08 - 09:18 PM (#2243281)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The entire country of China has exactly one time zone.

---

23 Jan 08 - 10:36 PM (#2243320)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Chocolate Penis invetment opportunity http://cgi.ebay.com/14ct-KOROIT-BOULDER-OPAL-RARE-GEM-CHOCOLATE-PENIS-PIC_W0QQitemZ180190306293QQihZ008QQcategoryZ110810QQcmdZVi

---

23 Jan 08 - 10:46 PM (#2243330)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Not THAT random, Donuel!!! LOL!



A

---

23 Jan 08 - 11:29 PM (#2243353)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

NOW YOU'VE DONE IT DONUEL.

Neither of your links works!

They probably saw your post here and pulled to the item for "PC-correctness" reasons and now the guy with the chocolate thingy will NEVER be able to invet it with the gal (or guy?) what want's it.

You should be shamed and ASShamed.

Discretion? - NO!, not Donuel!

John

---

24 Jan 08 - 07:26 AM (#2243489)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Drought could close nuclear power plants

Southeast water shortage a factor in huge cooling requirements
The Associated Press
updated 1:54 p.m. CT, Wed., Jan. 23, 2008

LAKE NORMAN, N.C. - Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.
Utility officials say such shutdowns probably wouldn't result in blackouts. But they could lead to shockingly higher electric bills for millions of Southerners, because the region's utilities could be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other energy companies.
Already, there has been one brief, drought-related shutdown, at a reactor in Alabama over the summer.

"Water is the nuclear industry's Achilles' heel," said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an environmental group critical of nuclear power. "You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants." He added: "This is becoming a crisis."

An Associated Press analysis of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors found that 24 are in areas experiencing the most severe levels of drought. All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants' turbines.

[Quite a bit more at the link]

John

---

24 Jan 08 - 10:53 AM (#2243626)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Pitter-patter of raindrops could power devices

24 January 2008
Paul Marks
Magazine issue 2640
Here's something residents of cloudy northern Europe should appreciate: a way of using rain to generate power.

Jean-Jacques Chaillout and colleagues at the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Grenoble, France, have shown that piezoelectric materials, which generate voltage in response to mechanical force, can be made to produce useful amounts of electrical power when hit by falling rain. "We thought of raindrops because they are one of the still- unexploited energy sources in nature," Chaillout says.

His team started by looking up data on different types of rainfall. Drizzle, they found, produces droplets of about 1 millimetre in diameter which have an impact energy of around 2 microjoules, while droplets from a downpour were typically 5 millimetres across and gave 1 millijoule of impact energy.

---

24 Jan 08 - 11:01 AM (#2243634)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

1814, Sir Walter Scott, Waverley:

"'D--n her gooseberry wig,' said the corporal, when she was out of hearing, 'that gimlet-eyed jade -- mother adjutant, as we call her -- is a greater plague to the regiment than the provost-marshal," ...

---

Random, yes? :D That boy could turn a phrase, no?



A

---

24 Jan 08 - 11:09 AM (#2243639)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Transplant teen who changed blood type is 'a girl in six billion'
Last updated at 15:37pm on 24.01.08


A teenage transplant patient from Australia has astounded scientists from around the world by becoming the first person ever to switch blood type and completely accept a transplanted organ.

Demi-Lee Brennan, 15, spontaneously switched from blood type O-negative to O-positive after taking on her liver donor's immune system.

Experts down under say the teenager is the living "holy grail of transplants" are have put together a team to research her against-the-odds transformation. They hope their findings will help other transplant patients and even multiple sclerosis and type-1 diabetes sufferers.

Demi-Lee suffered liver failure and had a liver transplant at the age of nine in 2001.

Several months on from the transplant, her doctors at Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney were shocked to discover her blood type had changed to match the blood type of her deceased male donor.

On closer inspection, specialists found that stem cells from the donor liver had penetrated her bone marrow, effectively resulting in a naturally occurring bone marrow transplant. It makes Demi-Lee the first person ever recorded whose body has entirely accepted a transplanted organ.

Remarkably, Demi-Lee no longer needs anti-rejection drugs to keep her alive. The drugs, known as immunosuppresants, can have toxic effects on organs and cause severe infections.

Other organ transplant patients have been taken off anti-rejection drugs, but nearly only with the aid of a bone-marrow transplant.

Head of haematology, Dr Julie Curtin, described the phenomenon as a natural bone-marrow transplant: "The holy grail of transplants was achieved.

"That's what we were trying to achieve for everybody, but Demi-Lee's body has done that itself."

Demi-Lee's doctor, Michael Stormon, said: "We were stunned, absolutely stunned, and also very puzzled," said Dr Stormon, who reported the case in Australia's New England Journal of Medicine.

---

24 Jan 08 - 11:16 AM (#2243644)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In other news reminiscent of Dickens and the wicked Fagin, police in London raided a number of houses and freed scores of children who had been smuggled into the country by a Romanian smuggling ring and forced to work as pickpockets. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, and all that. I wonder when we will get OUT of the nineteenth century?

Story here.


A

---

25 Jan 08 - 09:37 AM (#2244465)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

That Mushroom Cloud? They're Just Svejking Around

PRAGUE — One Sunday, several months ago, early risers gazing at Czech Television's CT2 channel saw picturesque panoramas of the Czech countryside, broadcast to the wordless accompaniment of elevator music. It was the usual narcoleptic morning weather show.

Then came the nuclear blast.

Across the Krkonose Mountains, or so it appeared, a white flash was followed by the spectacle of a rising mushroom cloud. A Web address at the bottom of the screen said Ztohoven.com.

Ztohoven, to no one's great surprise, turned out to be a collective of young artists and friends who had previously tinkered with a giant neon sculpture of a heart high atop Prague Castle, and managed (during a single night, no less) to insert announcements for an art opening inside all 750 lighted advertising boxes in the city's subway system.

Now half a dozen members of the group face up to three years in jail or a fine or both, charged with scaremongering and attempted scaremongering. The trial is set for March. Some Czechs expressed outrage over Ztohoven's action, naturally, but in general it drew a mild, tolerant, even amused public response, in contrast to how terrorism-related pranks, or what might seem like them, have been widely greeted elsewhere. The incident instead has highlighted an old Czech tradition of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride.

---

25 Jan 08 - 10:28 PM (#2245137)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Wired News reports:

OUNTAIN VALLEY, California -- As Southern California faces a worsening water crisis, Orange County has implemented a $480 million microfiltration system so advanced it can turn waste water into drinking water. The Groundwater Replenishment System, which started pumping purified water on Jan. 10th, is the largest of its kind in the world and will provide water to more than 100,000 Orange County families for the same or less than buying it wholesale. And because sewage is diverted to the purification system, less waste is dumped into natural water supplies.

The new plant is likely to be the first of many as other cities in California, Texas and Florida consider similar plans. Read on as we follow the filtration process on 70 million gallons a day from beginning to end, where it's pumped into the Orange County basin aquifer....

---

26 Jan 08 - 12:35 AM (#2245190)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Amos -

Wichita has been pumping "spare" water back into the Ogallala aquifer for about three years now. They claim to have raised the local level by about 3 feet - of the 30 or 40 that's been lost to the Colorado irrigators.

John

---

26 Jan 08 - 09:36 AM (#2245329)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

John:

Is this gray water or black water? What's "spare".

In other news a brief excerpt from a charming article in Slate on the rational economics of marrying:

"In Adam Smith's pin factory, if worker Elizabeth can sharpen two pins a minute and mount four pins a minute in paper, while worker James can sharpen one pin a minute and mount one pin a minute in paper, the logic of comparative advantage says that James should be sharpening pins, even though Elizabeth does the job faster. The relevant comparison is not whether Elizabeth sharpens pins faster than James but whether, relative to him, she sharpens pins faster than she mounts them in paper.

Imagine that James and Elizabeth are married; now, replace mounting pins in paper with looking after babies. Elizabeth is a more productive worker than James but also a more effective parent. James is a bad worker but a worse dad, and so Elizabeth takes the rational decision to stay home baking cookies and looking after the kids, while James tries to scrape together a living as a real estate agent. The logic of comparative advantage highlighted something that most menÑexcept economistsÑhave found it hard to get their heads around: there is no reason to believe that men were breadwinners because they were any good at it. They might simply have been breadwinners because getting them to help around the house would have been even worse."...

Grin for the day.


A

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26 Jan 08 - 09:53 AM (#2245334)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Actually, here's a link to the whole article. It is a wicked good read.


A

---

26 Jan 08 - 10:00 AM (#2245338)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Why Mike Huckabee's Tax Plan is Brilliant, in Slate Magazine, is also an interesting view on tax issues.


A

---

28 Jan 08 - 11:50 AM (#2247086)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Entire Synthetic Genome Created   

John Roach
for National Geographic News

January 25, 2008

Scientists yesterday announced that they have successfully created an entire synthetic genome in the lab by stitching together the DNA of the smallest known free-living bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium.

Experts are hailing the research as an important breakthrough in genetic manipulation that will one day lead to the "routine" creation of synthetic genomes—possibly including those of mammals.


This is "a striking technical accomplishment," biochemist Leroy Hood, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.

"It represents the initial stages of an important new step in studying how genes function together in systems to create complex phenotypes [traits]," added Hood, co-founder of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington.

Step Toward Synthetic Life

The new work is an important second step in a three-step process to the creation of synthetic life, said research leader Hamilton Smith, a biologist and Nobel laureate at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland.

The first step, reported last year by the same team at Venter's institute, was the successful transplantation of a genome from one species of bacteria into another, effectively switching the bug's identity.

"The third step, which we're working on now, is to take the chemically synthesized DNA, which is in the test tube, and get it into a bacterium where it can take over and produce a synthetic cell," Smith said. ...

---

28 Jan 08 - 08:33 PM (#2247510)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Nearly a half a billion years ago, tiny horseshoe crabs crept along the shorelines much like today's larger versions do, new fossil evidence suggests.

Two nearly complete fossil specimens discovered in Canada reveal a new genus of horseshoe crab, pushing their origins back at least 100 million years earlier than previously thought.

Dubbed Lunataspis aurora, the ancient horseshoe crab is estimated to have been just 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) from head to tail-tip. That's much smaller than its modern-day relatives that can span nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters).

---

Headgear Reverses AlzheimerÕs?
January 26th, 2008
Author Robert Roy Britt
A futuristic helmet, worn 10 minutes a day, reverses symptoms of AlzheimerÕs, its maker claims.

The helmet was built after a study at the University of Sunderland found infrared light can reverse memory loss in mice, according to The Daily Mail.

ÒCurrently all you can do with dementia is to slow down the rate of decay Ñ this new process will not only stop that rate of decay but partially reverse it,Ó said Gordon Dougal, a director of Virulite, a medical research company based in County Durham.

---

(Both from LiveScience.com's website)

---

30 Jan 08 - 10:59 AM (#2248648)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Is the Pacific splitting in two?
26 January 2008
Michael Reilly
NEw Scientist Magazine issue 2640
MOSES may have parted the Red Sea, but that was nothing compared to this feat. The world's biggest tectonic plate under the Pacific seems to be tearing apart, forming a new mid-ocean ridge and two distinct plates.

Muriel Gerbault and Valerie Clouard of the University of Chile in Santiago believe this is happening because the northern half of the plate has been moving west at a faster rate than the southern half for the past 7 million years.

North of the equator, the plate is moving relatively quickly toward the Mariana trench, where the ocean crust is disappearing into a subduction zone. Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere, the Tonga trench is consuming crust more slowly, and is itself migrating in the opposite direction to the Pacific plate. Both of these factors have slowed the movement of the southern half of the plate by as much as a centimetre per year

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30 Jan 08 - 11:51 PM (#2249258)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A leatherback turtle was tracked by satellite traveling 12,774 miles (20,558 kilometers) from Indonesia to Oregon, one of the longest recorded migrations of any vertebrate animal, scientists announced in a new report on sea turtle conservation.

Leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are the largest of all living turtles and are widely distributed throughout the world's oceans. They have been seen in the waters off Argentina, Tasmania, Alaska and Nova Scotia.

Adult leatherbacks periodically migrate from their temperate foraging grounds to breeding grounds in the tropics.

---

31 Jan 08 - 11:11 AM (#2249589)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Wall Street Journal today has an article on a widening habit--chewing on crushed ice. A lot.


"Compulsive ice eating was observed at least as far back as the 1600s, according to "Pagophagia, or Compulsive Ice Consumption: a Historical Perspective," an academic article published in the journal Psychological Medicine in 1992. Lazarus Riverius, a French royal physician, described young women afflicted with an "evil" diet ingesting great quantities of snow and ice, among other things, according to the journal article.

The American Dental Association says that ice-chewing can damage teeth. "People have the right to do things that may hurt them," says Matt Messina, a dentist in Cleveland and spokesman for the association. "If something breaks, we'll fix it."

Today, obsessive ice chewing has been linked to iron deficiency, which afflicts about 2% of U.S. adult males and as many as 16% of young females between the ages of 16 and 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Treating the deficiency -- whose link to ice eating is unclear -- tends to end the compulsive chewing for such people.

But many ice chewers say they just do it because they like to. Sometimes that leads to conflict with friends and family.


Jean Collins, a 44-year-old substitute teacher in Riverton, Wyo., says she chews through 10 to 14 28-ounce cups of shaved ice a day. "It's the first thing I did when I came home for lunch," she said in a phone interview.

She says her husband and three children have grown irritated by the frequent high-pitched whir of her ice-shaving machine -- and have threatened to destroy it. They've never followed through, but she has worn out four or five of the machines."

---

31 Jan 08 - 11:42 AM (#2249622)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In 1877 The Dodge City Times coverad a prize fight between Nelson Whitman and Red Hanley, who was billed as the "Red Bird from the South."

The Times reporter took detailed notes on Hanley's demolition: "During the forty-second round Red Hanley implored Norton (the referee) to take Nelson off for a little while till he could have time to put his right eye back where it belonged, set his jawbone and have the ragged edge trimmed off his ears where they had been chewed the worst.

This was against the rules of the ring so Norton declined, encouraging him to bear it as well as he could and squeal when he got enough. About the sisty-fifth round Red squealed unmistakably and Whitman was declared winner. Red retired from the ring in disgust."

---

31 Jan 08 - 11:46 AM (#2249627)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From the same source (a book of ohotos and essays ont he taming of the West):

"Margaret "Molly" Tobin Brown had come to Leadville from Hannibal, Missouri. At 19, short on literacy but long on Irish charm, she married James Joseph "Leadville Johnny" Brown - no relation to Henry, creator of the elite suburb, Brown discovered gold in the previously silver-rich Little Johhn mine and set her up in a stately Brown's Bluff palace that was guarded by imported Egyptian sphinxes and stone lions.

But it took more than a big house and trips to Paris, from which she returned hautely coutured and speaking French, to break into Denver society. It took the Titanic.

"On that ship, when it began to sink after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage, she grabbed command of a lifeboat, pistol in hand to enforce the women-and -children-first tradition, and kept up the spirits of her fellow cast-aways by singing hymns.

After that, even Brown's Bluff noticed the Unsinkable Molly Brown".

---

31 Jan 08 - 03:06 PM (#2249790)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"A well-connected Vatican insider who was accused of molesting young priests in training has died. Father Marcial Maciel never faced a trial nor was he punished by the Vatican despite the fact the church had asked him to stop all public ministry appearances.

A number of former priests had told Vatican investigators they were abused by Father Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, a small but wealthy Catholic order that operates in United States and 25 other countries.

The allegations were presented to Pope Benedict XVI in 1998 when he was a cardinal. Some of the accusers said then-Cardinal Ratzinger attempted to cover up the case because of Maciel's prominence and close relationship with Pope John Paul II.

The then-Cardinal Ratzinger became visibly upset when asked about the Maciel case by ABC News' Brian Ross in April 2002. "You do not ask such questions," he said and then slapped Ross's hand."

---

31 Jan 08 - 10:49 PM (#2250109)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

How to spot a wormhole in space
31 January 2008
Amarendra Swarup

IF THERE were a portal linking us to a parallel universe or some other region of space, how would we spot it? One suggestion is that it will give itself away by the curious way it bends light.

The existence of wormholes linking different regions of space was suggested in 1916 by the Austrian physicist Ludwig Flamm as a possible solution to equations of general relativity, which Einstein had published that year. They have since become accepted as a natural consequence of general relativity, which predicts that matter entering one end of a wormhole would instantly emerge somewhere else, so long as the wormhole is somehow propped open.
Though no direct evidence for wormholes has been observed, this could be because they are disguised as black holes.

---

01 Feb 08 - 03:12 AM (#2250190)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

If they're disguised as black holes, then they must have the same external characteristic as a black hole: "you can fly in but you can't fly back out." This would likely also mean that even if you flew into an indistinguishable object that looked like a black hole but might be a wormhole and successfully reached another point across the universe, you wouldn't be able to exit to find out where you were at the other end, or be able to return and exit back to your starting point?

This travel system must be provided by the same people who run some of our airlines.

John

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01 Feb 08 - 09:44 AM (#2250386)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Well, it is possible the front end is disguised, but the exit is not. I've known some businesses that have been run like that.

In other news:

Say What??

"Tonight, 200,000 men and women who wore our uniform proudly, and served this country courageously, as veterans will go to sleep under bridges, and on grates."

-- John Edwards


"Come on. The only thing sleeping under a bridge is that guy's brain. We're still looking for all the veterans sleeping under the bridges, so if you find anybody, let us know."

-- Bill O'Reilly, whose NYC office will be the site of a demonstration today by homeless vets

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01 Feb 08 - 12:25 PM (#2250542)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

One of the world's favorite operas, La bohème, had its debut performance at Teatro Regio Torino in Turin, Italy, on this date in 1896. The temperamental Arturo Toscanini conducted. Giacomo Puccini composed the romantic, sentimental music and Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa wrote the libretto about four young, poverty-stricken artists, struggling to survive a Paris winter. Puccini, Illica and Giacosa went on to collaborate on two other famous operas, Tosca and Madama Butterfly.

Quote: "God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way." — Arturo Toscanini, to a hapless trumpet player

---

01 Feb 08 - 07:51 PM (#2251020)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The U.S. Navy yesterday test fired an incredibly powerful new big gun designed to replace conventional weaponry aboard ships. Sci-fi fans will recognize its awesome power and futuristic technology.

The big gun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun, as it is called, will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact.

The test-firing, captured on video, took place Jan. 31 in Dahlgren, Va., and Navy officials called it the "world's most powerful electromagnetic railgun."

The Navy's current MK 45 five-inch gun, by contrast, has a range of less than 23 miles (37 kilometers).

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03 Feb 08 - 10:56 AM (#2252331)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Beatles hit to be played in space

Sir Paul McCartney asked Nasa to "send my love to the aliens"

"Across the Universe" by the Beatles will become the first song ever to be beamed directly into space next week, US space agency Nasa has announced.

The track will be transmitted through the Deep Space Network - a network of antennas - on the 40th anniversary of the song being recorded.

It will be aimed at the North Star, Polaris, 431 light-years from Earth.

In a message to Nasa, the former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney said the project was an "amazing" feat.

"Well done, Nasa," he added. "Send my love to the aliens. All the best, Paul."

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04 Feb 08 - 01:29 PM (#2253299)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Fresh milk from 1,100 cows will help heat up the historic salons of an 18th century castle in southwestern Sweden, a spokesman for the estate dairy producer said Saturday.

Although the 7,900 gallons of milk per day is still destined for consumers, the heat that it releases as it is chilled will warm a gym, a workshop, and a 50-room accommodation complex.

"We knew that there was a lot of energy when chilling the milk — which we do to make sure it stays fresh — and so we decided to try to put it to use," said Lennart Bengtsson, the chief executive of Wapno AB, which runs the dairy production on the castle estate situated near Halmstad, around 310 miles southwest of Stockholm.

Bengtsson said the estate had considered both biogas and windpower solutions as the castle looked to shift from its old oil-heating system, but that it finally settled on its own environmentally friendly "milk-heating" solution.

The castle's milk-heating system will start up in the next few weeks, while other buildings will be added at a later stage.

---

04 Feb 08 - 11:43 PM (#2253774)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Lonesome EJ

For Rapaire...
Cahokian.

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05 Feb 08 - 05:29 PM (#2254447)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

http://bcast1.imaginova.com/t?r=2&ctl=291F4:34C72


Lunar eclipses are wondrous celestial events that have launched many
curious onlookers into the fascinating world of astronomy. On the
evening of February 20, 2008, viewers across the Americas and much
of Europe will be treated to the third total lunar eclipse in eleven
months!   

The eclipse will enter its umbral phase, as the Moon rises in the
East just after 6pm (PST). At about 16¡ above the eastern horizon
in the constellation Leo, and lasting just over 50 minutes in
totality, this eclipse should provide a great opportunity for some
detailed lunar observation.

---

06 Feb 08 - 01:42 PM (#2255134)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

This is the opening session of the ninth annual meeting of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA) in Chicago. Sandberg and his fellow transhumanists plan to bypass death by using technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), genetic engineering and nanotechnology to radically accelerate human evolution, eventually merging people with machines to make us immortal. This may not be possible yet, the transhumanists reason, but as long as they live long enough - a few decades perhaps - the technology will surely catch up....

From New Scientist on-line.



A

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06 Feb 08 - 03:04 PM (#2255224)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Dark matter is supposed to be spread throughout the universe, but a new study reports a spiral galaxy that seems to be empty of the stuff, and astrophysicists cannot easily explain why.

In the outer regions of most galaxies, stars orbit around the centre so fast that they should fly away. The combined mass of all the observable inner stars and gas does not exert strong enough gravity to hold onto these speeding outliers, suggesting some mass is missing.
Most astronomers believe that the missing mass is made up of some exotic invisible substance, labelled dark matter, which forms vast spherical halos around each galaxy. Another possibility is that the force of gravity behaves in an unexpected way, a theory known as modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND.

In the spiral galaxy NGC 4736, however, the rotation slows down as you move farther out from the crowded inner reaches of the galaxy. At first glance, that declining rotation curve is just what you would expect if there is no extended halo of dark matter, and no modification to gravity. As you move far away from the swarming stars of the inner galaxy, gravity becomes weaker, and so motions become more sedate.

The rotation measurements only stretch 35,000 light years out from the galactic centre, which is not far enough to confirm that first impression. So a team of astronomers in Poland developed a more sophisticated analysis.

Joanna Jalocha, Lukasz Bratek and Marek Kutschera of the Polish Academy of Science in Krakow have found a way to splice the rotation curve together with another measurement: the density of hydrogen gas far from the galactic centre.

According to their combined mathematical model, ordinary luminous stars and gas can indeed account for all the mass in NGC 4736.
Sceptical response"If this paper is correct, then this galaxy contains very little or no dark matter," says astrophysicist Jürg Diemand of the University of California, Santa Cruz, US, who is not a member of the team. "That is surprising."

Diemand says numerous other techniques – including studies of how galaxies move inside clusters and measurements of the big bang's afterglow – all show evidence for dark matter.

So could the new analysis be faulty? "One really needs excellent data to pull this off," says Stacy McGaugh of the University of Maryland in College Park, US, an expert in galaxy formation and evolution. "I'm afraid my grumpy first impression is that I just don't buy it."

Great puzzle

McGaugh points out that other galaxies have shown declining rotation curves, but later observations have always shown that beyond a certain distance, they flatten out, which can't be explained by ordinary gravity from visible stars and gas. "If we believe this decline, it seems like the exception and not the rule," he says.
Even then, one exceptional dark-matter-less galaxy would be a great puzzle. "The current picture is that galaxies form inside of dark matter halos," Diemand told New Scientist. The dark matter's gravity attracts ordinary gas, which can then coagulate into stars.

"It is unclear how one would form a galaxy without a dark halo, or how one could remove the halo without destroying the galaxy," says Diemand. "A galaxy without dark matter really does not fit into our current understanding of cosmology and galaxy formation."

---

I love a good puzzle. Suppose these observations are true? What event in history could possibly account for such an anomaly?



A

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06 Feb 08 - 03:57 PM (#2255284)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

2008: Does time travel start here?
09 February 2008
Michael Brooks
Magazine issue 2642
AS YOU may have heard, this will be the year. The Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - will be switched on, and particle physics will hit pay-dirt. Yet if a pair of Russian mathematicians are right, any advances in this area could be overshadowed by a truly extraordinary event. According to Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, the LHC might just turn out to be the world's first time machine.

It is a highly speculative claim, that's for sure. But if Aref'eva and Volovich are correct, the LHC's debut at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, could provide a landmark in history. That's because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the creation of the first time machine, and that means 2008 could become Year Zero...


(New Scientist)

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07 Feb 08 - 10:37 PM (#2256502)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bill D

Bacterium from Mars?

"Deinococcus radiodurans has been listed as the world's toughest bacterium in The Guinness Book of World Records because of its extraordinary resistance to extreme conditions. It is the most radioresistant organism known to science and is able to rapidly repair damage to its genome."

"Conan the bacterium"

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08 Feb 08 - 10:52 AM (#2256810)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Weighing barely an ounce each, the butterflies have been clocked at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, observed as high as 12,000 feet and seen to fly 375 miles over open water. There are at least three major monarch broods in the Americas but only the largest, which lives east of the Rocky Mountains, travels such daunting distances -- farther than any other known insect species.

Seeking the secret of time and the butterfly, Dr. Reppert and his colleagues studied rhythmic molecular changes in the four brain cells that serve as the monarch's timing device. He discovered that two similar light-sensitive genes drive the clockworks. The first, common to plants and insects, is sensitive to blue light and appears to synchronize the cells to cycles of light and darkness.

The second gene "stunned" the scientists, Dr. Reppert said, because it so closely resembled one previously found only in humans and other mammals. It doesn't respond to light directly but, when triggered, makes a rising amount of protein that measures the passage of time since it was last activated.

"It functions in the butterfly clock almost identically to the way it functions in our clock," he said.

To completely decipher the biology of monarch navigation, Dr. Reppert and his collaborators at SymBio Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif., started last summer to sequence the 250 million base pairs of DNA that make up the butterfly's entire genome. "When you do something like this, you may discover a lot of genes," said company CEO Robert Feldman. "It is an iconic insect."

In small things considered is the world revealed.

(Wall Street Journal)

---

09 Feb 08 - 12:34 PM (#2257743)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

LONDON - After the Sunday service in Westminster Chapel, where worshippers were exhorted to wage "the culture war" in the World War II spirit of Sir Winston Churchill, cabbie James McLean delivered his verdict on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"Evolution is a lie, and it's being taught in schools as fact, and it's leading our kids in the wrong direction," said McLean, chatting outside the chapel. "But now people like Ken Ham are tearing evolution to pieces."

Ken Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, a Kentucky-based organization that is part of an ambitious effort to bring creationist theory to Britain and the rest of Europe. McLean is one of a growing number of evangelicals embracing that message -- that the true history of the Earth is told in the Bible, not Darwin's "The Origin of Species."

Europeans have long viewed the conflict between evolutionists and creationists as primarily an American phenomenon, but it has recently jumped the Atlantic Ocean with skirmishes in Italy, Germany, Poland and, notably, Britain, where Darwin was born and where he published his 1859 classic.

Darwin's defenders are fighting back. In October, the 47-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, condemned all attempts to bring creationism into Europe's schools. Bible-based theories and "religious dogma" threaten to undercut sound educational practices, it charged.... (Newsday.com)

---

If people were only as enthusiastic about gathering data as they are about promulgating conclusions from false or incomplete data, the world would be so much nicer...


A

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09 Feb 08 - 02:27 PM (#2257853)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

LiveScience.com   

SETI Battle of the Bandwidth: Beatles Outsignaled by Bob Marley

February 3rd, 2008
Author Leonard David
Blasting Beatle music into the cosmos in a Òhi-frequencyÓ hello to aliens is behind the power curve.

Using its Deep Space Network, NASA is blasting the Beatles Across the Universe directly into deep space at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, February 4th. The transmission is being aimed at the North Star, Polaris, which is located 431 light years away from Earth.

But Jamaican musician Bob Marley and his reggae rhythms were shot spaceward some nine years ago. ThatÕs the word from Charles Chafer, the Chief Executive Officer and originator of the Cosmic Call concept. He reminded me of the following:

ÒIn 1999 and again in 2002, my company leased the large (70 meter) steerable radio astronomy dish in Evpatoriya, Ukraine from Energia and the Ukrainian Air Force. Under the direction of Russian Academy of Sciences astronomer, Dr. Alexander Zaitsev, and Richard Brastaad, we beamed over 100,000 messages from people from all over the world to several stars selected on the basis of possibly having an Earth-like planet near them,Ó Chafer said.

ÒI used my prerogative to be certain that the music of Robert Nesta Marley Ñ the song, One Love Ð was included in both transmissions. I love the Beatles, but somehow I felt that Bob MarleyÕs music best captured the spirit of the planet, so I selected that song as a representation of Planet Earth,Ó Chafer advised me.

Meanwhile, thereÕs quite the discussion underway regarding intentional broadcasting to alien civilizations, an off-shoot from the traditional Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in listen-only mode. Do we want to tip off our hand that we are hereÉradio waving to less than friendly aliens?

ItÕs dubbed ÒActive SETIÓ - and I asked astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute to relay to me what he thinks.

ÒI am sympathetic to the idea that active SETI might be a worthy endeavor. The problems are (1) who will pay for it, given that even passive SETI Ñ which could succeed virtually immediately Ñ doesnÕt ever seem to be over-abundant with funds, and (2) what is the strategy? Just pinging random star systems would take a very long time with the kind of equipment we can muster, and then thereÕs always the matter of monitoring for replies that would be at least decades away,Ó Shostak told me. (...)

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11 Feb 08 - 11:04 PM (#2260053)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Hitler's 'lost fleet' of U-boats found in the Black Sea


By Andy McSmith
Monday, 11 February 2008

Excerpt:

"For years, German submarines U-19, U-20, and U-23 were a terrifying presence beneath the waves, preying on British and Russian shipping. Then, 60 years ago, they suddenly vanished to the bottom of the Black Sea.

Now the hulk of one of the lost submarines has been found by divers who are confident they can pinpoint the other two boats too.

The fate of "Hitler's lost fleet" was the talking point of a conference on international shipwrecks at Plymouth University at the weekend, when the Turkish marine engineer Selcuk Kolay described his painstaking search for the missing wrecks..."

---

12 Feb 08 - 02:09 PM (#2260585)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

By Wayne Drash
CNN

   
(CNN) -- Military supporters descended on Berkeley early Tuesday, demanding the famously liberal California college town rescind its vote that says Marine recruiters are "not welcome in this city."

The pro-military demonstrators were met by anti-war protesters who had camped out overnight, setting the stage for a dramatic showdown late in the day when the City Council is to discuss whether to revoke its previous vote.

"Their treasonous action, especially at this time of war right now, is not acceptable," said Mary Pearson, a spokeswoman for the group Move America Forward.

"It's very, very important for everyone to stand united ... to give our Marines and all of our military the greatest respect and honor that they deserve."

Before the sun was even up, about 300 demonstrators -- both pro-military and anti-war -- were already standing toe-to-toe in downtown. Many traded jeers and sneers.

"Code Pink doesn't stand for us," one sign said, held by a man in military fatigues. Signs held by anti-war activists read, "End the War" and "Bring the troops home now."

The City Council is to meet at 7 p.m. PT on whether to take back its previous measure urging the Marine recruiters to leave town.

"If recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders," the measure says.

It went on to say the council applauds residents and organizations that "volunteer to impede, passively or actively, by nonviolent means, the work of any military recruiting office located in the City of Berkeley."

Ever since the council measure, protesters with the anti-war group Code Pink have camped outside the Marine recruiting office on Shattuck Avenue, singing peace songs and chanting slogans for an end to the Iraq war.   

Republican lawmakers in Washington fired back last week, threatening to recall more than $2 million of federal funding to the city as well as money designated for the University of California-Berkeley, the campus that became a bastion of liberalism during the Vietnam War.

---

13 Feb 08 - 12:27 AM (#2261134)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Venezuela's state oil company said Tuesday that it has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil Corp. in response to the U.S. oil company's drive to use the courts to seize billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets.


President Hugo Chavez has said Exxon Mobil is no longer welcome to do business in Venezuela.

Exxon Mobil is locked in a dispute over the nationalization of its oil ventures in Venezuela that has led President Hugo Chavez to threaten to cut off all Venezuelan oil supplies to the United States.

Venezuela is currently the United States' fourth largest oil supplier.

Tuesday's announcement by state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, was limited to Exxon Mobil, which PDVSA accused of "judicial-economic harassment" for its efforts in U.S. and European courts.

PDVSA said it "has paralyzed sales of crude to Exxon Mobil" and suspended commercial relations with the Irving, Texas-based company.

"The legal actions carried out by the U.S. transnational are unnecessary ... and hostile," PDVSA said in the statement.

It said it will honor any existing contracts it has with Exxon Mobil for joint investments abroad, but reserved the right to terminate them if permitted by the terms of the contracts.

---

13 Feb 08 - 09:28 AM (#2261335)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Did T. rex have a penis? Did he even, as lizards do, have two?
I ask the question not out of prurience, but because it's a matter of scientific interest. There are a couple of reasons why. First, the penis is another important indicator of the mating system. In species where females usually mate with a single male during a breeding episode, penises tend to be small and uninteresting. In those where females mate with several males (whether by choice or by force), penises are typically larger, and come with fancy decorations such as grooves, nobbles, and spikes. Second, the question of the dinosaur penis provides an exercise in evolutionary inference.
The reason we don't know whether T. rex had one is that the organ is generally too soft to leave a fossil trace. (There's an exception to this: some mammals have a bone in their penis, the os penis or baculum. This can fossilize. Humans are unusual among primates in not having one; in case you're wondering, it's not clear whether the bone plays a role in maintaining erections.)
Moreover, whether a male has a penis at all varies from one group to the next. Male salamanders, for instance, don't: they deposit sperm on the ground and the female collects it. Among birds, penises are rare: ostriches, emus, ducks, geese and swans are among the few. The rest just have a cloaca — an all-purpose opening also used for urination, defecation and, in the female, laying eggs. To copulate, two birds bring their cloacae together in what's called a cloacal kiss.
So what can we say about dinosaurs? My guess is that the males had members — but it's an educated guess
..." NYT

---

13 Feb 08 - 09:55 AM (#2261349)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks, principal investigator of the new study. A popular theory, that muscles become tired because they release lactic acid, was discredited not long ago.

In a report published Monday in an early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Marks says the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells control muscle contractions. But when muscles grow tired, the investigators report, tiny channels in them start leaking calcium, and that weakens contractions. At the same time, the leaked calcium stimulates an enzyme that eats into muscle fibers, contributing to the muscle exhaustion.

---

13 Feb 08 - 10:51 AM (#2261394)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The USA executed 8 Japanese military officers for water boarding Americans.
Back then it was simply called water torture.

THe USA says we only want to use "it" if there is a nuclear bomb about to go off in the USA.

You would thnk that the Japanese officers would have had a credible defense since a nuclear bomb DID eventually go off in their country...twice.

---

13 Feb 08 - 10:54 AM (#2261396)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos why was this post closed: Did you go and question authority AGAIN?


Subject: RE: BS: Obama LOVES Bush
From: Amos - PM
Date: 12 Feb 08 - 10:40 PM

. It's not up to people who are ordered to do something by the authorities to determine whether the authorities are or are not acting within the law. Federal agents don't play nice. They don't ask politely. They expect to be obeyed. If not, they can arrange for a wide variety of unpleasant occurences. One phone call to their friends over at the IRS and your tax returns for the last seven years get audited.

Unfortunately this was the exact type of defense raised during the Nuremburg trials. Being ordered to break the law, and doing so, is still breaking the law. While this makes it tough on individual conscience, it is the only rational position to take if you are to have a rule of law, rather than a rule of Unary Executive bullying.

In the final analysis, orders are not above law, and the individual citizen has to answer to his own conscience and the law. Forgiving them, because it was ordered by the same agency, in broad, as is doing the forgiving, is just convenient as all hell.

I can only pray that Obama stands for better standards when he becomes President. I'd be interested to hear his rationalization for this call, which I find disappointing, as I already said.


A

---

13 Feb 08 - 11:19 AM (#2261415)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IF the thread was closed, it was because it was originated on false premises, and was strongly inclined toward ad hominem and vituperative style of communication not highly favored inthese parts.

He did not make the call of which I spoke, as you would have seen further along in the thread.


A

---

13 Feb 08 - 11:35 AM (#2261434)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

13 Feb 08 - 09:55 AM: For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks ... In a report published Monday¹ in an early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Marks says the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells

¹ Monday of this year? - - As no link to source was given, I had to look this up for myself, and find numerous descriptions exactly matching what's said above dating as far back as 1997 (and possibly earlier for a couple undated ones).

I'll watch for something new on the subject though.

John

---

13 Feb 08 - 11:38 AM (#2261440)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Two-hundred random traces...



A

---

13 Feb 08 - 11:55 AM (#2261458)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Mr. Stern's criticisms can be irksome to members of the city's Education Department, but they are heard.

"Sol is a pundit, and pundits have lots of ideas," said David Cantor, a spokesman for the department. "Some of his have been helpful."

Despite his obvious appetite for stirring controversy, Mr. Stern can sound as though he is on the edge of despair.

"We've been arguing about the same things for the last 10 years," he said. "Sometimes I tell my friends that I have fallen into the trap of writing about the two most intractable problems in the world: American education and the Middle East."

" (NYT)

---

13 Feb 08 - 03:05 PM (#2261630)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

John
Look up myalgia or the after effects of lyme disease and other chronic fatigue symptomology and treatment.

There are successful treatments that include antibiotics all the way to synthetic narcotic.

There is a lot of progress despite some of the medical establishment looking the other way.

---

13 Feb 08 - 06:07 PM (#2261745)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Photos of gorillas having intercourse face-to-face have been taken for the first time, according to this article in LiveScience.

---

13 Feb 08 - 06:31 PM (#2261771)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Amos -

Nice picture of the gorillas; but they're doing it sitting and not standing - and in the grass not in a canoe. They can't be too advanced as lovers ...

Actually the comment about the "smart" female observed "using a tool" is about as "significant" for gorilla watchers as the bit about how they have sex. It's probably well known to serious followers, but is the first note I've seen/noticed on that for gorillas. (I never doubted that the gorillas would "use tools," since I've noted even some house cats doing that. I hadn't seen that the researchers had recognized and reported it as such.)

John

---

14 Feb 08 - 04:56 PM (#2262572)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Shades of "The Crucible":


"Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.


In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.

'Undefined' crime

The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih's conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.

Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.

Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.

The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.

Also Ms Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings.

When an appeal court decided she should not be executed, the law courts imposed the death sentence again, arguing that it would be in the public interest. "


A

---

14 Feb 08 - 05:13 PM (#2262584)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A row has erupted in Australia after Sydney's zoo announced a nine-year-old Asian elephant was pregnant.

Animal rights groups say the elephant, Thong Dee, is too young to fall pregnant, and that the zoo is "irresponsible" in letting it happen.

This was "the equivalent of allowing your 12-year-old daughter to become pregnant", said Erica Martin of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

But keepers at Taronga Zoo say they took expert advice and acted on this.

"We took our advice from the experts in elephant reproduction," says Lucy Melo, senior keeper at the zoo.

"And based on their findings, when they came here and did elephant reproductive assessments... they suggested that all of the elephants were reproductively viable, and that they actually recommended Thong Dee for immediate breeding."

---

14 Feb 08 - 07:52 PM (#2262709)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Forgetfulness is key to a healthy mind
16 February 2008
Jessica Marshall
New Scientist Magazine issue 2643

SOME things in life are best forgotten. Unfortunately for AJ, forgetting is a luxury she can only dream of. A 42-year-old woman from California, AJ remembers every day of her life since her teens in extraordinary detail. Mention any date since 1980 and she is immediately transported back in time, picturing where she was, what she was doing, and what made the news that day. It's an ability that has baffled and amazed her family and friends for several decades, but it comes at a price. AJ is locked in a cycle of remembering that she describes as a "running movie that never stops". Even when she wants to, AJ cannot forget.
She is one of a handful of people with similar abilities now working with neuroscientists to find out how and why they remember so much. ...

---

14 Feb 08 - 08:03 PM (#2262715)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

This blog documents the tortuous steps of trying to teach a computer to understand what it means to be in love.

Looks a bit like a Mudcat thead! :D


A

---

15 Feb 08 - 10:13 AM (#2263079)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The map shows the impact of human life on the oceans of the world, at least on the surface. (Land masses are light gray; water regions are colored by scale).


A

---

15 Feb 08 - 10:33 AM (#2263108)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Tiger parts are still being widely sold in Sumatra, Indonesia, warns a new report. However, with tiger numbers dwindling, the illegal trade is looking like an increasingly unsustainable, as well as unsavoury, business.

Traffic, a wildlife monitoring network which works with WWF and the World Conservation Union, says the number of Sumatran tigers that are being illegally poached and sold is dropping. But that is not good news.

The group surveyed 326 shops across the Indonesian island of Sumatra in 2006 and found that 33 were selling body parts amounting to at least 23 tigers.

"This is down from an estimate of 52 killed per year in 1999-2000," says Julia Ng, lead author on new report. "Sadly, the decline appears to be due to the dwindling number of tigers left in the wild."

Conservation groups say the Indonesian government is not doing enough to protect the tiger subspecies despite ample evidence of their decline.

Tiger body parts, including canine teeth, claws, skin and whiskers, are believed to bring good luck to those who wear them and to give protection from black magic. The bones of the right front paw are sometimes "infused" in a glass of warm water, which is then drunk to treat headaches.

(New Scientist)

---

16 Feb 08 - 10:22 AM (#2263786)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles have synthesized a class of spongelike crystals that can soak up carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas in industrial emissions.

The crystals - zeolitic imidazolate frameworks, or ZIFs - are grids of metal atoms and organic molecules that loosely trap carbon dioxide as it drifts into microscopic pores. The researchers believe that atomic charges hold the gas in place.


One variety, ZIF-69, is so absorbent that a single liter of it can hold 83 liters of carbon dioxide, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Science.

The crystals could be tailored to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, factories and other industrial sources, said Omar M. Yaghi, the chemist from UCLA who led the study.

The idea is to line the insides of smokestacks with a layer of ZIF. Carbon dioxide that enters the pores could be sucked out periodically and sequestered underground.

Yaghi said the material also could be used to line vehicle exhaust systems. (LAT)

---

16 Feb 08 - 03:02 PM (#2264012)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In certain regions of Nepal, very young girls are chosen to act as "Goddesses" for a number of years.

"There are currently 12 sitting Kumaris, a word that means "virgin" in Nepali. But it is the Kumari of Basantapur who is the most important of all the worshiped virgins. She is worshiped by the king of Nepal and is believed to bestow strength on his monarchy.

A committee of Buddhist priests selects each Kumari through a process that begins once a young candidate has lost her first baby tooth. The Kumari's time in the spotlight is short: She must abdicate immediately after her first menstruation. At that point, the Kumari is expected to transition back to a normal childhood. .

The debate and its implications have hardly impressed Rashmila Shakya, who was a principal Kumari from 1984 to 1992. Being worshiped as a living goddess, Ms. Shakya says, was a privilege.

"It was fun. No one was mad at me. I didn't have to work either. I spent my days playing with dolls," Shakya says in her freshly cemented four-story house in central Kathmandu.

But when asked about the court case, her answer is just as simple: "That's politics. I don't want to get into that." Soft-spoken and shy, Shakya says she feels fortunate to have experienced both the lives of a goddess and a mortal. Her only regret is that she was not able to receive a formal education. "I used to get books used in the school curriculum. But there was no one pushing me to study, and I didn't sit for exams either," she says.

During her Kumari years, Shakya was allowed to meet with her biological family several times a year. She liked living with her caretaker family despite having to always wear makeup and the stiff, formal gown of the goddess.

After returning home in 1992 at the age of 12, she found the transition difficult. But a meeting with another former Kumari - a decade after returning to society - deepened her resolve to lead a normal, educated life. "I saw her sitting in her room, quietly, all made-up the way we used to be at the Kumari House. She still believed she was a goddess," she says. "I told myself this is not the way I am going to spend the rest of my life.""

(Shakya recently completeld a B. S. degree).


A

---

18 Feb 08 - 09:55 AM (#2265327)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Dumbing Of America
Call Me a Snob, but Really, We're a Nation of Dunces



By Susan Jacoby
Sunday, February 17, 2008; Page B01

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today's very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an "elitist," one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just "folks," a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: "We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.") Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country's democratic impulses in religion and education. But today's brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism. ...

Full article in the Washington Post...

---

20 Feb 08 - 12:02 PM (#2267485)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Nancy Nipples started the Pike Place Market Creamery in Seattle 30 years ago, selling milk, butter, cream and the like to help local independent dairies. It didn't help enough, and little by little they disappeared. "Last year a whole new group of local independent dairies started up a new cycle," Ms. Nipples said. "Hallelujah! The cream has 40 to 45 percent butter fat so you don't have to chant over it to whip it." (Nancy Nipples is the name she uses to sign checks; her full name, taken after a divorce, is Nancy Nipples the Milkmaid.)"

---

20 Feb 08 - 12:07 PM (#2267494)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 19 (UPI) -- A video by Will.i.am and George Pajon, Jr., in support of U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been viewed an estimated 6 million times.


Directed by Jesse Dylan, the "Yes We Can" video was released last week and can be viewed on

http://www.dipdive.com/;
http://www.yeswecansong.com/ and
http://www.youtube.com/

---

20 Feb 08 - 12:13 PM (#2267504)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

VATICAN CITY, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- The Vatican Monday issued a new set of rules tightening criteria for declaring someone a saint in a move seen as a return to more traditional practices.

Related Headlines
Vatican to tighten canonization process (February 12, 2008) -- A Vatican document calls for bishops to use greater sobriety and rigor when considering potential saints, the cardinal in charge of the process .

The 100-page document released instructs Catholic bishops to be tougher when deciding which candidates for sainthood can begin the official procedures leading to canonization, Italy's ANSA news agency reports.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, head of the Vatican's saints department, writes the new rules ask bishops to show "greater sobriety and rigor" when accepting requests to begin the first phase of the proceedings.

...

---

20 Feb 08 - 02:07 PM (#2267635)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future. Now ... I do recognize that non-human animals often act as though they have the capacity to think about the future. ... For example ... the squirrels in my yard act as though they know they will be unable to eat later unless they bury some food now ... [but instead] they have regular squirrel brains that run food-burying programs when the amount of sunlight that enters their regular squirrel eyes decreases by a critical amount. Shortened days trigger burying behavior with no intervening contemplation of tomorrow ... Until a chimp weeps at the thought of growing old alone, or turns down a Fudgesicle because it already looks to fat in shorts, I will stand by my [statement]. We think about the future in a way that no other animal can, does, or ever has, and this simple, ubiquitous, ordinary act is a defining feature of our humanity. ...

"The greatest achievements of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real, and it is this ability that allows us to think about the future. As one philosopher noted, the human brain is an 'anticipation machine,' and 'making future' is the most important thing it does."

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, Knopf, 2006,

---

20 Feb 08 - 02:26 PM (#2267650)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW YORK (AP) -- A man was charged with withdrawing $2 million from an account after a bank confused him with a man who has the same name.

Benjamin Lovell was arraigned Tuesday on grand larceny charges. The 48-year-old salesman said he tried to tell officials at Commerce Bank in December that he did not have a $5 million account. He says he was told it was his and he could withdraw the money.

Prosecutors said the bank -- which advertises itself as America's Most Convenient Bank -- confused Lovell with a Benjamin Lovell who works for a property management company.

The lesser-funded Lovell gave away some of the withdrawn money and blew some of it on gifts, but lost much of it on bad investments, prosecutors said.

---

20 Feb 08 - 04:41 PM (#2267810)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Florida's Education Evolution


Yesterday, the Florida Board of Education voted 4-3 to adopt new science standards that, for the first time, would require public schools to teach evolution.ÊPreviously, Florida's science standards referred to evolution as "biological changes over time," but those rules "were slammed by scientists as vague and shallow." The new standards are intended to "make science learning more in depth" and "improve the understanding of science by Florida students, who do poorly in the subject area when tested." In fact, a 2005 national review gave Florida's science standards a failing grade because of their "superficiality of the treatment of evolutionary biology" and for "fudging or obfuscating the entire basis on which biology rests." The new science proposal -- which won the approval of the National Academy of Sciences -- defined evolution as "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" and one "supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence." But instead of accepting thisÊscientific standard,Êthe Florida Board approved "a last-minute alternative"Êfollowing numerous public complaints and objections made by religious conservatives. The new Florida school science standard on evolutionÊwill come with a caveat:Ê"The subject will be taught as 'the scientific theory of evolution.'"

---

21 Feb 08 - 05:32 PM (#2268959)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Hitting a major milestone in nanotechnology, IBM researchers have figured out how to measure the amount of force needed to move an atom.


"IBM has been involved in atomic manipulation for 20 years," said Andreas Heinrich, a researcher and project leader at IBM. "What we have now is a way to quantify why we can move certain things, because now we know the forces involved. It's going from a trial-and-error stage to a more systematic way of doing things. It will be easier to build stuff once you have this knowledge."

Heinrich noted that in 1989 IBM Fellow Don Eigler showed off the ability to manipulate individual atoms with atomic-scale precision. Now about 20 years later, Heinrich and Markus Ternes, a post doctoral scientist at IBM, worked with scientists at the University of Regensburg to devise a way to calculate the force needed to manipulate those individual atoms.

Understanding the force required to move an atom is key to nanotechnology, according to Ternes. He explained that it's like engineers figuring out how to build a bridge over a large river. They both need to understand the strength of the different materials. How much force would it take to make a piece of metal bend? How much force would it take to move a cobalt atom over a copper surface? They're similar questions that all need to be answered in order to build a bridge or a nanoscale storage device.

---

24 Feb 08 - 10:18 AM (#2270951)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A new report in The Journal of Adolescence this month suggests that when it comes to sex, girls and dating, boys are more complex than we typically give them credit for. While hormonal urges are no doubt an important part of a teenage boyÕs life, they arenÕt necessarily the defining trait influencing a boyÕs relationships with girls.

Psychology researchers from the State University of New York at Oswego recently examined data collected from 105 10th-grade boys, average age 16, who answered questions about a number of health behaviors. In questions put to them about girls (most of the boys self-identified as heterosexual), the teenagers were asked to note their reasons for pursuing a relationship. The top answer, marked by 80 percent of the boys? ÒI really liked the person.Ó

(NYT)

---

25 Feb 08 - 11:39 PM (#2272456)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Most cells in our bodies sport hair-like organelles called cilia that help out with a variety of functions, from digestion to hearing. In the nose, cilia help to drain mucus from the nasal cavity down to the throat. Cold weather slows down the draining process, causing a mucus backup that can leave you with snotty sleeves. Swollen nasal membranes or condensation can also cause a stuffed schnozzle.

---

26 Feb 08 - 11:09 AM (#2272754)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The propensity to make music is the most mysterious, wonderful, and neglected feature of humankind: this is where Steven Mithen began, drawing together strands from archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience--and, of course, musicology--to explain why we are so compelled to make and hear music. But music could not be explained without addressing language, and could not be accounted for without understanding the evolution of the human body and mind. Thus Mithen arrived at the wildly ambitious project that unfolds in this book: an exploration of music as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, encoded into the human genome during the evolutionary history of our species.

Music is the language of emotion, common wisdom tells us. In The Singing Neanderthals, Mithen introduces us to the science that might support such popular notions. With equal parts scientific rigor and charm, he marshals current evidence about social organization, tool and weapon technologies, hunting and scavenging strategies, habits and brain capacity of all our hominid ancestors, from australopithecines to Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals to Homo sapiens--and comes up with a scenario for a shared musical and linguistic heritage. Along the way he weaves a tapestry of cognitive and expressive worlds--alive with vocalized sound, communal mimicry, sexual display, and rhythmic movement--of various species.

The result is a fascinating work--and a succinct riposte to those, like Steven Pinker, who have dismissed music as a functionless evolutionary byproduct.

---

26 Feb 08 - 10:26 PM (#2273301)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

LIMA (Reuters) - A ceremonial plaza built 5,500 years ago has been discovered in Peru, and archeologists involved in the dig said on Monday carbon dating shows it is one of the oldest structures ever found in the Americas.


A team of Peruvian and German archeologists uncovered the circular plaza, which was hidden beneath another piece of architecture at the ruins known as Sechin Bajo, in Casma, 229 miles north of Lima, the capital. Friezes depicting a warrior with a knife and trophies were found near the plaza.

"It's an impressive find; the scientific and archeology communities are very happy," said Cesar Perez, the scientist at Peru's National Institute of Culture who supervised the project. "This could redesign the history of the country."

Prior to the discovery at Sechin Bajo, archeologists considered the ancient Peruvian citadel of Caral to be one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, at about 5,000 years.

Scientists say Caral, located a few hours drive from Sechin Bajo, was one of six places in the world -- along with Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India and Mesoamerica -- where humans started living in cities about 5,000 years ago.

---

28 Feb 08 - 09:43 AM (#2274683)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president." - Kurt Vonnegut

---

28 Feb 08 - 10:45 AM (#2274760)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday approved a bill to extend more than $17 billion in tax credits and other incentives to encourage the production of energy from solar, wind and other renewable sources, and to promote energy conservation. The bill would be financed by ending tax incentives for oil and natural gas producers.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Senator Pete V. Domenici has opposed any effort to end incentives for oil and gas.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed to record profits and a need to repeal "subsidies to big oil."

Democratic leaders in the House hailed the legislation as a step toward energy independence and a moral victory for protecting the environment, by encouraging production of clean alternative fuels. But the White House threatened to veto the bill, saying it would be a mistake to increase the tax burden on American oil companies.

Similar legislation has failed to pass the Senate on three occasions over the last year, including an effort in December when the package of tax credits for renewable energy fell just one vote short of the 60 needed to advance it.

Senate Democrats say they still hope to get it approved. But Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the senior Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has opposed any effort to end the tax incentives for domestic production of oil and gas.

"Why would you tax oil when we are having troubles, when we aren't producing enough; we are importing it all?" Mr. Domenici said this month. "A tax on oil production in the United States? It seems kind of dumb to me."

In a statement after the House vote, Mr. Domenici denounced the bill and said Democrats were hurting the chances of extending the tax credits for alternative energy by tying them to ending the tax incentives for oil and gas.

"These tax credits for wind, solar, biomass and other technologies are set to expire at the end of this year," he said. "It is clear to me that America must pursue all its available resources if we are to meet our energy challenges."

During debate on the House floor, however, Democrats sought to frame the issue around the steep increase in gasoline prices and record profits for oil companies, a theme that they intend to focus on through this election year, along with their criticism of the Iraq war.

"Gasoline at the pump has gone up 75 cents, 75 cents since we first took up this legislation," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a speech supporting the bill. "Imagine what that means to a household income."

"The price at the pump increased 17 cents just in the past two weeks," Ms. Pelosi, of California, continued. "Just yesterday oil prices reached another new record at $101 per barrel. This is at a time when oil companies are making record profits. Last year, ExxonMobil earned $40.6 billion in profits, the largest corporate profit in American history, and yet the administration refused to repeal billions of dollars in subsidies to big oil."
...

---

It might be smarter to impose the burden on imports, But however it is done, steering the nation toward energy independence is critical, mandatory, essential and a primary goal. It is worth a lot. It would completely rewrite the political dynamics that have ruined so many lives in the Middle East, and would hopefully do so for the better.

A

---

28 Feb 08 - 04:09 PM (#2275097)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Exterminators looking for termites in a monastery in Brazil's biggest city of Sao Paulo found a mummy and a skeleton believed to be at least 200 years old, the head of the monastery said on Tuesday.

"There were some mounds of termite dust and the exterminators broke into the walls to see what was in there," Father Armenio Rodrigues Nogueira, who is in charge of the monastery, one of the city's oldest, told Reuters.

"It was a huge surprise."

The bodies, believed to be two nuns, were found weeks ago, but officials at the Mosteiro da Luz (Monastery of Light) decided to keep them secret while the Institute for National Artistic and Historical Heritage did further research.

The Catholic monastery was founded in 1774 by Brazil's first saint, Antonio Galvao, about 50 years before the nation's independence from colonial power Portugal.

---

28 Feb 08 - 05:19 PM (#2275179)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

George Bush has given Turkey permission to bonb the hell out of the Kurds.

It wasn't too long ago when were told how Saddam gassed Kurds with weapons of mass destruction (he bought the gas from US...shhhh) and how we needed to get in there to save them.

The Kurds have now been quadruple crossed by the USA.

---

28 Feb 08 - 11:10 PM (#2275390)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

FRACTALS THROUGH TIME.

A new theoretical study looks at what
fractal things look like not just when you magnify them in space
(they are scale invariant: they look the same even at finer and
finer size scales) but also when you magnify them in time---that is,
when you look at them over finer and finer time intervals. Fractals
are those geometrical shapes so tortuously indented as to take on
extra dimensionality. For example, a nominally one-dimensional
curve can, with enough switchbacks, begin to be characterized by a
dimension somewhere between 1 and 2. In other words the curve
starts to take on the properties of a surface.

Similarly a two dimensional surface can be so dimpled as to acquire some *volume.*
This fractal geometry is especially interesting to consider for
minerals and for certain living things (such as tumors) where highly
non-Euclidean interfaces are important. In a new paper, Carlos
Escudero of the Institute for Mathematics and Fundamental Physics in
Madrid performs calculations of the dynamic scaling (how a surface
changes in space and over time at several different scales) of
growing structures, such as the kind of semiconductor films used in
the microchip industry where, even under the most carefully
controlled of conditions, rough (non-Euclidean) geometries can
exist.

He found that the moment-by-moment behavior of the surfaces
are strongly effected by the fractal geometry. Escudero (34-
915616800, [e-mail]) will soon be testing his
theories with colleagues in several practical areas of research,
including the growth of tumor-like tissues in plants and the growth
of semiconductor films. (Physical Review Letters, upcoming article;
at http://www.aip.org/png/2008/297.htm we*ve posted a picture of a
plant tumor provided by the Complex Systems Laboratory at the
Technical University of Madrid. )

---

Food for thought. TIme fractals? Hmmmm.


A

---

01 Mar 08 - 04:00 PM (#2276772)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In the 1840s, Samuel Augustus Maverick was a Texas cattleman who refused to brand his cattle because he said it was cruel to the animals. Rather than hail him as a humane hero, his neighbors denounced him as a damned hypocrite because his kindness enabled him to lay claim to all the unbranded cattle that wandered onto his range. Lawsuits and shoot-Õem-ups are said to have followed, but the result was a triumph of eponymy: the cattlemanÕs name, Maverick, became the word for an animal that bore nobodyÕs brand.

MaverickÕs grandson and great-grandson became Texas politicians. In 1944, the former Representative Maury Maverick coined a word for bureaucratic obfuscation: gobbledegook. He said the language in official Washington sounded to him like the gobbling of a strutting turkey cock, Òand at the end of the gobble there was a sort of gook.Ó

---

03 Mar 08 - 07:32 AM (#2278109)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Police cite S.F. zoo patron accused of taunting rhino
A man accused of throwing acorns at a rhinoceros at the San Francisco Zoo has been cited for misdemeanor animal taunting

---

03 Mar 08 - 09:59 AM (#2278216)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researching the prospects for life beyond our solar system is moving to the next level. Exoplanet hunters are getting instruments that promise to spot Earth-like planets around alien stars. In some cases, they may even yield crude estimates of how life-friendly such a planet may be.

Meanwhile, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is gaining new capacity to scan the heavens for alien signals. It could produce more analyzed data over the next two years than its researchers have collected over the past half century.

Seth Shostak, who forecast that data bonanza at a meeting at the University of Arizona in Tempe earlier this month, readily admits that researchers have monitored only a tiny bit of the cosmos. A senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., Dr. Shostak explains that "we might have to search millions of star systems" to detect an alien signal. Yet, he says, "The actual number of star systems that radio SETI experiments have carefully examined is fewer than a thousand."

... New systems planned or under construction, such as the SETI Institute's 42-antenna Allen Telescope array, will begin the needed millions-of-stars search. Many of these radio telescopes will be ...sensitive enough to detect leakage from radio transmissions an alien civilization may be sending domestically.

Avi Loeb and Matias Zaldarriaga at Harvard University have proposed piggy-backing monitoring software on these telescopes to detect alien radio leakage. It will be technically difficult to avoid being fooled by Earth's own leakage. But the Harvard astronomers think it is doable. Shostak forecasts: "SETI experiments will have examined millions of star systems within a generation."

Meanwhile, exoplanet hunters do have something to show for their past efforts. The confirmed planet count is closing in on 300. It's hard to keep an accurate count since new planets are reported frequently. Two more were announced last week. One is Jupiter-size the other is Saturn-size in a star system 5,000 light-years away.

---

03 Mar 08 - 02:35 PM (#2278465)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

February 2008

Briefly Noted: Ballard Automotive Sale is Official
It's official: Ballard Power Systems' shareholders have overwhelmingly approved the sale of the company's automotive fuel cell business to Daimler AG and Ford Motor Co.

---

03 Mar 08 - 02:41 PM (#2278475)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Two battling Boston moms face the next round in court after police say they turned on each other at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant.

The fight allegedly broke out at the Natick pizza-and-play eatery during a child's birthday party, police said.

Natick police said the mom of the 9-year-old birthday boy apparently became enraged because the other woman's son was "hogging" an arcade game Saturday night.

Sgt. Paul Thompson said 38-year-old Catherine Aliaga and 33-year-old Tarsha Williams, both of Boston, would be summoned into court to answer charges of simple assault and battery stemming from the scuffle.

One of the accused moms tells the Herald today she's hiring a lawyer. "I cannot believe it," said Aliaga of the mess, quickly adding "I must call my attorney."

A company spokesman tells the Herald the two moms "exchanged words" Saturday night at 6:45 while two children were playing an arcade game and then "punches were thrown."

---

03 Mar 08 - 08:12 PM (#2278824)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

It is hard to picture a wee monkeylike adult creature weighing no more than an ounce. But fossils of the 55.8 million-year-old animal, the earliest known primate to inhabit North America, have emerged from coastal sediments in Mississippi.


It is even harder to imagine that tiny primates of this primitive kind were able to migrate to this continent all the way from their Asian homeland.

The world then was much warmer, however, basking in tropical or subtropical conditions nearly everywhere as continents drifted apart. Over countless generations the tree-dwelling primates slowly crossed to America from Siberia, presumably by the Bering land bridge when it was probably heavily forested.

Some primates apparently continued through Greenland and Scotland, connecting links to Europe at a time of lower sea levels.

This new reconstruction of the early dispersal of primates, the order of mammals that now includes humans and apes, stems from an analysis of a fossil primate discovered in 2001 near Meridian, Miss. The identification and significance of the new species are reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.... (NYT)

---

04 Mar 08 - 12:22 AM (#2278932)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

raffic that grinds to a halt and then restarts for no apparent reason is one of the biggest causes of frustration for drivers. Now a team of Japanese researchers has recreated the phenomenon on a test-track for the first time.
The mathematical theory behind these so-called "shockwave" jams was developed more than 15 years ago using models that show jams appear from nowhere on roads carrying their maximum capacity of free-flowing traffic Ð typically triggered by a single driver slowing down.
After that first vehicle brakes, the driver behind must also slow, and a shockwave jam of bunching cars appears, travelling backwards through the traffic.
The theory has frequently been modelled in computer simulations, and seems to fit with observations of real traffic, but has never been recreated experimentally until now.

(New Scientist)

---

04 Mar 08 - 11:44 AM (#2279276)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Many subjects have debates about definition. For example, novelists and poet routinely argue about the ideal direction of novels and poems. But the debate in philosophy is unbalanced because of the way power is distributed in the field. In literature, a range of novelists – almost all of them freelance individuals – compete to argue their case. In philosophy, academic philosophers are the only people with power: they have multi-million pound departments, they can hire and fire, they have a stranglehold on journals. And they are hugely powerful next to the few individuals who write philosophy books on a freelance basis. The popular interest in philosophy is still very weak. The idea of having a philosophy career outside of academia is a precarious proposition. Hence the outrage when an academic outsider writes a book about philosophy which attracts an undue amount of public interest – and dares to challenge some of their underlying assumptions about philosophy's role. Academic philosophers, ever mindful of people moving in on their patch, get out the big guns and try to ensure that the interloper will never dare to stray on their path again. If a modest "populariser" is content to write a basic introduction, the sort of thing that might bring more eighteen year olds into departments, then that is just about OK. But beware anyone who approaches the subject with more literary and ambitious intentions. Beware anyone who refuses to see themselves as a vulgariser and makes a claim to be a philosophical writer.

Life being short, one has to pick the important battles and I don't consider this to be one (it falls under Mario Vargas Llosa's famous category of "two bald men arguing over a comb"). However, I hope there will be a time when there will be more room in the academic philosophical imagination for the discursive, thoughtful quasi-philosophical essay which has always guided me in my own writing. I am inspired by what Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Emerson used to write. What Virginia Woolf wrote. What Adam Phillips writes today in psychoanalysis. What Joseph Brodsky or Roland Barthes have produced in literary criticism. There should of course be a place for Bernard Williams's vision of philosophy. But why not also allow Montaigne to be an inspiration?

---

04 Mar 08 - 10:49 PM (#2279836)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In the basement of a university in Lausanne, Switzerland sit four black
boxes, each about the size of a refrigerator, and filled with 2,000 IBM
microchips stacked in repeating rows. Together they form the
processing core of a machine that can handle 22.8 trillion operations per second. It
contains no moving parts and is eerily silent. When the computer is turned on,
the only thing you can hear is the continuous sigh of the massive air
conditioner. This is Blue Brain.

The name of the supercomputer is literal: Each of its microchips has
been programmed to act just like a real neuron in a real brain. The
behavior of the computer replicates, with shocking precision, the cellular events
unfolding inside a mind. "This is the first model of the brain that
has been built from the bottom-up," says Henry Markram, a neuroscientist at Ecole
Polytechnique FŽdŽrale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the director of the Blue
Brain project. "There are lots of models out there, but this is the only one
that is totally biologically accurate. We began with the most basic facts
about the brain and just worked from there."

Before the Blue Brain project launched, Markram had likened it to the
Human Genome Project, a comparison that some found ridiculous and others
dismissed as mere self-promotion. When he launched the project in the summer of
2005, as a joint venture with IBM, there was still no shortage of skepticism.

Scientists criticized the project as an expensive pipedream, a blatant
waste of money and talent. Neuroscience didn't need a supercomputer, they
argued it needed more molecular biologists. Terry Sejnowski, an eminent
computational neuroscientist at the Salk Institute, declared that Blue
Brain was "bound to fail," for the mind remained too mysterious to model. But
Markram's attitude was very different. "I wanted to model the brain
because we didn't understand it," he says. "The best way to figure out how
something works is to try to build it from scratch."

The Blue Brain project is now at a crucial juncture. The first phase
of the projectÑ"the feasibility phase"Ñis coming to a close. The skeptics,
for the most part, have been proven wrong. It took less than two years for the
Blue Brain supercomputer to accurately simulate a neocortical column, which
is a tiny slice of brain containing approximately 10,000 neurons, with
about 30 million synaptic connections between them. "The column has been built
and it runs," Markram says. "Now we just have to scale it up." Blue Brain
scientists are confident that, at some point in the next few years, they will be
able to start simulating an entire brain. "If we build this brain right, it
will do everything," Markram says. I ask him if that includes
selfconsciousness: Is it really possible to put a ghost into a machine? "When I say
everything, I mean everything," he says, and a mischievous smile spreads across his
face.

Henry Markram is tall and slim. He wears jeans and tailored shirts. He

---

05 Mar 08 - 10:12 AM (#2280149)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — A 10-cent pill doesn't kill pain as well as a $2.50 pill, even when they are identical placebos, according to a provocative study by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University.

"Physicians want to think it's the medicine and not their enthusiasm about a particular drug that makes a drug more therapeutically effective, but now we really have to worry about the nuances of interaction between patients and physicians," said Ariely, whose findings appear as a letter in the March 5 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Ariely and a team of collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used a standard protocol for administering light electric shock to participants' wrists to measure their subjective rating of pain. The 82 study subjects were tested before getting the placebo and after. Half the participants were given a brochure describing the pill as a newly-approved pain-killer which cost $2.50 per dose and half were given a brochure describing it as marked down to 10 cents, without saying why.

In the full-price group, 85 percent of subjects experienced a reduction in pain after taking the placebo. In the low-price group, 61 percent said the pain was less.

The finding, from a relatively small and simplified experiment, points to a host of larger questions, Ariely said.

---

06 Mar 08 - 02:53 PM (#2281432)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

According to EE Times, a California-based company called QuantumSphere has developed nanoparticles that could make hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. The company says its reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings can boost the efficiency of electrolysis (the technique that generates hydrogen from water) to 85% today, exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10%. The company says its process could be improved to reach an efficiency of 96% in a few years. The most interesting part of the story is that the existing gas stations would not need to be modified to distribute hydrogen. With these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could to make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving. "

""The nanoparticles are perfect spheres, consisting of a couple hundred atoms measuring from 16 to 25 nanometers in diameter. They are formed by means of a vacuum-deposition process that uses vapor condensation to produce highly reactive catalytic nanoparticles, for which the engineering team has formulated several end-use applications. 'Our biggest engineering challenge was finding a way to get the nanoparticles to stick to metal electrodes,' McGrath said. The company has solved that problem, she said, 'enabling existing electrolysis equipment to realize a 30 percent increase in hydrogen output just by retrofitting our coated electrodes.'"
"

See details at http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=847

---

06 Mar 08 - 03:06 PM (#2281446)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Democratic Process as they do it in Gambia offers some instructive insights. A pity our politicians can't muster that kind of juju


A

---

07 Mar 08 - 09:29 AM (#2282036)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Grand Canyon Still Grand but Older
(NYT)

By dating mineral deposits inside caves along the canyon's walls, geologists now claim the canyon's formation began 11 million years earlier than previous estimates.

---

Ah, hell...what's a few million years between friends, after all?


A

---

07 Mar 08 - 02:56 PM (#2282337)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SAN BRUNO — Seconds after Marc Perkel's mind had shifted into a higher state of thinking, he had a revelation: The Church of Reality.
Perkel was relaxing alone at home nine years ago when the light bulb went on.

"I was smoking a little weed, and I was thinking about religion," said the now 52-year-old realist. "The name kind of popped in my head. But I had a hard time grasping the idea that no one (had) thought about it. Quite frankly, that aspect (has) never gone away."

The next morning, The Church of Reality was born.

"If it's real, we believe in it," said Perkel, who is self-employed and works in Web hosting and spam filtering. "Anything true will stand up to scrutiny. We're not a faith-based religion. We're doubt-based. The Church of Reality is a new kind of religion."

The American Religious Identification Survey, performed in 2001 by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, found that the non-believer population at that time comprised roughly 14 percent of the American community.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis., said atheists, humanists, and free-thinkers are flourishing all over the country.

"Thomas Paine said, 'My own mind is my church,'" said Gaylor, referring to the author of "The Age of Reason" and a critic of 18th-century Christian doctrines.

"It's important that there be vocal groups and individuals. That's the only way to counter the religion din. Anything to have a free-thought point of view is a good thing."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation was formed in 1978. It is a national association of atheists, agnostics and other skeptics.

Gaylor suggested America may be moving in a more secular direction due to the controversy surrounding Terry Schiavo and the fight by the government and pro-life groups in 2005 to keep her feeding tube inserted.

"People are waking up to the danger of religion taking control of our government," Gaylor said.

The Church of Reality has its roots in atheism, humanism and science. Perkel has 24 principles, or truths, that revolve around the need for exploration and curiosity, environmentalism, compassion, inclusiveness and other virtues.

The church once was intended merely to poke fun at religion. But Perkel — who was "barely raised Jewish" — now emphasizes that the human race must evolve and move forward rather than look to the past as religious groups most often do.

"We inject reality DNA into the religious mind-set; we fill a void," Perkel said. "I get e-mails all the time saying, 'You have defined what I believe in. I just didn't have a name for it.'"

Outside the Church of Reality, Perkel is part of a secular humanist community in Palo Alto. Humanists

affirm the dignity and worth of all people.

Currently, Perkel's realists don't have a brick-and-mortar meeting place for services. However, people can participate in a forum on Perkel's site, http://www.churchofreality.org. He gets anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 hits a day. Recently, the church registered as a nonprofit organization. There is no official membership count, but 1,200 people are on Perkel's e-mail list.

In the future, he would like to have a place where he and other realists can congregate.

"We're still in our infancy," Perkel said. "It's OK if we're moving slowly."

---

08 Mar 08 - 12:34 PM (#2282958)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Seems like toking is sneaking into all kinds of unexpected corridors:

" ..It's midnight on a far-flung planet and some alien astronomers happen to have their radio telescopes pointed right at Earth, when they get a tiny spike in RF power - it's a message! Quick, decode it. What's it say?

It's . . . it's . . . an advertisement for Doritos. Beamed across the cosmos. On purpose.

No joke. Doritos' latest effort will see the UK public trying to come up with the winning 30-second spot that evidently will represent humanity's first interstellar ad campaign. With that universal fame, the winner will collect the tidy sum of 20,000 GBP.

In June, the ad will be broadcast using the high frequency radar telescope at the EISCAT Space Centre in Svalbard, Norway. It'll be aimed toward the "habitable zone" around one of the stars in the Ursa Major constellation, one of our best candidates for an untapped populace of snack food consumers."

---

12 Mar 08 - 10:36 PM (#2287019)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Nanotechnology Researchers Surprised to Find Unusual Strength Properties of Nanomaterials and May Expolit Them in Future Nanomachines


In yet another twist on the strangeness of the nanoworld, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland-College Park have discovered that materials such as silica that are quite brittle in bulk form behave as ductile as gold at the nanoscale. Their results may affect the design of future nanomachines.

---

14 Mar 08 - 01:57 AM (#2288022)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

cientific literature has been littered with studies over the past 40 years documenting the superior language skills of girls, but the biological reason why has remained a mystery until now.

Researchers report in the journal Neuropsychologia that the answer lies in the way words are processed: Girls completing a linguistic abilities task showed greater activity in brain areas implicated specifically in language encoding, which decipher information abstractly. Boys, on the other hand, showed a lot of activity in regions tied to visual and auditory functions, depending on the way the words were presented during the exercise.

The finding suggests that although linguistic information goes directly to the seat of language processing in the female brain, males use sensory machinery to do a great deal of the work in untangling the data. In a classroom setting, it implies that boys need to be taught language both visually (with a textbook) and orally (through a lecture) to get a full grasp of the subject, whereas a girl may be able to pick up the concepts by either method.

The team was able to pinpoint the differences between the sexes by monitoring brain activity in a group of children (31 boys and 31 girls, ranging in age from nine to 15) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while the kids tackled language tasks. In the exercises, two words were either flashed in front of, or spoken to them; they had to determine whether the pair was spelled similarly (omitting the first consonant, as in "pine" and "line") and whether the words rhymed, such as "gate" and "hate" or "pint" and "mint." In some cases, the words fit neither criterion: "jazz" and "list" being an example.

Study co-author Doug Burman, a research associate in Northwestern University's communication sciences and disorders department, says the team saw greater activity in the so-called language areas of the girls' brains than in those of the boys. The areas included the superior temporal gyrus (implicated in decoding heard words), inferior frontal gyrus (speech processing), and the fusiform gyrus, which helps spell and determine the meaning of words. Activation of the latter two structures, in particular, seemed to correlate with the girls' greater language accuracy.

---

14 Mar 08 - 11:44 AM (#2288305)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PHOTONIC QUBIT NETWORK. Finally, Charles Santori (Hewlett Packard,
[e-mail]) reported the creation of qubits in diamond
at room temperature without the need for any external magnetic field
(for polarizing electrons) or microwaves (for flipping the
polarization). All these tasks, he said, could be accomplished with
a visible-light laser modulated at two frequencies. The
all-optical approach to manipulating spins, using optical waveguides
and cavities, was a necessary step toward streamlining and scaling
up the process of creating and linking many qubits in a workable
quantum computer.

---

16 Mar 08 - 01:46 AM (#2289501)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Denmark has now taken over as the country with the highest tax burden, according to website E24 and Danish newspaper Dagbladet Bšrsen.

Based on figures taken from the tax authorities in both countries, Danes now have a tax burden of 48.4 percent, compared to 47.8 percent for Swedes.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is happy that Sweden no longer has the worldÕs highest tax burden.

ÒMoreover, the Danish media isnÕt even using the most recent information. This year weÕre going to land down below 47 percent,Ó he told news agency TT.

The government doesnÕt have a specific target for how much SwedenÕs tax burden ought to change during its current term in office.

---

16 Mar 08 - 10:44 AM (#2289704)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Smail focuses more attention on the Òpursuit of psychotropyÓ than on its consequences. Still, an intelligent disquiet runs through these pages. As we Ògrow numb to the mechanisms that stimulate our moods and feelings on a daily basis,Ó we ceaselessly shift from one device to another. The prospects for human foresight and self-knowledge would seem dim. In the 1860s, Walter Pater wrote that Òart comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those momentsÕ sake.Ó Has art become superfluous? Smail suggests we are all the choreographers of our own chemical dance, enjoying the ÒspikesÓ and ÒdipsÓ as they follow one another, and simply for their own sake."

From a review of ÒOn Deep History and the Brain,Ó Daniel Lord Smail

---

18 Mar 08 - 10:10 AM (#2291562)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2008) — Far from being a model of social co-operation, the ant world is riddled with cheating and corruption -- and it goes all the way to the top, according to scientists from the Universities of Leeds and Copenhagen.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also:
Plants & Animals
Insects and Butterflies
Evolutionary Biology
Mating and Breeding
Developmental Biology
Invasive Species
Biology
Reference
Fire ant
Ant
Africanized bee
Bee
Ants have always been thought to work together for the benefit of the colony rather than for individual gain. But Dr Bill Hughes from Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences has found evidence to shatter this illusion.

With Professor Jacobus Boomsma from the University of Copenhagen, he's discovered that certain ants are able to cheat the system, ensuring their offspring become reproductive queens rather than sterile workers.

"The accepted theory was that queens were produced solely by nurture: certain larvae were fed certain foods to prompt their development into queens and all larvae could have that opportunity," explains Dr Hughes. "But we carried out DNA fingerprinting on five colonies of leaf-cutting ants and discovered that the offspring of some fathers are more likely to become queens than others. These ants have a 'royal' gene or genes, giving them an unfair advantage and enabling them to cheat many of their altruistic sisters out of their chance to become a queen themselves."

But what intrigued the scientists was that these 'royal' genetic lines were always rare in each colony.

Says Dr Hughes: "The most likely explanation has to be that the ants are deliberately taking steps to avoid detection. If there were too many of one genetic line developing into queens in a single colony, the other ants would notice and might take action against them. So we think the males with these royal genes have evolved to somehow spread their offspring around more colonies and so escape detection. The rarity of the royal lines is actually an evolutionary strategy by the cheats to escape suppression by the altruistic masses that they exploit."

A few times each year, ant colonies produce males and new queens which fly off from their colonies to meet and mate. The males die shortly after mating and the females go on to found new colonies. The researchers are keen to study this process, to determine if their hypothesis is correct and the mating strategy of males with royal genes ensures their rarity, to keep their advantages undetected by their 'commoner' counterparts.

However, the scientists' discovery does prove that, although social insect colonies are often cited as proof that societies can be based on egalitarianism and cooperation, they are not quite as utopian as they appear.

---

20 Mar 08 - 08:30 PM (#2294129)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An amazing display of modern robotic science.



A

---

21 Mar 08 - 09:42 AM (#2294396)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Today is Bach's 350th birthday, according to Minnesota Public Radio.


A

---

22 Mar 08 - 12:06 AM (#2294968)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

63-year-old solves riddle from 1970

Israeli mathematician unravels puzzle that baffled scientists for decades
By Aron Heller
The Associated Press
updated 5:06 p.m. CT, Thurs., March. 20, 2008

JERUSALEM - A mathematical puzzle that baffled the top minds in the esoteric field of symbolic dynamics for nearly four decades has been cracked — by a 63-year-old immigrant who once had to work as a security guard.

Avraham Trahtman, a mathematician who also toiled as a laborer after moving to Israel from Russia, succeeded where dozens failed, solving the elusive "Road Coloring Problem."

The conjecture essentially assumed it's possible to create a "universal map" that can direct people to arrive at a certain destination, at the same time, regardless of starting point¹. Experts say the proposition could have real-life applications in mapping and computer science.

The "Road Coloring Problem" was first posed in 1970 by Benjamin Weiss, an Israeli-American mathematician, and a colleague, Roy Adler, who worked at IBM at the time.

/quote

There's a bit more at the link, although despite asserting that the "solution" is "on the web" they don't give a clue as to where.

¹ In the real world it's well known that one can arrive at an intended destination by following directions that do not include a starting point. This is, in fact, the system used by one aircraft manufacturer of my acqauintance, where in order to determine what part(s) are in use on the airplane one follows the "changes" without knowing what the original configuration was.

In this case, I "pulled" a minimum of about 300 drawings, and an average of about 425, for each of about 80 "problem squawks," in order to learn that previous engineers who had previously responded to the same pilot/shop complaints had "fixed" each of several parts and had indeed made perfectly fine "fixes" - but to parts that were not used on the airplane. Some "problems" had been fixed 8 consecutive times without ever being applied to parts in use.

Perhaps if I'd had this solution I might still work there (but I doubt it).

John

---

23 Mar 08 - 11:50 AM (#2295885)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Changes in the spin rate of Saturn's moon Titan suggest an ocean of liquid water lies beneath its icy surface, a new study reports. The finding bolsters the possibility that the moon might foster life.

Titan's low density suggests it is composed of a combination of water and rock. During the moon's early days, heat from its formation and the decay of radioactive material should have melted much of this water to create an ocean.
Much of the ocean would have since frozen. But scientists suspect a liquid layer up to 300 kilometres thick persists beneath an ice crust, probably aided by ammonia, which acts as an antifreeze.

---

23 Mar 08 - 06:59 PM (#2296141)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MONTEREY, California: A great white shark released from the Monterey Bay Aquarium six weeks ago has already swum past the southern tip of Mexico's Baja peninsula -- about 1200 miles (1930 kilometers) away.

---

24 Mar 08 - 09:56 AM (#2296486)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Bear Stearns had total positions of $13.4 trillion. This is greater than the US national income, or equal to a quarter of world GDP - at least in "notional" terms. The contracts were described as "swaps", "swaptions", "caps", "collars" and "floors". This heady edifice of new-fangled instruments was built on an asset base of $80bn at best.

---

24 Mar 08 - 03:14 PM (#2296672)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

December 7, 2006 Spectrolab has achieved a new world record in terrestrial concentrator solar cell efficiency. Using concentrated sunlight, Spectrolab demonstrated the ability of a photovoltaic cell to convert 40.7 percent of the sun's energy into electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) verified the milestone. High efficiency multijunction cells have a significant advantage over conventional silicon cells in concentrator systems because fewer solar cells are required to achieve the same power output. This technology will continue to dramatically reduce the cost of generating electricity from solar energy as well as the cost of materials used in high-power space satellites and terrestrial applications.

"This solar cell performance is the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved," said Dr. David Lillington, president of Spectrolab. "The terrestrial cell we have developed uses the same technology base as our space-based cells. So, once qualified, they can be manufactured in very high volumes with minimal impact to production flow."

"These results are particularly encouraging since they were achieved using a new class of metamorphic semiconductor materials, allowing much greater freedom in multijunction cell design for optimal conversion of the solar spectrum," said Dr. Richard R. King, principal investigator of the high efficiency solar cell research and development effort. "The excellent performance of these materials hints at still higher efficiency in future solar cells."

Spectrolab is reducing the cost of solar cell production through research investments and is working with several domestic and international solar concentrator manufacturers on clean, renewable solar energy solutions. Currently, Spectrolab's terrestrial concentrator cells are generating power in a 33-kilowatt full-scale concentrator system in the Australian desert. The company recently signed multi-million dollar contracts for its high efficiency concentrator cells and is anticipating several new contracts in the next few months.

Development of the high-efficiency concentrator cell technology was funded by the NREL's High Performance Photovoltaics program and Spectrolab.

---

24 Mar 08 - 06:54 PM (#2296838)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In case you wondered, here's the story on the battle of Actium and how it changed the world, and lead indirectly to the Bush Administration... .

The Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. was an epic showdown that pitted Mark Antony and Cleopatra against spurned former ally Octavian. When Octavian eventually reigned supreme in battle, it meant the end of the Roman Republic for good and the beginning of the Roman Empire, whose influences were ultimately felt throughout the world.

A

---

25 Mar 08 - 10:59 AM (#2297267)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

HOUSTON, March 25 (UPI) -- Space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station at 8:25 pm EDT Monday, ending a 12-day visit and beginning its return to Earth.

---

25 Mar 08 - 03:21 PM (#2297475)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A very pissed-off goat has killed a pastor, and tried for his wife and the emergency technicians who came to help.


A

---

25 Mar 08 - 06:47 PM (#2297614)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A brain scientist accidentally discovers Nirvana and comes back to tell the tale.


Absolutely worth listening.

A

---

25 Mar 08 - 06:55 PM (#2297618)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf Ñ about 6,180 square miles (16,000 square kilometers Ñ about the size of Northern Ireland)Ñ was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate.

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread Ñ we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."

(From Live Science).

A

---

25 Mar 08 - 10:26 PM (#2297727)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Children playing in Washington state may have dug up the remnants of D.B. Cooper's parachute. FBI is analyzing it.

---

26 Mar 08 - 09:37 AM (#2297940)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Quote of the day:

"If we didn't have this war going in Iraq, this thing would be a piece of cake. They could drop that much money through the cracks every lunch hour at the Pentagon."
Former U.S. presidential contender and special envoy for the U.N. food aid agency, George McGovern, who is pressing U.S. lawmakers to guarantee funds for overseas child nutrition programmes. He says mandatory funding for the McGovern-Dole programme - which sends U.S. crops to poor schoolchildren overseas - would sail through Congress were it not for the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into Iraq.

---

26 Mar 08 - 10:27 AM (#2297972)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bill D

"New research into advanced photon data transmission is revolutionary but guaranteed to make your head hurt".

Tripping on the light fantastic

Does this mean that aliens on Altair 4 are now watching Gilligan's Island? I sure hope so!

---

26 Mar 08 - 12:39 PM (#2298050)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Statement on Tibet and China

I wish to express my solidarity with the people of Tibet during this critical time in their history. To my dear friend His Holiness the Dalai Lama, let me say: I stand with you. You define non-violence and compassion and goodness. I was in an Easter retreat when the recent tragic events unfolded in Tibet. I learned that China has stated you caused violence. Clearly China does not know you, but they should. I call on China's government to know His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as so many have come to know, during these long decades years in exile. Listen to His Holiness' pleas for restraint and calm and no further violence against this civilian population of monastics and lay people.

I urge China to enter into a substantive and meaningful dialogue with this man of peace, the Dalai Lama. China is uniquely positioned to impact and affect our world. Certainly the leaders of China know this or they would not have bid for the Olympics. Killing, imprisonment and torture are not a sport: the innocents must be released and given free and fair trials.

I urge my esteemed friend Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Tibet and be given access to assess, and report to the international community, the events which led to this international outcry for justice. The High Commissioner should be allowed to travel with journalists, and other observers, who may speak truth to power and level the playing field so that, indeed, this episode -- these decades of struggle -- may attain a peaceful resolution. This will help not only Tibet. It will help China.

And China, poised to receive the world during the forthcoming Olympic Games needs to make sure the eyes of the world will see that China has changed, that China is willing to be a responsible partner in international global affairs. Finally, China must stop naming, blaming and verbally abusing one whose life has been devoted to non violence, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a Nobel peace laureate.

(From Desmond Tutu, also a Nobel laureate)

---

27 Mar 08 - 01:26 PM (#2298864)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"KAMUELA, HI -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 03/27/08 -- Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc., the world's foremost resource for researching deep family history via its proprietary Family Forest Project, today announces its latest discovery: Elvis Presley, the iconic "King of Rock" was, in fact, himself descended from kings of England.

"Through at least one of the known ancestral lines of Elvis' grandmother, Minnie Mae (Hood) Presley, recorded history shows Elvis Aaron Presley to be a descendant of King Henry the 1st and William the Conqueror," states Bruce H. Harrison, Millisecond's CEO and co-founder of the Family Forest Project
...

---

27 Mar 08 - 01:46 PM (#2298882)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...Many American women, until they get pregnant, have no idea that they are entitled to no paid leave under current law. Indeed, a study from Harvard University last year found that of 168 nations worldwide, the United States is one of only four whose government doesn't require employers to provide paid maternity leave. The others are Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

--Dana Goldstein
http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/68560

---

27 Mar 08 - 06:52 PM (#2299147)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Lights Out for Earth Hour

March 27, 2008

This Saturday, a global "lights out" event called Earth Hour is being held to call for immediate action on climate change. Nearly 200 cities and millions of people worldwide are expected to participate by turning off home and building lights from 8:00 pm-9:00 pm local time. Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Phoenix are hosting city-wide events, and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, Niagara Falls, the Sears Tower and Wrigley Field will turn off nonessential lights for the hour. Our friends at the World Wildlife Fund, who are organizing this event, expect it to be "among the largest global calls for climate change action ever."

---

28 Mar 08 - 12:40 PM (#2299660)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Cubans are to be allowed unrestricted access to mobile phones for the first time, in the latest reform announced under new President Raul Castro.

In a statement in official newspaper Granma, state telecom monopoly ETECSA said it would offer mobile services to the public in the next few days.

Some Cubans already own mobile phones, but they have had to acquire them via a third party, often foreigners.

Cuba's rate of cell phone usage remains among the lowest in Latin America.

Now Cubans will be able to subscribe to pre-paid mobile services under their own names, instead of going through foreigners or in some cases their work places.

However, the new service must be paid for in foreign currency, which will restrict access to wealthier Cubans.

---

29 Mar 08 - 11:03 PM (#2300812)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

March 29, 2008 Ð Vol.13 No. 1

A RAY OF HOPE IN SOLAR ENERGY.

ItÕs such a big planet. ThereÕs so much going on Ð so much of it frightening. The mainstream daily news is often so grim that it overshadows all the positive news thatÕs never seen or heard - itÕs safe to say - by most people.

If they only knew. ThereÕs more good news out there than bad.

Many want the world to be powered by clean solar energy. Eventually they may get their wish. ThereÕs certainly a continuing flow of good solar news - including here in the beleaguered US of A.

In Massachusetts a small startup company has formed that could revolutionize silicon-based photovoltaic solar electric power. That company, 1366 Technologies, has a new manufacturing process as well as new cell architecture that, says the company, will bring the cost of electricity from multi-crystalline silicon solar in line with that from coal-fired power plants.

With the new architecture, surface texture and metallization of the cell are improved which enhance cell efficiency by 25 percent: from 15-19 percent. While these improvements in cell efficiency and cost lowering improvements in manufacturing are proprietary and understandably not discussed, the company does describe one component of its new cell - its light capturing ribbon.

As small as they may seem, the interconnect wires, that metallic grid visible on most solar cells, block light and hampers the performance and electric output of the cell. 1366 is using a commercially available light-capturing ribbon to reflect 80 percent of sunlight that hits it back to the cell to generate electricity. With solar cells all minor improvements help....

(Green Earth News)

---

29 Mar 08 - 11:27 PM (#2300822)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

VLADIMIR PUTIN, the Russian president, is to raise plans for a tunnel to link his country with America when he meets his US counterpart, George W Bush, next Sunday.

The 64-mile tunnel would run under the Bering Strait between Chukotka, in the Russian far east, and Alaska; the cost is estimated at £33 billion.

Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club and governor of Chukotka, has invested £80m in the worldÕs largest drill but has denied that it is linked with the development.

Proposals for such a tunnel were approved by Tsar Nicholas II in the early 20th century but were abandoned during the Soviet era. If finally built, the tunnel would allow rail connections between London and New York.

---

30 Mar 08 - 01:51 PM (#2301200)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ONDON: Scientists have determined that solar flares in the Sun's outer layers that causes quakes, produce strong oscillations throughout the star the same way as the entire Earth is set ringing for several weeks after a major earthquake.

Christoffer Karoff and Hans Kjeldsen of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, came out with the new theory.

According to a report in Nature News , the possibility that post-quake vibrations also occur in the Sun, was first proposed in the 1970s, but has not been demonstrated until now.

"It's the first observational evidence of this that I'm aware of," said Gunter Houdek, a solar physicist at the University of Cambridge in England.

When Karoff and Kjeldsen studied data from two Sun-watching satellites - the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, they found that whole-star high-frequency oscillations are more prominent when solar flares are more active, implying a connection between them.

These oscillations are thought to be caused by turbulent convection near the solar surface, as hot material rises from deeper down and sinks again as it cools. This motion sets up a kind of noisy background shaking over a wide range of frequencies.

---

30 Mar 08 - 02:09 PM (#2301219)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The race to become the first private company capable of launching paying customers into space got more crowded last week as a small but well-respected California firm announced plans to have a two-seat spacecraft ready within two years.

The mini-ship, built by Mojave-based Xcor Aerospace and designed to fly to the edge of space, is expected to be ready for test flights by 2010, around the time Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic hopes to send its much larger spaceship on its maiden voyage.

More than half a dozen other companies -- most, unlike Xcor, bankrolled by wealthy businessmen, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal -- are building rockets and spacecraft that they hope will capture the imagination of space travelers. Most plan to finish testing their rockets and rocket planes in the next few years, and the Federal Aviation Administration has estimated the market for space tourism to be more than $1 billion a year by 2021. (WaPo)

---

31 Mar 08 - 10:26 AM (#2301998)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.

New York TImes

---

04 Apr 08 - 08:54 PM (#2306986)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

http://www.kestudies.org/

Knowledge Ecology Studies, Vol 2 (2008)

Cite as: "Life, the Internet, and Everything: An Interview with Bruce
Sterling," KEStudies, Vol. 2 (2008).

Life, the Internet and Everything: An Interview with Bruce Sterling

An intellectual survey of the cognosphere.


A

---

05 Apr 08 - 02:32 AM (#2307168)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Report finds the ... city most vulnerable in the West to attack

By Lyndsey Layton and Ashley Surdin
The Washington Post
updated 12:09 a.m. CT, Sat., April. 5, 2008

Quick: Name the Western U.S. city most vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

Is it Los Angeles, with its crowded roads that make quick escape impossible?

San Francisco and its iconic bridge?

Or Seattle with its Space Needle and busy port?

Try Boise, Idaho, with its, um, ... ... ... potatoes????.

A new study funded largely by the Department of Homeland Security ranked 132 American cities according to vulnerability to terrorist attacks.

Boise was the only city in the western half of the country to make the top 10.

/quote

The researchers assert that their definition of "vulnerable" has nothing to do with whether anyone is interested in attacking a place. It deals only with how easily the town could suffer catastrophic damage.

It's not indicated whether a factor entering into the calculation was "would anyone notice a disaster there."

Apparently, a 9 year old kid with a slingshot could just about take out Boise.(?)

A commentator remarked that Los Angeles has all of the same risk factors as Boise, but "they're used to it so who cares" ... sort of.

(Actually: "San Francisco and Los Angeles got low ratings despite their frequent wildfires and earthquakes because they've grown adept at handling disasters, Piegorsch said.")

See the article for the full story.

John

---

07 Apr 08 - 03:51 PM (#2309385)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The other side of the Fermi paradox

by Michael Huang (writing in The Space Review)

"The Fermi paradox—the estimation that extraterrestrial civilizations are common and would naturally expand into space, contradicting the lack of evidence that they exist anywhere—is the subject of fascinating speculation and guesswork. Every possible fate of extraterrestrial intelligence is proposed and explored. These thought experiments are not only interesting in their own right, but may help evaluate the state of a more terrestrial civilization. What will happen to humankind in the future?

By examining the possible futures of extraterrestrial civilizations, we are simultaneously examining the possible futures of our own civilization. Put in another way, if an alien civilization somewhere had their own version of the Fermi paradox, they would be speculating on our future in the same way that we speculate on theirs..."

See link for rest of analysis. Interesting.


A

---

07 Apr 08 - 07:10 PM (#2309561)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The discovery of a lungless frog-critter in the remote jungles of Borneo helps put time-tags omn major evolutionary branchings.


A

---

08 Apr 08 - 09:53 AM (#2310042)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

the average earnings of typical workers have failed to keep up with inflation in four of the past five years. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, average incomes in the highest-earning 1 percent of the United States grew 11 percent year-over-year between 2002 and 2006. Incomes in the bottom 99 percent grew by 0.9 percent annually over the period. This year looks bad, too.

This polarization is producing a pattern of income distribution rarely seen outside Africa or Latin America, and unheard of in the United States, at least since the gilded age. In 2006, the 15,000 families in the top 0.01 percent of the income distribution — earning at least $10.7 million apiece — pocketed 3.48 percent of the nation's total income, double their share in 1993.

---

08 Apr 08 - 09:25 PM (#2310728)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

"Based in the Waitakeres, in West Auckland, software developer and artist Vik Olliver is part of a team developing an open-source, self-copying 3D printer. The RepRap (Replicating Rapid-prototyper) printer can replicate and update itself. It can print its own parts, including updates, says Olliver, who is one of the core members of the RepRap team."

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/tech/2F5C3C5D68A380EDCC257423006E71CD

---

08 Apr 08 - 10:03 PM (#2310755)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The RUssians launched a Soyuz rocket into the blue yesterday, carrying into orbit the firt Korean astronaut, a lovely lady from S. Korea.


A

---

09 Apr 08 - 08:58 AM (#2310995)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The director of FEMA Chertoff disallows 550,000 legal immigrants from voting in November.

By decideing to not process thefinal papers for all immigrants who have done everything by the book until after the November elections he has successfully purified the upcoming election. These new citizens will just have to wait their turn a little while longer for the Constitution to apply to them.

_________________________

Haitain protests amid mass starvation has attracted the attention of a few reporters that certain Haitians have been seen eating dirt in their last desperate efforts to fight hunger.


_________________________

Charley Rose hosted a panal of 4 who were evenly split on the issue of withdrawl from Iraq. Things are better than we had hoped vs. things are worse than we feared was politely discussed with rhetoric such as "Yes we have lost 12 troops this week alone but the real issue is...."


This will eventually end with the Democrats being blamed for the percieved defeat of US forces.

___________________________

I heard the fighter planes overhead at a bit p[ast midnight 2 weeks ago which is out of the ordinary. I later leaned that ufo sightings in the Capitol area was to blame and not the typical "lost" Cessna.

---

09 Apr 08 - 11:53 AM (#2311148)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

CONCORD, N.H. — Calls from obese patients had increased nearly 25 percent in recent years, and the Fire Department could no longer handle them.

The department's gurneys could not adequately support the patients' weight, and the department had to pay a private ambulance company.

Last fall, the department bought three gurneys that can hold patients weighing up to 600 pounds, about twice the holding capacity of a regular stretcher.

"We had to do something," Acting Chief Tim McGinley said. "It was one of those things where we would try to use the equipment we had and were afraid that you were going to end up hurting somebody, the patients themselves or the staff."

As obesity rates increase around the country, fire departments and emergency medical workers are responding similarly.

"I think everybody is moving to a stretcher that has a higher weight capacity," said Jerry Johnston of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, president of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians. "We have to be able to deal with it and have the equipment to take care of those people appropriately. It's part of our job."

---

09 Apr 08 - 12:04 PM (#2311163)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Astronomers look away now. Throughout the Renaissance and the early development of modern science, astronomers refused to accept the existence of meteorites. The idea that stones could fall from space was regarded as superstitious and possibly heretical - surely God would not have created such an untidy universe?

The French Academy of Sciences famously stated that "rocks don't fall from the sky". Reports of fireballs and stones crashing to the ground were dismissed as hearsay and folklore, and the stones were sometimes explained away as "thunderstones" – the result of lightning strikes.
It was not until 1794 that Ernst Chladni, a physicist known mostly for his work on vibration and acoustics, published a book in which he argued that meteorites came from outer space. Chladni's work was driven by a "fall of stones" in 1790 at Barbotan, France, witnessed by three hundred people.

Chladni's book, On the Origin of the Pallas Iron and Others Similar to it, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena, earned him a great deal of ridicule at the time. He was only vindicated in 1803, when Jean-Baptiste Biot analysed another fall of stones at L'Aigle in France, and found conclusive evidence that they had fallen from the sky

---

09 Apr 08 - 12:17 PM (#2311174)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Data proves:

While every small increment in wealth improves health, an economic downturn in fact improves health across the board.

as counterintuitive as it sounds.

---

09 Apr 08 - 12:23 PM (#2311182)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Why in the hell were all the plans and blueprints for our Saturn 5 rocket ordered destroyed and never to be built again?

A cogent expanation has never been given.

---

10 Apr 08 - 08:27 AM (#2311965)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.

Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson", which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.

"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.

---

10 Apr 08 - 01:59 PM (#2312207)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Lots of fighter jets overhead today.

There is yet to be a report as to why.

---

10 Apr 08 - 03:00 PM (#2312271)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

They're doubling the Tractability Hypno-Aerosol delivery schedule in your area. They keep getting reports of random bursts of independent thought from somewhere in the region, and they need to suppress it fast.


A

---

10 Apr 08 - 05:47 PM (#2312429)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

April 9, 2008 -- One in five Nature readers -- mostly scientists -- say they up their mental performance with drugs such as Ritalin, Provigil, and Inderal.

The online poll from the British science magazine didn't ask readers how they felt about professional athletes using drugs to enhance their physical performance. But when asked how they felt about professional thinkers using drugs to enhance their cognitive performance, nearly 80% said it should be allowed.

While only a fifth of the poll's 1,400 respondents admitted to drug use to improve concentration, nearly two-thirds said they knew of a colleague who did. And if there were "a normal risk of mild side effects," nearly 70% of the scientists said they'd boost their brain power by taking a "cognitive-enhancing drug."

Scientists from all over the world participated in the poll, but 70% of respondents said they were from the U.S.

The most popular drug was Ritalin, used by 62% of responders. Provigil was the drug of choice for 44% of those polled -- suggesting that many of the users take more than one drug. Beta-blockers, such as Inderal, accounted for 15% of the drug use.

Most respondents said they took the drugs to improve concentration or to improve focus for a specific task. Counteracting jet lag was also a popular reason for drug use.

One alarming poll finding was how often respondents used brain-boosting drugs. It was an even split, with about 25% of users saying they took the drugs daily, weekly, monthly, or once a year at most.

When asked how big an effect the drugs had on their mental function, most users gave them a 3 or 4 on a 5-point scale with 1 being "mild" and 5 being "large." On the other hand, more than half of the users said the drugs had side effects they did not like.

(WebMD.com)

---

10 Apr 08 - 07:31 PM (#2312514)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ROCHESTER, Wash. (AP) -- Authorities say a woman has been found living with hundreds of rats and four malnourished snakes in a home outside Rochester.

Thurston County Animal Services Director Susanne Beauregard says an official from the Area Agency on Aging alerted authorities about a month ago, but the woman has been uncooperative. She says the woman calls the rats her friends.

On Wednesday a search warrant was obtained and officers found the floor covered with rat droppings and the carpets soggy with rat urine. Beauregard says two malnourished boa constrictors, a corn snake and a king snake were seized from cages.

Investigators believe the woman bought some rats to feed the boa constrictors, but they got loose and filled the house with their offspring.

---

11 Apr 08 - 07:06 AM (#2312801)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Ah HA I found out that the fighter jets were scrambled in part to clear air space when they shut down Dulles airport for the flight of 4 large vintage WW II aircraft to the air museum in Virginia.

---

11 Apr 08 - 12:52 PM (#2313074)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists have found a cluster of spruces in the mountains in western Sweden which, at an age of 8,000 years, may be the world's oldest living trees.

The hardy Norway spruces were found perched high on a mountain side where they have remained safe from recent dangers such as logging, but exposed to the harsh weather conditions of the mountain range that separates Norway and Sweden.

Carbon dating of the trees carried out at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, showed the oldest of them first set root about 8,000 years ago, making it the world's oldest known living tree, Umea University Professor Leif Kullman said.

California's "Methuselah" tree, a Great Basin bristlecone pine, is often cited as the world's oldest living tree with a recorded age of between 4,500 and 5,000 years.

Two other spruces, also found in the course of climate change studies in the Swedish county of Dalarna, were shown to be 4,800 and 5,500 years old.

---

12 Apr 08 - 06:30 PM (#2313937)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

It Takes a Cyber Village to Catch an Auto Thief is an awesome story of cyber-citizens knocking out crime using social-connection sites .



A

---

12 Apr 08 - 08:01 PM (#2313979)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

One of the truely immortal lifeforms on earth is not a tree but a jellyfish.

It can metamorphose in two directions from infant to adult and from adult to infant. IT would be like butterfly turning back into a catapillar.

---

14 Apr 08 - 01:09 PM (#2315261)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IN what may become the last trial for war-time crimes by a living Nazi, an 86-year old man is up for prosecution for the murder of unarmed civilians in Holland during the war, a reprisal for Dutch resistance murders of Nazi leaders in Holland. Der Spiegel reports:

"He joined the Waffen-SS, the elite military arm of Hitler's murderous SS organization, in 1940 and served on the Eastern Front for two years before returning to occupied Holland to join the 15-strong hit squad "Special Command Feldmeijer" in 1942.

His job was to help eradicate the Dutch resistance by shooting civilians deemed to be sympathetic to it. "We didn't know the men," Boere told SPEGEL ONLINE last August. "The security service of the SS gave us the name and off we went."

According to Dutch and German court documents, he and a companion shot dead a pharmacist, a bicycle dealer and another civilian.

In the case of the pharmacist Fritz Bicknese, Boere and a companion -- both dressed in civilian clothes -- walked into his drugstore in the town of Breda on July 14, 1944, asked him his name and then opened fire. Bicknese bled to death on the floor.

Boere admits that he was a "fanatic" at the time. "I'm sorry about what happened in 1944. I pray for the dead every night and for everyone who died in the war." He said he only realized after the war that he had believed in "total nonsense." ..."

---

There's the rub. What technique, or approach could dislodge belief in total nonsense without requiring it to run through the complete physical dramatization of violent death given and taken?

Where's the key to sanity, or the formulation that might make it impossible to believe in such fictions?

Along with water and energy, this is one of the big crises of human history, because we have so many more people sharing the bounded space of the planet than we did even a generation ago. So we can no longer afford the luxury of indulging in psycho belief systems.

A

---

14 Apr 08 - 01:18 PM (#2315277)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Hunger Crisis Illustrated from Der Spiegel.

I wonder if the driven price of oil is what is driving up the cost of food, and I am moved to wonder if the drivers are natural or artificial, and to what degree human management decisions have been causative vectors.


A

---

14 Apr 08 - 01:20 PM (#2315280)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Hey Amos I interviewed a nazi war criminal in a nursing home who feigned more mental disability than he had to avoid possible prosecution.

Today we have Iraqi war criminals wanted by Interpole living in the safe harbor of the US.

---

14 Apr 08 - 02:49 PM (#2315409)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Undersea quake swarm puzzles experts

Hundreds of tremors emanate from unusual source off Oregon coast
By Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press
updated 2:19 p.m. CT, Sun., April. 13, 2008

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off central Oregon, something that often happens before a volcanic eruption — except there are no volcanoes in the area.

Scientists don't know exactly what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of molten rock rumbling away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said Robert Dziak, a geophysicist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University.

There have been more than 600 quakes over the past 10 days in a basin 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Newport, Ore. The biggest was magnitude 5.4, and two others were more than magnitude 5.0, Oregon State University reported.

"In the 17 years we've been monitoring the ocean through hydrophone recordings, we've never seen a swarm of earthquakes in an area such as this," Dziak said.

/quote

Some additional commentary at the link, along with an almost illegible small "map" of where all this is going on.

John

---

14 Apr 08 - 02:58 PM (#2315417)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

DOnuel, what a rare story!! Did you ever publish it?


As for that cluster of tremors, it may be the Kraken is finally getting fed up, or the UFO's are leaving the parking garage...



A

---

14 Apr 08 - 03:17 PM (#2315435)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

But when(?) a new volcanic island appears 150 miles from the Oregon coast, what legal basis will the Russians have for claiming it as their territory?

John

---

14 Apr 08 - 03:25 PM (#2315449)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Swarm intelligence inspired by animals

Research could enhance surveillance photos, assist the military
By Bryn Nelson
Columnist
updated 11:14 p.m. CT, Sun., April. 13, 2008

It's never too late to learn about the birds and the bees.

Particularly when they can help enhance surveillance photos, quickly sort through military reports and even enable individual robots to navigate within an army of fellow automatons.

The secret behind these new research efforts derives from the basic rules of what's known as swarm intelligence, a scientific framework inspired by the way in which birds flock together, social insects swarm and dust particles swirl in the air.

By understanding and correctly applying the rules that animals or particles use to identify and align themselves with their neighbors, Oak Ridge National Laboratory computational scientist Xiaohui Cui said swarm intelligence can yield very fast, though often approximate, solutions. Even so, for an application like identifying the best evacuation route out of a city during an emergency, "getting something quickly is perhaps more important than making sure it's the absolute best system possible," said Jesse St. Charles, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate student working with Cui.

The ability to quickly cluster similar entities using minimal resources also could be a boon for military analysts tasked with searching through thousands of field reports for ones relevant to a specific course of action. To that end, Cui and St. Charles are working with both the U.S. Navy and Air Force to help them better organize their documents.

Flocking rules

The bird-flocking research underlying the duo's current effort was initiated by other scientists in the mid-'80s, mainly as a way to produce more realistic video games. From that early work, three basic rules emerged.

"The separation rule basically keeps the birds from colliding with each other. So as they get closer, there should be a stronger repulsive force," said St. Charles, who introduced his project earlier this year during a presentation at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The second, and complementary, rule is known as the cohesion rule. "It says, 'I don't want to get too far away from my neighbors,' " he said. For the third, or alignment rule, birds gauge where their neighbors are flying and then align themselves with the group's average heading.

A few years ago, Cui added a fourth rule, which states that birds should only flock with the same species. For their database-sorting algorithm to work, documents should likewise clump only with those that are similar enough to be considered, say, another mallard instead of a Canada goose.

To determine whether documents really are birds of a feather, a database is first stripped of non-meaningful words and word endings. Each raw document is then analyzed for the frequency of remaining terms, resulting in an ID that its neighboring documents can use to assess their relatedness.

"What we've done is set up a virtual two-dimensional space like a game board," St. Charles said. "We randomly position these documents at the beginning, and randomly assign them a direction to fly in. Each document will fly in whatever direction for a small distance. And they will ask, 'Who is nearby me?' They look at their neighbors and then apply the four rules to the documents by them."

After a few hundred steps around the board, similar documents find each other and become locked in the same flocking pattern. And because they don't have to apply the rules to every document in the database, St. Charles said, the system is much speedier than other aggregators.

On average, the duo deals with about 3,000 to 10,000 documents and normally ends up with around eight to 10 main clusters. The system also preserves indirect relationships that might be lost with other methods requiring a document that pertains to airlines, defense contracts and Senate policy to be stored under a single subject heading.

/quote

Additional comments on "Enhancing photographs" and "Route finding for Robots."

"No individual fully grasps the entire problem, whether the task is to defend a hive or migrate in a coordinated fashion, he said. But by acting on its own senses within its immediate surroundings, each animal influences its neighbors' behavior. Magnified across a large flock or swarm, "you get a global behavior of the whole system that can appear intelligent.""

Sound like a political party organization? Or maybe a megachurch?

Perhaps if this actually can be applied to government/military applications, the government could approach the collective intelligence of a flock of starlings.(?)

John

---

14 Apr 08 - 08:35 PM (#2315746)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From LiveScience.com:

"IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) Ñ The Johnson County Board of Supervisors has changed its mind about allowing a paranormal team to look for ghosts at a one-time mental asylum.

Board members last month approved an investigation of the buildings, but decided to vote it down in response to negative feedback, said Board Chairman Rod Sullivan.

He said the board initially did not oppose a request from the Johnson County Historical Society to have a paranormal team conduct a free investigation at the site, which is now a private residential care facility for the mentally ill called Chatham Oaks.

Chatham Oaks officials were among those opposed.

"I think the rules have changed a bit because Chatham Oaks stepped up,'' said board member Terrence Neuzil. "Obviously, the cards have changed a bit.''

Historical society officials said the controversy began in March when they passed along a request from the Carroll Area Paranormal Team to do a scientific study of the site. The team planned to spend one night at the site to look for paranormal activity, using equipment such as thermal imaging cameras and voice recording systems.

Brandon Cochran, museum operations assistant for the historical society, said one of the most common questions from people touring the 153-year-old poor farm is whether it's haunted. Cochran said he had hoped the study would end all the speculation."

---

15 Apr 08 - 10:59 AM (#2316217)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In a cultural development I never would have predicted, the United States is exporting its cheerleading know-how to Bangalore.

"Inevitably, moral scolds — of which India, as a society, has a surplus — will write letters to the editor complaining about the vulgarity/anti-Indianness/neocolonialism of the cheerleaders."

First Bollywood, now cheerleaders.

Clearly, we have replaced the UK in post-colonial cultural influence in the subcontinent.

Except on the far side of the Khyber.


A

---

15 Apr 08 - 05:30 PM (#2316662)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal's voice saying "E".

Story of the science behind this is here.


A

---

17 Apr 08 - 06:45 PM (#2318772)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Solar system 'bounce' may send comets our way
19 April 2008
Ker Than
Magazine issue 2652
OUR solar system has a bounce in its step, which may regularly send streams of comets hurtling into the Earth's neighbourhood.
The solar system orbits the Milky Way's centre, but it does not travel exactly on the galactic plane. As a result, the gravity of the plane pulls the solar system towards it, through it, and back again at regular intervals - we pass through the plane every 35 to 40 million years.
William Napier and Janaki Wickramasinghe at Cardiff University, UK, built a computer model of this motion. They found that when the oscillation brings us closer to the galactic plane, its gravitational tug can perturb comets in the Oort cloud, which surrounds the solar system. Similarly, passing through the galactic plane may bring the solar system into collision with the massive gas nebulas that reside there, which can also dislodge comets.

---

18 Apr 08 - 10:36 AM (#2319280)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

KUALA LUMPUR, Apr. 17, 2008 (Reuters) — Borneo's mysterious pygmy elephants may be the descendants of Javan elephants accidentally saved from extinction by a local sultan several centuries ago, the conservation group WWF said on Thursday.

Pygmy elephants, so called because they are smaller and less aggressive than mainland Asian elephants, number perhaps 1,000 today and live in lowland forests in Borneo that are shrinking under the threat from timber, rubber and palm oil plantations.

With their larger ears, more rotund features and longer tails, the animals differ from other Asian elephants and scientists have long questioned why they never spread to other parts of the island, the WWF said.

New research published on Thursday supports a long-held local belief that the elephants were brought to Borneo centuries ago by the Sultan of Sulu and abandoned in the jungle, it added.

"If they came from Java, this fascinating story demonstrates the value of efforts to save even small populations of certain species, often thought to be doomed," Christy Williams, of the WWF's Asian elephant and rhino program, said in a statement.

The Sulu elephants are thought to have originated in Java, where elephants became extinct some time in the period after Europeans arrived in South-East Asia, the WWF said.

"Elephants were shipped from place to place across Asia many hundreds of years ago, usually as gifts between rulers," the statement quoted Malaysian forester Shim Phyau Soon as saying.

---

18 Apr 08 - 10:40 AM (#2319284)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

...Researchers studied the responses of 540 women on the Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory for Women that rated current and sexual problems, lifetime arousal difficulty and lifetime problems with low sexual interest. The strongest predictors of reports of sexual problems were women's sexual inhibition scores. Below are some of the findings:

Sexual inhibition scores were the strongest predictor of current and past sexual problems including lifetime arousal difficulty and low sexual interest. They were better predictors than demographic and background factors such as age, socio-economic status, and whether or not women were in a sexual relationship.

"Arousal Contingency" or the ease with which arousal can be disrupted by situational factors, and "Concerns about Sexual Function" were the two most predictive of women's sexual problems.

The Kinsey Institute has been developing, testing and fine-tuning the dual control model of sexual response, which is the basis for the Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory for Women used in this study. This theoretical model reflects the idea that sexual response in individuals is the product of a balance between excitatory and inhibitory processes. Researchers believe these two systems operate somewhat independent of each other and are different in each person.
..."

(Science Daily News)

---

18 Apr 08 - 10:42 AM (#2319289)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The psychologists wanted to know if there is something inherently rewarding about being treated decently. So, they scanned several parts of the participants' brains while they were in the act of weighing both fair and miserly offers. Consistent with previous results, the researchers found that a region previously associated with negative emotions such as moral disgust (the anterior insula) was activated during unfair treatment. However, interestingly, they also found that regions associated with reward (including the ventral striatum) were activated during fair treatment even though there was no additional money to be gained.

As reported in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the brain finds self-serving behavior emotionally unpleasant, but a different bundle of neurons also finds genuine fairness uplifting. What's more, these emotional firings occur in brain structures that are fast and automatic, so it appears that the emotional brain is overruling the more deliberate, rational mind. Faced with a conflict, the brain's default position is to demand a fair deal.

Furthermore, when the scientists scanned the brains of those who were "swallowing their pride" for the sake of cash, the brain showed a distinctive pattern of neuronal activity. It appears that the unconscious mind can temporarily damp down the brain's contempt response, in effect allowing the rational, utilitarian brain to rule, at least momentarily.

(Also from Science Daily)

---

19 Apr 08 - 02:54 PM (#2320197)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Everyone by now should know the standard warning: Don't drink the water.

A new caution has been added:

DON'T EAT THE SPIDERS

One solution to pollution: Don't eat spiders

Contamination in food chain traced to mercury-laden crawlies near river

The Associated Press
updated 4:43 p.m. CT, Thurs., April. 17, 2008

WASHINGTON - Mercury contamination in rivers can spread to nearby birds, even ones that don't eat fish or other food from the water, researchers said.

Researchers from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., found high levels of mercury in the blood of land-feeding songbirds living near the South River, a tributary of the Shenandoah, they reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The South River was contaminated with industrial mercury sulfate from 1930 to 1950 and it remained under a fish consumption advisory.
But the researchers led by Dan Cristol, an associate professor of biology, studied birds that only eat insects that live on land.
Spiders made up the largest part of the birds' diet, along with moths and grasshoppers, the researchers said.

It turned out the spiders were the source of the mercury.

"The birds eat a lot of spiders. Spiders are like little tiny wolves, basically, and they'll bioaccumulate lots of contaminants in the environment. The spiders have a lot of mercury in them and are delivering the mercury to these songbirds," Cristol said in a statement.

The next question to be answered: How are the spiders getting the mercury?

The researchers speculated it could be from eating aquatic insects, or the chemical could have been deposited on land during flooding.

The research was funded by E. I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, the College of William and Mary and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

©2008 The Associated Press.

John

---

20 Apr 08 - 02:12 PM (#2320822)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Masturbation 'cuts cancer risk'

Researchers were assessing prostate cancer risk
Men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation, researchers suggest.

They say cancer-causing chemicals could build up in the prostate if men do not ejaculate regularly.

And they say sexual intercourse may not have the same protective effect because of the possibility of contracting a sexually transmitted infection, which could increase men's cancer risk.

Australian researchers questioned over 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer and 1,250 who had not about their sexual habits.
        
They found those who had ejaculated the most between the ages of 20 and 50 were the least likely to develop the cancer.

The protective effect was greatest while the men were in their 20s.

Men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life.

---

20 Apr 08 - 02:21 PM (#2320824)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Oh. come, come, Bobad. Surely you jest!!


A

---

20 Apr 08 - 02:27 PM (#2320828)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

I know it sounds too good to be true but you can check it out here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3072021.stm

---

20 Apr 08 - 05:05 PM (#2320948)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

I say, old cock, here's to your very good health. I didn't really doubt you, you know. Just keeping my hand in .

---

21 Apr 08 - 02:40 AM (#2321228)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"IT'S amazing that nobody has spotted it before. Superimposed on every ocean on the planet there is a striped pattern of currents. Yet what causes them is a mystery.

Between 1992 and 2003, Peter Niiler of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and colleagues collected data from more than 10,000 drifting ocean buoys, which they tracked with satellites. As expected, the buoys' movements were influenced mainly by known global currents, which are driven by wind and by differences in the temperature and salinity of seawater.

But when the team analysed the data, it emerged that something else had been subtly influencing the buoys' paths. It turned out that there were alternating strips of water running eastward or westward, a bit like parallel moving sidewalks. Niiler recalls his reaction: "My God, we've never seen these before."

Satellite measurements showed that the interfaces between adjacent currents were alternately associated with slight peaks and troughs in sea level. When the team looked at this variation globally, they found that the 150-kilometre-wide bands covered pretty much every ocean (see Map).

To confirm that the currents were real, the team set out to measure them directly in two regions in the eastern Pacific. "Their existence is so surprising that we had to prove first that they are not an artefact of satellite data," says Nikolai Maximenko of the University of Hawaii. Sure enough, they recorded currents flowing in opposite directions at around 40 metres per hour (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2008GL033267). This is slower than most previously known ocean currents, which may explain why the striped flows have remained undiscovered until now. "Only a very lazy canoeist would notice the effect," says Maximenko.

The flows extend right down to the ocean floor, and the boundaries between currents are alternately associated with peaks and troughs in temperature as well as sea level. This suggests that they influence processes such as nutrient and energy flow around the oceans, but this has yet to be proven, says Niiler.

What causes the striped flows remains a puzzle. "They are a fascinating new aspect to the ocean's circulation, but the jury is still out on the mechanisms leading to their formation," says Geoff Vallis of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University.

He points out that similar patterns exist in atmospheric flows on other planets, for example, Jupiter. Whether similar effects are at play here is unclear, he says."

---

Niiler has been busting his buns getting these physical measurements accomplished over twenty years using drifter buoys he designed. There are hundreds of his buoys all over the oceans.   The data from his drifters is the only source of the data behind these conclusions, and he deserves great credit for this. Without these measurements this pattern of striated currents would never have been deduced. And they could completely shift out understanding of the planets fluid dynamics.

For one thing the Niiler striations demonstrate that none of our models of ocean circulation are accurate, as none of them predicted the Niiler striations even though all the major ones agree on accurately modeling temperature and salinity models.

But it is on these inaccurate models that most of our intricate analyses of global warming and CO2 build up are built. It is possible that the ocean currents he has dexcribed have very different effects in their scrubbing of CO2 than previously estimated.

A

---

21 Apr 08 - 09:09 PM (#2322152)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In the mountains of Cameroon, the worldÕs rarest gorilla can now find sanctuary in a newly created reserve. At about 7.5 square miles (almost 20 square kilometers), the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary contains about 20 of the nearly 300 remaining Cross River gorillas.
The rest of the gorillas are scattered across multiple sites in Cameroon and Nigeria. Although small, the new reserve contains a genetically important segment of the population.
ÒHopefully, this and other sanctuaries like it will give us time to protect and learn more about the worldÕs rarest great ape,Ó said James Deutsch, Director of the Wildlife Conservation SocietyÕs Africa Program.
Cross River gorillas, which are related to the more well-known lowland and mountain gorillas, are classified as critically endangered by the World Conservation UnionÕs (IUCN) Red List.
While many populations are threatened by poachers, the gorillas of Kagwene have been protected by the local belief that the apes are people and therefore cannot be hunted or consumed. Elsewhere, gorillas are threatened by hunting and habitat loss.
Some former hunters and other residents from local communities staff the sanctuary. A field station also accommodates guards, who will be posted by the government to monitor and protect the sanctuary.

---

21 Apr 08 - 09:58 PM (#2322177)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

From: Amos - PM
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 02:40 AM

"IT'S amazing that nobody has spotted it before. Superimposed on every ocean on the planet there is a striped pattern of currents. Yet what causes them is a mystery.

While it may be that only a few people have mentioned it before, and so far as I've seen no one has done a detailed analysis, a very similar effect is seen at smaller scale in a number of different situations where it seems fairly well understood.

If there is a flow in one direction (here due to wind and tides) there must be a counterflow in the opposite direction to keep the water from accumulating, piling up, and tipping over on things. The resulting "stripes of flow" may occur sometimes between vertically stacked layers, but in open large bodies are expected to occur in areas laterally separated from each other.

The behavio(u)r is expected. All that's really left is for someone to run the numbers (and show that their set of numbers predicts "reality" to an acceptable degree).

Or so it would seem.

(The analysis for a simplified - smaller - device was assigned as homework in one of my Sophomore classes. Hardly anyone got it all right. I asked god for help, but he was still in short pants and hadn't progressed to partial differentials in compressible¹ flows.)

¹ Same math mostly works with density gradients.

John

---

22 Apr 08 - 03:36 PM (#2322846)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

DNA Evidence Frees Man From Zoo
   
PHOENIX—Years of controversy were finally settled Monday after DNA tests conclusively proved that Duane Panovich, an attraction at the Phoenix Zoo for the past 11 years, was indeed a human being, and not a reticulated giraffe from southwestern Kenya. (...)

(Well, I said random, didn't I?)


A

---

22 Apr 08 - 03:59 PM (#2322876)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Some families seem blessed with eternal youth, looking much younger than their years. Now, astronomers have found just such a clan of icy objects in the outer solar system. They appear puzzlingly fresh-faced, despite the fact that they probably formed in a collision more than a billion years ago.

The largest member of the family, a rapidly tumbling blimp-shaped object called 2003 EL61, was discovered in 2005. In 2007, astronomers found five smaller objects travelling in similar orbits. Their paths suggested they all formed a single object that was broken apart in a collision more than a billion years ago.

Now, a team led by David Rabinowitz of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, US, reports that the brightness of the large object and four of the smaller ones (the fifth could not be observed) changes little when observed from various points along Earth's orbit.
That suggests their surfaces are covered with fresh powdery ice no more than 100 million years old. The researchers also suspect it means the surfaces are bright, though they haven't directly measured how much light the objects reflect.

Odd compositionA fresh surface is understandable for the biggest object, 2003 EL61, because it is large enough to hold an atmosphere that vaporises and refreezes regularly. But the four smaller family members are too small to hold atmospheres, says Rabinowitz.

In fact, no other small objects in the outer solar system have been found with bright young surfaces. They are thought to darken over time as solar ultraviolet radiation and charged particles called cosmic rays break down carbon-rich ices such as methane. This 'space weathering' leaves behind dark, reddish carbon compounds.

"Something fishy is going on [with this family]," says Mike Brown of Caltech in Pasadena, US, who was not involved in the new study. "We sure have a lot to learn about what happens to ice in the outer solar system."
(New Scientist)

---

24 Apr 08 - 10:03 PM (#2324920)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scripps' official release concerning Niiler striations.


A

---

24 Apr 08 - 11:16 PM (#2324948)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

There's a new recipe in the embryonic stem cell cookbook. Scientists have announced the creation of a human master heart cell, able to transform into all the different cells that make up a beating heart.

Though the cells can repair a damaged mouse heart, it's too soon to say whether they will help treat humans who have suffered a heart attack, says Gordon Keller, a cell biologist at McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Toronto.

Embryonic stem cells are an exciting technology because, in the right environment, they transform into any human tissue. But the human heart, made of three different kinds of tissue, has thus far proved elusive.

By tweaking an existing recipe that makes one kind of heart cell, Keller's team coaxed stem cells into forming all three types: cardiac muscle cells that pump blood, smooth muscle cells that form blood vessels, and endothelial cells that line coronary blood vessels.

Beating cells

Beginning with human embryonic stem cells grown in the lab, Keller's team added proteins important to cell growth and differentiation. After two weeks, the researchers had created a culture that included all three kinds of heart cells, and Ð importantly Ð no others. Even in a Petri dish, the cells beat.

"I think it's fascinating to think you can take a cell, put it in a dish and 12 to 14 days later you get populations that are contracting human heart cells," Keller says.
When implanted into mice, the cells improved their damaged hearts. Just as importantly, the cells did not form teratomas, tumours that are a common problem with stem cell therapies.

"It's extremely interesting to think about having one cell that could do it all," says Chuck Murry, a cell biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, whose lab converted embryonic stem cells into heart muscle cells last year. (New Scientist, 23 April 08)

---

24 Apr 08 - 11:27 PM (#2324954)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Megaquake set to strike within a decade
26 April 2008
Catherine Brahic in New Scientist


SOMETIME in the next 10 years we can expect an earthquake of a similar magnitude to the 2004 Sumatra quake that triggered the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami. So say Vladimir Kossobokov of the International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics in Moscow, Russia, and colleagues, who have developed an algorithm to predict where and when such megaquakes will occur.
The team claims a global pattern emerges in the years before earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or more. For example, the number of quakes caused by crustal movements between 300 and 700 kilometres below the surface rises, as does the incidence of those with a magnitude of 8.0 or more. Kossobokov points out that the four largest earthquakes of the 20th century happened within just 12 years, starting with the Kamchatka Peninsula quake in Russia in 1952, and culminating in the magnitude 9.2 quake in Prince William Sound, Alaska. ...

---

25 Apr 08 - 01:04 AM (#2324978)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.


Geneticist Spencer Wells, here meeting an African village elder, says the study tells "truly an epic drama."

The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence.

"Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Studies using mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through mothers, have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.... (CNN)

---

25 Apr 08 - 01:08 AM (#2324981)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Atmospheric levels of the principal heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide, are continuing to rise at an accelerating rate," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "After a decade of stability, levels of an even more potent heat-trapper, methane," have risen as well. Both gases increased due to "the burning of fossil fuels."

The congressional leadership offices employ "full-time staffers who serve as liaisons to the political blogging world." CQ writes that "the largest such operation" may be in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. Also, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "has been following the bloggers for a few years now and has actually written a number of his own blog posts."

And finally: On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman spoke at Brown University about responding to climate change. However, not everyone liked his speech. A few seconds into his address, "environmental activists...stormed the stage" and began "tossing two paper plates loaded with shamrock-colored whipped cream at him. Friedman ducked, and was left with only minor streams of the sugary green goo on his black pants and turtleneck."

---

25 Apr 08 - 10:32 AM (#2325383)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds.

The research, being published Friday in the journal Science, yielded the first molecular data confirming the widely held hypothesis of a close dinosaur-bird ancestry, the American scientific team reported. The link was previously suggested by anatomical similarities. (NYT Science)

---

25 Apr 08 - 02:05 PM (#2325593)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

German intelligence agents have been caught spying on a German journalist -- again. The controversy over e-mails collected from a SPIEGEL reporter has become a national scandal. Chancellor Merkel says her faith in her spy chief has been rattled, while German papers wonder if the service can be trusted at all.


DDP
Ernst Uhrlau, top German spy.
Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendiesnst (BND), has spied on journalists before: In 2005 it emerged that German reporters were placed under surveillance by agents who wanted to ferret out the sources of leaks from the BND. It was a big scandal. There was a public uproar, and the government installed a new BND president, Ernst Uhrlau, who swore to make the service more "transparent."

The latest scandal is like déjà vu. E-mails by a German journalist -- this time at SPIEGEL -- have been collected by German intelligence agents. The apparent target of the surveillance was Mohammed Amin Farhang, Afghanistan's Economy Minister, who traded e-mails with SPIEGEL reporter Susanne Koelbl between June and November 2006. She was sending him pieces of an in-progress book about Afghanistan.

Her correspondence was retrieved using Trojan-Horse software that invaded the minister's computer system and sent copies of his e-mail back to the BND. In the meantime Germany's highest court has severely restricted (more...) the use of spyware against German citizens. It's doubtful the verdict will have a bearing on this case, but Mr. Farhang happens to carry a German passport...

(Der Spiegel)

---

01 May 08 - 10:11 AM (#2330571)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"A team of engineers at the University of California at Berkeley has developed a technique for transmitting medical images via cellphones. This potentially could bring medical imaging to the 'three-quarters of the world's population which has no access to ultrasounds, X-rays, magnetic resonance images, and other medical imaging technology.' The lead researcher said that this new system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible in non-industrialized countries. As medical images are usually pretty large, I was a little bit skeptical when I first read the UC Berkeley news release. But as the researchers have found a way to reduce these images to a mere kilobytes, it can actually be feasible..."(ZDNet)

---

01 May 08 - 10:15 AM (#2330575)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

According to New Scientist, two physicists from France and the U.S. have developed a simple mathematical model which shows how urban road networks evolve. Their model shows that urban street patterns and leaf pattern formation follow similar rules. The researchers validated their theoretical model by analyzing real road networks in about 300 cities. They've looked at young cities, such as Brasilia, and older ones, such as Cairo or London. Their conclusion is that the evolution of urban road networks follows 'a simple universal mechanism despite significant cultural and historical differences...".

---

Sometimes I get the feeling that we are all part of the Howdy Doody show, and we can't find the damn script...


A

---

01 May 08 - 10:19 AM (#2330578)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SOmebody order a Mongo for SPawzer, huh?

"Popular Science reports in 'The Cup Stops Here,' 'the most important piece of male athletic gear, the protective cup, hasn't changed much over the years.' After looking at a bunch of protective cups available from $8 to $25, the reporter thinks he has found the winner. The NuttyBuddy™ has been invented by Mark Littell, a former MLB pitcher. It is made of Lexan, a polycarbonate resin, and you can buy it for $19.95. And it is available in 4 sizes, 'Mongo' (XL), 'The Hog' (L), 'The Boss' (Juniors/small) and 'The Hammer' (youth). But read more…
.



Here are some short excerpts from the Popular Science article. "Littell is so confident in his product that he's taken 90 mph fastballs to his junk on national TV in an unparalleled, if not slightly disturbing, customer testimonial. The NuttyBuddy (or Nutty for short) has a more anatomical shape that distributes the force of an impact to the pelvic area and provides a more contoured space 'for testicle A and testicle B,' according to Littell. […] Littell says the roomier shape of the Nutty is a key to both comfort and protection, citing more confining models' lack of space. ('That's why [ball players] are constantly grabbing them"). More room results in a more natural fit, "the way that the Man upstairs made them,' says Littell."

...

---

01 May 08 - 10:52 AM (#2330615)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Polycarbonate contains BHA which causes prostate cancer.




Christian genocide cover up:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133&hl=en-CA

(interviews of the survivors)

---

03 May 08 - 10:45 AM (#2331968)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

GRAPHENE QUANTUM DOTS. Physicists at the University of Manchester
have created single-electron transistors as small as 30-nm in size
on two-dimensional carbon. (Ponomarenko et al., Science, 18 April
2008)

---

03 May 08 - 06:14 PM (#2332267)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From "Notes and Queries", Dialogues in Letters, 1871, London

SUMMUM Jus, SUMMA INJURIA" (4th S. v.
317, 433, 588.)Ñ Your correspondent G. A. B. has
been at the trouble to collect out of various Latin
authors the above adage, and he inquires if there
are any other instances of it being noticed.
In a sermon by Dr. Thomas Sherlock, an old
divine, and who was at one time Master of the
Temple Church, London, he will find mention
made of the phrase. It is very apt to be used by
some persons as a weapon of offence against the
science of judicature, and therefore I will give
the substance of Dr. Sherlock's interpretation, as
1 do not happen to have my own copy of his
works at hand. I am sure what is given contains
no vital error of the learned bishop's words. It
cannot with consistency be affirmed that what is
summum jut according to the law, is according to
the same law summa injuria. Summum jut regards
the written law ; summa injuria regards the
original reason of all law. He goes on further to
say, attention must be given to the difference
between the reason of justice and the rules oi
justice ; and by the rules of justice he understood
the general principles and maxims of justice by
which the laws of all countries are governed and
directed. By the reason of justice he understood
the fountain from which all maxims and all laws
are derived, which is no other than right reason
itself; for laws are not just as partaking of the authority of the lawgiver, but as partaking of his reason. Hence arises the distinction between jood and bad laws, though both derived from the >ame authority: showing thereby that an authority, though it may make a valid law, yet it cannot make a good one unless acting upon the reason of justice. A. B. Edinburgh.

---

"Тнв DEVIL BEATS пи WIFE " (4"1 S. vi. 273, 358, 427 ; vii. 25.) Ñ With regard to the proverbial " Devil and his dam," and the question " Who is the devil's wife ? " asked by CUTHBBET BBDB and myself, I find illustration in Ñ " Grim, the Collier of Croydon ; or the Devil and his Dame; with the Devil and St..Dun9tan."Ñ Dodaley's Old Playi, vol. xi. The Satanic portion of the plot of this play runs thus : Ñ Spenser's Malbecco tells the story of his wrongs to the infernal judges. They cannot believe that wives are so utterly bad ; and, to make proof, send up to earth the devil Belphagor, who is to remain here a twelvemonth and a day, to marry, and so to take back evidence on the matrimonial question to the hellish synod. Poor Belphagor is at the outset cheated of the wife of his choice, marrying the maid instead of the mistress. His wife, after committing all the sins that woman can commit, poisons him ; and he returns to hell with the new appendage of horns : Ñ " Belphagor. These are the ancient airas of cuckoldry, And these iny dame hath kindly left to me ; For which B쳌lpha쳌or shall be here derided, Unless your great infernal majesty Do solemnly proclaim, no devil shall scorn Hereafter still to wear the goodly horn. " Pluto. This for thy service I will grant tUee freely : All devils shall, аз thou dost, like horns wear, And none shall scorn Belphagor's arms to bear." [Compare the song in As You Like It (iv. 2) Ñ " Take thou no scorn to wear the horn."] This portion of the plot is taken from Machia- vel's Marriage of Belphegor. How much further back can the story be traced? JOHN ADDIS.

---

ARMS OF CHARLEMAGNE (4th S. vii. 75, 180.) The sword said to have been the property of Charlemagne, which, with other regalia, is preserved in the Schatzkammer at Vienna, bears on the pommel an escutcheon charged with the single-headed eagle displayed; the same bearing also appears upon the scabbard. The regalia, however, are of a later date than the time of Charlemagne. The eagle appears for the first time on the seal of the Emperor Henry (an. 1056). Armorial bearings, in the modern, acceptation of the term, were unknown in the days of Charlemagne ; but the eagle might be considered the traditional arms of the emperor, and so would answer W. M. H. C.'a purpose. J. WOODWARD. 4'bS.VII. MAT 6, 71.]

---

It seems life was considerably simpler in the nineteenth century, nicht war?


A

---

03 May 08 - 09:11 PM (#2332332)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery

BY DAN STOBER
   
Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.

The new technology, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html

---

03 May 08 - 11:41 PM (#2332374)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The entire trial of Daniel Parnell et al for conspiracy against landlords in the period 1880-1881 -- some of the finest language you will ever read -- can be found at this site -- but be prepared to spend some time lost in the traces of dusty time!

A

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04 May 08 - 05:14 AM (#2332463)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

The recent post by Bobab:

Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery

raises a minor question:

Will a Nanowire Lithium Ion battery using a silicon nanowire anode and holding 10 times the energy of a common Carbon-anode Lithium Ion battery also burn 10 times as brightly when the battery explodes in your laptop (as happens with annoying frequency with conventional Li-ion batteries)?

Just curious.

John

---

04 May 08 - 06:14 PM (#2332890)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Allan Bomhard and Colin Renfrew are in broad agreement with the earlier conclusions of Illich-Svitych and Dolgopolsky in seeking the Nostratic urheimat (original homeland) within the Mesolithic (or Epipaleolithic) Middle East, the stage which directly preceded the Neolithic and was transitional to it. Looking at the cultural assemblages of this period, two sequences in particular stand out as possible archeological correlates of the earliest Nostratians or their immediate precursors.

The first of these is focused on Palestine. The Kebaran culture of Palestine (18,000-10,500 BCE) not only introduced the microlithic assemblage into the region; it also has African affinity, specifically with the Ouchtata retouch technique associated with the microlithic Halfan culture of Egypt (24,000-17,000 BCE). The Kebarans in their turn were directly ancestral to the succeeding Natufian culture of Palestine and the Levant (10,500-8500 BCE), which has enormous significance for prehistorians as the clearest evidence of hunters and gatherers in actual transition to Neolithic food production. Both cultures extended their influence outside the region into southern Anatolia. For example, in Cilicia the Belbaşi culture (13,000-10,000 BCE) shows Kebaran influence, while the Beldibi culture (10,000-8500 BCE) shows clear Natufian influence.

The second possibility as a culture associated with the Nostratic family is the Zarzian (12,400-8500 BCE) culture of the Zagros mountains, stretching northwards into Kobistan in the Caucasus and eastwards into Iran. In western Iran, the MÕlefatian culture (10,500-9000 BCE) was ancestral to the assemblages of Ali Tappah (9000-5000 BCE) and Jeitun (6000-4000 BCE). Still further east, the Hissar culture has been seen as the Mesolithic precursor to the Keltiminar culture (5500-3500 BCE) of the Kyrgyz steppe.

To have spread so widely suggests some cultural advantages were possessed by these people. It has been proposed that the broad spectrum revolution of Kent Flannery,[citation needed] associated with microliths, the use of the bow and arrow and the domestication of the dog, all of which are associated with these cultures, may have been the cultural "motor" that led to their expansion. Certainly cultures which appeared at Franchthi cave in the Aegean and Lipinski Vir in the Balkans, and the Murzak-Koba (9100-8000 BCE) and Grebenki (8500-7000 BCE) cultures of the Ukrainian steppe, all displayed these adaptations. (Wikipedia discussion on Nostratic meta-grouping of language families)

---

05 May 08 - 01:27 AM (#2333079)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Spiders "talk" to potential mates using a type of light not visible to the human eye, scientists report.

A team found that male jumping spiders (Phintella vittata) are using ultraviolet B (UVB) rays to communicate with females.

While UVA rays are often used in animal communication, this is the first evidence that UVB light is also being used, the researchers said.

The study is published in the journal Current Biology.

It is unclear how the females detect the UVB light. The team found that male spiders were reflecting the ultraviolet B rays from their bodies. The researchers discovered that females were more likely to mate with males that could "talk" to them with UVB compared with spiders sitting in chambers where UVB light had been blocked with filters.

---

05 May 08 - 07:47 PM (#2333676)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sorry about the HTML -- I had been trying to start a new thread on this and the effing script would not start one.

Here's the link where the video may be seen.


A

---

06 May 08 - 08:50 PM (#2334476)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Oil paintings have been found in caves behind the two ancient colossal Buddha statues destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, suggesting that Asians Ñ not Europeans Ñ were the first to invent oil painting.

Many people worldwide were in shock when the Taliban destroyed the Buddha statues in the Afghan region of Bamiyan.

Behind those statues are caves decorated with paintings from the fifth to ninth centuries.

New experiments performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) show that the paintings were made of oil, hundreds of years before the technique emerged in Europe. The results are detailed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

ÒThis is the earliest clear example of oil paintings in the world, although drying oils were already used by ancient Romans and Egyptians, but only as medicines and cosmetics," said researcher Yoko Taniguchi.

In many European history and art textbooks, oil painting is said to have started in the 15th century in Europe.

However, scientists from the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Tokyo (Japan), the Centre of Research and Restoration of the French Museums-CNRS (France), the Getty Conservation Institute (United States) and the ESRF have recently identified drying oils in some samples studied from the Bamiyan caves.

Painted in the mid-seventh century, the murals show scenes with Buddhas in vermilion robes sitting cross-legged amid palm leaves and mythical creatures. The scientists discovered that 12 out of the 50 caves were painted with oil painting techniques, using perhaps walnut and poppy seed drying oils.

---

07 May 08 - 03:28 PM (#2335107)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

If cosmologist Will Percival of the University of Portsmouth in England is right, the universe will end about 60 billion years from now, when every molecule and atom will be torn asunder by a mysterious entity that opposes gravity's pull and turns it into a cosmic push.

The cosmic killer is a runaway version of what astronomers call dark energy, an unidentified substance that pervades all of space. Dark energy appears to cause the universe to expand at an accelerated rate. Many studies have found hints that the density of dark energy is constant over time and that it therefore exerts a constant repulsive force.

But Percival and his collaborators, studying cosmic expansion by measuring sound waves generated in the early universe, have found the first sign that dark energy could be growing stronger over time. It's as if someone had floored the cosmic gas pedal. And that would lead to a universe that ends in the Big Rip.

Percival's team examined the echo of sound waves created soon after the Big Bang, when photons and baryons — ordinary subatomic particles like electrons — were bound together. The primordial cosmic sound-wave oscillations arose because of the tug of war between gravity, which acted to compress each photon-baryon clump, and the radiation pressure exerted by the photons, which resisted that clumping. Although the sound waves ceased some 400,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe became cool enough for photons and baryons to go their separate ways, the echoes of this cosmic symphony left their imprint as ripples in the distribution of galaxies in the modern-day universe. The characteristic wavelength of these ripples provides a standard ruler for gauging cosmic expansion.

(Science News)

---

09 May 08 - 10:07 AM (#2336522)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

When Incan healers scraped or cut a hunk of bone out of a person's head, they meant business. Practitioners of this technique, known as trepanation, demonstrated great skill more than 500 years ago in treating warriors' head wounds and possibly other medical problems, rarely causing infections or killing their patients, two anthropologists find.

Trepanation emerged as a promising but dangerous medical procedure by about 1,000 years ago in small communities near the eventual Inca heartland in Peru's Andes mountains, say Valerie Andrushko of Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven and John Verano of Tulane University in New Orleans. Incan healers later mastered certain trepanation methods, performing them safely and frequently.

"Far from the idea of 'savages' drilling crude holes in skulls to release evil spirits, these ancient people were highly skilled as surgeons," Andrushko says.

The researchers' new investigation, published online April 3, will appear in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Prehistoric trepanation in this part of South America consisted of four techniques, the scientists say. Practitioners cut out squares of bone, bored holes in the skull, scraped away bone to create an opening or made circular incisions to remove a plug of bone. Inca surgeons specialized in the latter two methods. Excavations, however, have not yielded trepanation instruments.

In pre-Inca times, only one-third of skull surgery patients survived the procedure, as indicated by short- or long-term healing around cranial openings. Survival rates rose to between 80 and 90 percent during the Inca era, from A.D. 1400 to 1532. Few skulls showed signs of infection near surgical holes.

Most recipients of skull surgery displayed one trepanation hole. A substantial minority exhibited from two to seven such openings.

...

---

09 May 08 - 11:10 AM (#2336553)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Neil Young, the famous songwriter from the 1960s and '70s, who has remained productive through contemporary times, is building a musical archive that he hopes both his aging fans and future generations will buy to learn of his work.

Young appeared on stage at the opening of JavaOne Tuesday, and amidst the rehearsed lines, it was clear he was genuinely grateful to the originators of Java and Java developers who have enabled something that he longed to create since the 1980s: a multimedia presentation of his work, updatable with new material as it's found, and accessible to millions.

"Thank you, Java; thank you, Sun," said Young as his appearance on stage neared its close, and the "Rockin' In The Free World" refrain from his song of the same name started to play. It was perhaps a good choice as Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA) tries to emphasize its transition to a free and open source software company.
Young will soon issue the first disc in a five-volume edition containing the record of his work dating back to 1963, when he was an instrumentalist and member of the Buffalo Springfield band. He thanked Java because it is the software that runs Blu-ray players, and his archival work will appear on Blu-ray format discs.

---

09 May 08 - 11:18 AM (#2336557)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Men charged after skull dug up and used as bong
Thu May 8, 2008 7:08pm EDT

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Authorities in Texas have filed corpse-abuse charges against two men who allegedly removed a skull from a grave and used it as a bong.

The Harris County District Attorney's Office confirmed on Thursday that misdemeanor abuse of corpse charges have been filed in the case.

One of the men allegedly told police they dug up a grave in an abandoned cemetery in the woods, removed a head from a body and smoked marijuana using the skull as a bong.

Police found the cemetery and a grave that had been disturbed but are still investigating the rest of the story, officials said.

(Reporting by Bruce Nichols)

---

12 May 08 - 12:35 PM (#2338436)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sign and Sight, a German site, interviews a mad scientist of quantum mechanics. An excerpt:

"Die Weltwoche: Professor Zeilinger, the media calls you "Mister Beam". You personally were absolutely against the association with beaming. Why?

Anton Zeilinger: Because it gives the wrong impression of my work. "Beaming" exists only in science fiction films, where it was invented as a money-saving device. Actually having to land on all those planets runs up huge production costs. Beaming is cheaper: 1,2,3 and you're somewhere else. But that's a long way from anything we're doing here.

What are you doing?

Transferring the properties of light particles over certain distances onto other light particles, with no time delay. The procedure is based on phenomena which exist only in the quantum world, and is known as "quantum teleportation."

It sounds almost as exciting as "beaming".

Yes, but there are two major differences. Firstly, we transfer properties, not matter. And secondly, until now we have had more success with light particles and occasionally with atoms, not with larger objects.

In 1997 your team successfully performed the first quantum teleportation. What distances can be crossed with this technique today?


Last year we teleported light particles across a distance of 600 metres under the Danube – that's the current world record. In theory the range is limitless. I always say that when the Americans really start their Mars mission, the 280-day journey will be deadly boring for the astronauts. They might be interested in taking part in a few teleportation experiments on the way, and increase the record by a hundred million kilometres or so.

You said that you only transfer properties, not particles. Would "copying" not be a more accurate expression than "teleportation"?

No. Firstly it differs from simple copying in that the original loses all its properties. That is something so crazy that it could only exist in the quantum world. You can actually remove all the properties of a particle and give them to another particle.

But both particles remain where they are.

Yes, but the question is: how do I recognise an original? I maintain: solely through its properties. Matter itself is completely irrelevant. If swap all my carbon atoms for other carbon atoms, I am still Anton Zeilinger.

This happens over the course of our lives. We are continually changing our cells.

Exactly. The only important thing are my properties, and they are based on the order of the atoms – that what makes me who I am. The atoms are unimportant in themselves. So when we transfer characteristics during teleportation, in this sense we are actually transferring the originals.

Some teams of physicists are already teleporting single atoms. So what really stands in the way of beaming humans?

We are talking about quantum phenomena here – we have no idea how we could produce these with larger objects. And even if it was possible, the problems involved would be huge. Firstly: for physical reasons, the original has to be completely isolated from its environment for the transfer to work. There has to be a total vacuum for it to work. And it is a well-known fact that this is not particularly healthy for human beings. Secondly, you would take all the properties from a person and transfer them onto another. This means producing a being who no longer has any hair colour, no eye colour, nix. A man without qualities! This is not only unethical – it's so crazy that it's impossible to imagine...."

---

12 May 08 - 04:29 PM (#2338659)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From the International Herald Tribune:

MUMBAI: Uma Phago has no memory of seeing a human stomach, not even her own. But she remembers very well what a stomach feels like.

After her sister gave birth by Cesarean section, Phago ran her curious fingers along the stitched-up abdominal ridge. The sensation never left her mind.

In the Indian outsourcing company where she works, her job is to transcribe what American doctors record on their Dictaphones. They send their files at sundown to India, and a team of 5,500 Indians works while the doctors sleep. Every so often, the dictation involves a Cesarean, and Phago's ears perk up with fascination.

Phago, one of eight blind workers at CBay Systems, takes longer than most of her colleagues to type up the details. But because she is blind, she seems to get more of a thrill doing it, imagining the lives of the faraway patients and squeezing from each assignment a quantum of pleasure that is ever rarer in the tedious, soul-deadening world of Indian back offices.

In the dark, drab office where Phago works, her sighted colleagues stare all day long at their screens, conversing only rarely with one another and never with the doctors they assist. Working behind a virtual wall for foreigners you never meet is not for everyone. The grinding, repetitive, anonymous nature of much outsourcing work is one reason why even the best Indian back offices struggle to retain good employees longer than one year.


But Phago, who has been here for more than a year, has no plans to leave. She was hired as part of CBay's corporate social-responsibility experiment, and although the program reflects only a tiny corner of a vast industry, it has turned up an unexpected truth: Blindness seems to infuse the outsourcing transaction with a warmth and a mystique that the sighted often fail to see, almost as though outsourcing were made for the blind.

"It's our advantage, this imagination thing," Phago said. "Our whole life, we are imagining."

...

---

12 May 08 - 05:39 PM (#2338709)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Seal tries to Have Sex with Penguin, Makes History

"A seal has been caught on camera trying to have sex with a penguin.

This seems to be the first known example of a sexual escapade between a mammal and another kind of vertebrate such as a bird, reptile or fish, "although some mammals are known to have attempted sexual relief with inanimate Ñ including dead things Ñ objects," said researcher Nico de Bruyn, a mammal ecologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

One summer morning, scientists observing elephant seals on a beach on Marion Island near the Antarctic spotted a young male Antarctic fur seal subduing a king penguin.

"At first we thought it was hunting the penguin, but then it became clear that his intentions were rather more amorous," de Bruyn recalled today via email.

The roughly 240-pound seal subdued the 30-pound adult penguin by lying on it. The hapless bird of unknown sex struggled, rapidly flapping its flippers and attempting to stand and flee, without luck.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin and thrusting its pelvis at the bird in vain attempts to insert its penis for 45 minutes. Natural, unsuccessful sexual escapades by this variety of seal with members of its own species may last as long as this penguin assault did, "but yes, it is quite a long time and thus unusual," de Bruyn told LiveScience."

(Live Science .com)

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12 May 08 - 08:06 PM (#2338837)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Get Out Clause are an upcoming UK band who are currently unsigned. They took a brilliant and IÕm sure soon to be much copied method to producing their own video. Unable to hire a production crew for a standard 1980Õs era MTV music video, they performed their music in front of 80 of the 13 million CCTV ÒsecurityÓ cameras available in England, including one on a bus.

They then used BritainÕs Data Protection Act to request the footage that was shot of them. Grab some decent and inexpensive video editing tools (say. . . an iMac) and presto! They got themselves a unique and in my opinion quite interesting music video.

See it here. Top marks for innovative low-budget thinking.

---

13 May 08 - 10:29 AM (#2339258)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Years ago, Stanford communication and sociology researcher Clifford Nass wondered why some people treated their computers as humans, instead of machines, a question that led him down a path of interesting research. Now he wonders about drivers willing to have personal conversations with the artificial voice in their cars—and what will become of the secrets the humans share with their four-wheeled friends.

From Stanford.

---

There are certain advantages to having conversations with your car. It hardly ever tries to correct you, for one thing; it allows you to ramble without interrupting. Itis the epitome of the understanding friend--it is always at your service, takes care of its own operations quietly without interrupting, and does not impose ideas on you, preferring to allow you to work out your own cognitive destiny.

My new car is more understanding than my old one. It kept shivering and squeaking back.


A

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13 May 08 - 09:28 PM (#2339881)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

When President Truman retired from office in 1952, his income was
substantially a U.S. Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a
year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and
personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a
retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.
When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined,
stating, 'You don't want me. You want the office of the president, and
that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's
not for sale.' Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing
to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthd ay, he refused to
accept it, writing,
'I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the
reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.'
We now see that the Clintons have found a new level of success in
cashing in on the presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many
in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while
enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for
sale. Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, 'My choice
early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a
politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.'

---

14 May 08 - 12:53 PM (#2340420)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Story from Spiegel Online:

The German Aerospace Center and European aerospace group EADS unveiled a plan this week for a European manned spacecraft. But the project will only lift off if Europe's politicians back it.

The news was only announced to a small group of people. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the aerospace group EADS Astrium had invited a mere handful of journalists to Bremen. Hardly any information had been revealed before the meeting, only nebulous hints.

Now the reason for the secrecy has become apparent. Astrium is planning to add a new chapter to the history of space exploration. Engineers have quietly been developing a plan that would lead to the entry of Europe into manned space travel -- if it gets political backing.


Planners say manned European spaceflight could become a reality within nine years. The essence of the plan is to turn Europe's unmanned Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) into a full spacecraft in two stages.

The Europeans are proud of the school bus-sized vehicle. Its first incarnation, dubbed the "Jules Verne," successfully finished its maiden flight a few weeks ago and completed an automated docking at the International Space Station (ISS). "We caused a stir in the world with that," DLR head Johann-Dietrich Wörner said. Just after the launch, Wörner received congratulatory text messages from NASA boss Michael Griffin and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Perminov. There were also euphoric reactions when the ATV guided the ISS to a higher orbit as planned....

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14 May 08 - 01:15 PM (#2340443)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Here is a picture of a medieval church that has been underwater for four decades and has re-emerged from a drying dam. The village of Sant Roma had been underwater since the Catalonian valley, where it is located, was flooded -- only the church's belltower was visible. But, with the drought, which has gripped Spain and forced Barcelona to ship in water, the 11th century church has re-emerged and is attracting hordes of tourists.

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14 May 08 - 03:00 PM (#2340537)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Solar-powered bra 'able to charge an iPod'
By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 5:01PM BST 14/05/2008
A Japanese lingerie firm today unveiled the perfect gadget for eco-friendly sun worshippers – the solar-powered bra.
The bra comes with a detachable solar panel, worn around the stomach, which can produce enough energy to power an iPod or mobile phone as the wearer lazes on the beach, the makers claim.


It is also equipped with plastic pouches that can be filled with water, allowing wearers to quench their thirst without having to buy and then throw away hard-to-recycle drinks bottles.

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14 May 08 - 07:35 PM (#2340769)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Apple Trademarks The Rectangular Box
By Charlie Sorrel EmailMay 13, 2008

Apple has been granted a trademark for the shape of the iPod, essentially giving it exclusive rights to make a box with a screen and a wheel:

    [T]he design of a portable and handheld digital electronic media device comprised of a rectangular casing displaying circular and rectangular shapes therein arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Who decides that last point, we have no idea, but this will mean that Apple is likely to become much more aggressive in going after the knock-off iPod designs out there. One advantage of a trademark over a patent is that it doesn't expire. However, to keep a trademark, you need to defend it, which means lots of nasty letters to manufacturers. Otherwise, the shape of the iPod could end up like the name "Hoover" (now the English for vacuum cleaner).

Ridiculous? Perhaps. But if McDonald's can register "I'm going to McDonald's" and T-Mobile can lay claim to the color pink, then a pretty arrangement of shapes seems almost sensible.

Shape of Things to Come [Wall Street Journal]

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14 May 08 - 08:27 PM (#2340817)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Well, it is a trademark, but that is not a patent. Those who produce hand soap in boxes that look like iPods will be quite safe.


A

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14 May 08 - 08:41 PM (#2340822)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie

OK, this just happened in lovely, orderly Riverside, California.

A guy had a problem with rabbits shredding his garden. He did not shoot them, poison them, club them with a ball bat and sell their fur, or loose seven pit bulls on them. Instead, he lived-trapped them and released them in "the wild." As in "wild animal," q.v.

Chapter Two. He was reported to the police. An extremely conscientious [!?] Assistant D.A. charged him with willful abandonment and littering, and requested a fine, jail time, and removal of the man's dog from his home until such a time as he [the man, not the dog] should complete a course of sensitivity training with regard to animals.

Chapter Three. The judge, in a rare judicial lucid moment, said (in Latin of course)--"Not on my watch, you moron. Sit down with the defense attorney and give me something REASONABLE." No jail. No fine. No impounding the dog. Ah, but the DA gets to count this as a "conviction" so her average doesn't suffer, and she's still in line to move up through the ranks to District Attorney, Assemblyman, Governor of California, Governor of Florida, President.

Good thread, Amos

Chicken Charlie

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15 May 08 - 11:34 AM (#2341277)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A chimpanzee invents a better way to fish for ants, and improves his invention after some experience with it.

A charming video of the improvement can be found on this page.


A

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15 May 08 - 11:51 AM (#2341294)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Where do mathematical objects live?Think too hard about it, and mathematics starts to seem like a mighty queer business. For example, are new mathematical truths discovered or invented? Seems like a simple enough question, but for millennia, it has provided fodder for arguments among mathematicians and philosophers.

Those who espouse discovery note that mathematical statements are true or false regardless of personal beliefs, suggesting that they have some external reality. But this leads to some odd notions. Where, exactly, do these mathematical truths exist? Can a mathematical truth really exist before anyone has ever imagined it?

On the other hand, if math is invented, then why can't a mathematician legitimately invent that 2 + 2 = 5?

Many mathematicians simply set nettlesome questions like these aside and get back to the more pleasant business of proving theorems. But still, the questions niggle and nag, and every so often, they rise to attention. Several mathematicians will ponder the question of whether math is invented or discovered in the June European Mathematical Society Newsletter.

Plato is the standard-bearer for the believers in discovery. The Platonic notion is that mathematics is the imperturbable structure that underlies the very architecture of the universe. By following the internal logic of mathematics, a mathematician discovers timeless truths independent of human observation and free of the transient nature of physical reality. "The abstract realm in which a mathematician works is by dint of prolonged intimacy more concrete to him than the chair he happens to sit on," says Ulf Persson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, a self-described Platonist.

Still Debating Plato, Science News

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15 May 08 - 01:51 PM (#2341414)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Swiss inventor Yves Rossey has become the first human to fly with wings, more or less, flying over a Swiss village using a jet-pack of his own design. The pictures are breathtaking.


A

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16 May 08 - 08:44 AM (#2342091)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

From The Times
May 16, 2008
Billions of electronic-eating 'crazy rasberry ants' invade Texas

It sounds like the plot of a farfetched science fiction movie. Unfortunately for the residents of Texas, it is very much a reality: billions of tiny reddish-brown ants have arrived onshore from a cargo ship and are hell-bent on eating anything electronic.

Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges – all are considered food by the flea-sized ants, for reasons that have left scientists baffled.

Having ruined pumps at a sewage facility, the ants are now marching towards Nasa's Johnson Space Centre and William P. Hobby airport, Houston, putting state officials in a panic. "They're itty-bitty things, and they're just running everywhere," said Patsy Morphew, a resident of Pearland, on the Gulf Coast.

She spends hours sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. "There's just thousands and thousands of them. If you've seen a car racing, that's how they are. They're going fast, fast, fast. They're crazy."

Crazy is the the right word. The ants are known as "crazy rasberry ants": crazy because they seem to move in a random scrum as opposed to marching in regimented lines, and rasberry after a pioneering exterminator, Tom Rasberry, who first identified them as a problem.

The ants – also known as paratrenicha species near pubens – have so far spread to five counties in the Houston area. Scientists are not sure from where they originate but they seem to be related to a type of ant from the Caribbean. "At this point it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ants because they are so widely dispersed," said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist. He added that the only upside to the invasion was that the crazy rasberry ants ate fire ants, which sting humans during the long, hot Texas summers.

Unfortunately, the ants also like to suck the moisture from plants, feed on precious insects such as ladybirds and eat the hatchlings of a small, endangered type of grouse known as the Attwater prairie chicken. They also bite humans – although not with a sting like fire ants.

Perhaps their most remarkable characteristic, however, is that they are attracted to electrical equipment. Pest control specialists say that they are inundated with calls from homes and businesses now that the warm, humid season has begun, with literally billions of the ants wreaking havoc across the state. Worse, the ants refuse to die when sprayed with over-the-counter poison. Even killing the queen of a colony doesn't do any good, because each colony has multiple queens.

The Texas Department of Agriculture said that it was working with researchers from A&M University and the Environmental Protection Agency to find new ways to stop the ants.

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17 May 08 - 01:01 PM (#2342951)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SA's Venus Express spacecraft has picked up evidence that the molecule hydroxyl is lurking in the dense atmosphere of the hot planet.

The molecule is considered to be a crucial component of any planetary atmosphere because it is highly reactive - scientists say it combats pollutants in Earth's atmosphere, and may prevent carbon dioxide from transforming into carbon monoxide above Mars.
The presence of hydroxyl - which was picked up by the spacecraft's Visible and Thermal Imaging Spectrometer - isn't exactly a huge surprise, but ESA scientists say it should help them refine the theoretical models they use to describe what's going on in the planet's atmosphere. Principal Investigator Giuseppe Piccioni said: ÒVenus Express has already shown us that Venus is much more Earth-like than once thought. The detection of hydroxyl brings it a step closer.Ó

(PopSci)

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17 May 08 - 10:51 PM (#2343330)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The NAACP selected Benjamin Todd Jealous as its president yesterday, tapping a young, Oxford University-educated activist to lead the nation's oldest civil rights group.

Jealous, 35, was chosen by the group's 64-member board after a year-long search and was introduced at the group's national headquarters in Baltimore. He is expected to start his new job Sept. 1.

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19 May 08 - 04:53 PM (#2344613)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Conifer forests — really big greens — encroaching on Arctic tundra threaten to further accelerate warming in the far North.

Temperatures at these high latitudes already are climbing "at about twice the global average," notes F. Stuart Chapin of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

The newest data on the advance of northern, or boreal, forests come from the eastern slopes of Siberia's Ural Mountains. Here, north of the Arctic Circle, relatively flat mats of compressed, frozen plant matter — tundra — are the norm. This ecosystem hosts a cover of reflective snow most of the year, a feature that helps maintain the region's chilly temperatures. Throughout the past century, however, the leading edges of conifer forests have creeped some 20 to 60 meters up the mountains and begun overrunning tundra, scientists report in an upcoming Global Change Biology, now available online.

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20 May 08 - 08:33 PM (#2345668)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ST. LEONARDS, Australia, May 20 (UPI) -- The United States and Russia are in the bottom half of an annual study ranking nations on how peaceful they are, surveyors said Tuesday.

Iceland topped Vision of Humanity's Global Peace Index of 140 countries that analyzes how peaceful they are regarding international policy and domestic conditions, The Financial Times reported Tuesday.

Because of continued violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq ranked last in the index developed by the organization based in Australia.

The survey found 16 of the 20 most peaceful states are European democracies, most of them European Union members. China ranked 67th; the United States, 97th, and Russia, 131st.

The Global Peace Index was developed by the think-tank Institute for Economics and Peace and the Economist Intelligence Unit. It ranks each nation using 24 "peacefulness" measurements, including a nation's relations with its neighbors, arm sales and troop deployments.

Index officials said the United States' position reflects its military expenditures and engagement. It also has more citizens in jail than any other nation, proportionally.

Iceland's ranking reflects its political stability and its good relations with its neighbors, the index indicated. Iceland has no standing army and proportionally, has among the lowest percentage of its citizens incarcerated.

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20 May 08 - 09:14 PM (#2345693)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Canada was 11th. Peace brother.

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21 May 08 - 10:18 AM (#2346063)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Tracking Hate 2.0 on the Web
By Brad Stone

The Internet is seeing a stark rise in the number of hate and terror sites and Web postings, according to a Congressional briefing last week entitled "Hate in the Information Age."
At the briefing, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group based in Los Angeles, presented the organization's annual study of online terror and hate. He said the group had identified some 8,000 problematic sites in the last 12 months, a 30 percent spike over last year.
Contributing to this precipitous rise was the proliferation of Web 2.0 services, which have made it easy to post videos to sites like YouTube and mint hate groups on services like Facebook and MySpace.
Rabbi Cooper said the threat from hate groups is real, not theoretical. "The Internet is a fantastic marketing tool," he said.

Rabbi Cooper attributes a third of the 30 percent spike to blogs and discussion groups that support terrorism. The rest is the material of age-old hatreds–40 percent anti-Semitic, 20 percent anti-black, 15 percent anti-immigrant and the rest a hodge-podge of anti-religious, anti-government sentiment.
NYT

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22 May 08 - 02:39 AM (#2346636)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ARTICLE
Star self-destructs before astronomers' eyes
21 May 2008
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Hazel Muir



Astronomers happened to be looking at the moment a star exploded (Image: NASA/Princeton U/Gemini Observatories)
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Alicia Soderberg, Princeton University
Swift X-ray Telescope
Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope


Talk about right place, right time. Quite by chance, astronomers have captured footage of a star blowing itself to smithereens.
Stars heavier than about eight times the mass of the sun meet their deaths in catastrophic explosions when their core runs out of fuel. The core can collapse into a black hole or neutron star, generating a shock wave that ploughs outwards, blasting the star's atmosphere apart.
Hundreds of supernovae are seen every year, but usually days or weeks after the event (in the Earth's time frame), when the optical glow of radioactive nickel in the debris reaches a peak. By then it is often too late to determine what kind of star exploded or what events led up to the blast.
Alicia Soderberg from Princeton University and her colleagues were using an X-ray detector on NASA's Swift space telescope to observe a galaxy 88 million light years away when they saw a brief but intense X-ray signal. This is characteristic of a supernova explosion, and is emitted by hot gas trapped just behind the shock wave as it bursts out of a star. "It only lasted a few minutes and then the whole show was over," says Soderberg.
The observations suggest the star that exploded was of a hot, massive and luminous variety called a Wolf-Rayet star, and that the shock wave took about 10 minutes to travel from the stellar core out to the surface.
Astronomers may not need to be so fortunate in future. Though current satellite-borne X-ray telescopes do not scan enough of the sky with sufficient regularity to have a good chance of catching signals from exploding stars, proposed satellites such as NASA's Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST), which will image the entire sky every 95 minutes, could pick up hundreds of these blasts every year.

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23 May 08 - 01:52 AM (#2347405)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists find first dinosaur tracks on Arabian Peninsula
May 21, 2008 | User rating: 4.6 / 5 after 17 vote(s)

Scientists have discovered the first dinosaur tracks on the Arabian Peninsula. In the May 21 issue of the journal PLoS ONE, they report evidence of a large ornithopod dinosaur, as well as a herd of 11 sauropods walking along a Mesozoic coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen.

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23 May 08 - 10:10 AM (#2347621)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Ministry of the Interior in the Netherlands decided last week not to adopt electronic voting machines. The decision was made after reviewing extensive research which indicated that none of the available machines offered adequate privacy and security safeguards.

Related StoriesReport: post-election audits needed to ensure election integrity
E-voting reform bill scheduled for House vote this week
Paper trail voting report hammers straw men, its own credibility
E-voting vendor blocks security audit with legal threats
Developing new equipment that could meet the government's standards was deemed too costly and challenging. Instead, voters will go old-school: marking their choices on paper ballots which will be tabulated by machines. The government has also ordered periodic testing of the tabulation machines in order to ensure that they are consistently reliable.

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23 May 08 - 11:40 AM (#2347687)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

When NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander sets down in the Martian arctic on Sunday, it will open a new, icy frontier for scientists back on Earth.

Phoenix, a stationary lander set to make a planned May 25 descent to the Martian surface, is going to where no probe has gone before - the northern plains of Vastitas Borealis on Mars.

"Ten years ago, you wouldn't have chosen this spot at all because it looks just like every other part of Mars," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. "A lot of the features aren't even named up there."

But it's the promise of what lies beneath the frozen surface features, signs of untouched Martian water ice first spotted by orbiters in 2002, which spurred NASA engineers and researchers to launch the $420 million Phoenix last August.

Wielding its robotic arm like a backhoe, Phoenix is designed to dig down in to the Martian soil to collect water ice samples. It will feed them into small onboard ovens and beakers to determine if its landing site may have once been habitable for microbial life.

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23 May 08 - 05:07 PM (#2347833)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Male Birth Control on a key-fob. For the man who needs one more remote control!!


:D


A

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24 May 08 - 09:52 AM (#2348104)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Incense is psychoactive: Scientists identify the biology behind the ceremony
May 20th, 2008 by Josh Hill

Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. In a new study appearing online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), an international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

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24 May 08 - 05:40 PM (#2348403)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IF YOU thought it was hard finding the email address that some other john.smith hasn't already bagged, that's nothing compared with the difficulty you'll have getting an internet connection for your computer after 2011.

As of this month 85 per cent of the 4.3 billion available Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which identify devices connected to the net, are already in use. Within three years they will all be used up, according to a report by the OECD. "The situation is critical for the future of the internet economy," it says.

The report urges governments and businesses to upgrade from the current version, IPv4, to IPv6, which effectively has an unlimited number of IP addresses. IPv6 has been available for more than a decade but service providers have been slow to adopt it.

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25 May 08 - 12:06 PM (#2348837)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ThereÕs no way around it: The nature of light seems different depending on how itÕs observed. Light can act like a particle or wave, and all shades of gray in between. Now, physicists have the most dramatic demonstration yet that this range of behaviors between wave and particles really is unavoidable, and that light itself doesnÕt know what it is while itÕs propagating.

Light is made of elementary particles called photons, but those photons donÕt have well-defined trajectories. At any given time, their positions are diffused clouds of probability that move like waves. Thus, light can act like a wave, going around obstacles and creating patterns of interference. Or a photon can act like a particle, producing a discrete click when it hits a detector. The behavior depends on the experimental measurement.

In one interpretation, light somehow knows in advance what kind of measurement will be performed, so it can pick a certain modus operandi. ÒIn a na•ve interpretation, the photon would know the experimental apparatus, and behave accordingly,Ó says Jean-Fran쳌ois Roch of the Ecole Normale SupŽrieure in Cachan, France. ÒIf the experiment tests the particle-like behavior, then it behaves like a particle, and if the experiment tests the wavelike behavior, then it behaves like a wave.Ó

Roch and his collaborators, however, have now shown that this na•ve interpretation is, well, na•ve Ñ and they have done so for the first time for the full range of lightÕs behaviors. In an upcoming Physical Review Letters, they describe randomly changing the measurement they took while light was propagating, and how light behaved accordingly.


Physicists in France shot one photon at a time through a partially-reflecting mirror . Each photon ÒsplitÓ and took two trajectories simultaneously, hitting two regular mirrors and then recombining in different ways at a second partially-reflecting mirror, before hitting one of two detectors

ÒYou can change choices which, common sense says, had to be made at the beginning,Ó comments Wojciech Zurek of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. ÒIn some sense, you can rewrite the past by what you measure now.Ó

Inspired by an idea proposed three decades ago by physicist John Archibald Wheeler, Roch and his team played mind tricks with a single photon at a time. In their experiment, each photon went first through a partially reflecting mirror. Normally, the mirror would appear to reflect 50 percent of the light and let the other 50 percent pass through.

But a single photon, faced with the choice of going straight through the mirror or bouncing off, wonÕt decide right away. Only once it hits a detector will the photon decide which trajectory it took, with a 50-50 chance.

After splitting, the photonsÕ two virtual paths bounced off two (real) mirrors, and then crossed at a point. Beyond that point, the physicists placed a detector on each of the possible paths. Right at the crossing point, however, the researchers also placed a second partially reflecting mirror. They finely tuned the position of this last mirror to create the unmistakable signature of wavelike behavior. Light waves corresponding to the two paths created a pattern of interference Ñ with crests and troughs reinforcing or canceling each other out.

The team arranged the second partially reflecting mirror so that it would randomly twist the waves every 10 nanoseconds or so.

Roche and his collaborators had already described this kind of experiment last year in Science, in which the mirror twisted the waves by either 0 or 90 degrees. Twisting 90 degrees made the interference disappear, as if the mirror wasnÕt there, so that the experiment would revert to testing particle-like behavior. In the experiment reported in the upcoming paper, the team put into practice a variation on WheelerÕs idea, proposed by Zurek and William Wootters at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. In the new twist, the researchers allowed intermediate angles, so the last mirror can twist the light not only by 90 degrees, but also by any intermediate angle. That let the detectors receive partial information about the photonÕs path, which corresponded to the full range between particle and wave behaviors. The result is a progressive shift from interference to partial interference to no interference, showing that the particle/wave duality admits all shades of gray.

The researchers also placed the mirrors far from each other Ñ about 50 meters apart. Because a photon takes tens of nanoseconds to cover such a distance, and because information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, each photon couldnÕt possibly know the random state of the mirror Ñwhich changed faster than that ÐÑ in advance.

Peter Sonnentag of the University of TŸbingen in Germany calls the teamÕs latest results Òvery convincing.Ó He says that such experiments rule out Òan interpretation of quantum mechanics that would state that the photon adjusts its behavior to wavelike or particle-like at the beginning of an experiment.Ó

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It scarcely needs to be pointed out that the proposition "You can rewrite the past by what you measure in the present" will open the doors to a dozen New Age books about positive mental assertions and so on, far beyond the scientifically legitimate implications of the experiments described. Watch for it to resurface in numerous strange places on your bookstore's self-help shelf. :D


A

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25 May 08 - 12:13 PM (#2348841)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"ith nearly 300 planets now known beyond the solar system, astronomers are honing their hunting skills, trying to determine which stars are most likely to harbor planets that resemble Earth. A four-year study of 400 stars, most of them similar to the sun, have yielded what astronomers are calling a ÒremarkableÓ and unprecedented statistic.

As many as 30 percent of sunlike stars possess close-in, relatively small planets Ñ only four to 30 times as heavy as Earth. These are small enough to have a solid, rocky surface like EarthÕs or an icy one like NeptuneÕs. The planets all lie near their parent star and take less than 50 days to complete an orbit.

Christophe Lovis of Geneva Observatory in Switzerland and his colleagues base their findings on a search for tiny wobbles, induced by the tug of small, unseen planets, in the motion of several hundred F, G and K stars. Such stars range from 0.7 to 1.2 times the mass of the sun. (The sun is a G type star.) The researchers measured the wobbles, indicated by periodic shifts in the wavelength of starlight, using a sensitive spectrometer called HARPS, for High Accuracy Radial velocity Planetary Search, on the European Southern ObservatoryÕs 3.6-meter telescope in La Silla, Chile.

Lovis and his collaborators found signs of 45 low-mass planets among a subset of the stars. These include at least eight superEarths Ñ objects that are likely to have rocky surfaces and have between about four and 10 times EarthÕs mass. Heavier objects, up to 30 times EarthÕs mass, are classified as ice giants or Neptune-like planets, which would have an icy surface and an atmosphere composed mainly of hydrogen and helium."

---

25 May 08 - 12:27 PM (#2348848)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The great blockbuster mystery-adventure of the Crystal Skulls of Modern Manufacture.



A

---

25 May 08 - 12:37 PM (#2348851)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Last summer, the Discovery Channel temporarily suspended airing its hit survivalist show Man vs. Wild. The producer admitted that the protagonist would get help from staff or spend nights in hotels Ñ all along claiming to rough it alone in the worldÕs most inhospitable places. Yet, Man vs. Wild was not the first high-profile case of possible Òfrontier fakery.Ó

In August 1913, Joseph Knowles, a former Boston Post illustrator, one-time trapper, hunting guide and Navy man, went into the Maine woods on a solitary retreat. Starting out with nothing, not even clothes, Knowles thrived for two months by catching fish, gathering roots and berries, and killing game, the Post recounted in frequent updates.

KnowlesÕ feat was touted as a Òscientific experimentÓ to demonstrate that humans could still make it when deprived of the conveniences of modern life. He was a short-lived media sensation.

But soon after KnowlesÕ triumphant return to Boston, another newspaper printed an exposŽ: Knowles had received help all along. He had spent time drinking beer at a lodge. And the bear skin he sported during many public appearances hosted bullet holes. Motavalli enriches the narration with historical context. But perhaps more important, Motavalli explores the enduring significance of the wilderness in American culture.

---

25 May 08 - 02:37 PM (#2348901)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Huge hidden biomass lives deep beneath the oceans

    * 19:00 22 May 2008
    * NewScientist.com news service
    * Catherine Brahic

It's the basement apartment like no other. Life has been found 1.6 kilometres beneath the sea floor, at temperatures reaching 100 °C.

The discovery marks the deepest living cells ever to be found beneath the sea floor. Bacteria have been found deeper underneath the continents, but there they are rare. In comparison, the rocks beneath the sea appear to be teeming with life.

---

25 May 08 - 02:47 PM (#2348908)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Men are all the same.

---

25 May 08 - 10:55 PM (#2349122)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Cyber-Spying for Dummies
Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 11:10 AM ET May 24, 2008

Congressional experts fear that Defense intelligence agencies are not making wide enough—and smart enough—use of the vast pool of "open source" information now available in cyberspace. The House Armed Services Committee, in a report approved last week on the House floor, worried that clumsy attempts by Pentagon agents to download useful intelligence from the Web could compromise U.S. spy operations by putting potential enemies on notice that U.S. intelligence is interested in them.

Last week the Federation of American Scientists made public a U.S. Army field manual, stamped FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY, outlining procedures for open-source intelligence collection by Army units. The manual says Army agents "must use Government computers to access the Internet" unless they have special authorization to do otherwise. One U.S. official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that, in an effort to track people behind Web sites giving detailed instructions on how to build sophisticated IEDs, counterterrorism experts two years ago asked Pentagon brass for permission to log on to the Web sites using fake identities. The official said the plan was abandoned when lawyers and policymakers insisted that the counterterrorism officials log on using computers with telltale ".gov" or ".mil" domains—a ruling that would have tipped off potential bad guys.

/quote

So the army has to tell you if they're reading a newspaper that you publish for everybody to read, but the other "intel" guys can hide under your bed without a warrant?

Sounds like superb coordination of effort to me.

John

---

25 May 08 - 11:17 PM (#2349126)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

I am sure they have their reasons, John; just as I was sure, Mister Bush probably knew something I did not about terrorists and Iraq.



A

---

26 May 08 - 12:57 AM (#2349169)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Amos -

Given the number of "disaffected" enlisted people I met while in the military, a .gov or .mil URL might tag a new sign-in as a potentially valuable recruit, so I'm not sure they couldn't have created a "cover" that wouldn't have hurt the info gathering. That would, of course, require that they act "intelligently" in their data collection efforts ... ... .

Signing in as "Commanding General CONUS," or with a JAG office header might have been suspicious, I guess. Not too long ago though, I found a guy (SP3? according to the messages) spamming from my old post at YPG (.mil) using the offical website/server to sell phony drugs (probably Mexican, since it's only 30 miles to the border).

John

---

26 May 08 - 01:40 AM (#2349180)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

It sure is a sorry-ass version of technical literacy.


A

---

26 May 08 - 03:50 PM (#2349539)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

New MP3 Revolutionizes Way You Listen to Music

By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

If you are a serious guitar-master wannabe and you want to focus on the tune of Brian May's guitar and don't want to hear Freddie Mercury's voice and Roger Tailor drumming in Queen songs, then this may be what you have been looking for.

Korean computer engineers are introducing a new digital music format that has separate controls on the sound volume for each musical instrument, such as guitar, drum, base and voice -- an ideal tool for music lovers of different tastes as well as karaoke fans.

The new format, which has a file extension format of MT9 and a commercial title of Music 2.0, is poised to replace the popular MP3 file format as the de facto standard of the digital music source, its inventors say.

The MT9 technology was first conceived by Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and is being shaped into commercial use by venture company Audizen. It was selected as a candidate item for the new digital music standard at a regular meeting of Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the international body of the digital music and video industry, held in France late April.

``We made presentations to the participants and they were all surprised to see it. They immediately voted to make it a candidate for the digital music standard,'' said Ham Seung-chul, chief of Audizen. He is expecting it will be formerly selected as an international standard in the MPEG forum's next meeting to be held in Germany June.

The distinctive feature of MT9 format is that it has a six-channel audio equalizer, with each channel dedicated to voice, chorus, piano, guitar, base and drum. For example, if a user turns off the voice channel, it becomes a karaoke player. Or one can turn off all the instruments and concentrate on the voice of the main singer as if he or she is singing a cappella.

Ham says that the music industry should change its attitude to the market as music is becoming a digital service, rather than a physical product. MT9 is the ideal fit for the next generation of music business because it can be used for multiple services and products, such as iPhones, PCs, mobile phones and karaoke bars, he says.

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are both interested in equipping their mobile phones with an MT9 player and their first commercial products are likely to debut early next year, he said.

If selected as an international format, the MT9 technology can earn big for both Audizen and ETRI, a governmental research institute. ETRI said that it holds three international and six domestic patents for the technology and is planning to file two more this year.

The MT9 files are served in an album package. Audizen is currently selling a limited choice of albums at 2,000 won to 3,000 won on its Web site. More albums are being recorded in the format and even very old albums, such as Queen's or Deulgookhwa's, can be made into MT9 files if they have a digitally re-mastered music source, Ham said.

Unlike other digital formats exclusively used by big companies such as SK Telecom, Audizen allows users to copy the MT9 files, making it a more attractive format. ``It's like having a CD or cassette tape. Once you buy it, you can lend it to your friends. We don't want to be too fussy about DRM (digital right management),'' he said.

[e-mail]

---

26 May 08 - 04:21 PM (#2349562)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

They will have to make it iTunes-playable one way or anothert.



A

---

26 May 08 - 09:11 PM (#2349726)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SAN FRANCISCO Ñ Same-sex couples in some counties will be able to marry as soon as Saturday, June 14, the president of the California's county clerks association said Monday.

Stephen Weir, who heads the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said he was told by the Office of Vital Records that clerks would be authorized to hand out marriage licenses as soon as that date Ñ exactly 30 days after the California Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage should be legal.

The court's decisions typically take effect after 30 days, barring further legal action.
"They are shooting for the 14th," said Weir, adding that the state planned to give California's 58 counties advice early this week for implementing the historic change so local officials can start planning.

An effort, however, is under way to stay the Supreme Court's decision until voters can decide the issue with an initiative planned for the November ballot. The measure would overrule the justices' decision and amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.

Justices have until the ruling's effective date to weigh the request, but could give themselves longer to consider it, attorneys have said. Another complicating factor is that the Supreme Court also directed a midlevel appeals court that upheld the state's one man-one woman marriage laws a year ago to issue a new order legalizing same-sex marriage, and it's not clear when the appeals court would comply.

---

26 May 08 - 09:55 PM (#2349748)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Life has been found 1.6 kilometres beneath the sea floor, at temperatures reaching 100 ¡C.

The discovery marks the deepest living cells ever to be found beneath the sea floor. Bacteria have been found deeper underneath the continents, but there they are rare. In comparison, the rocks beneath the sea appear to be teeming with life.

John Parkes, a geobiologist at the University of Cardiff, UK, hopes his team's discovery might one day help find life on other planets. He says it might even redefine what we understand as life, and, bizarrely, what we understand by "age".

Parkes has been hunting for deep life for over 20 years. Recently, he and his colleagues examined samples of a mud core extracted from between 860 metres and 1626 metres beneath the sea floor off the coast of Newfoundland.

They found simple organisms known as prokaryotes in every sample. Prokaryotes are organisms that often have just one cell. Their peculiarity is that, unlike any other form of life, their DNA is not neatly packed into a nucleus.

Gradual descent

About 60% of the cells Parkes and his team found were alive. They are related to organisms found in deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Depending on the depth, between one in 20 and one in 10 of the cells were dividing, which is the normal way prokaryotes reproduce.

Where cells living so far beneath the sea floor could have come from remains a mystery. They may have been gradually buried in sediment as millions of years passed by, and adapted to the increasing temperatures and pressure, he says.

Another possibility is that they were sucked deep into the mud from the sea water above. Hydrothermal vents pulse hot water out of the seabed and into the ocean. This creates a vacuum in the sediment, which draws fresh sea water into the marine aquifer.

It is important to understand the way the cells got down there, because that has implications for their age. The cells are not very active and according to Parkes they have very few predators. "We find very few viruses, for example, down there," he says. "At the surface, if you don't divide you get eaten. But if there are no predators, the pressure to reproduce decreases and you can spend more energy on repairing your damaged molecules."

Ancient life

This means it is conceivable Ð but unproven Ð that some of the cells are as old as the sediment. At 1.6 km beneath the sea, that's 111 million years old. But in an underworld where cells divide excruciatingly slowly, if at all, age tends to lose its relevance, says Parkes.

Parkes' interest in prokaryotes goes far beyond those that are buried deep in the Earth. He thinks the cells found there could lead to life on other planets.
Previously, he has shown that the rocks beneath the oceans could be home to the largest population of prokaryotes on Earth, and account for one tenth of all living carbon. He estimates the combined undersea biomass could be equivalent to that of all the plants on Earth.

"We are all dominated by our surface existence where everything relates to photosynthesis and oxygen," he told New Scientist.

The possibility that there could be more forms of life beneath the surface than above it suggests that they have different and effective ways of surviving Ð ways that could be independent of light and oxygen. And if these "new" forms of life exist on Earth, they could exist on other planets too.

---

27 May 08 - 12:24 PM (#2350196)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Hear George W sing green green grass of home

---

27 May 08 - 04:56 PM (#2350428)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests.

God may work in mysterious ways, but a simple computer program called Evogod may explain how religion evolved. By assuming that a small number of people have a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish. However, according to the US scientist who wrote the program, religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out ö perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion.

Read the full story here:

Full Story

---

27 May 08 - 07:32 PM (#2350559)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Beavers to return after 400 years

The European beaver is to be reintroduced to Scotland for the first time in more than 400 years, the Scottish Government has announced.

Environment Minister Michael Russell has given the go-ahead for up to four beaver families to be released in Knapdale, Argyll, on a trial basis.

The beavers will be caught in Norway and released in spring 2009.

Mr Russell said: "This is an exciting development for wildlife enthusiasts all over Scotland and beyond."

The beavers, which will be captured in autumn 2008, will be put into quarantine for six months before three to four families are released. Five lochs have been proposed for the release.

This will be the first-ever formal reintroduction of a native mammal into the wild in the UK.
        
They are charismatic, resourceful little mammals and I fully expect their reappearance in Knapdale to draw tourists from around the British Isles and even further afield

The trial will be run over five years by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, with Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) monitoring the project.

Mr Russell added: "The beaver was hunted to extinction in this country in the 16th Century and I am delighted that this wonderful species will be making a comeback.

"They are charismatic, resourceful little mammals and I fully expect their reappearance in Knapdale to draw tourists from around the British Isles and even further afield.

"Other parts of Europe, with a similar landscape to Scotland, have reintroduced beavers and evidence has shown that they can also have positive ecological benefits, such as creating and maintaining a habitat hospitable to other species."

Scottish Natural Heritage will closely monitor the progress of the beavers over the next five years to consider the impact on the local environment and economy before any decision on a wider reintroduction.

Professor Colin Galbraith, director of policy for SNH, said: "The decision is excellent news. For the first time we will have the opportunity to see how beavers fit into the Scottish countryside in a planned and managed trial.

"No other beaver reintroduction project in Europe has gone through such a long, and thorough, process of preparation, assessment and examination."

Prof Galbraith added that although beavers had been spotted in the wild in isolated cases, they had usually been caught and returned to zoos.

Allan Bantick, chairman of the Scottish Beaver Trial Steering Group, said it was a "historic moment" for wildlife conservation.

"By bringing these useful creatures back to their native environment we will have the chance to restore a missing part of our wetland ecosystems and re-establish much needed natural processes," he said.

David Windmill, chief executive of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said: "It is a strong and visible sign of the Scottish Government's commitment to carrying out conservation in Scotland and re-building our depleted biodiversity."

Simon Milne, chief executive of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, said the challenge was now for the licence holders to raise funds for the project.

---

28 May 08 - 11:44 AM (#2351075)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ANd now, a weather report...from the Arctic region of northern Mars:

"Researchers also released the first weather report from the landing site, provided by a Canadian meteorology station mounted on the Lander's mast. Temperatures ranged from a low of -80° Celsius in the early morning to high of -30° C in the afternoon. That's warmer than it will be come August, when the sun sets below the landing site at the planet's arctic circle.

The average pressure was 8.55 millibars, less than 1 percent the pressure at sea level on Earth. The wind is blowing from the northeast at about 20 kilometers per hour with little dust obliterating the view. Future reports will include measurements of humidity and visibility as more weather instruments are switched on."

---

For some reason I am imagining a dusky summer evening in, say, Indiana or Missouri, with a few folks--Jared and his wife Mae, and their son Jared, Junior who is called "Bud" -- sitting out in rockers or porch swings enjoying the cool after dinner and recognizing the planet Mars by its reddish glint, hanging over the horizon among the distant stars. It is late June, say, in the year 1938. Mae is knitting, and speaks in a sort of dreamy tone.

"I wonder what the weather is like on Mars, Jared."

"Dang foolish idea, Maw. How's anyone ever gonna know thet?"

"But Dad!! Someday, we could go to Mars, maybe by a rocket or somethin'. Then we'd know!!!"

"You best tend to your books, sprat, an' git them dang tomfool idees outta yer head, iffen you want to 'mount to anything in this world. Weather reports from Mars? Ree-dicklous!! I cain't even get a straight answer from the damn raddio about weather right here in Teller County!!!"

"Awww, pa. But could happen....someday!!"

"An' hell could frizz over, too, young man. Ain't worth bettin' on, though!! You keep a sensible head on your shoulders, now, an' leave all that daydreamin' to others who don't mind wastin' their time..."

"Awww. Kin I have some more lemonade?"

(Camera pans the sky and zeros in on the red-glinting dot of far-off Mars, hanging over the horizon....).

---

28 May 08 - 05:42 PM (#2351415)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

EXPLODING STAR CAUGHT ON TAPE
Call it fantastic timing. Early this year, a group of astronomers
led by Princeton University's Alicia Soderberg were using NASA's
Swift satellite to observe a new supernova-one of those spectacular
explosions that mark the end of a massive star's life. This
supernova was in a galaxy some 100 million light years away. It was
relatively unremarkable, Soderberg admits. But then something
extraordinary happened. On January 9, in what some astronomers are
calling a remarkable stroke of good luck, another star in their
field of view went supernova. "We actually watched the star
explode," says Soderberg, who was in Michigan, talking to an
audience of fellow scientists about her research when the call about
the supernova came from her colleague. This set off a week of
scrambling to get astronomers across the globe to point telescopes
at the supernova to confirm and better study the phenomenon.

Astronomers have never before seen a star at the first moments of
its explosive death. Usually, astronomers miss the earliest flash
of a supernova because the explosion is only visible to orbiting
x-ray detectors on platforms like Swift. In the 22 May 2008 issue of
Nature, Soderberg and her colleagues describe how the supernova's
initial burst lasted a few minutes and then faded away. Its power
was remarkable. In 10 minutes, the exploding star expelled the about
the same amount of energy as the sun puts out in 82,000 years.

"It's incredibly serendipitous," says Harvard astrophysics professor
Josh Grindlay, a supernova expert who was not involved in the
research. "This almost certainly provides a whole new way of
detecting supernovae." Though astronomers have known about
supernovas for hundreds of years, the events are rare, only seen
about once a century in any given galaxy. They are only visible to
the eye or to ordinary telescopes a few weeks after the initial
burst, when the supernova begins to shine brightly-sometimes
becoming one of the brightest objects in the evening sky.
Supernovae are remarkable events not only for such displays of power
but because they culminate a natural process of stellar renewal-sort
of like cosmological compost. ...

(Physics News)

---

29 May 08 - 01:38 AM (#2351654)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

By John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle

In a dramatic reversal of decades of public opinion, California voters agree by a slim majority that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, according to a Field Poll released today.

By 51-42 percent, registered voters said they believed same-sex marriage should be legal in California. Only 28 percent favored gay marriage in 1977, when the Field Poll first asked that question, said Mark DiCamillo, the poll's director.

"This is a milestone in California," he said. "You can't downplay the importance of a change in an issue we've been tracking for 30 years."

While opposition to same-sex marriage has been weakening for years in California, supporters have remained a minority. In March 2000, for example, voters overwhelmingly backed Proposition 22, a statute that said the state would recognize only the marriage of a man and a woman. A 2006 Field Poll showed that half the state's voters still disapproved of same-sex marriage.

But the state Supreme Court's decision this month to overturn Prop. 22 might have turned the tide, DiCamillo said.
...

---

29 May 08 - 03:23 PM (#2352286)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Recommended for you »   

Add a section with stories recommended for you, by using search history.



World » edit   
Edition:
ArgentinaAustraliaBelgiëBelgiqueBrasilCanada EnglishCanada FrançaisChileColombiaCubaČeská republikaDeutschlandEspañaEstados UnidosFranceIndiaIrelandItaliaMéxicoNederlandNew ZealandNorgeÖsterreichPerúPortugalSchweizSouth AfricaSuisseSverigeU.K.U.S.Venezuela中国版 (China)香港版 (Hong Kong)日本 (Japan)한국 (Korea)台灣版 (Taiwan)ישראל (Israel)Ελλάδα (Greece)العالم العربي (Arabic)Россия (Russia)हिन्दी (India)
Section:

At least 123456789 stories






Calgary Herald
Royal flag comes down at Nepal palace
AFP - 5 hours ago
KATHMANDU (AFP) - The royal flag was taken down from Nepal's royal palace Thursday as the Himalayan nation celebrated a vote consigning its centuries-old monarchy to the history books and declaring a republic.

---

29 May 08 - 03:54 PM (#2352331)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

A bulletin report from international news sources has discovered new and startling information. No link can be provided due to the refusal of all sources to be quoted in any way that includes any identifying information:






Amos does NOT PREVIEW his posts here.

John

---

29 May 08 - 11:28 PM (#2352663)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

My apologies, John. Rushing never pays, does it?

BERLIN -- Authorities in southern Germany said Saturday they have taken custody of a 7-month-old boy after his parents posted an ad on eBay offering to sell him for one euro, the equivalent of $1.57.

Peter Hieber, a spokesman for police in the Bavarian town of Krumbach, said the baby was placed in the care of youth services in the southwestern Allgaeu region, although the child's 23-year-old mother insisted the ad was only a joke.

Authorities have launched an investigation into possible child trafficking against the baby's mother and 24-year-old father, neither of whom was identified.

"Offering my nearly new baby for sale, as it has gotten too loud. It is a male baby, nearly 28 inches (70 cm) long and can be used either in a baby carrier or a stroller," police quoted the ad as reading.
No offers were made for the child in the two hours and 30 minutes the ad was posted on Tuesday. eBay later deleted the posting and assisted police in tracking down the parents.

---

30 May 08 - 11:01 AM (#2352995)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

There is no point-and-click formula for accumulating a body of knowledge needed to make sense of isolated facts.

It is past time to retire the sliming of elite knowledge and education from public discourse.

Do we want mediocre schools or the best education for our children? If we need an operation, do we want an ordinary surgeon or the best, most elite surgeon available?

America was never imagined as a democracy of dumbness. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by an elite group of leaders, and although their dream was limited to white men, it held the seeds of a future in which anyone might aspire to the highest — let us say it out loud, elite — level of achievement.

Susan Jacoby is the author of "The Age of American Unreason."

---

30 May 08 - 02:36 PM (#2353182)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The entire continent of Europe is being disrupted at various places by protest strikes against high oil prices and demands something be done about it. Spain, Portugal, France, Bulgaria.

Here are some images of some of the strikes. (Der Spiegel)

---

30 May 08 - 04:33 PM (#2353274)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(And that was #400!)

---

30 May 08 - 05:18 PM (#2353319)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Re fuel price strikes:

In the US, industry reports are that for the past two months approximately 700 trucking companies per month have been forced to "cease operations" because cost of operations exceed what they're paid to move your food.

In one specific case, creditors got a "stop payment" order on the company credit cards, which are the only way drivers can purchase fuel, leaving about 1,000 drivers effectively stranded, up to 1,500 miles from home, with no way to get to delivery points or even to get back home.

So I'd guess one could say those thousand drivers are "on strike?"

In the US, trucking is the only way that schedules permit getting "fresh foods" to market. It cannot be done by rail with our existing systems/facilities.

Diesel fuel has been above $4.50/gallon for several months now everywhere in the US, while "consumers" p*ss & moan about $3.50 (+ a little in some places) gasoline. (That's about a 50% increase for diesel, versus around 20% increase for gasoline, over the past year. For diesel it's everywhere. There's a lot more variation in gasoline prices.)

At my last trip to the supermarket, I found several empty bins where the lettuce and brocolli had been, briefly. The "strike" is already working, but there may not be anyone to go back to work even if changes are made, with the way it's working for most here.

[I assume that personal opinions are about as random as anything that can be traced.]

John

---

30 May 08 - 05:44 PM (#2353339)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

John:

Grim shadows of harsh reality, but random enough, I would say.


A

Oh -- in case anyone missed it on the "Was this Worth Doing" thread, here's a lovely technological fancy to offset the pain:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/22/scope.project/index.html

A

---

30 May 08 - 07:09 PM (#2353399)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

A professor I knew many years ago sort of "had a dream" about a much shorter tunnel to connect Boston and Washington DC for a communter train. He presented the problem of calculating the "resonant frequency" for a "train" dropped into one end of the hole and arriving at the other on a number of freshman physics exams. (it's a non-linear pendulum problem)

In the absence of friction and windage (standard quiz conditions for freshmen) it turns out that the trip from one end to the other would be expected to take about a minute or two. For extra credit you could calculate the "peak velocity" at the center of the tube, which - recollection is - was about 2,300 mph, but it might have been a little less.

His "after test" critique always discussed the "make up energy" required for friction and windage, improvements possible by using a "constant slope" instead of straight-line hole for the tunnel, and a few other "practical bits."

We never did figure out for sure whether he really believed the tunnel might someday be "bored" to his specifications, although many students were, especially by the crigique.

John

---

30 May 08 - 11:10 PM (#2353491)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Proposal opportunity: NASA Lunar Science Institute

On June 2, 2008, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) Science Mission Directorate (SMD), in cooperation with the
Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD), is releasing a
Cooperative Agreement Notice (NNH08ZDA008C) soliciting proposals for
the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI). Proposers will be required
to clearly articulate an innovative, interdisciplinary, lunar
research program, together with plans to advance the full scope of
NLSI objectives as defined in the Institute's Mission Statement (see
NLSI website at http://lunarscience.arc.nasa.gov ). Proposals may
address science of the Moon, on the Moon, and from the Moon,
including objectives that meet NASA's future lunar exploration needs.
NASA anticipates making $8-10M per year available for this selection,
leading to 5 to 7 awards at least one of which will be focused on
exploration objectives. Awards will be for 4 years duration.

Participation is open to all categories of organizations (domestic
and non-U.S.), including industry, educational institutions,
not-for-profit organizations, Federally Funded Research and
Development Centers, NASA Centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and
other Government agencies. Upon its release date, this Cooperative
Agreement Notice will be available electronically from
http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ (select "Solicitations" then select "Open
Solicitations" then select "NNH08ZDA008C").

Notices of Intent (NOIs) are due June 27, 2008, and proposals are due
August 29, 2008.

Additional programmatic information can be obtained from: Dr. David
Morrison, Interim Director, NASA Lunar Science Institute, Ames
Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035; Tel: [phone]; email:
[e-mail].

---

01 Jun 08 - 11:07 AM (#2354342)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

A Tiny Fruit That Tricks the Tongue

Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times

ARRIE DASHOW dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a "chocolate shake."

HOW'S IT DO THAT? Franz Aliquo, who calls himself Supreme Commander, right, supplied miracle berries grown by Curtis Mozie, left, to party-goers in Long Island City, Queens, last weekend.

Those who attended sampled the red berries then tasted foods, including cheese, beer and brussels sprouts, finding the flavors transformed. Beer can taste like chocolate, lemons like candy. Mr. Aliquo says he holds the parties to "turn on a bunch of people's taste buds."

Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: "Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!"

They were among 40 or so people who were tasting under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit at a rooftop party in Long Island City, Queens, last Friday night. The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy.

The host was Franz Aliquo, 32, a lawyer who styles himself Supreme Commander (Supreme for short) when he's presiding over what he calls "flavor tripping parties." Mr. Aliquo greeted new arrivals and took their $15 entrance fees. In return, he handed each one a single berry from his jacket pocket.

"You pop it in your mouth and scrape the pulp off the seed, swirl it around and hold it in your mouth for about a minute," he said. "Then you're ready to go." He ushered his guests to a table piled with citrus wedges, cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers, strawberries and cheap tequila, which Mr. Aliquo promised would now taste like top-shelf Patrón.

The miracle fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, is native to West Africa and has been known to Westerners since the 18th century. The cause of the reaction is a protein called miraculin, which binds with the taste buds and acts as a sweetness inducer when it comes in contact with acids, according to a scientist who has studied the fruit, Linda Bartoshuk at the University of Florida's Center for Smell and Taste. Dr. Bartoshuk said she did not know of any dangers associated with eating miracle fruit.

......the best way to encounter the fruit is in a group. "You need other people to benchmark the experience," he said. At his first party, a small gathering at his apartment in January, guests murmured with delight as they tasted citrus wedges and goat cheese. Then things got trippy.

"You kept hearing 'oh, oh, oh,' " he said, and then the guests became "literally like wild animals, tearing apart everything on the table."

"It was like no holds barred in terms of what people would try to eat, so they opened my fridge and started downing Tabasco and maple syrup," he said.......

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/dining/28flavor.html?_r=3&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

---

02 Jun 08 - 08:03 PM (#2355699)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

umans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur.

And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions.

Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York says it starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world.

Scientists already knew about the lag, yet they have debated over exactly how we compensate, with one school of thought proposing our motor system somehow modifies our movements to offset the delay.

Changizi now says it's our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd. His research on this topic is detailed in the May/June issue of the journal Cognitive Science,

---

03 Jun 08 - 12:34 PM (#2356283)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

bobad.

To buy your own miracle berry plant see Logee.com

---

04 Jun 08 - 10:07 AM (#2357166)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"As far as anyone can tell, the bdelloid rotifers are ancient asexuals: they appear to have been living entirely without sex for more than 85 million years. And each time we learn more details of their lifestyle, the wackier it becomes.

Evolving to live without sex is easy; all sorts of organisms do it the whole time. For example: aphids, weevils, snails, water fleas, nematode worms, scorpions, even the occasional lizard, have all been known to evolve asexuality. Instead of reproducing via eggs and sperm, asexuals can reproduce in any number of ways. For instance, some bud off a piece of themselves; the piece grows into a whole new animal. The bdelloids, like many other asexuals, reproduce by means of eggs that don't need to be fertilized.
No, evolving asexuality isn't the hard part. The hard part is making an evolutionary success of it."

From this charming article by Olivia Judson, charming as well.,

---

04 Jun 08 - 11:33 PM (#2357860)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Scientists News Service, 3 June:

Kicking Pluto out of the planet club was nothing compared to this. An astronomer is calling for demoting two entire arms of our galaxy, after they failed to turn up in a sensitive new map of the Milky Way's stars.

Astronomers have long believed that our galaxy possesses four spiral arms, since radio observations show concentrations of gas that trace such a spiral structure.

But now, two of the Milky Way's arms have failed to turn up in a sensitive new survey that used the Spitzer Space Telescope to map the distribution of millions of stars. Spitzer is well-suited to mapping the galaxy's stars because its infrared vision can pierce through the dust that obscures stars at optical wavelengths of light.

Astronomer Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater, US, says these two arms, called Sagittarius and Norma, may be mostly concentrations of gas, perhaps sprinkled with pockets of young stars.

By contrast, the other two arms, called Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus, appear rich not only in gas, but in stars both young and old. "These major arms . . . could be the things that would really stand out if you were looking at the Milky Way galaxy from Andromeda [a nearby galaxy]," Benjamin says.

---

05 Jun 08 - 02:39 PM (#2358532)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A happily married couple in northern India got the shock of their lives when they learnt they had divorced 10 years ago, the Times of India reported on Tuesday.

Meena Verma, a mother of two children, tried to file a case against her in-laws for violence, only to be told by a court in Haryana state that she had been divorced for a decade.

Her husband Virender told the Times of India his brother, a lawyer, had apparently forged the divorce a decade earlier, when the couple were contemplating making a similar complaint.

"It seems the divorce was doctored to defeat Meena's possible complaint," he said.

The couple filed a petition accusing Virender's brother, Surinder Verma, and four associates, of forgery. Surinder denied the accusation.

(Reporting by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Alex Richardson)

---

05 Jun 08 - 03:36 PM (#2358604)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(06-05) 12:28 PDT SAQQARA, Egypt (AP) --

Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the "missing pyramid" of a pharaoh and a ceremonial procession road where high priests carried mummified remains of sacred bulls, Egypt's antiquities chief said Thursday.

Zahi Hawass said the pyramid — of which only the base remains — is believed to be that of King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years more than 4,000 years ago.

In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned Menkauhor's pyramid among his finds at Saqqara, calling it the "Headless Pyramid" because its top was missing, Hawass said.

But the desert sands covered Lepsius' discovery, and no archaeologist since was able to find it.

"We have filled the gap of the missing pyramid," Hawass told reporters on a tour of the discoveries at Saqqara, the necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, south of Cairo.

Only the pyramid's base — or the superstructure as archeologists call it — was found after a 25-foot-high mound of sand was removed over the past year and a half by Hawass' team.

---

07 Jun 08 - 02:41 AM (#2359883)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The CMB is relic radiation that fills the entire Universe and is regarded as the most conclusive evidence for the Big Bang.

Although this microwave background is mostly smooth, the Cobe satellite in 1992 discovered small fluctuations that were believed to be the seeds from which the galaxy clusters we see in today's Universe grew.

Dr Adrienne Erickcek, and colleagues from the California Institute for Technology (Caltech), now believes these fluctuations contain hints that our Universe "bubbled off" from a previous one.

Their data comes from Nasa's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been studying the CMB since its launch in 2001.
Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular.

Arrow of time

Describing the team's work at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in St Louis, Missouri, co-author Professor Sean Carroll explained that "a universe could form inside this room and weÕd never know".

---

07 Jun 08 - 11:28 PM (#2360486)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

At noon, it was black as night. It was May 19, 1780 and some people in New England thought judgment day was at hand. Accounts of that day, which became known as 'New England's Dark Day,' include mentions of midday meals by candlelight, night birds coming out to sing, flowers folding their petals,and strange behavior from animals. The mystery of this day has been solved by researchers at the University of Missouri who say evidence from tree rings reveals massive wildfires as the likely cause, one of several theories proposed after the event, but dismissed as 'simple and absurd.'

"The patterns in tree rings tell a story," said Erin McMurry, research assistant in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Tree Ring Laboratory. "We think of tree rings as ecological artifacts. We know how to date the rings and create a chronology, so we can tell when there has been a fire or a drought occurred and unlock the history the tree has been holding for years."

Limited ability for long-distance communication prevented colonists from knowing the cause of the darkness. It was dark in Maine and along the southern coast of New England with the greatest intensity occurring in northeast Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire and southwest Maine. In the midst of the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington noted the dark day in his diary while he was in New Jersey.

Nearly 230 years later, MU researchers combined written accounts and fire scar evidence to determine that the dark day was caused by massive wildfires burning in Canada.

---

09 Jun 08 - 10:38 AM (#2361409)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

One of the most famous quotes from Mensagem is the first line from O Infante (belonging to the second Part), which is Deus quer, o homem sonha, a obra nasce (which translates roughly to "God wants, man dreams, the deed is born"). That means 'Only by God's will man does', a full comprehension of man's subjection to God's wealth. Another well-known quote from Mensagem is the first line from Ulysses, "O mito é o nada que é tudo" (a possible translation is "The myth is the nothing that is all"). This poem refers Ulysses, king of Ithaca, as Lisbon's founder (recalling an ancient Greek myth).

---

10 Jun 08 - 10:10 AM (#2362267)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From its diminutive lavender flowers to its straggly windblown stalks, there is nothing about the beach weed known as the Great Lakes sea rocket to suggest that it might be any sort of a botanical wonder.

Yet scientists have found evidence that the sea rocket is able to do something that no other plant has ever been shown to do.

The sea rocket, researchers report, can distinguish between plants that are related to it and those that are not. And not only does this plant recognize its kin, but it also gives them preferential treatment.

If the sea rocket detects unrelated plants growing in the ground with it, the plant aggressively sprouts nutrient-grabbing roots. But if it detects family, it politely restrains itself.

The finding is a surprise, even a bit of a shock, in part because most animals have not even been shown to have the ability to recognize relatives, despite the huge advantages in doing so.

If an individual can identify kin, it can help them, an evolutionarily sensible act because relatives share some genes. The same discriminating organism could likewise ramp up nasty behavior against unrelated individuals with which it is most sensible to be in claws- or perhaps thorns-bared competition.

"I'm just amazed at what we've found," said Susan A. Dudley, an evolutionary plant ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who carried out the study with a graduate student, Amanda L. File.

"Plants," Dr. Dudley said, "have a secret social life."

Since the research on sea rockets was published in August in Biology Letters, a journal of the United Kingdom's national academy of science, Dr. Dudley and colleagues have found evidence that three other plant species can also recognize relatives.

---

10 Jun 08 - 10:28 AM (#2362279)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...It was the directory for world's first commercial phone system, Volume 1, No. 1, published in New Haven by the Connecticut District Telephone Company in November 1878, future issues to be published "from time to time, as the nature of the service requires."

Two things struck me. As an aging veteran of the current rewiring of the human condition, I wondered whether there might be lessons from that first great rewiring of our collective nervous system.

Another was a shock of recognition — that people were already talking on the phone a year before Einstein was born. In fact, just two years later Einstein's father went into the nascent business himself. Einstein grew up among the rudiments of phones and other electrical devices like magnets and coils, from which he drew part of the inspiration for relativity. It would not be until 1897, after people had already made fortunes exploiting electricity, that the English scientist J. J. Thomson discovered what it actually was: the flow of tiny negatively charged corpuscles of matter called electrons.

The New Haven switchboard opened in January 1878, only two years after Alexander Graham Bell, in nearby Boston, spoke the immortal words "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." It was the first commercial system that allowed many customers to connect with one another, for $22 a year, payable in advance...."

---

10 Jun 08 - 11:05 AM (#2362311)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW YORK (AP) — A Manhattan skyscraper that is home to The New York Times became the site of twin daredevil stunts Thursday, with two men scaling the 52-story office tower within a matter of hours.

The first man, Alain Robert, unfurled a banner as he climbed that said "Global warming kills more people than a 9/11 every week." He was arrested when he made it to the top.

Hours later, a second man ascended the building — a stunt that drew the attention of thousands of onlookers, along with TV cameras that captured the drama in real time. Crowds on the street pressed against police barricades to watch, and people clapped and cheered for the climber while snapping pictures on their cellphones.

He, too, was taken into custody as he reached the top. Police said he was charged with reckless endangerment, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct and was awaiting arraignment overnight.

"Only in New York. This is why I live in New York," said 29-year-old Emily Perschetz, who watched the second climber for about 20 minutes.

---

10 Jun 08 - 12:06 PM (#2362376)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

What will more Americans do this year in numbers greater than all Americans that will get cancer, get married and graduate college collectively?











answer:


declare bankruptcy.

---

11 Jun 08 - 10:34 PM (#2363880)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In a bizarre revelation, the judge who is presiding over the Isaacs obscenity trial in Los Angeles was found to have sexually explicit material on a publicly-accessible website. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged that he had posted the materials, but says he believed the site to be for personal storage only, and not accessible to the public (though he does acknowledge sharing some of the material with friends). The files included images of masturbation, public sex, contortionist sex, a transsexual striptease, a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows, and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. The latter two are especially ironic in that the trial involves the distribution of allegedly obscene sexual fetish videos depicting bestiality, among other things, by Ira Isaacs, an L.A. filmmaker."
Stanislav_J continues: "The judge has blocked public access to the site (putting up a graphic that reads, 'Ain't nothin' here Ñ y'all best be movin' on, compadre').

Isaacs' defense had welcomed the assignment of Kozinski to the case because of his long record of defending the First Amendment, but the startling news about his website (the revelation of which seems to have been interestingly timed to coincide with today's scheduled opening arguments) now have many folks calling for him to be removed from the case. There is no indication that any of the images on Kozinski's site would be considered obscene or illegal. But certainly, one has to believe that most would consider this at the very least to represent a serious conflict of interest given the nature of the trial."

---

12 Jun 08 - 10:31 AM (#2364209)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Rare Turtle Returns to Texas



For the first time since the 1930's, federal biologists confirmed that a leatherback sea turtle has nested on a Texas beach, at the Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi.

---

14 Jun 08 - 12:20 AM (#2365626)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Posted: June 13, 2008

Silver, gold, tin and oxygen: The chemical elements most frequently cited in music


(Nanowerk News) Here is our 'Slow News Friday' story for this week: Do the chemical elements, Mendeleev or the Periodic Table play any role in the world of music? Here are a few preliminary notes for an answer to that question, maybe just the tip of an iceberg. Some suggestions are offered on music that is worth listening to, although some of the works commented on may require more of a good sense of humour than musical sensibility from the reader. No word yet on nanoparticles in popular music, though.
The four chemical elements cited most often in musical songs and compositions are, in this order, silver, gold, tin and oxygen, followed by copper and iron, according to a study carried out by Santiago çlvarez, professor at the School of Chemistry of the University of Barcelona, and recently published in New Journal of Chemistry ("Music of the elements").

The music of the elements

To quantify the presence of these elements in the music market, çlvarez analysed the English and Spanish names of each element in a musical cyber store. The chemist explained to SINC that the results may include some redundancies due to different versions of a same piece - especially in classical music - and that some elements appear overvalued since they have several meanings (such as radio or indio in Spanish, lead in English or mercury (mercurio) in both languages). In any case the final aim of the study was not so much a comprehensive statistical analysis. but rather to "build bridges between science and music".

In general, with the exception of oxygen, the elements that appear most frequently in musical compositions are the metals seen most often over the history of humanity and daily life, comments çlvarez, "and silver and gold share the pedestal of popular imagination". Both appear in songs not only because they are components of a large variety of objects, but also because they are the symbol of wealth, luxury and power or due to the metaphors referring to their properties such as metallic shine.
Numerous classical composers have referred to gold or silver in their works such as Bach (Gold und Ophir ist zu schlecht, aria from the cantata BWV 64), Beethoven (Hat man nicht auch Gold beineben, from Fidelio), Dvorçk (O Silver Moon, from Rusalka), or Wagner, in his opera Rhinegold, whose plot revolves around a golden ring and power and the accompanying curse. In the field of pop and rock music there is an abundance of groups that mention these precious metals in their songs: the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Genesis, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Sting, Spandau Ballet, Status Quo and many more.

Another metal with a significant musical presence is tin, which Krzysztof Penderecki uses as an instrument in his work Fluoresences together with pieces of wood and glass, a siren and a typewriter. It is also found in March of the Tin Soldiers by Tchaikovsky although perhaps the piece most related to this metal is Tin Roof Blues interpreted by legendary jazz figures such as Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, Kid Ory or Tommy Dorsey. Curiously, in English the expression "tin earÓ is used to refer to people who have little ear for music, observes çlvarez. ...

---

14 Jun 08 - 02:49 AM (#2365655)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Chips ahoy? Food company beams Doritos ad into outer space

Snack foodÐmaker Frito-Lay apparently believes there may be a market in outer space for its Doritos corn chips. The company announced this week that it plans to beam a 30-second video spot to a solar system 42 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, within which are the seven stars that make up the Big Dipper. The target system consists of two known gas-giant planets orbiting a star quite close in size to our own, meaning that in principle there might be habitable worlds there. The ad, called "Tribe," which shows a gaggle of Doritos dancing around a jar of salsa, was the winning entry in the Doritos Broadcast Project, a U.K. contest to make a video conveying everyday life for inquisitive extraterrestrials. Only thing: How will ETs know Earthlings aren't a bunch of dancing little edible triangles?

---

14 Jun 08 - 10:34 AM (#2365792)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Watching the Fred Thompson candidacy alone was worth the price of admission Ñ sort of like a version of ÒWaiting for GodotÓ in which Godot actually shows up and turns out to be a mailman who enjoys recounting the plots of ÒLaw & OrderÓ episodes in great detail."

Gail Collins

---

16 Jun 08 - 10:47 AM (#2366951)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"I became a journalist because I wanted to tell stories. To find stories you must give yourself to the moment. Time must weigh on you, its lulls, accelerations and silences. The life within, the deeper story, does not yield itself with ease."

Roger Cohen, NYT

---

17 Jun 08 - 02:25 PM (#2368013)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Condom wars for U.S. presidential rivals
The U.S. presidential campaign is in full swing and it is not only the politicians who are looking to get the benefit out of it. A local company has started selling condoms dedicated to the candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, and the contraceptives have rapidly become a big hit on the internet.
The condoms are decorated with portraits of the candidates and rephrased slogans of their presidential campaigns.

The Obama condom carries the slogan "Use with Good Judgment", while the McCain version says "Old but Not Expired."

According to the information on the pack, the Obama condoms could become a real salvation for buyers in the hard period the U.S. is facing.

"These are uncertain times," according to the leaflet. "The economy's a ball-buster and the surge went flaccid! But now there are Obama condoms, for a change you can believe in!"

And the users of the McCain equivalent can be sure that they are "battle tested, strong and durable, for those occasions when you just need to switch your position!" They are also "a perfect gift for grandpa!"

The contraceptives are meant to be collectors' items, but the produces say they are perfectly real and the equal of other condoms sold in the U.S.
The reactions of the candidates as well as the sales results are not yet known.

---

17 Jun 08 - 03:33 PM (#2368075)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Questions/ammunition for journalists...


I would like to know the number of foreclosures there have been under Republican regiemes vs. Democratic.


What is the total amount of money owed to workers in the form of unfunded pensions and health care.

What is the amount of money states have been ordered to support in the form of unfunded mandates - and by whom.


How large would our city on Mars be if we had not wasted money on the Korean, Viet Nam and Iraq wars.

How many foreskins would it take to give McCain a complete new skin makeover.

---

17 Jun 08 - 08:16 PM (#2368353)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.Õs electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.
A vast area of photovoltaic cells would have to be erected in the Southwest. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours.
Large solar concentrator power plants would be built as well.
A new direct-current power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity across the country.
But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive."

A Solar Grand Plan, Scientific American

---

17 Jun 08 - 10:22 PM (#2368406)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Phoenix lander has uncovered a patch of what may be ice on the border of a polygon-shaped section of soil in Mars's northern plains.
The lander's robotic arm uncovered the white substance after further excavating sites called Dodo and Baby Bear to create one large trench. The patch sits at the edge of a polygon, a geological formation created by the seasonal expansion and shrinkage of ice in the Martian soil.
It is too early to say whether the bright area is made of ice or salt. But over the coming days, the lander's cameras will periodically snap pictures of the area to see if the exposed layer changes.
If the layer is an isolated chunk of ice, exposure to the Sun will likely cause the patch to shrink as it turns into water vapour, a process called sublimation. An isolated chunk of ice may hint that liquid water once pooled in the trough between polygons and then froze.

---

17 Jun 08 - 11:01 PM (#2368423)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

On June 4 a 37-year-old woman from San Francisco - Erika La Tour Eiffel, nŽe Erika La Tour - married the Eiffel Tower, in a ceremony attended by 12 friends. Of course, in many ways this is quite a melancholy fact. La Tour Eiffel had an unhappy childhood, cannot form trusting romantic relationships with other human beings and feels safe in investing love only in things that cannot possibly hurt her. Unless, obviously, there is some deep structural damage, exacerbated by a minor earth tremor - in which case a piece of the Eiffel Tower could shear off, and hurt the new Mrs La Tour Eiffel quite a bit.

La Tour Eiffel's unresolved emotional state is reflected in the buildings she falls in love with. Before she was with the Eiffel Tower, she was in love with the Berlin Wall - scarcely the warm, supportive, stable structure of one's dreams. Second-time around, and one wouldn't want to bet the house on her current relationship lasting either. Despite its venerability, the Eiffel Tower is still out on the town, seven nights a week, like a big, iron Peter Stringfellow. It has women crawling all over it. It's hard to see how the new Mrs La Tour Eiffel will get the commitment she craves. Her fatal weakness seems to be for high-profile, trophy buildings, the architectural equivalent of rock stars. I can't help but feel that, as she matures, she will find she has nothing in common with these global icons. My warm hope is that she will eventually give up on these high (in the case of the Eiffel Tower 968ft, or 300m)-profile buildings, and find a more low-key, sustainable happiness with a nearby municipal building - a library, maybe. I hope that they get to settle down, experience true love and maybe raise a couple of small outhouses together.

(London Times columnist Caitlin Moran)

---

19 Jun 08 - 07:55 PM (#2370327)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

""Researchers have found a way to generate the shortest-ever flash of light Ð 80 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second) long.
Such flashes have already been used to capture an image of a laser pulse too short to be "photographed" before (see right).
The light pulses are produced by firing longer, but still very short laser pulses into a cloud of neon gas. The laser gives a kick of energy to the neon atoms, which then release this energy in the form of brief pulses of extreme ultraviolet light.
The trigger pulses fired at the neon cloud are themselves only 2.5 femtoseconds, billionths of a millionth of a second, long, says team member Eleftherios Goulielmakis at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany."

Beautiful picture of result here.


A

---

19 Jun 08 - 07:57 PM (#2370328)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"European researchers said on Monday they discovered a batch of three "super-Earths" orbiting a nearby star, and two other solar systems with small planets as well.
They said their findings, presented at a conference in France, suggest that Earth-like planets may be very common.
"Does every single star harbour planets and, if yes, how many?" asked Michel Mayor of Switzerland's Geneva Observatory. "We may not yet know the answer, but we are making huge progress towards it," Mayor said in a statement.
The trio of planets orbit a star slightly less massive than our Sun, 42 light years away towards the southern constellations Doradus and Pictor.
The planets are bigger than Earth Ð one is 4.2 times the mass, one is 6.7 times and the third is 9.4 times. And they circle their star on faster, closer orbits than Earth, which takes 365 days to orbit the Sun Ð one whizzes around in just 4 days, one takes 10 days and the slowest takes 20 days."


A

---

19 Jun 08 - 11:08 PM (#2370412)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

There is water ice on Mars

within reach of the Mars Phoenix Lander,

NASA scientists announced Thursday.

Photographic evidence settles the debate over the nature of the white material seen in photographs sent back by the craft. As seen in lower left of this image, chunks of the ice sublimed (changed directly from solid to gas) over the course of four days, after the lander's digging exposed them.

"It must be ice," said the Phoenix Lander's lead investigator, Peter Smith. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice."

The confirmation that water ice exists in the area directly surrounding the lander is big and good news for the Martian mission. NASA's stated goal for the Mars Phoenix was to find exactly this -- water ice -- and then analyze it. With the latest news, the first step is accomplished. All that's left now is to get the water into the Phoenix's instruments, a task which has occasionally proven more difficult than anticipated.
Still, this is the best opportunity that humanity has ever had to analyze extraterrestrial water in any form. That had the Phoenix Lander's persona fired up.
"Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!" the Mars Phoenix Lander tweeted at about 5:15 pm.

---

19 Jun 08 - 11:16 PM (#2370417)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Tech savvy British teens have found an innovative -- and illegal -- way to beat summer heat using Google Earth.

Teens scour through the aerial photographs available in the satellite imaging program to locate houses with pools. Once a target has been identified, the revelers use social networking sites like Bebo and Facebook to coordinate illicit pool parties when homeowners are away, according to U.K tech publication The Register.

Local law enforcement told a London entertainment guide that that the "pool-crashing" craze was discovered after multiple pool owners awoke up to find pools full of teens partying or came home from work to a backyard full of beer cans.

Owners of poolside property worry that the craze could spread as the weather gets hotter and homeowners prepare to leave for vacation.

Earlier this year, a water fight organized on Facebook caused thousands of dollars in damage at a public garden in the city of Leeds.

---

20 Jun 08 - 12:12 AM (#2370436)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Whoops:

"
(CNN) -- What was believed to be the sixth human foot to wash up on the shores of British Columbia in recent months proved to be a fake, authorities said Thursday.

A "skeletonized animal paw" had been placed in a sock and athletic shoe that was packed with dried seaweed, the British Columbia Coroners Service announced.

The hoax was uncovered as the coroner's office began DNA and other forensic tests on the supposed foot in an attempt to identify the person to whom it belonged.

The coroners service, a forensic pathologist and an anthropologist all examined the shoe and remains before declaring it a fake.

"It is the position of BCCS that this type of hoax is reprehensible and very disrespectful to the families of missing persons," authorities said in a written statement."

---

20 Jun 08 - 12:26 AM (#2370440)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

With the museum's full consent, the Tseycum tribe will be repatriating the remains of 55 of their ancestors to Canada this week. On Monday morning, in a quiet first-floor auditorium away from the museum's crowds, tribe members performed an emotionally charged private ceremony over the 15 sturdy plastic boxes that contained the remains. The ceremony lasted two and a half hours, and the tribe members and elders from related tribes prayed, spoke, wept and sang, saying they wanted to soothe their ancestors' spirits and prepare them for a return trip from a journey that, the tribe leaders say, should never have happened at all.

"And then we said, 'Now we're going to take you home,' " Chief Jacks said, moments after the ceremony ended. "These people we are taking here have knowledge, respect, wisdom," he added. "We live by today's society, but our history walks with us."

The remains, guessed to be at least 2,000 years old, have been at the museum for about 100 years but have almost certainly never been on display, said Steve Reichl, a museum spokesman. The museum has repatriated other remains to Canada at least once before, in 2002, according to Reichl, and remains have also been returned numerous times to American Indians.

Reichl said the museum worked to streamline the Tseycums' trip. "The end result was a successful visit," he said, "and a moving ceremony."

For the Tseycum people, Monday's events marked a singular culmination of years of painstaking, and painful, detective work.

The tribe's quest to reclaim their ancestors began seven years ago, when Chief Jacks's wife, Cora Jacks, found documents and papers relaying the life story of a 19th- and early 20th-century archaeologist, Harlan Ingersoll Smith. Jacks said she learned that Smith had robbed the graves of Tseycum ancestors, who were buried on Vancouver Island under giant boulders, and sold them to major American museums, and most likely others worldwide.

Mrs. Jacks grew nearly obsessed with tracking down the remains, Chief Jacks said, poring over books, researching government archives and spending late nights searching for clues online.

Smith's selling price, said Chief Jacks, was $5 a skull, $10 for a body.

"He dug our people up and sold them to museums on all four corners of the earth," said Chief Jacks, 63, who is hoping that the Canadian government will help defray the costs of the trip. "What happened to 'rest in peace'?"

---

21 Jun 08 - 01:40 PM (#2371489)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In 2006, for the first time in U.S. history, a majority of all births to women under 30 Ñ 50.4 percent Ñ were out of wedlock. Nearly 80 percent of births among black women were out of wedlock.

---

22 Jun 08 - 03:41 AM (#2371748)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The average life expectancy in 1900 was 47 years. Today it is 77, and rising.
The infant-mortality rate has dropped from 1 in 10 to 1 in 150.
ÒPoorÓ Americans today have routine access to a quality of housing, food, health care, consumer products, entertainment, communications and transportation that even the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers could only dream of.
A farmer a century ago could produce only one-hundredth of what his counterpart is capable of growing and harvesting today.
In the 19th century, almost all teenagers toiled in factories or fields. Now, 9 in 10 attend high school.
TodayÕs Americans have three times more leisure time than their great-grandparents did.
The price of food relative to wages has plummeted: In the early part of this century the average American had to work two hours to earn enough to purchase a chicken, compared with 20 minutes today.

---

22 Jun 08 - 03:47 AM (#2371751)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

If the entire world population of 6.7 billion lived in the United States, the country's density would be about 700 people per square kilometer, according to the New York-based Center for Migration Studies.

The Netherlands has a density of about 400 people per square kilometer. Other cities with a high number of people per square kilometer include Singapore (6,500), Hong Kong (6,600), Macao (18,500), and Monaco (22,000).

---

23 Jun 08 - 03:50 AM (#2372323)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

The price of food relative to wages has plummeted: In the early part of this century the average American had to work two hours to earn enough to purchase a chicken, compared with 20 minutes today.

But median wage is less than average, and at current Kansas minimum wage, it's still about an hour and forty minutes

(at a discount market)

((before taxes)).

And lots of jobs are exempt even from that minimum.

John

---

23 Jun 08 - 01:56 PM (#2372621)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Although a majority of Americans say religion is very important to them, nearly three-quarters of them say they believe that many faiths besides their own can lead to salvation, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The report, titled U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths.

For example, 70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or denomination said they agreed that "many religions can lead to eternal life," including majorities among Protestants and Catholics. Among evangelical Christians, 57 percent agreed with the statement, and among Catholics, 79 percent did.

Among minority faiths, more than 80 percent of Jews, Hindus and Buddhists agreed with the statement, and more than half of Muslims did.

The findings seem to undercut the conventional wisdom that the more religiously committed people are, the more intolerant they are, scholars who reviewed the survey said.

"It's not that Americans don't believe in anything," said Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University. "It's that we believe in everything. We aren't religious purists or dogmatists."

The survey confirms findings from previous studies that the most religiously and politically conservative Americans are those who attend worship services most frequently, and that for them, the battles against abortion and gay rights remain touchstone issues.

"At least at the time of the surveys in 2007, cultural issues played a role in political affiliation," and economic issues less so, said John C. Green, an author of the report and a senior fellow on religion and American politics at Pew. "It suggests that the efforts of Democrats to peel away Republican and conservative voters based on economic issues face a real limit because of the role these cultural issues play."

The survey, which is based on telephone interviews with more than 35,000 Americans from May 8 to Aug. 13, 2007, is the second installment of a broad assessment Pew has undertaken of trends and characteristics of the country's religious life. The first part of the report, published in February, depicted a fluid and diverse national religious life marked by people moving among denominations and faiths.

According to that report, more than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion. Every denomination and religion lost and gained members, but the survey indicated that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. Sixteen percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country's fourth-largest "religious group."

The new report sheds light on the beliefs of the unaffiliated. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, 70 percent of the unaffiliated said they believed in God, including one of every five people who identified themselves as atheist and more than half of those who identified as agnostic.

"What does atheist mean? It may mean they don't believe in God, or it could be that they are hostile to organized religion," Mr. Green said. "A lot of these unaffiliated people, by some measures, are fairly religious, and then there are those who are affiliated with a religion but don't believe in God and identify instead with history or holidays or communities."

The most significant contradictory belief the survey reveals has to do with salvation.

Previous surveys have shown that Americans think a majority of their countrymen and women will go to heaven, and that the circle is wide, embracing minorities like Jews, Muslims and atheists. But the Pew survey goes further, showing that such views are held by those within major branches of Christianity and minority faiths, too.

Scholars said such tolerance could stem in part from the greater diversity of American society: that there are more people of minority faiths or no faith and that "it is hard to hold a strongly sectarian view when you work together and your kids play soccer together," Mr. Lindsay said. ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/us/24religion.html?hp

---

23 Jun 08 - 06:01 PM (#2372792)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Good point, John.

This from Nature.com, a major change of subject:

"The quantum internet

H. J. Kimble1


Quantum networks provide opportunities and challenges across a range of intellectual and technical frontiers, including quantum computation, communication and metrology. The realization of quantum networks composed of many nodes and channels requires new scientific capabilities for generating and characterizing quantum coherence and entanglement. Fundamental to this endeavour are quantum interconnects, which convert quantum states from one physical system to those of another in a reversible manner. Such quantum connectivity in networks can be achieved by the optical interactions of single photons and atoms, allowing the distribution of entanglement across the network and the teleportation of quantum states between nodes."

Coincidentally, from Arxiv.org:

Quantum Physics
System Design for a Long-Line Quantum Repeater

Rodney Van Meter, Thaddeus D. Ladd, W.J. Munro, Kae Nemoto
(Submitted on 29 May 2007 (v1), last revised 7 May 2008 (this version, v2))
We present a new control algorithm and system design for a network of quantum repeaters, and outline the end-to-end protocol architecture. Such a network will create long-distance quantum states, supporting quantum key distribution as well as distributed quantum computation. Quantum repeaters improve the reduction of quantum-communication throughput with distance from exponential to polynomial. Because a quantum state cannot be copied, a quantum repeater is not a signal amplifier, but rather executes algorithms for quantum teleportation in conjunction with a specialized type of quantum error correction called purification to raise the fidelity of the quantum states. We introduce our banded purification scheme, which is especially effective when the fidelity of coupled qubits is low, improving the prospects for experimental realization of such systems. The resulting throughput is calculated via detailed simulations of a long line composed of shorter hops. Our algorithmic improvements increase throughput by a factor of up to fifty compared to earlier approaches, for a broad range of physical characteristics.
Comments:        12 pages, 13 figures. v2 includes one new graph, modest corrections to some others, and significantly improved presentation. to appear in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
Subjects:        Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
Cite as:        arXiv:0705.4128v2 [quant-ph]

---

24 Jun 08 - 08:00 AM (#2373140)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Delving into a 3,000-year-old mystery using astronomical clues in Homer's "The Odyssey," researchers said Monday they have dated one of the most heralded events of Western literature: Odysseus' slaughter of his wife's suitors upon his return from the Trojan War.

According to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the wily hero who devised the Trojan Horse hefted his mighty bow on April 16, 1178 BC, and executed the unruly crowd who had taken over his home and was trying to force his wife into marriage.

The finding leaves many perennial questions unanswered, such as whether the events portrayed actually occurred or whether the blind poet Homer was the author of the tale.

(LA Times)


Wal,at least they got the date right.


A

---

24 Jun 08 - 09:58 PM (#2373699)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

n the autumn of 1703, an unusual anxiety was shewn to enforce the laws against the importation of provisions from Ireland and from England. Mr Patrick Ogilvie of Cairns, a brother of the Lord Chancellor, Earl of Seafleld, was commissioned to guard the coasts between the Sound of Mull and Dumfries, and one Cant of Thurston to protect the east coast between Leith and Berwick, with suitable allowances and powers. It happened soon after that an Irish skipper, named Hyndman, appeared with a vessel of seventy tons, full of Irish meal, in Lamlash Bay, and was imme diately pounced upon by Ogilvie. It was in vain that he represented himself as driven there by force of weather on a voyage from Derry to Belfast: in spite of all his pleadings, which were urged with an air of great sincerity, his vessel was condemned.

Soon after, a Scottish ship, sailing under the conduct of William Currie to Londonderry, was seized by the Irish authorities by way of reprisal for HyndmanÕs vessel. The Scottish Privy Council (February 15, 1704) sent a remonstrance to the Duke of Ormond, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, setting forth this act as Ôan abuse visibly to the breach of the good correspondence that ought to be kept betwixt her majestyÕs kingdoms.Õ How the matter ended does not appear; but the whole story, as detailed in the record of the Privy Council, gives a striking idea of the difficulties, incon veniences, and losses which nations then incurred through that falsest of principles which subordinates the interests of the com munity to those of some special class, or group of individuals.

Ogilvie was allowed forty foot-soldiers and twenty dragoons to assist him in his task; but we may judge of the difficulty of executing such rules from the fact stated by him in a petition, that, during the interval of five weeks, while these troops were absent at a review in the centre of the kingdom, he got a list of as many as a hundred boats which had taken that opportunity of landing from Ireland with victual. Indeed, he said that, without a regular independent company, it was impossible to prevent this traffic from going on.Õ...

---

25 Jun 08 - 11:42 PM (#2374521)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SAN DIEGO Ð A team of San Diego scientists has moved embryonic stem cell research a step closer to helping repair the brains of stroke victims and people with diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Advertisement

The team, led by the Burnham Institute's Stuart Lipton, figured out how to coax the embryonic stem cells of mice to become nerve cells that, when transplanted into a mouse brain damaged by stroke, link themselves to the existing network of neurons.
The mice showed therapeutic improvement, and none of them developed tumors, which has been a problem associated with the implantation of stem cells, according to the article published today in The Journal of Neuroscience.

Lipton said that since submitting the article several months ago, his team has been able to achieve the same result with human embryonic stem cells implanted in mice.

Conditions such as stroke, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease destroy brain cells, causing speech and memory loss and other debilitating consequences. In theory, transplanting neuronal brain cells could restore at least some brain function, just as heart transplants restore blood flow.

---

26 Jun 08 - 10:47 AM (#2374798)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ScienceDaily (June 26, 2008) — Wellcome Trust scientists have identified a key region of the brain which encourages us to be adventurous. The region, located in a primitive area of the brain, is activated when we choose unfamiliar options, suggesting an evolutionary advantage for sampling the unknown. It may also explain why re-branding of familiar products encourages to pick them off the supermarket shelves.


In an experiment carried out at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London), volunteers were shown a selection of images, which they had already been familiarised with. Each card had a unique probability of reward attached to it and over the course of the experiment, the volunteers would be able to work out which selection would provide the highest rewards. However, when unfamiliar images were introduced, the researchers found that volunteers were more likely to take a chance and select one of these options than continue with their familiar -- and arguably safer -- option.

Using fMRI scanners, which measure blood flow in the brain to highlight which areas are most active, Dr Bianca Wittmann and colleagues showed that when the subjects selected an unfamiliar option, an area of the brain known as the ventral striatum lit up, indicating that it was more active. The ventral striatum is in one of the evolutionarily primitive regions of the brain, suggesting that the process can be advantageous and will be shared by many animals.

"Seeking new and unfamiliar experiences is a fundamental behavioural tendency in humans and animals," says Dr Wittmann. "It makes sense to try new options as they may prove advantageous in the long run. For example, a monkey who chooses to deviate from its diet of bananas, even if this involves moving to an unfamiliar part of the forest and eating a new type of food, may find its diet enriched and more nutritious."

---

27 Jun 08 - 02:58 AM (#2375343)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 27 June 2008


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It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic Ð and worrying Ð examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally icefreeNorth Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by hugeswathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.

---

27 Jun 08 - 03:14 AM (#2375354)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For a small planet, Mars sure knows how to go big. It's about half as large as Earth, but it's got the hugest volcano in the solar system in the Arizona-sized Olympus Mons and the grandest of all canyons in the 7 kilometer-deep Vallis Marineris. Now it can add its coolest, most-braggable title: the Biggest Impact Crater in the Solar System. In a new study out in Nature, scientists have shown that Mars was probably hit by an asteroid the size of the Moon sometime in its early history, which left a crater the size of the planet's entire northern hemisphere.

---

27 Jun 08 - 09:21 AM (#2375524)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

This week's results are from a single scoop of Martian soil. The science pack was designed to understand the wet chemistry of the soil: what is dissolved in it, and how acidic or alkaline it is. The initial results showed that the soil is very basic, as the pH was measured at between eight and nine. In addition to the basic nature of the soil, the instrument found a host of salt components. Those identified so far include magnesium, sodium, potassium, and chlorine, and the analysis is not yet complete. According to co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, science lead for the wet chemistry investigation, these salt findings are simply further evidence of water.

How does this out-of-the-world soil compare to Earth? According to Kounaves, "This soil appears to be a close analog to surface soils found in the upper dry valleys in Antarctica. [...] Over time, I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world, but that in many aspects, like mineralogy, it's very much like Earth."

While this instrument has provided a wealth of data, it is not the only chemical analysis currently being undertaken on the Martian surface. The Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) has baked a soil sample up to 1,800 oF to examine the gases released at various temperatures, which can provide a large amount of data. In this case, the analysis is very complicated and it's expected to take a few more weeks until the results are known.

Coupled with the previous results, where the lander uncovered water ice that later sublimed, these new discoveries strengthen the idea that liquid water once existed on the surface. "At this point, we can say that the soil has clearly interacted with water in the past. We don't know whether that interaction occurred in this particular area in the northern polar region, or whether it might have happened elsewhere and blown up to this area as dust," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead TEGA scientist.

---

27 Jun 08 - 11:02 AM (#2375596)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.

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The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.

Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like "I think I read somewhere" or even with a reference to a specific source.

In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a gloss of credibility.

Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position.

Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate.

Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to "stop the smears," the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man.

Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication of the study of students' impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.

In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true.

In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes's ideal.

---

27 Jun 08 - 02:04 PM (#2375711)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Battle of the Bovines in the Swiss Alps

Forget bullfights. In the Alps, it is the female cows that get to enter the ring. The female members of the robust Heren breed fight it out for the title "Queen of Queens." It's a competition where Daisy and Buttercup get to be contenders.

Spain may have bull fighting but in Switzerland it is the female that gets to enter the ring. Yes, the normally docile cow gets in touch with her inner bovine boxer and locks horns with her rival to claim the title of "Queen of queens."

These moo fighters belong to the small black-coated Herens or Eringer breed, suitable for trekking through steep mountain paths, and are more wiry, muscular and aggressive than their voluptuous placid cousins munching grass in the meadows down below. The robust alpine breed fight amongst themselves to establish hierarchy within the herd.

The "Battle of the Queens," or "Combat de Reines" is a huge attraction in the Swiss canton of Valois, as well as the Aosta Valley in Italy and parts of France, drawing crowds of thousands to the regional bouts. The tradition goes back to the 17th century but the first official cow fight was organized in 1923. Each year the Swiss season culminates in the grand finals in Martigny in October, which are attended by up to 50,000 spectators.

The tournaments are well ordered affairs, with cows put into different categories according to weight. Then each Daisy or Buttercup enters into a duel for dominancy, locking horns and kicking the dirt to show who's boss. While there is aggression and the battles can sometimes take up to 40 minutes, not much harm is done. In fact an animal rights group that turned up to protest one year went off home once they realized how little violence was actually involved.

In fact sometimes the biggest problem can be getting the divas to enter the fray at all. If a cow refuses to take on an opponent then that's that, she is eliminated.

---

27 Jun 08 - 02:08 PM (#2375713)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

THE NEXT BIG THING

Sometime over the next several weeks, a privately held and ultra-secretive company named EEStor Inc., based in Cedar Park, Texas, is expected to release the results of independent third-party testing of its electrical-energy storage unit, which aims to replace the electrochemical batteries we now use in everything from hybrid cars to laptop computers. EEStor says its system, combining battery and ultra-capacitor technology and based on modified barium titanate ceramic powder, could power a car for 400 kilometres with regular performance. It claims the unit would charge in a few minutes and weigh less than 10 per cent of current lead-acid batteries for the same cost.

If it is proven to work, EEStor, and its equity and business partners, including Zenn and U S. defence contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., will have a technology that could change the transportation industry, with implications for renewable energy and any sector that needs electrical energy storage technology.

Officials at Lockheed, which this year bought exclusive rights to use EEStor's power system for military purposes, have said the technology "could lead to energy independence for the war fighter." Officials with Zenn, which bought exclusive worldwide rights to the system for vehicles weighing up to 1,400 kilograms, say they believe it is the "holy grail" of electric storage systems.

EEStor has said it expects its technology to be commercially ready within six months.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=c2046e9d-ce11-4115-af06-9737c3f6f232

---

01 Jul 08 - 09:19 AM (#2378166)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Hypocrisy is driven by mental processes over which we have volitional control," said Dr. Valdesolo, a psychologist at Amherst College. "Our gut seems to be equally sensitive to our own and others' transgressions, suggesting that we just need to find ways to better translate our moral feelings into moral actions."

That is easier said than done, especially in an election year. Even if the presidential candidates know in their guts that they are being hypocritical, they cannot very well be kept busy the whole campaign doing mental arithmetic. Besides, they are surrounded by advisers with plenty of spare mental power to rationalize whatever it takes to win.

Politicians are hypocritical for the same reason the rest of us are: to gain the social benefits of appearing virtuous without incurring the personal costs of virtuous behavior. If you can deceive even yourself into believing that you're acting for the common good, you'll have more energy and confidence to further your own interests — and your self-halo can persuade others to help you along.

But as useful as hypocrisy can be, it's apparently not quite as basic as the human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Your mind can justify double standards, it seems, but in your heart you know you're wrong. "


Deep Down, We Can't Fool Even Ourselves
            

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: July 1, 2008, NYT Science

---

01 Jul 08 - 09:30 AM (#2378174)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The evidence is getting stronger that our neighbor, Mars, was struck by a massive asteroid or other space object some four billion years ago, at the dawn of the solar system. Three papers published in the journal Nature make a persuasive case that a cataclysmic impact stripped away much of the Martian surface in the planet's northern hemisphere, leaving behind a huge, smooth basin to puzzle modern researchers.

The thought of the forces at play makes for a thrilling — even chilling — reminder that the solar system was a very dangerous place at the start.

The reports from three separate research teams sought to explain why much of the Martian north is a low-lying expanse of smooth plains, while the southern hemisphere has rugged highlands sitting on a thicker crust. One theory was that geological forces within the planet were responsible. The other, given a strong boost by the new papers, blamed a cosmic collision.

The best guess is that an object about 1,250 miles wide, roughly the size of Pluto, slammed into Mars at 20,000 miles an hour. It created an elliptical basin measuring 6,500 miles by 5,300 miles — about 40 percent of Mars's surface and by far the largest impact scar yet found in the solar system.

At roughly the same time, Earth suffered an even more calamitous collision, which ejected enough material into space to form the Moon. A lesser impact 65 million years ago is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs, and a much lesser impact a century ago flattened a forest in Siberia.

For those inclined to fret about their own cosmic risks, another article in Nature provides some reassurances. A decade-long search for asteroids or other objects nearby that might menace the Earth has found "little risk of a cataclysmic impact" — at least for the next century.
"

---

Well!! That's us sorted, eh?



A

---

01 Jul 08 - 09:51 AM (#2378200)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

"Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. ..."


Robert Kennedy
City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio
April 5, 1968

Thanks, Carol!


A

---

01 Jul 08 - 10:30 PM (#2378767)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

The Girl who Silenced the U.N. for Five Minutes


This is an incredible video of a Canadian girl who spoke to the United Nations and left them completely silent and speechless for five minutes. Her name is Severn Suziki, and her speech was given at a U.N. assembly in Brazil when she was twelve years old. She had raised all the money to travel to the delegation, five thousand miles from her home, herself.

Speaking about the hole in the ozone layer, pollution, the devastation of the forests and extinction of so many species, Severn charges that we adults have no idea how to fix these things, in fact can't fix them, and that we must change our ways. "If you don't know how to fix it, stop breaking it," she pleads.

Severn continued to say:

"I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am hear to speak on behalf of starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I'm only a child and I don't have the solutions…but neither do you. I am only a child, but I know we are all part of a family five billion strong; in fact, 30 million species strong, and borders and governments will never change that.

Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to share. We are afraid to let go of some of our wealth. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with children living in the streets. This is what one child told us:

'I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter, love and affection.'

If child on the streets who has nothing is willing to share - why are we, who have everything, still so greedy?

I am only a child, but I know if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and finding treaties - what a wonderful place this world would be."

And here's the kicker - this speech was given in 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. How much is still relevant today? All of it. And the more important question is: How much has been changed, accomplished, since Severn spoke that day?

Years later, Severn wrote a piece for Time magazine in which she said: "I spoke for six minutes and received a standing ovation. Some of the delegates even cried. I thought that maybe I had reached some of them, that my speech might actually spur action. Now, a decade from Rio, after I've sat through many more conferences, I'm not sure what has been accomplished. My confidence in the people in power and in the power of an individual's voice to reach them has been deeply shaken…In the 10 years since Rio, I have learned that addressing our leaders is not enough. As Gandhi said many years ago, 'We must become the change we want to see.' I know change is possible."

At the age of nine, Severn founded the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a group of children dedicated to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. Today, Severn is an environmental activist, speaker, television host and author. She has spoken around the world about environmental issues, urging listeners to define their values, act with the future in mind, and take individual responsibility.

She co-hosted Suzuki's Nature Quest, a children's television series that aired on the Discovery Channel in 2002. In early 2002, she helped launch an Internet-based think tank called The Skyfish Project. As a member of Kofi Annan's Special Advisory Panel, she and members of the Skyfish Project brought their first project, a pledge called the "Recognition of Responsibility", to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002.

Click here to watch the video and hear her incredible speech

---

02 Jul 08 - 04:47 PM (#2379472)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Washington's Boyhood Home Is Found
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By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: July 3, 2008
George Washington's boyhood home has been found.


Researchers announced Wednesday that remains excavated in the last three years were those of the long-sought dwelling, on the old family farm in Virginia, 50 miles south of Washington. The house stood on a terrace overlooking the Rappahannock River, where legend has it the boy threw a stone or coin across to Fredericksburg.

On the subject of legend, the archaeologists who made the discovery could no more tell a lie than young George. No, there was not a single cherry tree anywhere around, not even a stump or a rusty hatchet. The tale of the boy owning up to whacking his father's prized cherry tree, the one thing most people think they know of Washington's youth, has long since been discredited as apocryphal.

But finding the house, archaeologists and historians say, may yield insights into the circumstances in which Washington grew up. Actual documentary evidence of his formative years is scant.

"What we see at this site is the best available window into the setting that nurtured the father of our country," Philip Levy, an archaeologist and associate professor of history at the University of South Florida, said in an announcement of the discovery.

Dr. Levy and other members of the excavation team said the foundations, stone-lined cellars and other remains suggested that this was far from being the rustic cottage of common perception, but one befitting a family of the local gentry. It was a much larger one-and-a-half story residence, with perhaps eight rooms and an adjacent structure for the kitchen.

---

04 Jul 08 - 03:26 PM (#2381164)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Mercury is not just the solar system's shrimpy kid brother, at least since Pluto was kicked out of the planetary club two years ago. It's shrinking.

New measurements taken by NASA's Messenger spacecraft this year show that the innermost planet has shrunk by more than a mile in diameter over its history. Scientists attribute that to the gradual cooling of the planet's core.


Messenger, which stands for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging, is the first spacecraft to study Mercury up close since Mariner 10 in 1975. It made its first close fly-by in January, whisking to within 125 miles of the surface of the planet before cruising off on a highly elliptical orbit. It will swing back for a second encounter in October before settling into a final close orbit in 2011.

The first comprehensive data from the January fly-by are being published in today's issue of the journal Science.

Mercury has long been considered little more than a hot rock, with daytime surface temperatures of up to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. But Messenger has uncovered a more surprising place, with peaks as high as 15,000 feet and vast basins stretching hundreds of miles across the planet's surface.

"When you look at the planet in the sky, it looks like a simple point of light," said Messenger project scientist Ralph McNutt of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "But when you experience Mercury close up, you perceive a complex system and not just a ball of rock and metal. We are all surprised by how active that planet is."

---

04 Jul 08 - 08:56 PM (#2381323)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Curious footnotes to history" Department:

"ometimes reporters wrote up private memos for the publisher and top editors. Russell Baker summarized a private five-hour meeting with Times reporters and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey on Dec. 15, 1958, about HumphreyÕs talks in Moscow with the Soviet premiere, Nikita Khrushchev. Talking about China, Khrushchev said, according to the memo: ÒTo make a modern society function successfully ... ÔincentivesÕ were required. Humphrey protested that K. was talking capitalism. ÒNevertheless,Õ K. said, Ôit works.Õ Ó"

(NY Times on its own history)

---

04 Jul 08 - 09:10 PM (#2381328)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

As Jean Barman has noted, this interest in both physical and metaphorical frontiers shaped the way Skinner envisioned the past: Skinner reified the past lives of others using her own life as a model. She had journeyed from a fur trading outpost to one of the largest cities in the world in three decades. Her own life's story, it seemed to her, mirrored much of North American history.7        7
      Both works surpassed expectations. Glasgow called Pioneers of the Old Southwest a book "so good that it seems like an impertinence to praise it." Many inside and outside the history profession considered Pioneers the best new work on the late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century trans-Appalachian South. At first glance, the reasons for her success appear simple and straightforward: She had a knack for writing, a passionate love of the fur trading frontier, and a clairvoyant tone warmed by a sense of place. A passage about Major Patrick Ferguson in Pioneers of the Old Southwest illustrates this point nicely:


Ferguson was a night marauder. The terror of his name, which grew among the Whigs of the Back Country until the wildest legends about his ferocity were current, was due chiefly to a habit he had of pouncing on his foes in the middle of the night and pulling them of out bed to give fight or die. It was generally both fight and die, for these dark adventures of his were particularly successful. Ferguson knew no neutrals or conscientious objectors; any man who would not carry arms for the King was a traitor, and his life and goods were forfeiting ... Hence his wolfish fame. 'Werewolf' would have been a fit name for him for, though he was a wolf at night, in the daylight he was a man and, as we have seen, a chivalrous one.

---

05 Jul 08 - 11:20 AM (#2381679)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

LAST YEAR, LAWYERS for the Social Security Administration queried the Justice Department: Does the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples, also bar the child of a same-sex couple from receiving Social Security benefits from his non-biological parent? The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded in an opinion made public last month that Elijah, son of Karen and Monique, had a right to those benefits...

---

05 Jul 08 - 07:21 PM (#2382005)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Coinciding with economic stimulus checks, the internet porn industry has seen a 30% increase in revenues during a season when a fall off of sales is normally seen.

---

05 Jul 08 - 11:17 PM (#2382119)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For those who need it, excellent advice on whom not to marry, or how to choose whom you do.



A

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06 Jul 08 - 11:41 AM (#2382365)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

JERUSALEM Ñ A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time. (NYT)

---

06 Jul 08 - 12:45 PM (#2382423)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"There are no signs to announce the edge of the solar system, but when the venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft approached this final frontier last Aug. 31 it was in for quite a shock. So were the scientists who analyzed the data that the craft radioed back to Earth, along with related observations by NASAÕs twin Earth-orbiting STEREO spacecraft.

The signals reveal that at a distance of 83.7 astronomical units (1 AU is the average Earth-sun separation), Voyager 2 had at least five encounters with a turbulent region known as the termination shock, the researchers report in the July 3 Nature. ThatÕs the place where the solar wind Ñ the sunÕs hot supersonic wind of protons and other charged particles, which carves the heliosphere, a bubble in space extending well beyond the orbit of Pluto Ñ slams into cold interstellar space and abruptly slows.

Analyzing the encounter is critical for understanding how the bubble interacts with surrounding space, and how the bubbles carved by other stars affect their surroundings, notes Voyager lead investigator Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

Researchers had expected that Voyager 2 would have only one encounter with the shock. The multiple crossings indicate that Òthe shock is not the steady structure that is predicted by the simplest theory,Ó says Len Burlaga of NASAÕs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. ÒIt is like a wave approaching a beach, that grows, breaks, dissipates, and then re-forms closer to shore.Ó


ON THE EDGELocation of the two Voyager spacecraft at the fringes of the solar system and the STEREO spacecraft. New data form the Voyager 2 craft and STEREO are providing fresh insight about the structure of the edge of the solar system. L. Wang/UC Berkeley
Gusts in the solar wind may cause the shock to Òcome and go, re-forming itself and decaying,Ó Stone suggests." (Science News)

---

06 Jul 08 - 12:47 PM (#2382425)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Nearly all of the information transmitted from one brain region to another passes through a core located in the center and back of the brain along the crack that separates the two hemispheres, an international group of researchers reports in the June 30 PLoS Biology.

Earlier research pinpointed an area of the brain called the default network Ñ a group of brain regions that are active when a person is thinking about nothing in particular. The new map of the brainÕs anatomy showed that, in fact, the default network also resides in this physical hub, the core of the brain.

ÒOur map is a very crude one,Ó says Olaf Sporns, a computational neuroscientist at Indiana University in Bloomington. But the wiring diagram is a first step toward understanding how the brain is structured and how it communicates. Such diagrams could help therapists design strategies to improve recovery of stroke victims or people with other brain injuries.

The new study Òtakes the idea of the intrinsic organization of the brain to a new level,Ó says Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis. The research reveals that Òthere are hubs in the brain and some hubs are more important than others. This one rises to the top of the pile.Ó" (Ibid)

---

08 Jul 08 - 10:27 AM (#2383760)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

LONDON — The governing body of the Anglican Church in Britain voted on Monday to approve the appointment of women as bishops, a step that appeared to risk a schism in the church in its historic homeland as the Anglican church worldwide faces one of the most serious threats to its unity in its history, over the ordination of gay clergy members.
After a debate late into the night in the city of York, the General Synod of the Church of England, an assembly that holds ultimate authority on church doctrine in Britain, voted by comfortable margins within each of the synod's three houses — bishops, clergy and laity — to approve the consecration of women as bishops in the face of bitter opposition from traditionalists.

---

08 Jul 08 - 11:56 PM (#2384363)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ith lower surface tension and gas pressure, large bubbles usually outlast their smaller counterparts. But nanoscale bubbles, like the one pictured above, can last over a year.
By covering bubbles with a mixture of glucose syrup, sucrose stearate, and water, Harvard researchers can crystallize this outer layer to form nearly impermeable shells over the bubble surfaces.
The resulting shells buckle over time into a stable pattern of five-, six-, and seven-sided areas.
This experimental study, lead by Howard Stone from Harvard's engineering school, appeared in the May 30 issue of the journal Science.
These microbubbles may one day help extend the lifetimes of common gas-liquid products that rapidly disintegrate like aerated personal-care products and contrast agents used for ultrasound imaging.

---

12 Jul 08 - 06:20 PM (#2387517)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

So you think the way the universe began is unnatural?

Low-entropy configurations are rare.

If you take a deck of cards and you open it up, it's true that they're in order. But if you randomly chose a configuration of a deck of cards it would be very, very unlikely that they would be in perfect order.

That's exactly low entropy versus high entropy.

The universe is more than what we see?

The reason why you are not surprised when you open a deck of cards and it's in perfect order is not because it's just easy and natural to find it in perfect order, it's because the deck of cards is not a closed system. It came from a bigger system in which there is a card factory somewhere that arranged it. So I think there is a previous universe somewhere that made us and we came out.

We're part of a bigger structure.

Are you saying that our universe came from some other universe?

Right. It came from a bigger space-time that we don't observe. Our universe came from a tiny little bit of a larger high-entropy space.

I'm not saying this is true; I'm saying this is an idea worth thinking about.

You're saying that in some universes there could be a person like you drinking coffee, but out of a blue cup rather than a red one.

If our local, observable universe is embedded in a larger structure, a multiverse, then there's other places in this larger structure that have denizens in them that call their local environs the universe. And conditions in those other places could be very different. Or they could be pretty similar to what we have here.

How many of them are there? The number could well be infinity. So it is possible that somewhere else in this larger structure that we call the multiverse there are people like us, writing for newspapers like the L.A. Times and thinking about similar questions.

So how does the arrow of time fit into this?

Our experience of time depends upon the growth of entropy. You can't imagine a person looking around and saying, "Time is flowing in the wrong direction," because your sense of time is due to entropy increasing. . . . This feeling that we're moving through time has to do with the fact that as we live, we feed on entropy. . . . Time exists without entropy, but entropy is what gives time its special character.

Entropy gives time its appearance of forward motion?

Yeah, its directionality. The distinction between past and future. If you're floating in outer space, in a spacesuit, there would be no difference between one direction and another. However, nowhere in the universe would you confuse yesterday and tomorrow. That's all because of entropy, and that's the arrow of time.

---

14 Jul 08 - 12:48 PM (#2388613)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In one SPanish town by the sea, they don't fight bulls with swords and capes. Instead they lure them to leap into the sea.

Photos of this strange ritual.


A

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14 Jul 08 - 01:21 PM (#2388662)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Our universe is a fractal outgrowth from other ordered systems.

We could be an off shoot of anoher Universe's massive black hole or the result of a collision of two branes of Universes.


I have given this a lifetime of thought and may be a crack pot or modern jackass to some, but then again so were some of Jules Verne's ideas.

---

14 Jul 08 - 01:43 PM (#2388695)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

There are some advanced mathematicians around, Donuel, who believe that that is the most reasonable explanation ofr our universe's existence. But inheritance of anti-entropic systems does not clearly explain the fundamental nature and cause (if there is such a thing) for existence and the existrence of somethign trather than nothing. It just moves the mover back one step and gets no closer to the Prime mover.


A

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15 Jul 08 - 10:10 AM (#2389574)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

On genetics and social engineering:

"The bottom line is this: For a time, it seemed as if we were about to use the bright beam of science to illuminate the murky world of human action. Instead, as Turkheimer writes in his chapter in the book, "Wrestling With Behavioral Genetics," science finds itself enmeshed with social science and the humanities in what researchers call the Gloomy Prospect, the ineffable mystery of why people do what they do.

The prospect may be gloomy for those who seek to understand human behavior, but the flip side is the reminder that each of us is a Luxurious Growth. Our lives are not determined by uniform processes. Instead, human behavior is complex, nonlinear and unpredictable. The Brave New World is far away. Novels and history can still produce insights into human behavior that science can't match.

Just as important is the implication for politics. Starting in the late 19th century, eugenicists used primitive ideas about genetics to try to re-engineer the human race. In the 20th century, communists used primitive ideas about "scientific materialism" to try to re-engineer a New Soviet Man.

Today, we have access to our own genetic recipe. But we seem not to be falling into the arrogant temptation — to try to re-engineer society on the basis of what we think we know. Saying farewell to the sort of horrible social engineering projects that dominated the 20th century is a major example of human progress.

"

(NYT)

---

15 Jul 08 - 10:28 PM (#2390313)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Directed self-assembly of ordered structures as a simple nanotechnology tool
(Nanowerk Spotlight) The use of spontaneous self-assembly as a lithography- and external field-free means to construct well-ordered, often intriguing structures has received much attention for its ease of organizing materials on the nanoscale into ordered structures and producing complex, large-scale structures with small feature sizes. These self-organized structures promise new opportunities for developing miniaturized optical, electronic, optoelectronic, and magnetic devices.
An extremely simple route to intriguing structures is the evaporation-induced self-assembly of polymers and nanoparticles from a droplet on a solid substrate. However, flow instabilities within the evaporating droplet often result in non-equilibrium and irregular dissipative structures, e.g., randomly organized convection patterns, stochastically distributed multi-rings, etc. Therefore, fully utilizing evaporation as a simple tool for creating well-ordered structures with numerous technological applications requires precise control over several factors, including evaporative flux, solution concentration, and the interfacial interaction between solute and substrate.
To this end, a group of scientists has developed a simple and straightforward method to create gradient concentric rings of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) over large surface areas with controlled density by combining two consecutive self-assembly processes, namely, evaporation-induced self-assembly of polymers in a sphere-on-flat geometry, followed by subsequent directed self-assembly of MWCNTs on the polymer-templated surfaces.

---

15 Jul 08 - 10:34 PM (#2390316)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

...Evolutionary psychologists Simon Townsend and Klaus Zuberbuhler studied chimp behavior in Uganda's Budongo Forest over 16 months.
The team established that female chimpanzees hid their sexual activity when high-ranking females were nearby, perhaps in a bid to reduce competition for good quality males.
This could prevent higher-ranking female chimpanzees from turning on them.
They also found the females produced more copulation calls when high-ranking males were around, presumably to attract them.
The scientists believe that having sex with several males causes confusion among the male chimpanzees as to which one sired the offspring.
The males are therefore less likely to kill any babies that might be theirs.
..

(Discovery Channel)

---

17 Jul 08 - 02:18 PM (#2391599)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Thousand Wrestlers and Two Tons of Olive Oil (der Spiegel)

Every summer for the last 650 years, Turkish men have gathered to see who was the strongest, fastest and slickest of them all. It's called Kirkpinar, and it's the biggest oil wrestling competition in the world.

The well-muscled men face off in the middle of a grassy field, as a crowd of thousands looks on eagerly. Slowly, methodically, they cover their chests and legs with olive oil -- first with the right hand, then with the left. Then they take turns oiling each others' backs.


Then the fun begins: Turkey's annual Kirkpinar festival, the highlight of the Turkish sporting calendar, is a three-day orgy of oil wrestling. Known as "yagli gures" (pronounced "yaw-luh gresh"), the slippery sport is considered by some to be the Turkish national game.

Oil wrestling season lasts eight months a year in Turkey, but all the local and regional matches are just warm-ups for the main event: the Kirkpinar in Edirne, the granddaddy of all oil-based sports events. The Kirkpinar -- first contested in 1362 -- is considered by some to be the longest continuously running sporting event in the world, lubricated or not.

---

17 Jul 08 - 08:22 PM (#2391704)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Nobody understands how lightning makes X-rays," says Martin Uman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Florida. "Despite reaching temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun, the temperature of lightning is still thousands of times too cold to account for the X-rays observed."

That said, Uman added, "It's obviously happening. And we have put limits on how it's happening and where it's happening."

In new research, Uman and colleagues have taken a step forward in their understanding:

As lightning comes down from a cloud, it moves in steps, each 30 to 160 feet long. In this "step leader" process, X-rays shoot out just below each step millionths of a second after the step completes, the researchers learned.

The finding, based on lightning created in a lab and detailed online this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, could eventually lead to better predictions of lightning.

"A spark that begins inside a thunderstorm somehow manages to travel many miles to the ground, where it can hurt people and damage property," said Uman's colleague Joseph Dwyer, a professor in the department of physics and space sciences at Florida Institute of Technology. "Now, for the first time, we can actually detect lightning moving toward the ground using X-rays. So just as medical X-rays provide doctors with a clearer view inside patients, X-rays allow us to probe parts of the lightning that are otherwise very difficult to measure."

But challenges remain.

"From a practical point of view, if we are going to ever be able to predict when and where lightning will strike, we need to first understand how lightning moves from one place to the other," Dwyer said. "At present, we do not have a good handle on this. X-rays are giving us a close-up view of what is happening inside the lightning as it moves."

---

18 Jul 08 - 10:06 AM (#2392071)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The movie Topcapi shows the Turkish festival in detail...




Lightning produces eM waves from IF, visible, UV, radio and even X rays when bolts branch. Sometimes lightning goes up into space in a beautiful blue cone called sprites. The energy potentials change from ground level to toposhere so mauch that a suspended wire would conduct electricity for a town for years. Lightning storms have energies similar to nuclear waapons.

But when we ask why
we encounter mysteries large enough to stump Tesla.

Some mysteries I have been thinking about lately regard particles accelerated in cyclotrons for a significant periods of time at velocities well over 90% the speed of light.
Should they disappear into the future? Will they not age far more than their surrounding?

Can VLS varying light speed exist? Quantum tunneling still conveys information, so can we decode the information that comes from the quantum tunnels streaming virtual particles.

Can Quasars be sibling big bangs from/to our Universe?

Be any of these wonderings have answers, still the question why goes beyond the original questions.

---

19 Jul 08 - 11:55 PM (#2393256)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"PARIS, July 19, 2008 - Members of the International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN) and the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) have decided to name the newest member of the plutoid family Makemake, and have classified it as the fourth dwarf planet in our Solar System and the third plutoid.

Makemake (pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh) is one of the largest objects known in the outer Solar System and is just slightly smaller and dimmer than Pluto, its fellow plutoid. The dwarf planet is reddish in colour and astronomers believe the surface is covered by a layer of frozen methane.

Like other plutoids, Makemake is located in a region beyond Neptune that is populated with small Solar System bodies (often referred to as the transneptunian region). The object was discovered in 2005 by a team from the California Institute of Technology led by Mike Brown and was previously known as 2005 FY9 (or unofficially "Easterbunny"). It has the IAU Minor Planet Center designation (136472). Once the orbit of a small Solar System body or candidate dwarf planet is well determined, its provisional designation (2005 FY9 in the case of Makemake) is superseded by its permanent numerical designation (136472) in the case of Makemake.

The discoverer of a Solar System object has the privilege of suggesting a name to the IAU, which judges its suitability. Mike Brown says: "We consider the naming of objects in the Solar System very carefully. Makemake's surface is covered with large amounts of almost pure methane ice, which is scientifically fascinating, but really not easily relatable to terrestrial mythology. Suddenly, it dawned on me: the island of Rapa Nui. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I wasn't familiar with the mythology of the island so I had to look it up, and I found Makemake, the chief god, the creator of humanity, and the god of fertility. I am partial to fertility gods. Eris, Makemake, and 2003 EL61 were all discovered as my wife was 3-6 months pregnant with our daughter. I have the distinct memory of feeling this fertile abundance pouring out of the entire Universe. Makemake was part of that." WGPSN and CSBN accepted the name Makemake during discussions conducted per email."

---

20 Jul 08 - 11:33 AM (#2393468)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The National Aquatics Center in Beijing, newly built for the Olympics, is a glowing cube of bubbles. The walls, roof and ceiling of the ÒWater CubeÓ are covered Ñ indeed, made from Ñ enormous bubbles that seem to have drifted into place randomly, as if floating on the surface of a pool.


But of course, those bubbles hardly skittered there of their own free will. Creating this frothy confection took a lot of steel, a lot of manpower, and not least, a lot of fancy mathematics.


SWIMMING IN BUBBLES

The roof is constructed in the same manner as the walls.
The motivating idea for the building was that it would express the spirit of water. Its designers first thought of liquid water, vapor, or ice, but finally settled on foam. The bubbles, they decided, really would be bubbles: pillows made of a transparent plastic called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (or ETFE ) filled with air, attached to a steel framework outlining the edge of each bubble.


A basic challenge was that they wanted the foam to look random and organic. But for the engineering to be practical, it had to have some underlying order. So Tristram Carfrae, an engineer at Arup, the Australian engineering firm on the project, looked into the mathematics of foam.


The trail led all the way back to an idea from the 1880s. The physicist Lord Kelvin decided that the ether, the mysterious substance then believed to fill the universe and transmit light waves, must consist of foam. ...

(Full story here.)

---

20 Jul 08 - 03:10 PM (#2393577)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

But the origin of the purity-ball movement was not so much about their five daughters; it was about the fathers Randy saw who, he says, didn't know what their place was in the lives of their daughters. "The idea was to model what the relationship can be as a daughter grows from a child to an adult," Randy says. "You come in closer, become available to answer whatever questions she has."

So he and Lisa came up with a ceremony; they wrote a vow for fathers to recite, a promise "before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity," to practice fidelity, shun pornography and walk with honor through a "culture of chaos" and by so doing guide their daughters as well. That was in 1998, the year the President was charged with lying about his sex life, Viagra became the fastest-selling new drug in history, and movies, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, reflected "a surge in the worldwide relaxation of sexual taboos."

Word of the event spread fast: soon the camera crews came, and so did Tyra Banks and Dr. Phil. The Abstinence Clearinghouse estimates there were more than 4,000 purity events across the country last year, with programs aimed at boys now growing even faster. And inevitably the criticism arrived as well, dressed up in social science and scholarly glee at the semiotics of girls kneeling beneath raised swords to affirm their purity. The events have been called odd, creepy, oppressive of a girl's "sexual self-agency," as one USA Today columnist put it. Father-daughter bonding is great, the critics agree--but wouldn't a cooking class or a soccer game be emotionally healthier than a ceremony freighted with rings and roses and vows? Some academic skeptics make a practical objection: The majority of kids who make a virginity pledge, they argue, will still have sex before marriage but are less likely than other kids to use contraception, since that would involve planning ahead for something they have promised not to do. This puts them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. To which defenders say: Teen pledgers typically do postpone having sex, have fewer partners, get pregnant less often and if they make it through high school as virgins, are twice as likely to graduate from college--so where's the downside?

The purity balls have thus become a proxy in the wider war over means and ends. It is being fought in Congress, where lawmakers debate whether to keep funding abstinence-only education in the face of studies showing it doesn't work; in the culture, as Lindsay and Britney and Miley march in single file off a cliff; at school-board meetings, where members argue over the signal sent by including condoms in the prom bag; at the dinner table, where parents try to transmit values to children, knowing full well that swarms of other messages are landing by text and Twitter. "The culture is everywhere," says Randy's daughter Khrystian, 20. "You can't get away from it." But maybe, the new Puritans suggest, there's a way to boost girls' immunity.


(Excerpt from Time magazine.)

---

20 Jul 08 - 03:53 PM (#2393598)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...Of greatest concern to Einstein, and to many yet today, is the quantum insistence that the future is not precisely determined by the past, as it allegedly was in the clockwork universe quantified by Newton. In a quantum universe, multiple outcomes are allowed, with precisely determined odds, like a cosmic horse race in which Big Brown usually wins, but not always. A radioactive atom will probably decay within a given time, but not for sure. EinsteinÕs desire for a deity without dice is defied repeatedly by quantum phenomena. Yet every test of the quantum rules confirms this weirdness; in any experimental challenge, quantum theory is more reliably victorious even than Tiger Woods on good knees.

Quantum physics therefore claims cosmic authority. EinsteinÕs theory of general relativity, for instance, is supposed to govern the cosmos on large scales, but it is widely believed to be ultimately deficient because it cannot be made compatible with quantum requirements. On the other hand, quantum physics has mostly been tested on a small scale. Quantum message sending on Earth, via light pulses transmitted through optical fibers, demonstrates that the weirdness is preserved over distances of kilometers. But thatÕs not necessarily enough to allay all suspicion that someday quantum physics will fail.

From space, though, quantum signals could be sent simultaneously to stations much farther than current technology allows on land. So a group of physicists has devised a plan to test the universality of quantum weirdness by following the lead of Forbidden Planet and sending quantum messages from space to Earth.

Altair-4 is too far away, of course, but the International Space Station is conveniently nearby, and the physicists are far along in plans to use it to test quantum physics. An experimental proposal called Space-QUEST, led by physicists from the University of Vienna, calls for space-to-ground signaling using the latest in quantum communication technology...."

(Live Science)

---

20 Jul 08 - 06:08 PM (#2393685)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

11:07 a.m. July 19, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO Ð A measure that aims to keep prostitutes from facing criminal charges has qualified for the November ballot in San Francisco.
The measure, which qualified Friday, would bar authorities from spending money to investigate or prosecute prostitutes for engaging in prostitution.

A San Francisco first-time offender program that allows men to avoid charges for soliciting a prostitute if they attend a class and pay a fine would also end under the measure.
The Erotic Service Providers Union recently announced it had gathered the 12,000 signatures necessary to put the measure on the ballot after failing to get a similar initiative before voters in 2006.

Mayor Gavin Newsom says the measure would hurt the city's ability to investigate and prosecute sex-trafficking crimes.

---

22 Jul 08 - 11:34 PM (#2395647)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

BEIJING (Reuters) - Thousands of ancient artifacts and wooden poles more than 3,000 years old have been unearthed in China's southern Yunnan province, possibly the world's largest site of a Neolithic community, local media reported on Tuesday.

The poles, found standing 4.6 meters underground, were used as part of building structures for an ancient community that may have covered an area of 4 square km, the China Daily reported, citing Min Rui, a researcher at Yunnan Archaeological Institute, who is leading the excavation team.

The site could be older than the Hemudu community in Yuyao, in Zhejiang province, which is among the most famous in China and is believed to be the birthplace of society around the Yangtze River.

An area of 1,350 sq m has already been uncovered and excavation is ongoing.

"I was shocked when I first saw the site. I have never seen such a big and orderly one," Yan Wenming, history professor at Peking University, was quoted as saying.

Excavation began in January, but the site was actually discovered five decades ago during the construction of a canal along the banks of the Jianhu Lake, about 500 km northwest of the provincial capital Kunming.

Archaeologists have found more than 3,000 artifacts made of stone, wood, iron, pottery and bone, as well as more than 2,000 of the wooden posts.

---

22 Jul 08 - 11:36 PM (#2395648)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ATHENS (Reuters) - German archaeologists using radar technology believe they may have discovered the ancient horse racing track at Olympia where Roman Emperor Nero bribed his way to Olympic laurels.

The whereabouts of the racecourse is one of the last remaining mysteries of Olympia, the holy site where the ancient Greeks founded the Olympic Games in the eighth century BC.

The one-kilometer-long course, the largest structure of ancient Olympia, has been lost for more than 1,600-years since the Christian Emperor Theodosius abolished the games because of their pagan past.

"By means of geomagnetic investigation ... the first clear indications of the localization of the Hippodrome were found," said a statement sent to Reuters by Norbert Muller of the Johannes Gutenburg University Mainz, which helped fund the search.

German archaeological teams have been continuously excavating at Olympia since 1875 but the racehorse has remained hidden by several meters of silt on the floodplain of the Alfeios river.

In the second century AD, the travel writer Pausanias described the location of the track to the east of the Olympic sanctuary, detailing its unusual starting mechanism and the dangers for charioteers who were often injured at its sharp turn.

---

23 Jul 08 - 05:23 PM (#2396277)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Subject: [ifaction] Third Circuit Court of Appeals Strikes Down the
Children's Online Protection Act (COPA)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:45:56 -0400


The court this morning issued a unanimous opinion in ACLU v. Mukasey
affirming the District Court and holding that the Child Online
Protection Act is unconstitutional.

The court held that COPA is vague and overbroad, and that it does not
constitute the least restrictive means of protecting children. In
reaching these conclusions, the court also confirmed that COPA does not
apply to websites outside the U.S.

COPA is the successor statute to the Communications Decency Act, which
attempted to extend indecency rules to the Internet.

---

24 Jul 08 - 10:18 AM (#2396739)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In my extended family, I have something of a reputation for being a privacy Nazi. This is due to my penchant for not giving out addresses and phone numbers to stores that seem to think my buying something from them is a good enough reason to ask for it, but it turns out I'm only playing in the minor leagues. The American Library Association is raising more than a million dollars to fund a new "Right to Information Privacy Campaign" with a goal of nothing less than getting Americans "to recommit to information privacy."

Librarians might not be the group you'd first imagine out in the streets, manning the barricades, but they can get pretty agitated about both censorship and privacy. (Note: never tell a librarian that you'd like to ban a particular book unless the two of you are separated by an inch of plexiglass.) In this case, the 64,000 librarians of the ALA believe that their work remains vital to a vibrant democracy, since "the right to read and search for information is the foundation of individual liberty."


The ALA's new campaign wants to 1) educate people, and then 2) turn them into activists. The education component of the three-year program will make people aware, for instance, that "checking out a biography of Osama Bin Laden could prompt seizure of their library records" or that "online searches create traceable records that make them vulnerable to questioning by the FBI." The ALA also worries about provisions in the law that "gag" the people who are on the receiving end of government orders to turn over these records.

..." (Excerpted from Ars Technica).

---

24 Jul 08 - 07:58 PM (#2397218)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Hare's a fascinating series of essays on why people do not like reason. A great topic and some interesting input on it.


A

---

25 Jul 08 - 10:07 AM (#2397586)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Once upon a time in Narnia, a little Scots boy lost a battle with corporate lawyers …


Domain name was kept for boy's birthday to coincide with release of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

« Previous « PreviousNext » Next »View GalleryADVERTISEMENTPublished Date: 24 July 2008
By SHÂN ROSS
AN 11-YEAR-OLD boy was last night ordered by a court to hand back his birthday present – a Narnia-based website address – after one of the biggest legal firms in the world said it belonged to its multi-millionaire client.
Comrie Saville-Smith, from Edinburgh, an avid fan of the CS Lewis novels, was given the domain name narnia.mobi as a gift by his parents after it became available online.

But yesterday the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Switzerland ruled in favour of New York-based law firm Baker & McKenzie, representing Lewis's estate, that the name belonged to its client.

Last night Gillian Saville-Smith, Comrie's mother and a writer, described the decision as a "scandalously one-sided appraisal of the evidence" and added: "We are shocked by the decision. We put up a spirited fight because we wanted to prove that you do not have to hand something over just because someone richer and more powerful tell you to do so." ...
(The Scotsman

---

25 Jul 08 - 02:40 PM (#2397807)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

We are growing cancer vaccines in tobbacco plants!

Last week on npr and CNN you may have seen the reseach done on the current state of poor excercise for American Children.

(that was my wife's research project)

---

25 Jul 08 - 02:48 PM (#2397813)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

We came across one American woman who'd been living there for 19 years. Her shop is hard to miss. Lao Textiles is located in a beautiful old French colonial mansion in the center of town and is the headquarters for Carol Cassidy, a professional weaver who has spent her adult life combining indigenous Asian and African talent with her own designs. In so doing she has created industries in India, Cambodia, Lesotho and Laos that sell exquisite local textiles to an audience from Hong Kong to Rome to New York.

"I build on indigenous culture and skill to create an international product of a high standard," she says. "The goal is to enable these rural producers to benefit. We're the beautiful side of globalization."

Her Next Big Thing: a bag made out of jungle vine by the women of Pakor, a village of about 100 people in Northern Laos filled with members of the minority khummu.

Through two translators, one of them told me by phone: "I hope the bag generates income and gets our products to someone who's interested. I hope it helps the women here have an income. Because usually it is the men who earn and decide everything."

Asked what she knew about the United States, another villager told me: "I don't know where it is. It's a country far away with many, many people who could get to know about Laos and our people through our bags."

---

How achingly lovely to think of someone who lives in a beautiful place and does not know where the United States is!


A

---

28 Jul 08 - 04:42 PM (#2399760)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Washington: Scientists have invented a new material that will make cars even more efficient, by converting heat wasted through engine exhaust into electricity.

Such materials are called as thermoelectric materials by scientists, and they rate the materials' efficiency based on how much heat they can convert into electricity at a given temperature.

Previously, the most efficient material used commercially in thermoelectric power generators was an alloy called sodium-doped lead telluride, which had a rating of 0.71.

The new material, thallium-doped lead telluride, has a rating of 1.5 - more than twice that of the previous leader.

"The same technology could work in power generators and heat pumps," said project leader Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology at Ohio State University.

Thermoelectrics are also very small.

Some experts argue that only about 25 percent of the energy produced by a typical gasoline engine is used to move a car or power its accessories, and nearly 60 percent is lost through waste heat - much of which escapes in engine exhaust.

According to Heremans, a thermoelectric (TE) device can capture some of that waste heat. It would also make a practical addition to an automobile, because it has no moving parts to wear out or break down.

"The material does all the work. It produces electrical power just like conventional heat engines - steam engines, gas or diesel engines - that are coupled to electrical generators, but it uses electrons as the working fluids instead of water or gases, and makes electricity directly," he said.

"Thermoelectrics are also very small. I like to say that TE converters compare to other heat engines like the transistor compares to the vacuum tube," he added.

The new material is most effective between 450 and 950 degrees Fahrenheit - a typical temperature range for power systems such as automobile engines. "...

---

29 Jul 08 - 12:34 PM (#2400422)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Our cars and trucks are about 20% efficient.

Our best vehicles available today are 40% efficient.

Can our goal ever surpass 60% efficiency?

---

30 Jul 08 - 11:38 AM (#2401337)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An important scientific breakthrough in workplace relationships may lead to improved morale for workers everywhere except the WHite House, if applied.


A

---

30 Jul 08 - 01:38 PM (#2401488)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A seven-year-old German boy indulged his sweet tooth and liberally handed out money after helping himself to his elderly grandmother's bank account. But the police eventually arrived to spoil the fun for this underage Robin Hood and his jolly schoolmates.


A sweet-toothed youngster who wanted to spread a little joy nicked his elderly grandmother's bank card and pilfered €500 ($778) from her account.

As befits his age, the seven-year-old first bought some sweets. But then -- not knowing how to spend the rest of the money -- the boy was overcome with a generosity that prompted him to press bank notes into the hands of some of his playmates.

Police in the western city of Aachen, where the boy lives, explained on Tuesday how he had learned to use a bank machine -- as well as the card's PIN number -- by accompanying his 80-year-old grandmother on shopping trips. During a recent visit, he pocketed one of her bank cards and made his way to a nearby ATM, where he made five withdrawals over an hour -- until the withdrawal limit had been reached.

---

04 Aug 08 - 05:26 PM (#2405189)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Even Jules Verne did not foresee this one. Deep down at the very bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, geochemist Andrea Koschinsky has found something truly extraordinary: "It's water," she says, "but not as we know it."
At over 3 kilometres beneath the surface, sitting atop what could be a huge bubble of magma, it's the hottest water ever found on Earth. The fluid is in a "supercritical" state that has never before been seen in nature.
The fluid spews out of two black smokers called Two Boats and Sisters Peak.
Koschinsky, from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, says it is somewhere between a gas and a liquid. She thinks it could offer a first glimpse at how essential minerals and nutrients like gold, copper and iron are leached out of the entrails of the Earth and released into the oceans.
Liquids boil and evaporate as temperature and pressure rise. But push both factors beyond a critical point and something odd happens: the gas and liquid phase merge into one supercritical fluid. For water, this fluid is denser than vapour, but lighter than liquid water.

---

05 Aug 08 - 07:13 AM (#2405602)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Thermodynamic Properties of Steam: Including Data for the Liquid and Solid Phases, Joseph H. Keenan and Frederick G. Keys, First Edition, Thirty-First printing, New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., ©1936.

I'll agree with "not previously seen in nature" - - maybe, but properties of supercritical and triple-point water have been quite well known for some time, and have had industrial uses for about a century.

John

---

05 Aug 08 - 09:05 AM (#2405657)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

State of the US Patent and Trademark office:

"...the same ineptitude by USPTO examiners in different technological arts on a regular basis. My colleagues in other patent law firms constantly complain to me about their similar experiences.

Here is a quote, from an article recently published by one of my very experienced colleagues, patent attorney John Rogitz, a U.S. Naval Academe graduate:

            "The PTO has also established, as a proxy
             for "quality", a declining allowance rate
             (for example, in a December 2006 posting
             on its website), as if quality materializes
             from obstructing one's customers from
             gaining protection they seek without
             reference to whether the increased
             obstruction is due to better searches and
             more penetrating analysis - or simply
             to heightened institutional intransigence."

No doubt your competitors are experiencing similar difficulties in getting their U.S. patent applications allowed with reasonable claims.

..."

---

05 Aug 08 - 01:25 PM (#2405838)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Secret Gorilla "Paradise" Found; May Double World Numbers

Dan Morrison
for National Geographic News

August 5, 2008
Deep in the hinterlands of the Republic of the Congo lies a secret ape paradise that is home to 125,000 western lowland gorillas, researchers announced today.

The findings, if confirmed, would more than double the world's estimated population of this great ape subspecies, which is classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Western lowland gorillas have been devastated in recent years by illegal hunting for bush meat and the spread of the Ebola virus. Just last year scientists projected the animals' numbers could fall as low as 50,000 by 2011.

---

05 Aug 08 - 04:30 PM (#2405992)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I saw a picture of an underwater lake at the botom of the sea.
The interface makes the lake appear almost as surface lakes do. They reflect and diffract light quite nicely.

---

05 Aug 08 - 04:42 PM (#2406009)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos, YOU once wrote in 2001,

"We will not tire. We will not falter. And we will not fail.
Wish I knew that guy's speechwriter. Good line. What if it is true? Whoa! For wanting to put an end to terrorism, I am sure we are stirring up a good dose of stark terror.

But even so, it is plain that there are even some Afghans who think the arrival of the Mellicans just might improve life in general for them, since it can't get much worse. Others, contrariwise.

The religous ideology which admits of violence against innocents, women and children is not mainstream Islam, and was only articulated for use against (I believe) Nasser, in the 20th century. The version that Ladenites and their ilk assert is a cruel distortion of mainstream Islamic teachings, and is motivated not by religous belief but by the desire for power, money, control, and other pleasures of the not-quite-bright.

Maybe the whole thing was a trick to get us to waste our treasure bombing the deserts? Naaah -- it couldn't be!!

The big risk in all this would be a complete failure of Bush's cabinet to understand the bazaar mentality and the cultural mandates the people they are opposing live under. What is required is a massively skillful PR campaign of the sort that is hardly ever accomplished--lots of intell, deep understanding of buttons, a mastery of humor and deft deflection, surehanded reversals of rhetorical postures on their part, etc. Black PR where needed. Massive amounts of it.

For example, the forces on the other side have already started a wide-spread rumor circulating among Muslims in both India and Pakistan with great certainty that the whole 9-11 caper was a scam perpetrated by the Israelis, to stir up hatred of Arabs and Muslims. Not hard to deflect if you catch it early or can manage the exposure correctly, because it is so ridiculous (I think). But its a masterful rumour to spread amongst the uncritical crowds.

You can't fight that brand of insanity with just Big Iron. It takes intell, and craft in psychological operations.

__________________________________

Now that we have tired, faltered and failed, where is that intel and psy-ops?

The latest confirmed by Sy Hirsh of the NYT is that the White House approved of a plan to stage a war with US troops dressed as Iranian regulars and suffer actual deaths of other US troops unaware of the deception.

---

05 Aug 08 - 04:48 PM (#2406016)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

I saw that abysmal scheme--which was so evil even those it was being presented to rejected it. It was not approved, as I recall the Hirsch story, just proposed.

If we had spent an eighth of the money we have spent on meat and steel in Iraq on PR, psy-ops and intell, and never invaded, we would have started a reformation in Iraq with much less woe and loss.

A

---

05 Aug 08 - 10:37 PM (#2406215)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Right now I envision somewhere there is an Iraqi author equivalent to our dearly departed Shelby Foote busily writing the definitive 3 volumn history of the Bush Invasions of Iraq.

---

05 Aug 08 - 11:01 PM (#2406224)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The cold war mind set of out spending an enemy on new weaponry served both the arms makers and pentagon. It did uniquely work on the Soviets at one point in time. When it is used now against an enemy with box cutters and strap on bombs it is pure nonsense but still beneficial for Lookheed. A $47 billion bomber contract and 300 billion Halliburton contract must help someone, but not our country.

The Old CIA idea that perception becomes reality when it is repeated earnestly and frequently is disasterous in this situation.
WHile that psy weapon is alive and well on FOX it is totally cock blocked by Al Jazeera in the Middle East.

I have thought of a psyop program that comes directly from the mouths of soldiers and seasoned with the spice of common sense.
The problem is that we have lost our treasury to the ravings of the Rand Corporation and like minded ruling class think tanks.
There is no $ left to carry it out except in a feeble shadow state of its best implementation.
Most of it was done in 2001. Don't assume that I suffer from extreme hubris. Aferall if an idiot like Bush could get us this far into bankruptcy and defeat,an idiot like me could get us out.

The truth is closing the barn door now after Q Khan , bin Laden and George W have escaped, is useless.

---

06 Aug 08 - 11:13 AM (#2406577)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SAN DIEGO – There were no takers in San Diego Tuesday for a trial self-deportation program initiated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Under "Operation Scheduled Departure," which began Tuesday, immigrants who have not complied with a final order of deportation are being asked to turn themselves in to federal immigration officials with the promise that they will not be placed in custody and can schedule their own departure date within 90 days.



Advertisement "The way I have presented it is this: Either you knock on our door, or we knock on yours," said Rob Baker, field office director for detention and removal for ICE in San Diego.
The pilot program, which is being tried in five cities including San Diego, ends Aug. 22.

The program has generated skepticism and even ridicule from critics since it was announced. Baker said that while no prospective deportees showed up Tuesday at ICE offices in the federal building at 880 Front St. in downtown San Diego, about five people sought information for family members.

The other cities in the pilot program are Santa Ana, Chicago, Phoenix and Charlotte, N.C. It could be expanded nationwide if successful.

As of Tuesday afternoon, only one person – in Phoenix – took the offer, according to an ICE official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because not all the numbers are in.

Angel Martinez, a construction worker in Charlotte, N.C., told the AP he did not think the program would work.

"You would have to be crazy – who would want to turn themselves in?" Martinez said. "Nobody wants to go back. We risked everything to get here for a reason."

---

07 Aug 08 - 09:25 AM (#2407517)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Pirate's Life for Me!

BOSASSO, Somalia, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Somali pirates are investing heavily in trafficking the narcotic khat, along with other businesses, as they seek to spend big profits from ransom payments after months of attacks.

Maritime officials say at least 26 ships have been hijacked off the coast of the Horn of Africa country so far this year.

Most of them brought ransoms of at least $10,000, and in some cases much more. A lot of that money is now in the hands of pirates in the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland.

Siyad Mohamed and his gang recently shared a $750,000 ransom after releasing a German ship they seized in May. Mohamed said they decided to invest in trafficking khat, a mild narcotic leaf that is very popular in the region.

"We've started importing," Mohamed told Reuters by telephone from Garowe, Puntland's capital.

"We bought it from Kenya after normal supplies dwindled due to delays. We saw an opportunity and took it."

Mohamed said he earned $75,000 from the German ransom, a large amount in such a poor region.

"We work in three groups. One group is at sea now looking for ships to hijack. The other two, including mine, are next in line. We all share the ransom money," the 30-year-old former fisherman said. "Fellow pirates get free khat supply."

Banned in many Western countries, khat is a flowering plant that is native to east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and is believed to have originated in Ethiopia. Users, mostly men, chew the fresh leaves to get a mild amphetamine-like high.

Other pirates have benefited even more from the trade. And residents of Garowe and Bosasso, Puntland's other main town, say most of the hijackers are well known.

Following this year's sharp increase in attacks at sea, the wealthy pirates have attained near-celebrity status in the area, building palatial beach villas and other buildings, cruising around town in expensive cars and marrying additional wives.

---

07 Aug 08 - 07:49 PM (#2408009)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Exoskeleton for grannies

Finding ways to assist and care for the growing elderly population in many developed countries is a growing problem. One challenge is to work out how to improve the strength and utility of ageing limbs.

Yoshiyuki Sankai at the University of Tsukuba near Tokyo, has developed an exoskeleton for a single arm that can do just that.

The device consists of a tabard worn over the shoulders with a motorised exoskeleton for one arm attached. The exoskeleton senses the angle, torque and nerve impulses in the arm and then assists the user to move his or her shoulder and elbow joints accordingly.

---

07 Aug 08 - 09:24 PM (#2408075)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The answer to ÒGot milk?Ó just got a little older: A new study indicates that people have been milking cattle and other domesticated animals as well as processing and storing milk products for 2,000 years longer than originally thought.

A group of scientists studied thousands of pottery shards from sites all over the Near East and the Balkans and tested them for residues of milk fats. They found that milk was already being used and processed by societies there by the seventh millennium B.C.

Previously, the earliest evidence of milk use came from the fifth millennium, though cattle, sheep and goats had already been domesticated by the eighth millennium.

---

07 Aug 08 - 09:44 PM (#2408093)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

hysics may not be the most obvious subject of a rap song (in fact, itÕs probably the least), but thatÕs exactly what inspired Katherine McAlpine over at the CERN (the acronym in French for the European Organization for Nuclear Research) press office.

In a, well frankly, hilarious video (courtesy of the New Scientist) the scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider can be seen doing their best rapper impressions as they put together the parts of the enormous particle accelerator.

While the rapping isnÕt exactly up to P. DiddyÕs (or whatever heÕs calling himself these days) standards, itÕs certainly a pretty entertaining explanation of what some of the LHCÕs components will be doing once it switches on this month: namely, smashing together very tiny particles at very high speeds to see what happens. Its experiments could yield insights into some of the big mysteries of the universe, perhaps providing a glimpse of the elusive Higgs boson or answering the question of just what exactly dark matter is made up of.

---

07 Aug 08 - 09:49 PM (#2408094)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

That first word is "PHYSICS" and the video linked above is ROCKIN'!!!!!



A

---

08 Aug 08 - 12:18 AM (#2408150)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Our place in the universe may be a lot more special than many experts have assumed, new evidence suggests.
Scientists simulating the formation of planetary systems have discovered there is nothing average about the Solar System.
The Earth, and its inhabitants, exist in a peaceful system where planets have near circular orbits and do not interfere with each other.

This is not true of other star systems, where orbits are elongated and unstable.
The new computer simulations, using data from 300 planets orbiting other "suns", show that the Solar System owes its quiet life to early conditions being "just right".
If they had been even slightly different, unpleasant things might have happened - like planets being thrown into the sun or jettisoned into deep space.

Before the discovery of "exoplanets" in the early 1990s astronomers had no reason to think the Solar System was unusual.

Professor Frederic Rasio, from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, said: "We now know that these other planetary systems don't look like the Solar System at all. The shapes of the exoplanets' orbits are elongated, not nice and circular.

"Planets are not where we expect them to be. Many giant planets similar to Jupiter, known as 'hot Jupiters', are so close to the star they have orbits of mere days.
"Clearly we needed to start afresh in explaining planetary formation and this greater variety of planets we now see.""

---

11 Aug 08 - 11:46 AM (#2410609)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In 2005, the world's current account balances - exceptionally - did actually balance. Since then, the surpluses have gained the upper hand. According to the IMF's latest estimates, the world will show an overall combined surplus of $265 billion this year.

Large surpluses in China ($385 billion), Japan ($193 billion), Germany ($191 billion), Saudi Arabia ($145 billion) Russia ($99 billion), Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (each $66 billion) more than compensate for the red ink in the deficit countries, led by the US ($614 billion), Spain ($171 billion), UK ($137 billion), France ($67 billion), and Italy ($56 billion).

The world has never seen such a profusion of imbalances - a potent source of international liquidity as well as of potential financial instability. No one is sure how, when or why, but sooner or later these figures will have to come into better balance. If we are lucky, the correction will take place without too much damage to the global economy". (David Marsh of MarketWatch)

---

12 Aug 08 - 10:13 AM (#2411497)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: beardedbruce

a threefer, from CNN!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/11/remains.found.ap/index.html


http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/08/11/lw.better.than.sex/index.html


http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/11/hm.pole.dancing/index.html

---

14 Aug 08 - 01:08 AM (#2413194)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A hand holding a biological brain and a robot. The brain consists of a collection of neurons cultured on a Multi Electrode Array (MEA) which communicates and controls the robot via a Bluetooth connnection. Scientists in Britain announced that they had stitched together thousands of rat neurons into primitive brains capable of controlling the movement of robots.

Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue. Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday.

Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP.

"The purpose is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a biological brain," said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot's principle architects.

Observing how the nerve cells cohere into a network as they fire off electrical impulses, he said, may also help scientists combat neurodegenerative diseases that attack the brain such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

"If we can understand some of the basics of what is going on in our little model brain, it could have enormous medical spinoffs," he said.

Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of the blockbuster animation "Wall-E", Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons.

Once removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialised nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an eight-by-eight centimetre (five-by-five inch) array of 60 electrodes.

This "multi-electrode array" (MEA) serves as the interface between living tissue and machine, with the brain sending electrical impulses to drive the wheels of the robots, and receiving impulses delivered by sensors reacting to the environment.

---

14 Aug 08 - 01:12 AM (#2413197)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Phys.Org reports:

Democratic politicians receive a 40% increase in contributions in the 30 days after appearing on the comedy cable show The Colbert Report. In contrast, their Republican counterparts essentially gain nothing. These findings appear to validate anecdotal evidence regarding the political impact of the program, such as the assertions by host Stephen Colbert that appearing on his program provides candidates with a "Colbert bump" or a rise in support for their election campaigns.

This analysis of one of America's most well-known pop icons of recent years is conducted by political scientist James H. Fowler (University of California, San Diego), who is also a self-identified fan of the show. The research appears in the July issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association. It is online at http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PSJuly08Fowler.pdf .

While Fowler notes that Colbert often makes "outlandish" claims for laughs, he also observes that specific segments of the program are devoted to politicians and that politicians themselves have taken notice of the Colbert Report's impact. Moreover, even a cursory analysis demonstrates that despite being a comedy program The Colbert Report appears to exercise "disproportionate real world influence"—likely due to the "elite demographic" of its audience. To investigate the claim of the Colbert bump, the author uses data acquired from the Federal Election Commission on fundraising by Congressional Democrats and Republicans.

His analysis finds that Democrats who appear on The Colbert Report enjoy a significant increase in the number and total amount of donations they receive over the next 30?? days when compared to similar candidates who do not appear on the show. Specifically, Democrats who come on the program raise $8,247 more than colleagues who don't do so on the 32nd day following their appearance—"a bump of roughly two-fifths over the normal rate of receipts." Republicans do not appear to benefit at all from appearing on the program; notably, they raise more funds in the month before coming on the program while actually raising less money in the month following their appearance—hinting at a possible "Colbert bust" for the GOP instead.

---

14 Aug 08 - 09:38 AM (#2413464)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

"The Earth, and its inhabitants, exist in a peaceful system where planets have near circular orbits and do not interfere with each other."

This was probably not always the case.

There is evidence that Venus and Saturn and a planet formerly sharing a Mars orbit as its moon, were all in different orbits than they are today.




AI biologic brains sounds chillingly like the plot premis to Arnolds Terminator series.




Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin share the same birthday.

Bbruce, Aren't cults cool?

At the Olympics George Bush said "Once religion enters the picture, nothing can stop it."
he did not clariify which religion.

---

14 Aug 08 - 09:49 AM (#2413478)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Cashew Shells have a substance called (Erucial) that seems to turn on the immune system to make one immune for life to poison ivy.
npr story

---

14 Aug 08 - 10:08 AM (#2413499)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

How to slow aging http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/08/11/2331197.htm?site=science

---

17 Aug 08 - 08:46 AM (#2415969)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center's Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that " 'The Daily Show' is clearly impacting American dialogue" and "getting people to think critically about the public square."

While the show scrambled in its early years to book high-profile politicians, it has since become what Newsweek calls "the coolest pit stop on television," with presidential candidates, former presidents, world leaders and administration officials signing on as guests. One of the program's signature techniques — using video montages to show politicians contradicting themselves — has been widely imitated by "real" news shows, while Mr. Stewart's interviews with serious authors like Thomas Ricks, George Packer, Seymour Hersh, Michael Beschloss and Reza Aslan have helped them and their books win a far wider audience than they otherwise might have had.

Most important, at a time when Fox, MSNBC and CNN routinely mix news and entertainment, larding their 24-hour schedules with bloviation fests and marathon coverage of sexual predators and dead celebrities, it's been "The Daily Show" that has tenaciously tracked big, "super depressing" issues like the cherry-picking of prewar intelligence, the politicization of the Department of Justice and the efforts of the Bush White House to augment its executive power."NYT

---

17 Aug 08 - 03:54 PM (#2416239)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

DO SUBATOMIC PARTICLES HAVE FREE WILL?
By Julie RehmeyerWeb edition : Friday, August 15th, 2008   Text Size If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove.FIXED FORK?
"If the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect—what is the source of the free will possessed by living things throughout the earth?"—Titus Lucretius Carus, Roman philosopher and poet, 99–55 BC.


Human free will might seem like the squishiest of philosophical subjects, way beyond the realm of mathematical demonstration. But two highly regarded Princeton mathematicians, John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably.

The finding won't give many physicists a moment's worry, because traditional interpretations of quantum mechanics embrace unpredictability already. The best anyone can hope to do, quantum theory says, is predict the probability that a particle will behave in a certain way.

But physicists all the way back to Einstein have been unhappy with this idea. Einstein famously grumped, "God does not play dice." And indeed, ever since the birth of quantum mechanics, some physicists have offered alternate interpretations of its equations that aim to get rid of this indeterminism. The most famous alternative is attributed to the physicist David Bohm, who argued in the 1950s that the behavior of subatomic particles is entirely determined by "hidden variables" that cannot be observed.

Conway and Kochen say this search is hopeless, and they claim to have proven that indeterminacy is inherent in the world itself, rather than just in quantum theory. And to Bohmians and other like-minded physicists, the pair says: Give up determinism, or give up free will. Even the tiniest bit of free will.

Their argument starts with a proof Kochen created with Ernst Specker 40 years ago. Subatomic particles have a property called "spin," which occurs around any axis. Experiments have shown that a type of subatomic particle called a "spin 1 particle" has a peculiar property: Choose three perpendicular axes, and prod the spin 1 particle to determine whether its spin around each of those axes is 0. Precisely one of those axes will have spin 0 and the other two will have non-zero spin. Conway and Kochen call this the 1-0-1 rule.

Spin is one of those properties physicists can't predict in advance, before prodding. Still, one might imagine that the particle's spin around any axis was set before anyone ever came along to prod it. That's certainly what we ordinarily assume in life. We don't imagine, say, that a fence turned white just because we looked at it — we figure it was white all along.

But Kochen and Specker showed that this assumption — that the fence was white all along — can't hold in the bizarre world of subatomic particles. They used a pure mathematical argument to show that there is no way the particle can choose spins around every imaginable axis in a way that is consistent with the 1-0-1 rule. Indeed, there is a set of just 33 axes that are enough to force the particle into a paradox. It could choose spins around the first 32 axes that conform with the rule, but for the last, neither 0 nor non-zero would do. Choosing zero spin would create a set of three perpendicular axes with two zeroes, and choosing non-zero spin would create a different set of three perpendicular axes with three non-zeroes, breaking the 1-0-1 rule either way....

(Science NEws)

---

17 Aug 08 - 03:57 PM (#2416240)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Related news from the same site:

"INVISIBLE HAND, AND A QUICK ONE AT THAT
By Davide CastelvecchiWeb edition : Wednesday, August 13th, 2008   Text Size Any alternative to quantum weirdness would require faster-than-light communication.
It's another bad day for Einstein. He either has to give up relativity or embrace quantum mechanics.

Reality seems governed by the kind of randomness that Einstein loathed and that quantum theory is rooted in. But any alternative explanation would have to allow information to travel at least 10,000 times faster than light, physicists have now shown in the most stringent such test to date.

Nicolas Gisin and his team at the University of Geneva sent pairs of photons traveling separately along optical fibers. Without weirdness of quantum mechanics, the photons' behavior could only be explained if photons separated by 18 kilometers could influence each other virtually instantaneously. That would be a blatant violation of the solidly tested principle that nothing travels faster than light — part of Einstein's theory of relativity.

The team sent the photons along two optical fibers, from Geneva to the nearby towns of Jussy and Satigny, they describe in the Aug. 14 Nature. The photons were generated in a state of quantum uncertainty, so that their departure times would be slightly fuzzy.

When a photon arrived at its destination, it was detected. This detection gave the photons' travel times precise values, erasing the uncertainty. The travel times showed small, random variations from one photon to the next, Gisin explains. Quantum theory predicts that in this type of situation, it is impossible to predict the exact travel time in advance, and that, in fact, even the photons themselves don't know what the travel time is.

The physicists also created the photons in such a way that the destiny of each photon sent to Jussy was linked by quantum entanglement to the destiny of a photon sent to Satigny. Quantum entagled particles form one system, rather than separate systems with independent properties.

In this case, the travel times were correlated, and once a photon was detected, the travel time of its twin ceased to be undefined. Once measured, the second photon's travel time turned out to be identical to that of its entangled twin.

But, to a quantum mechanics skeptic, it's as if one photon let the other know what value to pick. For one photon's choice to affect the other's, information would have to travel the 18 kilometers separating the two towns in virtually no time. The team couldn't prove that information traveled instantaneously. But because their experimental errors were limited to time differences of less than one-third of a billionth of a second, they could prove that — if one photon influenced the other — the information must have traveled at least 10,000 times faster than light...."

A

---

18 Aug 08 - 11:13 AM (#2416838)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Pacific Gas and Electric (PCG) in California announced last week it will buy 800 megawatts of solar-generated electricity from two companies, enough to light 239,000 homes. Within three years, PG&E will buy its solar energy from OptiSolar and SunPower, which plan to build the world's two largest solar farms in California as part of the deal.

It would nearly double the USA's entire solar-panel capacity. Driving the trend are solar's falling costs and state alternative-energy mandates.

Solar power has grown but still makes up well under 1% of U.S. power generation. More than 90% of solar panels have been installed on rooftops by maverick consumers and businesses. Utilities' embrace of solar energy will help push it to about 10% of power generation by 2025, predicts Ron Pernick, principal of research firm Clean Edge.

"Just a handful of utilities doing something big changes the scale of the entire market," says Julia Hamm of the Solar Electric Power Association.

---

18 Aug 08 - 11:39 AM (#2416861)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Sooner or later Amos, we are going to see the reason why there is spooky action at a distance (independent of time and the speed of light.)

Sooner or later we will see why a real object visible to the naked eye truely is at two places at the same time.

Sooner or later we will understand why our mere act of looking, changes the behavior of an atom.


hint:

It will be more of an inderstading than an understanding.

---

18 Aug 08 - 06:34 PM (#2417274)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Hologrphic Evabgelical preacher http://www.slate.com/id/2197166/

---

20 Aug 08 - 01:16 PM (#2418729)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Dinasaurs are old. That much we knew. But a new find in a limestone quarry located in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt may show that they are fully 15 million years older than scientists currently believe.

According to a Tuesday report in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, a local paper in the region, archaeologists working in the quarry found traces of a dinosaur that they believe are 250 million years old -- older than any known evidence of dinosaurs. So far, officials from the state's Office for Preservation of Monuments and Archaeology have declined to confirm the find. A spokeswoman there has merely pointed out that the quarry is still in operation and that hobby diggers should stay away.

The scientific community, though, is electrified. Should the age of the traces be confirmed, the find could shed light on the very beginnings of dinosaurs. One expert told the paper that the find is of "sensational importance to science."

Until now, scientists assumed that dinosaurs first evolved from archosaurs approximately 235 million years ago -- a good 15 million years after the creation of the dinosaur traces now discovered. Archosaurs were lizard-like creatures that were much smaller than most dinosaurs. Present-day alligators, crocodiles and a few species of birds are likewise descendents of archosaurs. Dinosaurs, though, died out some 65 million years ago.

..."

(Der Spiegel)

---

20 Aug 08 - 06:32 PM (#2419036)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Stem cells to make O negative blood in quantiy.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/08/universal-blood.html

---

21 Aug 08 - 11:53 AM (#2419485)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ASSOCIATED PRESS

4:54 a.m. August 21, 2008

BOSTON – Two Massachusetts businesses are battling over the macabre legacy of a former Sunday school teacher who was accused in the hatchet deaths of her wealthy father and stepmother more than 110 years ago.

The owner of the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River, which is in the home where the 1892 slayings took place, has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent a new museum and gift shop in Salem from using Borden's name.

Advertisement Donald Woods insists the attraction would infringe on his trademark of "Lizzie Borden Museum" and siphon business away from Fall River, a hardscrabble fishing community 80 miles south of Salem, which is in Boston's far-north suburbs.
Fall River Mayor Robert Correia said the double-murder mystery is one of his community's top tourist attractions. Borden was acquitted but widely believed to be guilty. No one else was ever charged.

---

21 Aug 08 - 05:37 PM (#2419752)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Elephants master basic mathematics
12:10 20 August 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Ewen Callaway



A cunning Asian elephant wins a simple counting game
Watch the full-size video

Biologist Naoko Irie and one of her mathmatical elephants (Photo courtesy of Naoko Irie)
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Add elephants to the growing menagerie of animals that can count.
An Asian elephant named Ashya beat this reporter at a devilishly simple addition problem. When a trainer dropped three apples into one bucket and one apple into a second, then four more apples in the first and five more in the second, the pachyderm recognised that three plus four is greater than one plus five, and snacked on the seven apples. (In my defence, I watched the video in a noisy and crowded auditorium.)
"I even get confused when I'm dropping the bait," says Naoko Irie, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, Japan, who uncovered the elephant's inner genius. She presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology's annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.
Moreover, Irie found that as well as summing small numbers with almost 90% accuracy, elephants can discriminate between small numbers.
That's not so surprising, considering that animals from salamanders to pigeons to chimpanzees can discern numerical values. But all animals, including humans when forced to make split-second decisions, are best at telling apart two quantities when the ratio between the large and small number is greatest.
Spot the difference
Not so for elephants, Irie says. The four that she tested distinguished between five and six apples as well as they did between five and one. They picked the bucket with the most fruit 74% of the time, on average, far above 50-50.
"It really is tough to figure out why [elephants] would need to count," says Mya Thompson, an ecologist at Cornell University who studies elephants and attended Irie's talk. Asian elephants live in close-knit groups of six to eight, and they may count one another to make sure the herd sticks to together. "You really don't want to lose your group members," she says.

---

24 Aug 08 - 01:52 PM (#2421286)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

rs ago
A British-built solar-powered spy plane has set an unofficial record by staying in the air for three-and-a-half days, the company behind it announced.
The Zephyr used solar power in the day and rechargeable batteries at night to beat the world record for the longest duration unmanned flight.
Defence company Qinetiq said the plane flew on autopilot for 82 hours 37 minutes, exceeding the current official world record for unmanned flight which stands at 30 hours 24 minutes set by Global Hawk in 2001 and Zephyr's previous longest flight of 54 hours achieved last year.

But a spokesman said the record was unofficial because the firm did not set out to fulfil necessary criteria to make it official.

"We were more concerned about demonstrating the technology to the customer than the record status," he said.

According to Qinetiq, the Zephyr - a high-altitude long-endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) - completed the test flight at the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona on July 28-31.

Launched by hand, Zephyr is an ultra-lightweight carbon-fibre aircraft that flies on autopilot, the firm said.

By day it uses solar power generated by amorphous silicon solar panels no thicker than sheets of paper that cover the aircraft's wings.

---

25 Aug 08 - 05:44 PM (#2422021)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

" This organization is a terrorist organization and [it] created mayhem against the public life, so we decided to declare it banned."

REHMAN MALIK,
Pakistani Interior Ministry chief, explaining the nation's decision today to ban the Taliban after its militants claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks in Pakistan

---

27 Aug 08 - 04:44 PM (#2423665)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Tijuana is currently covered with fiberglass cows. They invaded about a month ago, and they've been grazing the sidewalks all over the city since then. Along Revolucion and Paseo de los Heroes, in Santa Cecilia Plaza and Parque Morelos, throughout Zona Rio, outside the Palacio Municipal and CECUT, at the Instituto Municipal de Arte y Cultura and the airport. They're everywhere.

Hooker cows, matador cows, airplane cows, two-headed tiger cows, Marilyn Monroe cows, crucigrama cows, taco cows. Cows plowing through fake chunks of the border fence. Cows with neon Lucha Libre masks for spots. Cows dressed like firefighters with fire hoses for udders.

Seventy in total, 20 owe their markings to Baja California artists, many of whom covered them with Tijuana iconography. Things like 1980s Ford station wagon taxi cabs that still miraculously run. Or those scruffy donkeys that have been done up with paint to look like zebras.

The rest of the herd hails from all over Mexico, a trait unique to this installment of the international craze that is CowParade. The public art exhibits traditionally call one town home, with local businesses and organizations sponsoring individual cows. But Mexican dairy king Lala purchased all 70 and bumped it up to a national affair that travels from city to city.

---

28 Aug 08 - 01:19 PM (#2424519)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Northeast and Northwest Passages Both Free of Ice
By Christoph Seidler

For the first time ever, both the Northwest and the Northeast Passages are free of ice. Shipping companies have been waiting for this moment for years, but they will have to wait a little while longer before they can make use of the Arctic shortcut.

Shippers in Bremen are getting impatient. The Beluga Group, a shipping company based in the northern German city, had planned to send a ship through the Northeast Passage -- or the Northern Sea Route, as Russians call it -- this summer, according to spokeswoman Verena Beckhausen. The route leads from the Russian island Novaya Zemlya, off the northern coast of Siberia, through the Bering Strait between far eastern Russia and Alaska.

---

28 Aug 08 - 08:00 PM (#2424975)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

those cows were in DC about 10 years ago.

Vladamir Putin announced that he is extending a security force to Poland's border DUE TO WHAT ONE OF THE CANDIDATES SAID REGARDING THEIR MISSLES.

clever that he would not say which candidate.

---

29 Aug 08 - 04:23 PM (#2425790)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A VAST region of the Amazon forest in Brazil was home to a complex of ancient towns in which about 50,000 people lived, according to scientists assisted by satellite images of the region.

The scientists, whose findings were published yesterday in the journal Science, described clusters of towns and smaller villages connected by complex road networks and housing a society doomed by the arrival of Europeans five centuries ago.

European colonists and the diseases they brought with them probably killed most of the inhabitants, the researchers said. The settlements, consisting of networks of walled towns and smaller villages organized around a central plaza, are now almost entirely overgrown by the forest.
"These are not cities, but this is urbanism, built around towns," University of Florida anthropologist Mike Heckenberger said.

"If we look at your average medieval town or your average Greek polis, most are about the scale of those we find in this part of the Amazon. Only the ones we find are much more complicated in terms of their planning," Mr Heckenberger added.

Helped by satellite imagery, the researchers spent more than a decade uncovering and mapping the lost communities.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans starting in 1492, the Americas were home to many prosperous and impressive societies and large cities. These findings add to the understanding of the various pre-Columbian civilisations.

The existence of the ancient settlements in the Upper Xingu region of the Amazon in north-central Brazil means what many experts had considered virgin tropical forests were in fact heavily affected by past human activity, the scientists said.

The US and Brazilian scientists worked with a member of the Kuikuro, an indigenous Amazonian people descended from settlements' original inhabitants.

---

01 Sep 08 - 04:49 PM (#2427981)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SALT LAKE CITY — The best deal on fuel in the country right now might be here in Utah, where people are waiting in lines to pay the equivalent of 87 cents a gallon. Demand is so strong at rush hour that fuel runs low, and some days people can pump only half a tank.

It is not gasoline they are buying for their cars, but natural gas.

By an odd confluence of public policy and private initiative, Utah has become the first state in the country to experience broad consumer interest in the idea of running cars on clean natural gas.

Residents of the state are hunting the Internet and traveling the country to pick up used natural gas cars at auctions. They are spending thousands of dollars to transform their trucks and sport utility vehicles to run on compressed gas. Some fueling stations that sell it to the public are so busy they frequently run low on pressure, forcing drivers to return before dawn when demand is down.

It all began when unleaded gasoline rose above $3.25 a gallon last year, and has spiraled into a frenzy in the last few months.

Ron Brown, Honda's salesman here for the Civic GX, the only car powered by natural gas made by a major automaker in the country, has sold one out of every four of the 800 cars Honda has made so far this year, and he has a pile of 330 deposit slips in his office, each designating a customer waiting months for a new car.

"It's nuts," Mr. Brown said. "People are buying these cars from me and turning around and selling them as if they were flipping real estate."

Advocates for these cars see Mr. Brown's brisk sales as a sign that natural gas could become the transport fuel of the future, replacing much of the oil the nation imports. While that remains a distant dream, big increases recently in the country's production of natural gas do raise the possibility of making wider use of the fuel.

To a degree, it is already starting to happen in Utah, where the cost savings have gotten the public's attention. Natural gas is especially cheap here, so that people spend about 87 cents for a quantity of gas sufficient to propel a car approximately the same distance as a $3.95 gallon of gasoline.

---

07 Sep 08 - 10:27 AM (#2433247)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PAMELA MAY HAVE SPOTTED THE DARK STUFF
By Ron CowenWeb edition : Thursday, September 4th, 2008   

Data from an orbiting observatory record more positrons than standard model accounts forCosmologists are agog about the possibility that an orbiting observatory may have discovered particles of dark matter — the proposed, invisible material that researchers believe makes up most of the mass of the universe.

At two meetings in August, researchers analyzing data from the Russian-European observatory PAMELA, short for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, reported preliminary evidence that the device had recorded more positrons from the Milky Way than could be accounted for by the standard model of elementary particle physics.

At the International Conference on High Energy Physics, held in Philadelphia, PAMELA researcher Mirko Boezio of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Trieste suggested that the surplus of positrons — the electron's antiparticle, which is equal in mass but opposite in charge — could be accounted for by the annihilation of pairs of dark-matter particles. According to an existing theory, when dark-matter particles collide, they decay into a spray of ordinary, visible particles, including an abundance of positrons.

"We plan to have final results ready by early October and submit a paper to a peer-reviewed journal," Boezio told Science News. Until then, he says, the findings remain preliminary, and "We prefer to withhold further comments."

But that hasn't stopped other researchers from posting their interpretations of the data on the Internet.

---

07 Sep 08 - 11:37 AM (#2433294)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

REMAINS of a long dead house mouse have been found in the wreck of a Bronze Age royal ship. That makes it the earliest rodent stowaway ever recorded, and proof of how house mice spread around the world.

Archaeologist Thomas Cucchi of the University of Durham, UK, identified a fragment of a mouse jaw in sediment from a ship that sank 3500 years ago off the coast of Turkey.
The cargo of ebony, ivory, silver and gold - including a gold scarab with the name of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti - indicates it was a royal vessel. Because the cargo carried artefacts from many cultures, its nationality and route is hotly debated, but the mouse's jaw may provide answers. Cucchi's analysis confirms it belonged to Mus musculus domesticus, the only species known to live in close quarters with humans (Journal of Archaeological Science, vol 35, p 2953). The shape of the molars suggests the mouse came from the northern Levantine coast, as they are similar to those of modern house mice in Syria, near Cyprus.

And, when generations of rodents live aboard ships, they evolve larger body shapes. Yet this mouse was roughly the same shape and size as other small, land-dwelling mice of the time, suggesting it boarded just before the ship set sail.

---

07 Sep 08 - 11:40 AM (#2433298)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Swimming cages may soon shepherd farmed fish about the ocean, giving them a more natural environment and reducing their impact on natural ecosystems. The first tests of the wandering cages have just taken place in Puerto Rico.

Fish farms in the open ocean offer an alternative to conventional fishing, which is on track to wipe out all commercial stocks by 2050. But there are concerns that installing large, static farms could damage local ecosystems.

"Depending on the size of the stock, large residues of fish faeces could catch under the cages and degrade the seabed," says Cliff Goudey from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anchoring cages against the battering of storms would also be a challenge.
So Goudey came up with the idea of wandering cages. These wouldn't stay in any one place long enough to damage local wildlife, and could drift with storm waves to avoid feeling their full force.

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07 Sep 08 - 04:22 PM (#2433527)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/06/24.php



Jeff Sharlet researched the largest most powerful influence on the US goverment for the last 70 years.

His book is entitled 'The family'

The facts I gleaned from his book is source from which I accurately use words like fascism and mafia when refering to certain Congressional power brokers.

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07 Sep 08 - 04:31 PM (#2433531)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bee

FTA: "The foreclosure market is getting wild in Lake Elsinore: "Taking advantage of a slump in local real estate, a family of bobcats has moved into a foreclosed Lake Elsinore home, lolling about on fences and walls and riveting an entire neighborhood."

Click on the photo to enlarge - it's a really neat scene.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/09/bobcats-on-a-ba.html

---

07 Sep 08 - 04:51 PM (#2433542)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Alice

Great bobcat photo. Thanks for that!

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07 Sep 08 - 11:23 PM (#2433787)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2008) — Researchers in Switzerland have developed a new method to fabricate borosilicate glass nanoparticles. Used in microfluidic systems, these "Pyrex"-like nanoparticles are more stable when subjected to temperature fluctuations and harsh chemical environments than currently used nanoparticles made of polymers or silica glass.

Their introduction could extend the range of potential nanoparticle applications in biomedical, optical and electronic fields.

Thanks to their large surface-to-volume ratio, nanoparticles have generated wide interest as potential transporters of antibodies, drugs, or chemicals for use in diagnostic tests, targeted drug therapy, or for catalyzing chemical reactions.

Unfortunately, these applications are limited because nanoparticles disintegrate or bunch together when exposed to elevated temperatures, certain chemicals, or even de-ionized water. Using borosilicate glass (the original "Pyrex") instead of silica glass or polymers would overcome these limitations, but fabrication has been impossible to date due to the instability of the boron oxide precursor materials.

In this week's advance online issue of Nature Nanotechnology, a group of EPFL researchers, led by Professor Martin Gijs, reports on a new procedure to fabricate and characterize borosilicate glass nanoparticles. In addition to biomedical applications, the new nanoparticles could also have applications in the production of photonic bandgap devices with high optical contrast, contrast agents for ultrasonic microscopy or chemical filtration membranes.

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10 Sep 08 - 09:34 AM (#2436138)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Wednesday, September 10, 2008
After 14 years and $8 billion, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, succeeded in turning on the most powerful microscope ever built for investigating the elemental particles and forces of nature.

At 4:27 a.m., Eastern time, the protons made their first circuit around a 17-mile-long racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, 300 feet underneath the Swiss French border, and then made a return journey.

"It's a fantastic moment," said Lyn Evans, who has been the project director of the collider since its inception. "We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe."

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10 Sep 08 - 10:26 AM (#2436215)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From a nurse's story of losing a patient (NYT):

I am 43. I came to nursing circuitously, following a brief career as an English professor. Often at work in the hospital I hear John Donne in my head:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.


But after my Condition A I find his words empty. My patient died looking like one of the flesh-eating zombies from "28 Weeks Later," (and indeed in real life, even in the world of the hospital, a death like this is unsettling.

What can one do? Go home, love your children, try not to bicker, eat well, walk in the rain, feel the sun on your face and laugh loud and often, as much as possible, and especially at yourself. Because the only antidote to death is not poetry, or drama, or miracle drugs, or a roomful of technical expertise and good intentions. The antidote to death is life.

(Theresa Brown, staff nurse at a hospital in Pennsylvania).

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12 Sep 08 - 02:37 PM (#2438589)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers have made a major advance in inorganic chemistry that could lead to a cheap way to store energy from the sun. In so doing, they have solved one of the key problems in making solar energy a dominant source of electricity.

Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at MIT, has developed a catalyst that can generate oxygen from a glass of water by splitting water molecules. The reaction frees hydrogen ions to make hydrogen gas. The catalyst, which is easy and cheap to make, could be used to generate vast amounts of hydrogen using sunlight to power the reactions. The hydrogen can then be burned or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity whenever it's needed, including when the sun isn't shining.

Solar power is ultimately limited by the fact that the solar cells only produce their peak output for a few hours each day. The proposed solution of using sunlight to split water, storing solar energy in the form of hydrogen, hasn't been practical because the reaction required too much energy, and suitable catalysts were too expensive or used extremely rare materials. Nocera's catalyst clears the way for cheap and abundant water-splitting technologies.

Nocera's advance represents a key discovery in an effort by many chemical research groups to create artificial photosynthesis--mimicking how plants use sunlight to split water to make usable energy. "This discovery is simply groundbreaking," says Karsten Meyer, a professor of chemistry at Friedrich Alexander University, in Germany. "Nocera has probably put a lot of researchers out of business." For solar power, Meyer says, "this is probably the most important single discovery of the century."

The new catalyst marks a radical departure from earlier attempts. Researchers, including Nocera, have tried to design molecular catalysts in which the location of each atom is precisely known and the catalyst is made to last as long as possible. The new catalyst, however, is amorphous--it doesn't have a regular structure--and it's relatively unstable, breaking down as it does its work. But the catalyst is able to constantly repair itself, so it can continue working.

(Technology Review, July 31 08)

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17 Sep 08 - 11:55 AM (#2443112)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PALO ALTO, CA—Gathering for what members of the international science community are calling "potentially the most totally out-to-lunch freaky head trip since Einstein postulated that space and time were, like, curved and shit," a consortium of the world's top physicists descended upon Stanford University Monday to discuss some of the difficult questions facing the cutting edge of theoretical thinking.

Cal Tech physicist Dr. Jonathan Friedrich postulates a bunch of freaky shit that makes his colleagues' heads spin right the hell off.
Among the revolutionary ideas expected to be raised at the historic week-long summit is the possibility that, like, our whole friggin' universe might be just one big atom in, say, some super-duper huge thing out there somewhere, or something.

"Whoa, man," Dr. Jacob "The Boz" Bozeman of MIT told reporters. "The implications of this deceptively simple hypothesis are, like, completely blowing my mind. Like, we could all be nothing more than this little dot in the fingernail of some huge-ass giant dude. Or maybe a seed in the mustard of, like, some really big sandwich, or even a germ on the back of a flea that's, like, sitting on a hair on some giant dog's ass. Truly, it boggles the freakin' mind, man. It freaks me the fuck right out."

The universe-as-possible-giant-atom theory originated in May with a team of Cal Tech particle physicists, who developed the theory late one night while sitting around on a couch in the Physics Department's cyclotron and foosball facility, "just shooting the shit." The theory, which was reportedly conceived after the group became highly engrossed in ceiling-tile patterns for several minutes while waiting for a pizza to arrive, is said to be so advanced that only a few scientists in the world even have their heads together enough to really, you know, deal. Yet even among this elite group, many are said to be "seriously thrown for a loop" by its implications.

"I'm like, 'Whoa there, man, slow down,'" said Dr. Dieter Gerhardt, a low-temperature physicist at Cornell University. Pausing for a moment to collect himself, the renowned scientist then placed his hands on his forehead before extending them outward in a sweeping gesture and making a buzzing "space-noise" sound effect with his lips, non-verbally indicating the degree to which his mind was blown by the whole freaky deal.

Among other topics to be explored at the Stanford conference, according to Bozeman: the concept of parallel, or "alternate," Earths; the theory of multi-dimensional "superstrings" that fold backward and forward throughout the fabric of the universe; and "a whole bunch of other shit I totally can't even handle thinking about right now."

On Monday, the most high-profile conference attendee, Cambridge's Dr. Stephen Hawking, discussed his recent research exploring the possible existence of "sideways," or lateral, time, a concept most scientists in attendance described as "way out there."

"I don't want to fuck with anybody's head here," Hawking told the assembled scientists via his voice-simulation device, "but if time goes sideways as well as forward, there might be, like, other versions of this reality, where, say, the Roman Empire is still in charge and stuff."

"By the way," Hawking added, "ever think about what'd happen if you, say, went back in time and accidentally killed your own younger self? Man, that shit would be so fucked up."

Hawking's ideas provoked strong reaction. "I remember I was pretty wigged out when Feynman came up with that shit about antiparticles just being normal particles traveling backwards in time," said Dr. Wei Lo-Huang of Princeton. "That was heavy enough to have to deal with. But now Hawking comes up with this? What is with that?"

"Fuck, man... if this turns out to be true, it will require a total recalibration of all our methods for measuring space-time flux, and that means all my old equations are gonna be, like, for shit," Wei said. "Aw, man."

Though Hawking's lateral-time theory may prove significant, most scientists in attendance said they plan to avoid it for now, explaining that the "whole one big atom deal" (or "WOBAD" theory, as it has come to be known within physics circles) is more than enough to completely freak their shit, and that they would prefer to take these mind-blowing questions one at a time, just so they don't completely, you know, lose it. "... The Onion parody site

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18 Sep 08 - 09:06 AM (#2443962)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

William Yuan, a seventh-grader from Portland, OR, developed a three-dimensional solar cell that absorbs UV as well as visible light. The combination of the two might greatly improve cell efficiency. William's project earned him a $25,000 scholarship and a trip to the Library of Congress to accept the award, which is usually given out for research at the graduate level.

"Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light," he said. "I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. My project focused on finding the optimum solar cell to further increase the light absorption and efficiency and design a nanotube for light-electricity conversion efficiency."

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18 Sep 08 - 12:00 PM (#2444086)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Onion reports:

Dolphins Evolve Opposable Thumbs: Humanity Says 'Oh, *****'

In an announcement with grave implications for the primacy of the species of man, marine biologists reported Monday that dolphins, or family Delphinidae, have evolved opposable thumbs on their pectoral fins."I believe I speak for the entire human race when I say, 'Holy *****,'" said Dr. James Aoki. "That's it for us monkeys."

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18 Sep 08 - 12:12 PM (#2444099)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: beardedbruce

Obama Deletes Another Unread MoveOn.org E-Mail
September 17, 2008 | Issue 44•38


CHICAGO—After receiving yet another unwanted e-mail from liberal political action group MoveOn.org Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama deleted the message from his inbox without even glancing at its contents.

Inside Obama's Emails
"Ugh, not these people again," Obama was overheard to say as he placed the unread e-mail into the Gmail folder marked "Trash."

According to official records, the e-mail, entitled "50,000 Obama buttons?" was sent at 6:47 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Aides say that Obama checked his mail at 7 a.m. before leaving for a charity fundraiser, and appeared visibly dismayed upon realizing that his new message was from MoveOn.org.

"It seems like every time I turn on my computer, another goddamn MoveOn.org e-mail pops up," said Obama, noting that this is the third message from the progressive online organization he has deleted in the past week. "How many of these things am I going to get?"

"They already know I'm going to vote for Obama," Obama added. "The only people who sign up for this thing are Democrats anyway. They're just preaching to the choir."

Obama reportedly joined the MoveOn.org mailing list while attending the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Although he was initially intrigued by the idea of receiving newsletters and updates from a group of like-minded, politically active Americans, Obama said the nonstop deluge of e-mails has made him regret his decision.

"I usually get excited when I see that I have one unread message," Obama said. "I think that maybe it's something interesting or important, but then I see it's another MoveOn e-mail and my heart just sinks. It's like getting nothing."

Obama has deleted approximately 25 e-mails from MoveOn.org in the past two months. In addition, Obama's junk folder contains nearly 60 messages from various MoveOn employees and members whose e-mail addresses Obama has previously flagged as spam. Perhaps most telling of his recent frustrations, Obama's mail records confirm that, in April 2008, he replied to a MoveOn.org e-mail entitled "10 Things You Need to Know About John McCain" with the message "Shut up."

Obama, who has traveled across the nation advocating unity among all races and social classes, said he was tired of the onslaught of MoveOn e-mails alleging the organization is making a difference with free campaign buttons, meet-ups, and "make your own Obama video" contests.

"I tried to skim over a few of them at first, but after a while, it's like, 'enough,'" said Obama, who noted that a pro-Obama house party should never be touted as "historic." "The other day, four people sent me the same freaking petition. The same one. How many times do I have to sign this?"

"I know this election is important and everything," Obama added. "But these people seriously need to relax."

Although he acknowledged that it takes little time and effort to discard the unwanted messages, the senator said that MoveOn has nonetheless become a nuisance. In recent weeks, he has begun automatically deleting any e-mail in which he sees the name "Barack Obama" in the subject line, which has only created further problems.

"Shortly after the DNC, I accidentally erased a personal message from my grandmother congratulating me on my nomination," Obama said. "Way to go, MoveOn.org."

According to Obama, however, the most annoying aspect of the MoveOn e-mails is the "self-righteous manner" in which the political advocacy group's mostly white employees have appropriated his campaign message and used it as their own.

"It's irritating that these people think they're doing everybody this great service just by clicking 'send' a million times," Obama said. "I'm trying to make the world a better place, but with all the time I've been spending deleting e-mails, it's going to take me forever."


the Onion

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18 Sep 08 - 12:13 PM (#2444101)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: beardedbruce

'Time' Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece
July 18, 2008 | Issue 44•29

NEW YORK—Hailed by media critics as the fluffiest, most toothless, and softest-hitting coverage of the presidential candidate to date, a story in this week's Time magazine is being called the definitive Barack Obama puff piece.

"No news publication has dared to barely scratch the surface like this before," columnist and campaign reporter Michael King wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday. "This profile sets a benchmark for mindless filler by which all other features about Sen. Obama will now be judged. Just impressive puff-journalism all around."

The 24-page profile, entitled "Boogyin' With Barack," hit newsstands Monday and contains photos of the candidate as a baby, graduating from Columbia University, standing and laughing, holding hands with his wife and best friend, Michelle, greeting a crowd of blue-collar autoworkers, eating breakfast with diner patrons, and staring pensively out of an airplane window while a pen and legal pad rest comfortably on his lowered tray table.

According to political analysts, the Time piece features the most lack-of-depth reporting on Obama ever published, and for the first time reveals a number of inconsequential truths about the candidate, including how he keeps in shape on the campaign trail, and which historical figures the presidential hopeful would choose to have dinner with.

"The sheer breadth of fluff in this story is something to be marveled at," New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet said. "It's all here. Favorite books, movies, meals, and seasons of the year ranked one through four. Sure, we asked Obama what his favorite ice cream was, but Time did us one better and asked, 'What's your favorite ice cream, really?'"

Time managing editor Rich Stengel said he was proud of the Obama puff piece, and that he hoped it would help to redefine the boundaries of journalistic drivel.

"When the American people cast their vote this November, this is the piece of fluff they're going to remember," Stengel said. "Not the ones by Newsweek, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Economist, Nightline, The Wall Street Journal, or even that story about lessons Obama learned from his first-grade teacher we ran a month ago."

The article, which follows Obama for 12 days during his campaign, was written by reporter Chris Sherwood, and is relentless in its attempt to capture the candidate at his most poised and polished. Sherwood said the profile easily trumps all other fluff pieces in its effort to expose the presidential candidate for who he really is: "an awesome guy."

"My editors told me that if I wanted to uncover the most frivolous, trivial information on Obama, I had to be prepared to follow the puff," Sherwood said. "That meant that not only did I have to stay and watch Sen. Obama play endless games of basketball with city firemen to show readers how athletic and youthful he is, but I also had to go to NBA shooting experts to learn what aspects of his jump shot are good and what parts are great."

Sherwood said he was granted full access to the candidate, and was permitted by chief strategist David Axelrod to ask any question he desired—an opportunity the reporter used to lob the easiest softballs at Obama yet, ranging from how happy he felt when he met his wife to what songs are currently on his iPod playlist. Sherwood was also fearless in his effort to paint the candidate as someone who is "surprisingly down to earth," a phrase that is used a total of 26 times throughout the feature.

"If we were going to get the story we wanted, it was my responsibility as a journalist to ask the really tough questions to his two young daughters," said Sherwood, who grilled Malia and Sasha Obama, 9 and 7, about whether they were "proud of [their] daddy." "I also had to capitalize on every opportunity to compare the story of Obama's upbringing and rise to power to that of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s and John F. Kennedy's, no matter how suspect those parallels really are."

According to the Time reporter, work on the profile was often harder than he had anticipated, with Obama at times dodging questions about whether or not he played a musical instrument, and about what Monopoly piece he thought best represented his candidacy and why.

"Situations like these are when you have to get on the phone and talk, not only to his mother, but to his aunt, his uncle, a Boy Scout leader, or maybe even one of his camp counselors growing up," Sherwood said. "And if they don't return your call, you turn to Sunday school teachers and former babysitters—anyone who is willing to go on record and say that Barack Obama was a really good kid who was destined for great things."

Added Sherwood, "It's all about getting the factoids out in the open."

Readers have so far responded favorably to the piece, with sales of the latest issue of Time nearly tripling that of an issue last month featuring a 36-page exposé that tore apart and vilified former candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan.

"I'm not quite sure how he intends to turn around the economy or get us out of Iraq," said California resident Geoff Mills, an ardent Obama supporter who read the Time story. "But any man who prefers his steak cooked medium-rare has my vote."


the Onion

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18 Sep 08 - 01:55 PM (#2444186)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Jaysus, Bruce. Find something real to do, huh?


A

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18 Sep 08 - 02:08 PM (#2444198)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: beardedbruce

Like starting a "Popular Opinion " thread to accumulate comments that agree with me?

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18 Sep 08 - 02:11 PM (#2444204)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: beardedbruce

beardedbruce 18 Sep 08 - 12:13 PM
beardedbruce 18 Sep 08 - 12:12 PM
Amos 18 Sep 08 - 12:00 PM
Amos 18 Sep 08 - 09:06 AM
Amos 17 Sep 08 - 11:55 AM
Amos 12 Sep 08 - 02:37 PM
Amos 10 Sep 08 - 10:26 AM
Amos 10 Sep 08 - 09:34 AM
Amos 07 Sep 08 - 11:23 PM



You were saying?????

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18 Sep 08 - 02:12 PM (#2444205)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sure, go for it: "Popular Hallucinations on the Conservative Movement" or something.


A

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20 Sep 08 - 09:02 PM (#2446217)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MORE BIKES, FEWER BIKE ACCIDENTS. In a study that at first glance
seems counterintuitive, researchers at the University of New South
Wales in Sydney, Australia reviewed safety studies from 17 countries
and 68 cities in California and found that the more people bike in a
community, the less they collide with motorists. ╲It appears that
motorists adjust their behavior in the presence of increasing
numbers of people bicycling because they expect or experience more
people cycling,╡ said Julie Hatfield, and injury expert from the
university. With fewer accidents, people perceive cycling as safer,
so more people cycle, thus making it even safer, she said. ╲Rising
cycling rates mean motorists are more likely to be cyclists, and
therefore be more conscious of, and sympathetic towards, cyclists,╡
she said. Safety experts said the decrease in accidents that comes
with an increase in cycling is independent of improvements in
cycling-friendly laws and better infrastructure such as bike paths.
The safety studies reviewed were from Australia, Denmark, the
Netherlands, 14 other European countries, and 68 cities in
California. Although the review focused on bicycling, it appears
that the more is safer rule also applies to pedestrians, Hatfield
said.
(Phys News)

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21 Sep 08 - 10:41 PM (#2446951)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/

Tuesday, September 23 at 8 p.m.


Astronomers are closing in on the proof they've sought for years
that one of the most destructive objects in the universe--a
supermassive black hole--lurks at the center of our own galaxy.
Could it flare up and consume our entire galactic neighborhood? Join
NOVA on a mind-bending investigation into one of the most bizarre
corners of cosmological science: black hole research. From event
horizon to singularity, the elusive secrets of supermassive black
holes are revealed through stunning computer-generated imagery,
including an extraordinary simulation of what it might look like to
fall into the belly of such an all-devouring beast.

Here's what you'll find on the companion Web site:

        Inside an Enigma
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/enigma.html
        Explore the oddities of black holes in this interview with
        NASA's Steve Ritz.

        Black Holes Explained
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/explained.html
        Listen in as top physicists take on the challenge.

        Galactic Explorer
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/expo-flash.html
        Astronomer Andrea Ghez talks of her huge discovery and her life.
        Hear audio highlights or go to the full interview.

        Birth of a Black Hole
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/form.html
        In this slide show, see how a dying star is reborn as a black
        hole.

        Tiny Black Holes
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/tiny.html
        Miniature black holes might be all around us, even passing
        through Earth.

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23 Sep 08 - 02:14 PM (#2448337)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A MUSLIM CREATIONISM DEBATE (Click for full article)
Taking on Darwin in Turkey
By Daniel Steinvorth in Istanbul

Fundamentalist Christians in America are not the only ones leading a crusade against Darwin. Creationism and "intelligent design" are becoming increasingly popular among Turkey's Muslims, too.

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24 Sep 08 - 09:33 AM (#2448915)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In Japes for Our Tymes the author provideth Middle English translations of modern comics with humorous effect.


A

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25 Sep 08 - 04:54 PM (#2450231)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Tree-generated electricity may be key to preventing forest fires: scientists Last Updated: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 | 3:42 PM CBC News MIT researchers are experimenting to see if electricity generated by trees can power a network of sensors to prevent forest fires from spreading. The scientists said Tuesday that their pilot system produces enough electricity to allow temperature and humidity sensors to wirelessly transmit signals four times a day, or immediately if there's a fire. Forestry officials often rely on remote-controlled weather stations to transmit local climate data used in fire prediction models. But it's expensive and difficult to recharge or replace the batteries that power isolated stations. Tapping into the tiny amounts of electricity produced by trees can recharge batteries automatically, cutting costs and increasing fire surveillance, say the scientists. A single tree doesn't generate a lot of power, but over time the "trickle charge" adds up, "just like a dripping faucet can fill a bucket over time," Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering in Cambridge, Mass., said in a release. Scientists have long known that trees can produce minute amounts of electricity. But no one knew exactly how the energy was produced or how to take advantage of it. Zhang and his co-authors reported the answer in the August issue of the Public Library of Science ONE: the energy comes from an imbalance in pH (potential of hydrogen Ñ the measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution) between a tree and the soil in which it grows. "[The] sustained voltage difference routinely observed between parts of trees and soil is mainly due to a difference in pH between the two. Specifically, the tree-root-soil system acts as a concentration pH cell," the authors write. The scientists plan to test their tree-powered wireless sensor network this spring on land owned by the United States Forest Service.

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25 Sep 08 - 05:42 PM (#2450279)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

FURTHEST SEEABLE THING. For the first time in history you could
have looked half way back to the origin of the universe with your
naked eye. On the night of March 19, 2008 a telescope mounted in
space observed a flash from a gamma ray burst, an extremely
explosive celestial object, which set several records. First, if
youâ•˙d been looking in that direction you would have been able to
see, with your own unaided eyes, something at a distance
further-seven billion light years---than anything a human being has
ever seen in history. Second, since looking out into space is
equivalent to looking back in time (it takes the light from distant
objects many years to reach the Earth), you would have been
witnessing the earliest thing ever seeable by the naked eye.

A new report describes observations made of the explosion by an
orbiting telescope called Swift and by some of ground-based
telescopes that got in on the action once they were notified by
Swift. Swift has three onboard detectors which look not at ordinary
visible light but at much more energetic light in the form of x rays
and gamma rays. One feature of Swiftâ•˙s mission is that as soon as
it sees something interesting it alerts controllers on the ground so
that other telescopes can be turned in that direction. In this way
the explosive outburst, whose official name is GRB 080319B, could be
tracked by telescopes sensitive to other kinds of light, such as
infrared and even radio waves.

The March 19 event is an example of a gamma ray burst. This comes
about when certain heavy old stars have used up all their internal
fuel. When a star has no more fuel, the force of gravity causes it
to contract. If this process is violent enough, the star can blow
apart as a supernova. In some special cases, what is left behind is
a black hole, and outward going shock waves which, when they
criss-cross, can create a brilliant flash of light. For a short
time this light is more powerful than that coming from an entire
galaxy of stars.

The cone of energy flying away from the explosion can be quite
narrow, so to be observed from far away, as this object was, it had
to be aligned just right to be seen by Swift.

This gamma burst was not the furthest ever observed with a
telescope, but it was the brightest in terms of the energy
released. So bright, in fact, that it could have been seen unaided
in areas of North and South America the night of March 19, if only
for about 40 seconds. The splash of light arriving at Swiftâ•˙s place
in orbit that two of Swiftâ•˙s three detectors were temporarily
blinded.

Fortunately several telescopes quickly maneuvered into position and
could study the stellar explosion as it unfolded. By then the gamma
rays, the most energetic part of the light blast, would have died
down. But other types of light continued to issue from the scene.
According to Swift scientist Judith Racusin, an astronomer at Penn
State, this has become the best-observed gamma ray burst, and the
observations have already changed the way we think about bursts
work.

When you look out at the night sky about 3000 stars are visible.
Everything you can see at night is either a planet in our home solar
system or one of those stars, all of which are located in our home
galaxy, the Milky Way. The furthest thing you can normally see with
the naked eye, and with some difficulty, is the Andromeda Galaxy,
about 2.5 million light years away. Only about once a century is a
supernova visible from any further galaxy. And by now itâ•˙s been 400
years since weâ•˙ve seen one of those.

That makes GRB 080319B all the more impressive. It breaks the
record of most distant seeable-with-the-naked-eye thing by a factor
of a thousand. Located in the Bootes Constellation, the gamma burst
is at a distance of 7 billion light years, which means that it took
light seven billion years to come from the blast to Earth. That
means that a person seeing the visible portion of the blast would
have been looking halfway back toward the time of the big bang,
when, according to modern cosmology, the universe began. When the
blast occurred the sun hadnâ•˙t even appeared yet, much less the
Earth, much less the human species. (The results appeared Nature
magazine, 11 September 2008.)

---

26 Sep 08 - 05:36 PM (#2451199)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Fountains are great tourist attractions. Just think about the crowds drawn to the Bellagio in Las Vegas. But fountains don't need to be huge to be impressive. Take the fountain in this Video of the Day, for example.

This fountain can actually make pictures and words with falling water. It's been described as working like an inkjet printer. Hundreds of nozzles create precise streams of water. Timed just right, images are created.

This intelligent waterfall welcomes people to Canal City Hakata. That Japanese shopping complex was built around an artificial canal. There are several fountains at the complex. But this one takes the cake!"

Smart-Fountain Painitng, an awesome demonstration.

---

27 Sep 08 - 08:47 PM (#2451879)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Mathematicians in California could be in line for a $100,000 prize (£54,000) for finding a new prime number which has 13 million digits.

Prime numbers can be divided only by themselves and one.

The prize was set up by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to promote co-operative computing on the Internet.

The team from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) found the new number by linking 75 computers and harnessing their unused power.
This enabled them to perform the enormous number of calculations needed to find and verify a new prime.

Thousands of people around the world linked the powers of their personal computers in the search for new "Mersenne" prime number - named after 17th-Century French mathematician Marin Mersenne.
Mersenne primes are expressed as two to the power of P, minus one - with P being itself a prime number.
Edson Smith, the leader of the winning UCLA team, told the Associated Press news agency: "We're delighted. Now we're looking for the next one, despite the odds."

---

27 Sep 08 - 09:26 PM (#2451899)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The soft green heart-shaped leaf of the horny goat weed could hold the key to a new drug for treating erectile dysfunction. Researchers say the Viagra alternative could be as effective as the famous blue pill, but have fewer side-effects.
Mario Dell'Agli of the University of Milan, Italy, and colleagues tested four plants which are used as natural aphrodisiacs in traditional cultures to establish their potential as alternatives to Viagra.
Viagra's active compound, sildenafil, works by inhibiting an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5). Because PDE5 helps control blood flow to the penis, inhibiting PDE5 promotes male erection.
Dell'Agli and his colleagues tested the four plants in vitro to see how efficient they were at inhibiting PDE5. Just one – Epimedium brevicornum, also known as horny goat weed and Bishop's Hat – had an effect. This confirmed previous studies showing that icariin, a compound found inside the horny goat weed, is a PDE5 inhibitor.
The fifth compound
Sildenafil, however, is 80 times more effective at inhibiting PDE5 than icariin. Dell'Agli and his team extracted icariin from the plants, and produced six modified versions of it, which they also tested on PDE5. The most efficient of these, compound 5, "works as well as Viagra", says Dell'Agli.
A drug made from compound 5 could also cause fewer side effects than Viagra.
In addition to PDE5, sildenafil affects other phosphodiesterases, including some that are essential to sight and heart function. As a result, people who have heart problems are not advised to take Viagra and patients who do take the drug sometimes suffer disturbances to their eyesight.

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27 Sep 08 - 10:24 PM (#2451918)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A giant goose-like bird that was the size of a light aircraft and had a beak like a crocodile's jaws has been found to have soared above Britain 50 million years ago.

A fossil skull preserved in London clay has been identified as belonging to a relative of modern ducks and geese with a wingspan of 5m (16ft) and armed with a beakful of teeth. The ancient creature has been nicknamed Mother Goose by Gerald Meyr, the palaeontologist who identified it, because of the bird's extraordinary size.

It is thought to have had a similar lifestyle to the albatross of today, which spends most of its life at sea and is a master at using thermals and air currents to remain airborne with minimum effort.

The ancient goose, one of the biggest species of bird to take to the skies, was even bigger than the wandering albatross, which, at up to 3.7m wing tip to wing tip, has the biggest wingspan of all living birds. Mother Goose, more properly named Dasornis emuinus, is thought to have had a wingspan almost 50 per cent bigger than the wandering albatross.

"Imagine a bird like an ocean-going goose, almost the size of a small plane," said Dr Meyr, of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt. "They had lightweight bones so despite their great size they weren't very heavy. I think they were capable of soaring and gliding – though they would probably have needed strong winds to take off.

"By today's standards these were pretty bizarre animals, but perhaps the strangest thing about them is that they had sharp, tooth-like projections along the cutting edges of the beak.

"The beak was so covered in bony teeth that it looked like a crocodile."

Some early birds had enamel teeth but these were lost about 100 million years ago, yet Mother Goose reevolved them, this time made from bone and possibly covered with a layer of keratin, the biological material used for the beak. Dr Meyr believes that the 60 to 80 teeth in the beak, estimated at 20-25cm long, were developed to help the prehistoric bird keep a grip of the fish and squid it would have snatched from the sea.

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29 Sep 08 - 01:07 PM (#2452999)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Private Company Launches Its Rocket Into Orbit
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By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: September 28, 2008
A privately financed company launched a rocket of its own design successfully into orbit on Sunday night, ushering in what the company's founders hope will be a new era of spaceflight.

It was the fourth launching attempt by the company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, which was founded by Elon Musk, an Internet entrepreneur born in South Africa.

"We've made orbit!" Mr. Musk exclaimed to his employees at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., proclaiming the moment "awesome."

"There were a lot of people who thought we couldn't do it — a lot, actually," he said after thanking his employees. "But, you know, the saying goes, fourth time's the charm."

Mr. Musk, 37, founded SpaceX in 2002 after selling the online payment company he helped found, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion.

SpaceX, which has more than 500 employees, captured one of the most coveted prizes of the new space industry: a commercial orbital transportation services contract worth as much as $100 million. Known by its acronym, Cots, the program encourages private-sector alternatives to the space shuttle.

The company is developing a larger rocket, the Falcon 9, to provide cargo services to the International Space Station for NASA after the shuttle program winds down in 2010. The company also hopes to adapt its technology to carry people to the station, which could help bridge the gap until the debut of the next generation of NASA spacecraft, planned for 2015.

"This is just the first step in many," Mr. Musk told his team.

---

30 Sep 08 - 09:44 PM (#2454376)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A teenager whose lottery win turned her into an overnight millionaire said that, when the truth sunk in, she screamed so much that it alarmed her dog, who bit her on the bottom.

Would-be lawyer Ianthe Fullagar, 18, from Ravenglass, Cumbria, won more than £7m in the EuroMillions lottery, on only the second occasion she had bought a ticket. She was tempted to try after hearing that the jackpot was more than £100m.

"At first I thought I had matched three numbers, so I couldn't believe it when I realised I had the five main numbers plus one Lucky Star," she said.

"I checked the ticket and saw that the average win for those numbers was £280,000 and couldn't stop screaming. My mum called the National Lottery Line and it was only then that I realised I had won a share of the jackpot. We were both screaming so loudly that my dog, Brock, didn't know what was happening and bit me on the bottom."

---

01 Oct 08 - 09:32 AM (#2454725)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In general, for "good" traits, such as generosity, friendliness, and sense of humor, most people rate themselves as above average; for "bad" traits like snobbishness and dishonesty people typically describe themselves as below average (less snobbish, less dishonest). Most of us thus believe we are less biased than other people, less racist, less prone to conform, and less prone to be influenced by advertising. Yet, while good at spotting bias and prejudice in others, we are routinely blind to it in ourselves.
These happy illusions extend to those we identify with.

People expect that members of their own ethnic groups are more likely to smile (even in situations where a smile is inane, such as being alone in a room waiting for a computer to start up). Asked to pick out photographs of people likely to support the same political party as themselves, they pick more beautiful people than they do for supporters of an opposing party. In general, people tend to hold more favorable views of their "in-group," to exaggerate differences with a perceived out-group, and to treat members of their in-group more generously.

When it comes to studying ourselves — to trying to understand how we compare to other animals on the planet — we run into similar problems. We consistently overestimate human uniqueness and underestimate the abililities of other animals.

On the overestimation side, we only need to look at history to see that humans tend to have any number of self-aggrandizing beliefs — we have a long tradition of believing ourselves to be the center of the universe, for example, or to think the planet was created especially for us. We often forget that for the first two billion years of its existence, the planet was home only to bacteria, and that bacteria make all other lifeforms possible: we are as dependent on the bacteria in our guts as a termite or cow. And when the chimpanzee genome was published, there was a big disappointment. The genes that have been evolving fastest between our lineage and theirs turned out not to be those involved in head size or intelligence, but those involved in reproduction and the immune system—the same pattern you see between any other pair of closely related species of mammal.

Moreover, in our assessments of other animals, we are consistently surprised. My favorite example of this comes from a headline in Nature a few years ago that announced that "sheep are not so stupid after all." The reason for the re-evaluation of ovine intelligence was a series of elegant experiments that showed that sheep can recognize and remember other sheep. But sheep are social animals: they live in flocks. It would be astonishing if they could not do this. (A sheep newspaper would no doubt have run the headline, "Humans Amazed Again!")

The idea that we need outside help in assessing ourselves isn't new. The great 19th century scientist Thomas Huxley, in his classic text about the evolution of humans and their similarities to chimpanzees and gorillas, wrote:

Let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular "erect and featherless biped," which some enterprising traveler, overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a cask of rum.

Huxley goes on to argue that only a human could deny the extraordinary resemblances between humans and their primate cousins.
Since then, the genuine difficulty in disconnecting the "mask of humanity" has grown more apparent. As we continue to learn about the inherent human tendencies towards bias, and the flattering illusions we like to maintain, it may get easier to guard against the problem, and to assess ourselves more clearly. Yet perhaps — probably — there are some biases that our brains have that we simply can't see at all, blind spots that we, as a species, can never discover we have.
"

Olivia Judson, writing in the Times.

---

09 Oct 08 - 02:51 PM (#2461311)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW YORK - In a sign of the times, the legendary National Debt Clock in New York City has run out of digits to record the growing debt.

The Times Square-area ticker needs two additional digits to track a national debt 100 times larger than the current $10.2 trillion.

As a short-term fix the digital dollar sign on the billboard-style clock has been switched to a number one - the "1" in $10 trillion. The Durst Organization says it plans to update the sign next year.

The late Manhattan real estate developer Seymour Durst put the sign up in 1989 to call attention to the then-national debt of $2.7 trillion. The clock was turned off during the 1990's when the debt decreased.

Seymour Durst died in 1995, and his son Doug Durst now runs the company that maintains the clock.

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10 Oct 08 - 09:32 AM (#2462059)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The stock market bell was rung today by the Cancer SSociety and the ambassador of Jibuti. (its hard to find anyone who wanted this honor today)

GM is now at its all time low matched only by their 1929 earnings.
wanna buy a $4 dollar share of GM?

---

10 Oct 08 - 04:00 PM (#2462422)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NOt unless they can start desinging cars for the 21st century instead of the nineteenth.


A

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11 Oct 08 - 05:12 PM (#2463224)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Fertile women hit a high note
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Agence France-Presse

The closer a woman was to ovulation, the more her pitch was raised, the investigators found.
Credit: iStockphoto


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PARIS: A woman raises the pitch of her voice during her most fertile period of the month in an unconscious boost to her femininity, according to a study published today.

As they report in the British journal Biology Letters a pair of scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) asked 69 women to make voice recordings when they were at high and low fertility points in their menstrual cycle.

Minnie mouse on helium

The closer a woman was to ovulation, the more her pitch was raised, the investigators found.

The increase in tone was only slight – not exactly Minnie Mouse on helium - but the peaks were enough to be picked up by the voice decoder and presumably by the male ear, as well. The difference was the greatest on the two days preceding ovulation, when fertility within the cycle is the highest.

Curiously, this distinction only occurred when, among the sentences she was asked to speak, the volunteer introduced herself: "Hello, I'm a student at UCLA."

The scientists suggest the pitch change happens because men are lured to a more "feminine" voice in a woman - and women respond to the instinct.

Sexual signals and reproductive fitness are strongly associated with voice, which is why women are often drawn to men with the husky voice of the supposed alpha male.

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14 Oct 08 - 11:01 PM (#2465898)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

By Mary Brophy Marcus, USA TODAY
Time spent Googling the latest campaign news or searching for choice eBay buys may help stimulate and improve the minds of middle-aged and older Americans, UCLA scientists suggest.

Research reported in next month's American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry is the first to assess how performing Internet searches influences brain activity in older Americans, says study author Gary Small, professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

The research included 24 healthy volunteers ages 55 to 76. Half had Internet-searching experience, and the others had none. All were asked to perform Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded the brain-circuitry changes they were experiencing.

All of the volunteers showed significant brain activity during the reading task, which stimulated brain regions that control language, reading, memory and visual abilities.

BETTER LIFE: More news on preventing dementia
But during Internet searches, major differences flared up between the two groups, Small says. Only those who had previous Web-search experience registered extensive activity in decision-making and complex-reasoning portions of the brain.

"Our most striking finding was that Internet searching appears to engage a greater extent of neural circuitry that is not activated during reading, but only in those people with prior Internet experience," Small says. He is also co-author of iBrain (HarperCollins, 2008), which was released on Tuesday and explores how older Americans can keep up with younger generations in an increasingly technological world.

Small says that over time, he'd expect the inexperienced Internet searchers to benefit as well.

Harvard neuroscientist Randy Buckner says the study is interesting because it explores influences of the modern world on the brain. But he wonders if completely novel activities influence brain activity or if it's the activity of Web searching itself that causes a leap in brain bustle.

---

15 Oct 08 - 12:56 PM (#2466416)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Stress reduction has been found highly significant when people meditate for the well being of people they do not like.

I think Jesus was on to something when said forgive your enemies and pray.+

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15 Oct 08 - 11:35 PM (#2466906)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

n a new study of a fossil fish that lived 375 million years ago, scientists are finding striking evidence of the intermediate steps by which some marine vertebrates evolved into animals that walked on land.


There was much more to the complex transition than fins evolving into sturdy limbs. The head and braincase were changing, a mobile neck was emerging and a bone associated with underwater feeding and gill respiration was diminishing in size, a beginning of the bone's adaptation for an eventual role in hearing for land animals.

details here.

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16 Oct 08 - 04:13 AM (#2466999)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: The Fooles Troupe

"scientists are finding striking evidence of the intermediate steps by which some marine vertebrates evolved into animals that walked on land"

Tasmanian Hand fish

I'm not making this up, you know...

---

16 Oct 08 - 05:12 PM (#2467673)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Man 'roused from coma' by a magnetic field
15 October 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Linda Geddes


JOSH VILLA was 26 and driving home after a drink with a friend on 28 August 2005 when his car mounted the kerb and flipped over. Villa was thrown through the windscreen, suffered massive head injuries and fell into a coma.
Almost a year later, there was little sign of improvement. "He would open his eyes, but he was not responsive to any external stimuli in his environment," says Theresa Pape of the US Department of Veterans Affairs in Chicago, who helped treat him.
Usually there is little more that can be done for people in this condition. Villa was to be sent home to Rockford, Illinois, where his mother, Laurie McAndrews, had volunteered to care for him.
But Pape had a different suggestion. She enrolled him in a six-week study in which an electromagnetic coil was held over the front of his head to stimulate the underlying brain tissue. Such transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been investigated as a way of treating migraine, stroke, Parkinson's disease and depression, with some promising results, but this is the first time it has been used as a potential therapy for someone in a coma-like state.
The rapidly changing magnetic fields that the coil creates can be used either to excite or inhibit brain cells - making it easier or harder for them to communicate with one another. In Villa's case, the coil was used to excite brain cells in the right prefrontal dorsolateral cortex. This area has strong connections to the brainstem, which sends out pulses to the rest of the brain that tell it to pay attention. "It's like an 'OK, I'm awake' pulse," says Pape.
At first, there was little change in Villa's condition, but after around 15 sessions something happened. "You started talking to him and he would turn his head and look at you," says McAndrews. "That was huge."
Villa started obeying one-step commands, such as following the movement of a thumb and speaking single words. "They were very slurred but they were there," says Pape, who presented her findings this month at an international meeting on brain stimulation at the University of Göttingen, Germany. "He'd say like 'erm', 'help', 'help me'."
After the 30 planned sessions the TMS was stopped. Without it, Villa became very tired and his condition declined a little, but he was still much better than before. Six weeks later he was given another 10 sessions, but there were no further improvements and he was sent home, where he remains today.
Villa is by no means cured. But he is easier to care for and can interact with visitors such as his girlfriend, who has stuck by him following the accident. "When you talk to him he will move his mouth to show he is listening," McAndrews says. "If I ask him, 'Do you love me?' he'll do two slow eye blinks, yes. Some people would say it's not much, but he's improving and that's the main thing."

---

17 Oct 08 - 05:53 PM (#2468636)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In a study of Christian church members who approached their church for help with a personal or family member's diagnosed mental illness, researchers found that more than 32 percent were told by their pastor that they or their loved one did not really have a mental illness.

The problem was solely spiritual in nature, they were told.

Here's the thing: Other studies have found that clergy, and not psychologists or other mental health experts, are the most common source of help sought in times of psychological distress.

"The results are troubling because it suggests individuals in the local church are either denying or dismissing a somewhat high percentage of mental health diagnosis," said study leader Matthew Stanford, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Texas. "Those whose mental illness is dismissed by clergy are not only being told they don't have a mental illness, they are also being told they need to stop taking their medication. That can be a very dangerous thing."

The results, based on surveys of 293 individuals, were published in the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture.

Baylor researchers also found that women were more likely than men to have their mental disorders dismissed by the church.

In a subsequent survey, Baylor researchers found the dismissal or denial of the existence of mental illness happened more in conservative churches, rather than more liberal ones.

All of the participants in both studies were previously diagnosed by a licensed mental health provider as having a serious mental illness, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, prior to approaching their local church for assistance. ... (LiveScience.com)

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17 Oct 08 - 08:02 PM (#2468743)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Mental illnesses afflict 25 percent of U.S. adults, according to official numbers. But in reality, we're all a little crazy. And for good reason: Nature doesn't really care about our happiness. ..."

"...Natural selection wants us to be crazy — at least a little bit. While true debilitating insanity is not nature's intention, many mental health issues may be byproducts of the over-functional human brain, some researchers claim.

As humans improved their gathering, hunting and cooking techniques, population size increased and resources became more limited (in part because we hunted or ate some species to extinction). As a result, not everyone could get enough to eat. Cooperative relationships were critical to ensuring access to food, whether through farming or more strategic hunting, and those with blunt social skills were unlikely to survive, explained David C. Geary, author of "The Origin of Mind" (APA, 2004), and a researcher at the University of Missouri.

And thus, a diversity of new mental abilities, and disabilities, unfurled.

The Nature of joy

It might seem as though modern man should have evolved to be happy and harmonious. But nature cares about genes, not joy, Geary said.

Mental illnesses hinder one in every four adults in America every year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. And this doesn't count those of us with more moderate mood swings.

To explain our susceptibility to poor mental health, Randolph Nesse in "The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology" (Wiley, 2005) compares the human brain with race horses: Just as horse breeding has selected for long thin legs that increase speed but are prone to fracture, cognitive advances also increase fitness — to a point...."

"...ven if 16 million men today can trace their genes to Genghis Khan (nature's definition of uber-success can be measured by his prolific paternity), very few potential despots achieve such heights. Perhaps to check selfish urges, in favor of more probable means to biological success, social lubricants such as empathy, guilt and mild anxiety arose.

For example, the first of our ancestors to empathize and read facial expressions had a striking advantage. They could confirm their own social status and convince others to share food and shelter. But too much emotional acuity — when individuals overanalyze every grimace — can cause a motivational nervousness about one's social value to morph into a relentless handicapping anxiety.

Pondering the future

Another cognitive innovation made it possible to compare potential futures. While other animals focus on the present, only humans, said Geary, "sit and worry about what will happen three years from now if I do that or this." Our ability to think things over, and over, can be counterproductive and lead to obsessive tendencies.

Certain types of depression, however, Geary continued, may be advantageous. The lethargy and disrupted mental state can help us disengage from unattainable goals — whether it is an unrequited love or an exalted social position...."

Full story at Live Science.

---

20 Oct 08 - 01:18 PM (#2470907)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In the autumn of 1938, Hitler's thugs launched a brutal attack on the Jews, which later became known as Kristallnacht. Now, an Israeli journalist has found remnants of that pogrom in a dump near Berlin.

It was almost exactly seven decades ago that Nazi SA thugs spread out across Germany to spread terror among the Jewish population. The event, which saw thousands of Jewish shops destroyed, hundreds of synagogues torched and dozens of Jews killed, came to be known as Kristallnacht.

Now, an Israeli journalist conducting research near Berlin has stumbled upon what might be a massive dump full of the wreckage from the pogrom, which took place on the night of Nov. 9, 1938.

The find, first reported in this week's edition of SPIEGEL, was made by Yaron Svoray, 54, less then an hour's drive northeast of Berlin in the German state of Brandenburg. While conducting research on Carinhall, the country residence of Nazi honcho Hermann Göring, a local told him that objects from Jewish houses destroyed during the pogroms had been dumped nearby.

Upon further inspection, Svoray quickly found a number of artifacts that possibly corroborated the local's claim, including a green glass bottle with a Star of David imprinted on its bottom and part of an elaborate backrest that Svoray believes were to be found in synagogues of the time.

The dump where the objects were found is roughly the size of four football fields. An old map identifies the general area as having been in use since 1900 and indicates that the specific area in which Svoray found the relics was used as a location for unloading trash between 1935 and 1940.

"In all probability, what we're dealing with here are remains from Kristallnacht," Svoray said, referencing the so-called "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom of November 9, 1938, which saw Nazis launch a coordinated attack on synagogues and Jewish businesses across Germany. Over 1,400 synagogues and other Jewish religious establishments in Germany and Austria were either heavily damaged or destroyed on that night, according to estimates of the German Historical Museum. Dozens of Jews were killed in the attack, and thousands were arrested and led away to concentration camps....

(Der Spiegel)

---

21 Oct 08 - 04:55 PM (#2472150)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Every day, you handle the deadliest substance on earth. It is a weapon of mass destruction festering beneath your fingernails. In the past 10 years, it has killed more people than all the wars since Adolf Hitler rolled into one; in the next four hours, it will kill the equivalent of two jumbo jets full of kids. It is not anthrax or plutonium or uranium. Its name is shit—and we are in the middle of a shit storm. In the West, our ways of discreetly whisking this weapon away are in danger of breaking down, and one-quarter of humanity hasn't ever used a functioning toilet yet. "

Read the complete story on shit here.


A

---

22 Oct 08 - 10:51 AM (#2472778)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

EW DELHI — India launched its first unmanned spacecraft to orbit the moon early Wednesday, part of an effort to assert its power in space and claim some of the business opportunities there.

Related
Times Topics: India
Enlarge This Image

Indian Space Research Organization, via Associated Press
In an undated photo, the Chandrayaan-1 was taken to the launching pad in Sriharikota.
The Indian mission is scheduled to last two years, prepare a three-dimensional atlas of the moon and prospect the lunar surface for natural resources, including uranium, a coveted fuel for nuclear power plants, according to the Indian Space Research Organization.

The spacecraft will not land on the moon, though it is supposed to send a small "impactor" probe to the surface.

The launching of Chandrayaan-1, as the vehicle is called — roughly translated as Moon Craft-1 — comes about a year after China's first moon mission.

Talk of a space race with China could not be contained, even as Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, was due to visit Beijing later in the week.

"China has gone earlier, but today we are trying to catch them, catch that gap, bridge the gap," Bhaskar Narayan, a director at the Indian space agency, was quoted by Reuters as having said.

---

27 Oct 08 - 11:35 AM (#2477269)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Salisbury says it was 1970s entrepreneur Henry Smolinski who developed a wing and engine to be hooked to the back of a Ford Pinto, a subcompact car in the era, with hopes of production.

"It was fun," says Bert Boeckmann, whose Galpin Motors in Los Angeles is the nation's largest Ford dealership. He took a test ride in the Flying Pinto to an altitude of about 10 feet.

But the operation "was kind of working on a shoestring" and didn't pay enough attention to safety. Smolinski and a colleague were killed in 1973 when a wing collapse led to a fiery crash.

"Henry said if he ever died, he would like to die in his Flying Pinto," Boeckmann recalls.

---

27 Oct 08 - 04:51 PM (#2477510)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

'Twin' solar system 'like ours'
3 hours ago

Undiscovered planets may lie hidden in a "twin" solar system 10.5 light years from the Earth, scientists believe.

Epsilon Eridani looks very like a much younger version of our own star system, say astronomers in the latest edition of the Astrophyiscal Journal.

It possesses a rocky asteroid belt identical to the one that lies between Mars and Jupiter, and an outer ring of icy material similar to the Kuiper Belt at the edge of our Solar System. In addition it has a second outer belt of asteroids containing 20 times more space rock than the inner one.

Astronomers think unseen planets must have confined and shaped the three rings of material surrounding Epsilon Eridani. Three planets with masses between those of Neptune and Jupiter would neatly explain the observations.

One candidate planet near the innermost asteroid belt has already been detected from the "wobble" effect of its gravity on the star. A second planet is thought to lurk near the second asteroid belt and a third near the inner edge of Epsilon Eridani's "Kuiper Belt".

Epsilon Eridani, which is visible to the naked eye, is slightly smaller and cooler than the Sun but much younger. Whereas the Sun formed around 4.57 billion years ago, Epsilon Eridani is only around 850 million years old. The star's asteroid belts were found using the Spitzer space telescope.

Dr Massimo Marengo, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the US astronomers who made the discovery, said: "Studying Epsilon Eridani is like having a time machine to look at our solar system when it was young."

Co-author Dr Dana Backman, from the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute, said: "This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth."

Although Epsilon Eridani's "Kuiper Belt" is about 100 times more packed with icy debris than our own, scientists think that when our solar system was 850 million years old, its Kuiper Belt must have looked very similar.

---

29 Oct 08 - 10:33 AM (#2479007)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

AN unmanned spacecraft from India — that most worldly and yet otherworldly of nations — is on its way to the moon. For the first time since man and his rockets began trespassing on outer space, a vessel has gone up from a country whose people actually regard the moon as a god.

Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image

Vivienne Flesher
The Chandrayaan (or "moon craft") is the closest India has got to the moon since the epic Hindu sage, Narada, tried to reach it on a ladder of considerable (but insufficient) length — as my grandmother's bedtime version of events would have it. So think of this as a modern Indian pilgrimage to the moon.

As it happens, a week before the launching, millions of Hindu women embarked on a customary daylong fast, broken at night on the first sighting of the moon's reflection in a bowl of oil. (This fast is done to ensure a husband's welfare.) But reverence for the moon is not confined to traditional Indian housewives: The Web site of the Indian Space Research Organization — the body that launched the Chandrayaan — includes a verse from the Rig Veda, a sacred Hindu text that dates back some 4,000 years: "O Moon! We should be able to know you through our intellect,/ You enlighten us through the right path."

(NYT)

---

30 Oct 08 - 05:41 PM (#2480286)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ET, phone... each other? If aliens really are conversing, we are not picking up what they are saying. Now one researcher claims to have a way of tuning in to alien cellphone chatter.
On Earth, the signal used to send information via cellphones has evolved from a single carrier wave to a "spread spectrum" method of transmission. It's more efficient, because chunks of information are essentially carried on multiple low-powered carrier waves, and more secure because the waves continually change frequency so the signal is harder to intercept.

It follows that an advanced alien civilisation would have made this change too, but the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) is not listening for such signals, says Claudio Maccone, co-chair of the SETI Permanent Study Group based in Paris, France.
An algorithm known as the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is the method of choice for extracting an alien signal from cosmic background .

---

31 Oct 08 - 10:44 AM (#2480857)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

After an electrical malfunction caused it to go dormant a month ago, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business. But the space shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble has been pushed back again, NASA officials said Thursday.

To show this week that the orbiting eye still has the same chops as ever, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore used Hubble's wide-field planetary camera 2 to record this image of a pair of smoke-rings galaxies known as Arp 147.

The galaxies, about 450 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, apparently collided in the recent cosmic past. According to Mario Livio, of the space telescope institute, one of the galaxies passed through the other, causing a circular wave, like a pebble tossed into a pond, that has now coalesced into a ring of new blue stars. The center of the impacted galaxy can be seen as a reddish blur along the bottom of a blue ring.

(Picture here).

---

31 Oct 08 - 10:48 AM (#2480860)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Beautiful Math (Click link to see images)
By John Tierney

The rough edges of the black shape in this famous fractal, named the Mandelbrot set, are derived from the equations described in Nova's program this evening on fractal geometry, "Hunting the Hidden Dimension." (Art Matrix)

It's hard enough to make modern mathematics comprehensible in print, so I'm especially impressed to see anyone try to do it on television. Tonight, at 8 p.m. on PBS, Nova is presenting "Hunting the Hidden Dimension," an hour-long documentary on what it calls a "compelling mathematical detective story," the discovery of fractal geometry and its resulting applications. Of course, it doesn't hurt that there are lots of beautiful examples of fractals the natural world — and the unnatural worlds of "Star Trek" and "Star Wars."

[UPDATE, Wednesday, Oct. 29] If you missed the show last night, you can watch it by clicking here. You'll see a beautiful explanation of how patterns of static in phone lines led to the Mandelbrot set pictured above — and much more. I agree with Xanthippe's critical verdict on the show: "Brilliant."

The documentary, produced and directed by Michael Schwarz and Bill Jersey, tells how the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot became obssessed with "roughness" because so much in nature was not explained by orderly classical shapes like cones and spheres. He developed equations to explain shapes ranging from clouds to broccoli, and the equations turned out to be useful in creating movies, building cell-phone antennas, developing stronger concrete and a myriad of other applications

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03 Nov 08 - 02:00 PM (#2483493)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Stevens Juror Dismissed, Lied About Father's Death
Washington Post - 1 hour ago

By Del Quentin Wilber A juror dismissed from the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) after she told the judge her father had died in California admitted in court today that her excuse had been a lie: She actually left town to attend a horse race.

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07 Nov 08 - 09:08 PM (#2488101)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Skeleton Of 12,000-Year-Old Shaman Discovered Buried With Leopard, 50 Tortoises And Human Foot

ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2008) — The skeleton of a 12,000 year-old Natufian Shaman has been discovered in northern Israel by archaeologists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The burial is described as being accompanied by "exceptional" grave offerings - including 50 complete tortoise shells, the pelvis of a leopard and a human foot. The shaman burial is thought to be one of the earliest known from the archaeological record and the only shaman grave in the whole region.

Dr. Leore Grosman of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, who is heading the excavation at the Natufian site of Hilazon Tachtit in the western Galilee, says that the elaborate and invested interment rituals and method used to construct and seal the grave suggest that this woman had a very high standing within the community. Details of the discovery were published in the PNAS journal on November 3, 2008.

What was found in the shaman's grave?
The grave contained body parts of several animals that rarely occur in Natufian assemblages. These include fifty tortoises, the near-compete pelvis of a leopard, the wing tip of a golden eagle, tail of a cow, two marten skulls and the forearm of a wild boar which was directly aligned with the woman's left humerus.
A human foot belonging to an adult individual who was substantially larger than the interred woman was also found in the grave.
Dr. Grosman believes this burial is consistent with expectations for a shaman's grave. Burials of shamans often reflect their role in life (i.e., remains of particular animals and contents of healing kits). It seems that the woman was perceived as being in close relationship with these animal spirits.

Method of burial
The body was buried in an unusual position. It was laid on its side with the spinal column, pelvis and right femur resting against the curved southern wall of the oval-shaped grave. The legs were spread apart and folded inward at the knees.
According to Dr. Grosman, ten large stones were placed directly on the head, pelvis and arms of the buried individual at the time of burial. Following decomposition of the body, the weight of the stones caused disarticulation of some parts of the skeleton, including the separation of the pelvis from the vertebral column.
Speculating why the body was held in place in such a way and covered with rocks, Dr. Grosman suggests it could have been to protect the body from being eaten by wild animals or because the community was trying to keep the shaman and her spirit inside the grave.
Analysis of the bones show that the shaman was 45 years old, petite and had an unnatural, asymmetrical appearance due to a spinal disability that would have affected the woman's gait, causing her to limp or drag her foot.
Fifty tortoises
Most remarkably, the woman was buried with 50 complete tortoise shells. The inside of the tortoises were likely eaten as part of a feast surrounding the interment of the deceased. High representation of limb bones indicates that most tortoise remains were thrown into the grave along with the shells after consumption.
The recovery of the limb bones also indicates that entire tortoises, not only their shells, were transported to the cave for the burial. The collection of 50 living tortoises at the time of burial would have required a significant investment, as these are solitary animals. Alternatively, these animals could have been collected and confined by humans for a period preceding the event.
Shaman graves in archaeology
According to Dr. Grosman, the burial of the woman is unlike any burial found in the Natufian or the preceding Paleolithic periods. "Clearly a great amount of time and energy was invested in the preparation, arrangement, and sealing of the grave." This was coupled with the special treatment of the buried body.
Shamans are universally recorded cross-culturally in hunter-gatherer groups and small-scale agricultural societies. Nevertheless, they have rarely been documented in the archaeological record and none have been reported from the Paleolithic of Southwest Asia.
The Natufians existed in the Mediterranean region of the Levant 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. Dr. Grosman suggests this grave could point to ideological shifts that took place due to the transition to agriculture in the region at that time.

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08 Nov 08 - 04:44 PM (#2488652)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

William Robinson writes
"After an 18-day journey, Chandrayaan-1, the moon mission of India, has entered Lunar orbit. The maneuver was described as crucial and critical by scientists, who pointed out that at least 30 per cent of similar moon missions had failed at this juncture, resulting in spacecraft lost to outer space. The lunar orbit insertion placed Chandrayaan-1 in an elliptical orbit with its nearest point 400 to 500 kilometers away from the moon, and the farthest, 7,500 kilometers. By November 15, the spacecraft is expected to be orbiting the moon at a distance of 100 kilometers and sending back data and images (the camera was tested with shots looking back at Earth). The Chandrayaan-1 is also scheduled to send a probe to the moon's surface." (Slashdot)

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11 Nov 08 - 10:05 PM (#2491368)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"New large-scale studies of DNA are causing a rethinking of the very nature of genes. A typical gene is no longer conceived of as a single chunk of DNA encoding a single protein. It turns out, for example, that several different proteins may be produced from a single stretch of DNA. Most of the molecules produced from DNA may not even be proteins, but rather RNA. The familiar double helix of DNA no longer has a monopoly on heredity: other molecules clinging to DNA can produce striking differences between two organisms with the same genes — and those molecules can be inherited along with DNA.

Scientists have been working on exploring the 98% of the genome not identified as the protein-coding region. One of the biggest of these projects is an effort called the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, or 'Encode.' And its analysis of only 1% of the genome reveals the genome to be full of genes that are deeply weird, at least by the traditional standard of what a gene is supposed to be and do.

The Encode team estimates that the average protein-coding region produces 5.7 different transcripts. Different kinds of cells appear to produce different transcripts from the same gene. And it gets even weirder. Our DNA is studded with millions of proteins and other molecules, which determine which genes can produce transcripts and which cannot. New cells inherit those molecules along with DNA. In other words, heredity can flow through a second channel." (Slashdot)

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11 Nov 08 - 10:16 PM (#2491376)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Beautiful Dissertation on Wisdom by a plurality of sweethearts.



A

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12 Nov 08 - 10:50 AM (#2491734)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Ten actual remarks by Charles Darwin, from the UK Timeson-line edition:

So, in the interests, of rescuing him from the no-man's-land in which he has become trapped, here are 10 Darwin quotations, from his later years, which you are unlikely to hear from the mouths of either creationists or atheists in 2009.

1. "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic." (Autobiography)

2. "It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

3. "I hardly see how religion & science can be kept as distinct as [Edward Pusey] desires… But I most wholly agree… that there is no reason why the disciples of either school should attack each other with bitterness." (Letter to J. Brodie Innes, November 27 1878)

4. "In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

5. "I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind." (Letter to John Fordyce, May 7 1879)

6. "I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God." (Letter to Frederick McDermott, November 24 1880)

7. [In conversation with the atheist Edward Aveling, 1881] "Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind?" (Edward Aveling, The religious views of Charles Darwin, 1883)

8. "Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" (Letter to Graham William, July 3 1881)

9. "My theology is a simple muddle: I cannot look at the Universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent Design." (Letter to Joseph Hooker, July 12 1870)

10. "I can never make up my mind how far an inward conviction that there must be some Creator or First Cause is really trustworthy evidence." (Letter to Francis Abbot, September 6 1871

---

12 Nov 08 - 11:18 AM (#2491774)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Theodorid (King of the Visigoths) died in the thirteenth year of his reign.

His brother Euric succeeded him with such eager haste that he fell under dark suspicion. Now while these and various other matters were happening among the people of the Visigoths, the Emperor Valentinian was slain by the treachery of Maximus, and Maximus himself, like a tyrant, usurped the rule. Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, heard of this and came from Africa to Italy with ships of war, entered Rome and laid it waste. Maximus fled and was slain by a certain Ursus, a Roman soldier.

After him Majorian undertook the government of the Western Empire at the bidding of Marcian, Emperor of the East. But he too ruled but a short time. For when he had moved his forces against the Alani who were harassing Gaul, he was killed at Dertona near the river named Ira. Severus succeeded him and died at Rome in the third year of his reign. When the Emperor Leo, who had succeeded Marcian in the Eastern Empire, learned of this, he chose as emperor his Patrician Anthemius and sent him to Rome. Upon his arrival he sent against the Alani his son-in-law Ricimer, who was an excellent man and almost the only one in Italy at that time fit to command the army. In the very first engagement he conquered and destroyed the host of the Alani, together with their king, Beorg.

Now Euric, king of the Visigoths, perceived the frequent change of Roman Emperors and strove to hold Gaul by his own right. The Emperor Anthemius heard of it and asked the Brittones for aid. Their King Riotimus came with twelve thousand men into the state of the Bituriges by the way of Ocean, and was received as he disembarked from his ships.

Euric, king of the Visigoths, came against them with an innumerable army, and after a long fight he routed Riotimus, king of the Brittones, before the Romans could join him. So when he had lost a great part of his army, he fled with all the men he could gather together, and came to the Burgundians, a neighboring tribe then allied to the Romans. But Euric, king of the Visigoths, seized the Gallic city of Arverna; for the Emperor Anthemius was now dead.

---

12 Nov 08 - 11:45 AM (#2491788)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And in another part of the jungle altogether:

Going for the Guinness World Record
Dallas residents gathered to watch giant beach balls bounce around the downtown area. The balls measure 36 feet in diameter and are more than three stories high. To break the Guinness record, the balls need to be at least 32.8 feet (10 meters) in diameter and made of real beach ball material.
(ABC)

---

I have to ask, though, what "real" beach ball material is. Coconut shell? Gourds? The mind boggles at the new definition here exposed of the word "real", brought to you from Fantasy Land, where people get famous for ...well, for being famous.


A

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12 Nov 08 - 06:26 PM (#2492229)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bill D

Oh, my..... I saw the beginning of that attitude when *I* was a graduate asst. 35 years ago! They wanted the 'grade'....not necessarily the knowlege that earned it..



and, if I hit 'send' in time, 600..

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12 Nov 08 - 06:33 PM (#2492234)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bill D

(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.)

---

13 Nov 08 - 01:47 PM (#2492969)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

---

19 Nov 08 - 05:51 PM (#2497998)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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19 Nov 08 - 08:29 PM (#2498116)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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20 Nov 08 - 11:17 AM (#2498494)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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21 Nov 08 - 10:03 AM (#2499314)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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21 Nov 08 - 10:38 AM (#2499331)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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)

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25 Nov 08 - 09:48 AM (#2501162)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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25 Nov 08 - 09:29 PM (#2501744)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

27 Nov 08 - 02:45 PM (#2503052)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

27 Nov 08 - 10:41 PM (#2503274)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

---

28 Nov 08 - 11:45 AM (#2503602)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

01 Dec 08 - 02:42 PM (#2505155)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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."

---

01 Dec 08 - 03:05 PM (#2505180)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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)

---

01 Dec 08 - 03:11 PM (#2505191)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

01 Dec 08 - 07:14 PM (#2505398)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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 !!"

---

02 Dec 08 - 07:32 PM (#2506382)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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.

---

02 Dec 08 - 10:59 PM (#2506498)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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.

---

03 Dec 08 - 08:42 AM (#2506778)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

03 Dec 08 - 09:26 AM (#2506823)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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

---

03 Dec 08 - 10:01 PM (#2507322)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

---

04 Dec 08 - 10:52 AM (#2507670)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

11 Dec 08 - 01:50 PM (#2512781)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

12 Dec 08 - 03:06 PM (#2513710)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

12 Dec 08 - 11:42 PM (#2514056)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos


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.

---

12 Dec 08 - 11:46 PM (#2514059)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

12 Dec 08 - 11:50 PM (#2514061)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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



A

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13 Dec 08 - 12:12 AM (#2514068)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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."

---

13 Dec 08 - 12:14 AM (#2514070)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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."

---

13 Dec 08 - 01:55 PM (#2514413)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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13 Dec 08 - 01:56 PM (#2514414)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


A

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14 Dec 08 - 11:47 AM (#2514966)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

16 Dec 08 - 04:55 PM (#2517186)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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."

---

16 Dec 08 - 05:58 PM (#2517242)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

16 Dec 08 - 07:54 PM (#2517343)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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.

---

16 Dec 08 - 08:02 PM (#2517352)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

---

17 Dec 08 - 09:05 PM (#2518510)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

17 Dec 08 - 09:21 PM (#2518517)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

---

17 Dec 08 - 11:47 PM (#2518582)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

...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.

---

20 Dec 08 - 10:58 AM (#2520624)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

28 Dec 08 - 12:31 AM (#2525877)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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28 Dec 08 - 01:22 AM (#2525886)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

---

28 Dec 08 - 11:36 AM (#2526038)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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)

---

28 Dec 08 - 12:24 PM (#2526064)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

---

29 Dec 08 - 11:56 AM (#2526690)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

---

29 Dec 08 - 01:28 PM (#2526752)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

DOnuel:

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


A

---

30 Dec 08 - 12:09 AM (#2527139)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

---

02 Jan 09 - 12:06 PM (#2529702)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

" 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

---

02 Jan 09 - 01:11 PM (#2529753)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

---

02 Jan 09 - 04:33 PM (#2529945)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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).

---

02 Jan 09 - 11:28 PM (#2530202)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Art Thieme

I'm gonna save this entire thread to CDs. Grand reading here! Thanks all !!!!!

Art

---

05 Jan 09 - 01:48 PM (#2532201)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW YORK (AP) — A Long Island teenager has earned all 121 merit badges offered by the Boy Scouts of America. It's an accomplishment the local arm of the organization calls "an almost unheard-of feat."
Oceanside resident Shawn Goldsmith earned his final badge — for bugling — in time for his 18th birthday in November. He far surpassed the 21 badges required to achieve the elite rank of Eagle Scout.

He says he took about five years to earn his first 62 badges and then nearly doubled that number in a matter of months. He did it with the encouragement of his grandmother, who died shortly before he reached his goal.

The Binghamton University freshman was awarded his final badges on Dec. 19. He says he hopes to become a businessman and politician.

(USA Today)

---

06 Jan 09 - 09:44 AM (#2532822)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Regarding the 12,000+ year old impact not mentioned by the Washington Post, some scientists think that much of the impact hit in the now Chicago area.

What is curious is that worldwide there is evidence of 12,000 year old impact exctictions even in Asia and the middle east. The civilization that predated the ancient Egyptians was lost with only a few remnants of legends of the Yeptepi people remained when Pharoic times began.
Also DNA tracing the X chromosme of mothers indicate that a cinch point exists 12,500 years ago when the human species had an incredibly small gene pool. So small in fact that human extinction may have been overcome by sheer luck.

Perhaps the theory that man was respondisble for the extinction of Mammoths, Sabre toothed tigers and a myriad of other creatures was bogus. By Occams Razor alone the impact theory seems best.

---

07 Jan 09 - 07:45 PM (#2534638)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Shares of Indian IT outsourcing giant Satyam Computer Services (NYSE: SAY) got pummeled this morning, after Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju admitted that the company's books are cooked.

It's not pretty. Satyam's balance sheet cash is inflated by the rupees equivalent of more than $1 billion, as the result of several years of inflated profits.

"It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten," Raju confesses in a note to the company's board, presumably unaware of the chairman's number-crunching trickery. Fearing that the gaps would become public under a buyout -- and the stock had risen yesterday on newspaper reports that it was an acquisition target -- Raju came clean.

(Motley Fool)

---

08 Jan 09 - 02:36 PM (#2535327)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Polish city of Malbork has found a mass grave with the remains of some 1,800 people, thought to be former German residents of the town. They apparently died as the Red Army marched through Poland -- and some of them appear to have been executed.

The first skeletons were unearthed by construction workers last October. A pit dug for the foundation of a new hotel in the Polish city of Malbork revealed the remains of dozens of corpses, all heaped together in what was apparently a World War II-era mass grave. But plenty of questions remained, and investigators began taking a closer look.

The remains were found not far from the famous Malbork Castle.
This week, Piotr Szwedowski, a Malbork city official, revealed what they found. "Since then, we have exhumed around 1,800 corpses," he told the news agency AFP. "We are pretty sure that they were former residents of Malbork."

City officials are also pretty sure that they were victims of a massacre. Szwedowski said that one in 10 of the corpses had been shot in the head. All of them, furthermore, had been buried naked, "without shoes, without clothes, without personal items," he said. "The metal detectors used during the excavations found no metal, not even a false tooth."...

(Der Spiegel)

---

08 Jan 09 - 06:02 PM (#2535489)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Scientist discusses the possibility of bringing back into existence ten extinct species, including the mammoth and the saber-tooth.

A

---

17 Jan 09 - 10:04 PM (#2541846)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

UNBELIEVABLE SUPER SOIL super dirt


This new invention has been rediscovered from 2 to 3 millenium ago.

++++++++++++++++++++



goodbye silcon chips here comes Carbon buckypaper

http://globaldialoguecenter.blogs.com/jbgoodnews/2008/12/1-buckypaper-super-strong-and-super-light.html


Hey we can use it for buildings and then use photoelectric paint to produce electricity.

http://globaldialoguecenter.blogs.com/jbgoodnews/2008/12/2-nanopaperas-strong-as-iron-and-made-out-of-wood.html

---

17 Jan 09 - 10:08 PM (#2541848)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I've invented the women's urinal. Once social stigma is gradually overcome...no more longer lines for women.

---

17 Jan 09 - 11:17 PM (#2541885)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Climbing a Steep Hill Easier

How important is it to have a friend next to you when you climb a steep hill? Based on research done by Simon Schnall at the University of Plymouth, UK, it makes the climb easier. The longer you have known your friend and the better the friendship, the less steep seemed the climb. Schnall found that just thinking about your friend made the hill seem up to 20 per cent gentler.

Too often we underestimate the power of friends.

Google words: "Simon Schnall steep hills"

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826604.600-friends-turn-mental-mountains-into-molehills.html

---

18 Jan 09 - 01:10 AM (#2541924)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

HILADELPHIA — In a cave overlooking southeastern Armenia's Arpa River, just across the border from Iran, scientists have uncovered what may be the oldest preserved human brain from an ancient society. The cave also offers surprising new insights into the origins of modern civilizations, such as evidence of a winemaking enterprise and an array of culturally diverse pottery.

Excavations in and just outside of Areni-1 cave during 2007 and 2008 yielded an extensive array of Copper Age artifacts dating to between 6,200 and 5,900 years ago, reported Gregory Areshian of the University of California, Los Angeles, January 11 at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America. In eastern Europe and the Near East, an area that encompasses much of southwest Asia, the Copper Age ran from approximately 6,500 to 5,500 years ago.

The finds show that major cultural developments occurred during the Copper Age in areas outside southern Iraq, which is traditionally regarded as the cradle of civilization, Areshian noted. The new cave discoveries move cultural activity in what's now Armenia back by about 800 years.

"This is exciting work," comments Rana Özbal of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.

A basin two meters long installed inside the Armenian cave and surrounded by large jars and the scattered remains of grape husks and seeds apparently belonged to a large-scale winemaking operation.

Researchers also found a trio of Copper Age human skulls, each buried in a separate niche inside the three-chambered, 600-square–meter cave. The skulls belonged to 12- to 14-year-old girls, according to anatomical analyses conducted independently by three biological anthropologists. Fractures identified on two skulls indicate that the girls were killed by blows from a club of some sort, probably in a ritual ceremony, Areshian suggested.

Remarkably, one skull contained a shriveled but well-preserved brain. "This is the oldest known human brain from the Old World," Areshian said. The Old World comprises Europe, Asia, Africa and surrounding islands.(New Scientist)

---

19 Jan 09 - 06:56 PM (#2543509)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Teilhard refers to "Centeredness" as a characteristic of the universe on all levels. Each corpuscle of matter has a centre "within", its principle of organisation. The more complex the being, the greater degree of centreity. Teilhard teaches that Centreity is the true, absolute measure of being in the beings that surround us, and the only basis for a truely natural classification of the elements of the universe. The axis of evolution stretches from the lowest degree of centreity to the highest, and entities having the same degree of centreity constitute "isopheres", forming universal units of the same type of being. So pre-living entities are ordered on Earth in the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. Organic beings make up the biosphere, and thinking entities (which in Teilhard's system solely means man) the noosphere. When ranked in their natural order, the whole family of isopheres will define at the heart of the system a focus-point of universal synthesis, the Centre of centres, Omega [Activation of Energy, pp.10-13, 102; Beatrice Bruteau, Evolution towards Divinity, p.138]"

"Teilhard de Chardin's Evolutionary Philosphy"
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Teilhard/Teilhard-evolution.htm

---

19 Jan 09 - 08:46 PM (#2543587)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

James D. "Blue Jeans" Williams

Governor James D. Williams was elected to office during the first centennial of American Independence (1876). The 100 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence had been a century of progress for the state of Indiana. Governor Williams will long be remembered in history as the "farmer governor of Indiana." He became the 17th Hoosier governor and was the first farmer by occupation to make it to that office.

In his early youth his parents moved from Ohio to Knox County, Indiana, where he resided until he went to the state capital to assume the duties as governor. Williams' early education was a one-room schoolhouse and to this he added a good general knowledge of current events. When he was 20 years old his father died making Jim the sole support for his family. He soon established a good reputation within his community and was known for his honesty, hard work and a lot of common sense. Williams became the wealthiest man in his Knox County community through his excellence farming techniques.   

Williams' first taste of public service was as a justice of the peace. Four years later, in 1843, he was elected to the General Assembly where he served until 1874, when he was elected to Congress. In his campaigns for governor he wore his usual homespun clothing, or blue jeans. His opponents called him "Blue Jeans" and made fun of him, regarding him as an ignorant hick. This was a huge mistake on his opponent's part, knowing that Indiana is a highly agricultural state and Williams' appeal to the Hoosier farmer. When the campaign ended, the election returns showed that the old farmer from Knox County had beaten his opponent, General Benjamin Harrison, by over 5,000 votes![5]   

Williams' administration is marked by some very important events. Several amendments to the state constitution were proposed at this time and pushed forward to final adoption in 1881. The most important events included the holding of elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November (instead of the former October elections), limiting of debts by local communities and elimination of the restrictions against Black voters. Governor Williams died November 20, 1880, and lieutenant governor Isaac Gray served out the remaining 7 weeks of his term. ...

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20 Jan 09 - 09:38 AM (#2543950)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Since the 1970s, relationship experts have popularized the notion of “empty nest syndrome,â€쳌 a time of depression and loss of purpose that plagues parents, especially mothers, when their children leave home. Dozens of Web sites and books have been created to help parents weather the transition. Simon & Schuster has even introduced a “Chicken Soup for the Soulâ€쳌 dedicated to empty nesters.

But a growing body of research suggests that the phenomenon has been misunderstood. While most parents clearly miss children who have left home for college, jobs or marriage, they also enjoy the greater freedom and relaxed responsibility.

And despite the common worry that long-married couples will find themselves with nothing in common, the new research, published in November in the journal Psychological Science, shows that marital satisfaction actually improves when the children finally take their exits.

“It’s not like their lives were miserable,â€쳌 said Sara Melissa Gorchoff, a specialist in adult relationships at the University of California, Berkeley. “Parents were happy with their kids. It’s just that their marriages got better when they left home.â€쳌...NYT

---

21 Jan 09 - 09:36 PM (#2545651)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Measuring Quantum Information Without Destroying It
January 15th, 2009 By Miranda Marquit in Physics / Physics
(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the Holy Grails - so to speak - of science involves building quantum computers that can perform, with accuracy, the computations too advanced and too large for classical computers. While we remain years from this goal, breakthroughs are made regularly that make the reality of quantum computing a little more tangible. One such advancement is a recent demonstration of a quantum non-demolition sum gate, at the University of Tokyo.


The gate demonstrated in Tokyo is for use in quantum optics, but it is analogous to the C-not gate used for qubits. One of the prominent features of this gate, Peter van Loock, a scientist associated with the Max Planck Institute For The Science of Light and with the University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, tells PhysOrg.com, is that it is meant for infinite dimensions described by continuous quantum variables. "In quantum optics, there are nice techniques in the lab that can be done with continuous variables," he says. "This gate can be seen as part of a universal set to transform a multi-mode, infinite-dimensional, optical state by an arbitrary unitary transformation, as required for universal processing and computation."

Work on the quantum non-demolition (QND) sum gate, and interpretation of the results, was done by Jun-ichi Yoshikawa, Yoshichika Miwa, Alexander Huch, Ulrik L. Anderson and Akira Furusawa, as well as van Loock. Their findings can be found in Physical Review Letters: "Demonstration of a Quantum Nondemolition Sum Gate."

"There are two main significances of this QND gate," van Loock explains. "The first is that it is an entangling gate that does not require you to prepare the states. Second, this gate has the properties of quantum non-demolition."
Most of the time, when one wants to entangle quantum optical modes, van Loock says, it is necessary to prepare their states beforehand. "These cannot be classical, or near-classical, states when you entangle them, for instance, using a simple beam splitter. However, with this particular gate, you do not have to prepare the states in order to get an entangled output. You can use coherent states as input and get entanglement. This gate would entangle even two fairly classical states directly coming out of a laser source."

The other item of significance has to do with the curious non-demolition quality of the gate. Normally, when quantum states are measured, the act of observing them destroys the state. The point of QND, then, is to measure a quantum observable without disturbing it. "The necessary back action of the measurement process must then be confined onto the conjugate quantum observable," van Loock points out. "Qualities of quantum non-demolition include information gain, signal preservation and quantum state preparation. This sum gate reveals QND features, even with regard to two non-commuting observables. Either of these could be measured after the gate in a QND fashion, with the two output modes of the gate palying the roles of signal and probe."

(PhysOrg)

---

22 Jan 09 - 12:37 PM (#2546180)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

QND sounds like a key component for a transporter.

This all seems confounding.

---

22 Jan 09 - 08:20 PM (#2546579)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Scientist argues, based on DNA that Charles Darwin's "Tree of Life" concept of relationships between life forms was fundamentally flawed.



A

---

25 Jan 09 - 12:24 AM (#2548440)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

QUANTUM INFORMATION TELEPORTED BETWEEN DISTANT ATOMS

New technique can move fragile quantum data between atoms without destroying it By Patrick Barry Web edition : Thursday, January 22nd, 2009   

A qubit walks into a bar, unsure of whether to order drink A or drink B. If the bartender asks the qubit what it wants, the qubit will collapse and be destroyed. But now researchers can instantly teleport the original, intact qubit to another "bar" far away.

In the Jan. 23 Science, a team is reporting what is the first successful transfer of a qubit — an undecided bit of quantum information — between two widely separated, charged atoms. Because the quantum information instantly hops from one atom to the other without ever crossing the space between the two, scientists call the transfer "teleportation."

Being able to teleport such information between atoms could aid the development of ultrafast quantum computers and extremely secure quantum communication, the researchers point out.

"The catch with quantum information is that you can't read it without destroying it," says study coauthor Steven Olmschenk, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park. "Somehow you have to send it from one point to another without ever having read it."

To read the quantum information contained in an atom or a photon, scientists must measure some property of that particle. But in the quantum world, the act of measuring a particle alters it. Until it's measured, an atom or photon can remain in an ambiguous state of all possible values simultaneously. Whenever a particle is measured, though, this range of possibilities "collapses" into a single, distinct value. The original, uncommitted state is lost, and it's this ability to hold multiple values at once that gives qubits such potential for high-performance computing.

Scientists have previously teleported unmolested qubits between photons of light, and between photons and clouds of atoms. But researchers have long sought to teleport qubits between distant atoms. Light's high speed of travel makes photons good transporters of information, but for storing quantum information, atoms are a much better choice because they're easier to hold on to.

"This is a big deal," comments Myungshik Kim, a quantum physicist at Queen's University Belfast in the United Kingdom. "To store information as it is in quantum form, you have to have a teleportation scheme available between two stationary qubits. Then you can store them and manipulate them later on." (Science NEws)

---

26 Jan 09 - 09:05 PM (#2549855)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"While it may come as no surprise that genes may help explain why some people have many friends and others have few, the researchers said, their findings go just a little farther than that.

"Some of the things we find are frankly bizarre," said Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University in Massachusetts, who helped conduct the study.

"We find that how interconnected your friends are depends on your genes. Some people have four friends who know each other and some people have four friends who don't know each other. Whether Dick and Harry know each other depends on Tom's genes," Christakis said in a telephone interview.

Christakis and colleague James Fowler of the University of California San Diego are best known for their studies that show obesity, smoking and happiness spread in networks.

For this study, they and Christopher Dawes of UCSD used national data that compared more than 1,000 identical and fraternal twins. Because twins share an environment, these studies are good for showing the impact that genes have on various things, because identical twins share all their genes while fraternal twine share just half.

"We found there appears to be a genetic tendency to introduce your friends to each other," Christakis said.

There could be good, evolutionary reasons for this. People in the middle of a social network could be privy to useful gossip, such as the location of food or good investment choices. ... "It may be that natural selection is acting on not just things like whether or not we can resist the common cold, but also who it is that we are going to come into contact with," Fowler said in a statement."

---

26 Jan 09 - 09:07 PM (#2549856)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

BAY CITY, Mich. -- Officials in central Michigan say a 93-year-old man who owned more than $1,000 in unpaid electric bills froze to death inside his home -- where the municipal power company had restricted his use of electricity.
Neighbors and friends of Marvin Schur want answers as to how this could happen.
"Now that we do know it was hypothermia, there's a whole bunch of feelings that I've got going through me," said Jim Herndon, a neighbor of Schur's. "There's anger, for the city and the electrical company."
Bay City officials said changes are on the way in an attempt to not let another instance like this happen again.

---

27 Jan 09 - 07:39 AM (#2550064)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

A woman gave birth to a litter of 8 humans this week. All are in stable condition despite being delivered 6 weeks early.

---

29 Jan 09 - 02:31 PM (#2552170)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

-A newly married couple in western Germany thought they were on the way to a romantic honeymoon hotel. Instead, their navigation system led them into the depths of a dark forest, where they got stuck. It took the cops hours to find them.

The ideal vision of a honeymoon tends to involve white sandy beaches, palm trees and sunny skies -- not a latter day version of "Hansel and Gretel." But a German couple who tied the knot on Tuesday evening spent their first hours of wedlock stuck in the mud deep in a dark western German forest shivering through the late evening in their tiny Nissan Micra.

After a wedding in the town of Hamm, just east of Dortmund, the couple set off for a hotel in a rustic village called Willingen. They switched on their car's navigation system and proceeded to follow instructions.

Unfortunately, the navigation system seemed to have no better idea of where to go than the couple had. The newlyweds found themselves driving along a bumpy, unpaved forest road toward a tall mountain. Even when a barricade blocked further progress, the navigation system led them forward. But when they tried to drive around the roadblock, their car got stuck.

Not wanting to spend the night in a pitch-black forest on the side of an 840-meter (2,755-foot) mountain, the couple called the police. By now it was about 8 p.m. The police needed another two hours to find them, since the couple was unable to say exactly where they were.

Finally, though, the cops were able to get the car back onto a main road and lead the couple to their honeymoon hotel -- where they checked in just before midnight. (Der Spiegel)

---

29 Jan 09 - 05:31 PM (#2552311)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

A volcano 200 miles from Fairbanks Alaska is expected to erupt within a few short days. (or so says FOX news)

2,000 people who were exposed to beryllium are being notified.\(thats all I got)

The samonella tainted peanut butter from Georgia was known to be poison when it was shipped.

---

29 Jan 09 - 06:39 PM (#2552365)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Donuel:

Cite your sources!! It makes them much more interesting.


A

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29 Jan 09 - 07:59 PM (#2552445)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Thats all my memory preserved today from cable news scrolls. This morning a man with a badge posted our home for County auction come March 6th. I've been kinda distracted.

---

29 Jan 09 - 08:44 PM (#2552466)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Donuel:

Why?


A

---

29 Jan 09 - 10:50 PM (#2552539)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

presumably the county failed to credit one tax payment that took two attempts for our bank to process and pay to the State.
We assume at this point that one computer did not talk to another computer since Agnes in receiving took a long lunch that day ;)

We will know more in days to come. The language of a forclosing auction action is so arcane... "The State prays to redeem said property".

if and when the clerical error is corrected we will still have to fight to have all their lawyer, title searchers, clerks and court fees waived, let alone the publications in all the newspapers for the next 3 weeks.

We had no problems for 20 years but from the time we bought this house from 2 IRS employees 4 years ago, we have had 6 allegations of not "Filing taxes going back 10 years and now this.

My lawyer affirms that IRS tipsters do get half of anything collected by way of fines. The easiest to Phish for money is to write the IRS that Joe Shmoe 'failed to file taxes in 1999' since a 10 year old form can easily go missing. The penalty of a failure to file (despite proving all taxes were paid) could be as much as $1,000 if you can not prove you filed - note the IRS has no requirement to prove anything. A devious person reading this could go into their own cottage business "informers R Us" Just come up with a name, an address and a year. Some are bound to pay a fine for a missing reciept.

ITs enough to make me ponder if there is a deliberate malevolent hand respondsible for these groundless allegations. Something akin to 'God's warriors' that the guy across the street said has ways to punish God's enemies.

For the time being I choose to believe that the current lack of social finesse and correct accounting is merely a sign of our government's desperate and negligent times. They say you can't sue city hall.

Now is the time for all good men to go search for their receipts.

---

30 Jan 09 - 10:04 PM (#2553390)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Riginslinger

"the guy across the street said has ways to punish God's enemies."


                ...god's only enemy is reality...

---

01 Feb 09 - 05:55 PM (#2554806)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

On will o'the wisps, jack o'lanterns, corpse-candles or what you may:

William Fulke (1563), A Goodly Gallerye: William Fulke's Book of Meteors. pp.10-13.

Of lights that goe before men, and follow them abroad in the fields, by the night season.

There is also a kind of light, yt is seene in the night season, and seemeth to goe before men, or to follow them, leading them out of their way onto waters, and other dangerous places. It is also very often seene in the night, of them that saile in the Sea and sometime will cleave to ye mast of the shippe, or other high partes, sometime glide round about the shippe, and either rest in one part till it goe out, or else bee quenched in the water.

This impression seene on the land, is called in Latine, Ignis fatuus, foolish fire, that hurteth not, but onely feareth fooles. That which is seene on the Sea, if it bee but one, is named Helena, if it bee two, it is called Castor and Pollux.

The foolish fire, is an Exhalation kindled by meanes of violent moving, when by cold of the night, in the lowest region of the ayre, it is beaten downe, and then commonly, if it be light, seeketh to ascend upward, and is sent downe agayne; so it banceth up and downe: Els if it move not up and downe, it is a great lumpe of glewish or oyly matter, that by moving of the heat in it selfe, is enflamed of it selfe, as moyst hay will be kindled of it selfe. In hote and fennie Countries, these lightes are often seene, and where as is aboundance of such unctuous and fat matter, as about Churchyards, where through the corruption of the bodies there buried, the earth is full of such substance: wherefore in Churchyards, or places of common buriall, oftentimes are such lights seene, which ignorant and superstitious fooles have thought to bee soules tormented the fire of Purgatorie. Indeed the devill hath used these lightes (although they be naturally caused) as strong delusions, to captive the mindes of men, with feare of the Popes Purgatorie, whereby hee did open injury to the bloud of Christ, which onely purgeth us from all our sins, and delivereth us from all torments, both temporal and eternall according to the saying of the wiseman, The soules of the righteous are in the bands of God, and nor torment toucheth them.

But to returne to the lights, in which, there are yet two things to bee considered. First, why they lead men out of their way. And secondly, why they seeme to follow men and goe before them. The cause why they lead men out of the way, is, that men, while they take heed to such lights, and are also sore afraid, they forget their way, and then being once but a little out of their way, they wander they wot not wither, to waters, pittes, and other very dangerous places. Which, when at length they hap the way home, will tell a great tale, how they have beene led about by a spirit in the likenesse of fire.

Now the cause why they seeme to goe before men, or to follow them, some men have said to bee the moving of the aire, by the going of the man, which aire moved, should drive them forward, if they were before, and draw them after, if they were behind. But this is no reason at all, that the fire, which is oftentimes three or foure miles distant from the man that walketh, should bee mooved to and fro by that aire which is moved through his walking, but rather the moving of the aire and the mans eyes, causeth the fire to seeme as though it moved: as the Moone to children seemeth, if they are before it, to run after them: if shee bee before them, to run before them, that they cannot overtake her, though shee seeme to be verie neere them. Wherefore these lights rather seeme to move, than that they be moved indeed.

---

02 Feb 09 - 01:31 PM (#2555405)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Fox fire, animal bio luminesence, St. Elmo's fire, earthquake lights, sprites and globes of light all seem to have different sources. Some have yet to be explained and so being, are my favourite mysteries.

---

03 Feb 09 - 11:10 AM (#2556181)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

They say that you're going blind, that your vision is rapidly deteriorating, but don't worry: They are just a coat rack and hat. (Onion horoscopes)

---

05 Feb 09 - 11:56 AM (#2558062)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists say they have discovered fossil remains of a colossal prehistoric snake that once roamed the superheated Paleocene jungles of South America. The one-tonne Titanoboa cerrejonensis would have been more than 40 feet long and ten feet around at its thickest.

Investigating brainboxes say the mighty snake's huge size was made possible by the significantly higher temperatures on Earth 60m years ago. The size of cold-blooded creatures such as snakes is limited by the warmth of their environment.

"The size is pretty amazing," said David Polly of Indiana University. "We went a step further and asked, how warm would the Earth have to be to support a body of this size?"

Collaboration with Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Toronto paleontologist Jason Head produced an answer: 30°C to 34°C. This is noticeably hotter than present-day temperatures in Colombia, where the mega-snake fossils were found in a coal mine. Modern Colombian rainforest temperatures average out at 27°C, too cold for the monster snakes to survive.

"Tropical ecosystems of South America were surprisingly different 60m years ago," said Jonathan Bloch of Florida Uni, who found the fossils along with Jaramillo.

"It was a rainforest, like today, but it was even hotter and the cold-blooded reptiles were substantially larger. The result was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen."

---

05 Feb 09 - 07:05 PM (#2558469)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PLANT POWER PLANTS
Charles Darwin's 200th birthday arrives on February 12, 2009, and
while his theory of evolution has stood the test of two centuries,
scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are now are
working to circumvent evolution, at least a bit, by introducing some
non-accidental changes into the tiniest of all plants.

The scientists want to genetically modify microalgae so as to
minimize the number of chlorophyll molecules the algae need to
harvest light without compromising the photosynthesis process in the
cells. The goal is to use the microalgae for making bio-fuel.
Instead of making more sugar molecules for themselves, they could be
producing hydrogen or hydrocarbons for us, and in the process
mitigate the threat of climate change caused by the burning of
fossil fuels.

The Berkeley researchers have identified the genetic instructions in
the algae genome responsible for deploying about 600 chlorophyll
molecules in the cellâ•˙s light-gathering antennae. They figure that
the algae can get along with only about 130 molecules.

Why go to this trouble? Researcher Tasios Melis argues that a
larger chlorophyll antenna helps the organism compete for sunlight
absorption and survive in the wild, where sunlight is often limited
but is detrimental to the engineering-driven effort of using algae
to convert sunlight into biofuel. The scientists want to divert the
normal function of photosynthesis from generating biomass to making
products such as lipids, hydrocarbons, and hydrogen....

---

08 Feb 09 - 12:00 PM (#2560907)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In 1859 Charles Wheatstone was appointed by the Board of Trade to report on the subject of the Atlantic cables, and in 1864 he was one of the experts who advised the Atlantic Telegraph Company on the construction of the successful lines of 1865 and 1866.

In 1870 the electric telegraph lines of the United Kingdom, worked by different companies, were transferred to the Post Office, and placed under Government control.

Wheatstone further invented the automatic transmitter, in which the signals of the message are first punched out on a strip of paper, which is then passed through the sending-key, and controls the signal currents. By substituting a mechanism for the hand in sending the message, he was able to telegraph about 100 words a minute, or five times the ordinary rate. In the Postal Telegraph service this apparatus is employed for sending Press telegrams, and it has recently been so much improved, that messages are now sent from London to Bristol at a speed of 600 words a minute, and even of 400 words a minute between London and Aberdeen.

On the night of 8 April 1886, when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill for Home Rule in Ireland, no fewer than 1,500,000 words were dispatched from the central station at St. Martin's-le-Grand by 100 Wheatstone transmitters. The plan of sending messages by a running strip of paper which actuates the key was originally patented by Bain in 1846; but Wheatstone, aided by Mr. Augustus Stroh, an accomplished mechanician, and an able experimenter, was the first to bring the idea into successful operation.

---

08 Feb 09 - 11:39 PM (#2561393)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A huge protest against global warming was attended by hundreds of angry and concerned individuals.


A

---

11 Feb 09 - 12:30 PM (#2563974)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The lookouts for little green men can go home. It wasn't an unidentified flying object with octopus tentacles that caused a wind turbine blade in England to fall off last month, and damaged another blade. Rather, the problem was "material fatigue" in the turbine that caused bolts to come loose.

"To be honest I'm not surprised. But there was part of me that did hope it was a U.F.O. as it was a lovely story," said Dale Vince, the founder of Ecotricity, the wind project operator, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

A statement on Ecotricity's Web site further explains:

    This interim report has concluded that bolts securing the blade to the hub of the turbine failed due to "material fatigue." The bolts used to attached the blade to the hub of the turbine exhibited classic signs of fatigue failure.

Of course, "material fatigue" may be more worrisome than some of the alternative theories, like a cow-sized ice chunk or a robot stealth bomber. Enercon, the manufacturer of the turbines, is carrying out further studies to determine what caused the failure, according to Ecotricity. The results may be ready in a few weeks.

---

18 Feb 09 - 07:16 PM (#2570474)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sun-powered device converts CO2 into fuel

11:17 18 February 2009 by Jon Evans
For similar stories, visit the Energy and Fuels and Climate Change Topic Guides
Powered only by natural sunlight, an array of nanotubes is able to convert a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour into natural gas at unprecedented rates.

Such devices offer a new way to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into fuel or other chemicals to cut the effect of fossil fuel emissions on global climate, says Craig Grimes, from Pennsylvania State University, whose team came up with the device.

Although other research groups have developed methods for converting carbon dioxide into organic compounds like methane, often using titanium-dioxide nanoparticles as catalysts, they have needed ultraviolet light to power the reactions.

The researchers' breakthrough has been to develop a method that works with the wider range of visible frequencies within sunlight.

Enhanced activity
The team found it could enhance the catalytic abilities of titanium dioxide by forming it into nanotubes each around 135 nanometres wide and 40 microns long to increase surface area. Coating the nanotubes with catalytic copper and platinum particles also boosted their activity.

The researchers housed a 2-centimetre-square section of material bristling with the tubes inside a metal chamber with a quartz window. They then pumped in a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour and placed it in sunlight for three hours.

The energy provided by the sunlight transformed the carbon dioxide and water vapour into methane and related organic compounds, such as ethane and propane, at rates as high as 160 microlitres an hour per gram of nanotubes. This is 20 times higher than published results achieved using any previous method, but still too low to be immediately practical.

If the reaction is halted early the device produces a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as syngas, which can be converted into diesel. (New Scientist)

---

20 Feb 09 - 09:58 AM (#2571735)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

'...To create a machine that could pass the Turing test has become the holy grail for the generations since 1950 of those committed to the pursuit of what they call, modestly enough, artificial intelligence. But how to go about it? From the beginning, there were two contrasting approaches, which we may characterize, crudely, as reductionist and holistic. Looking back over the period with the benefit of hindsight, one of the pioneers and prophets of the holistic approach offered this fairy-tale account:

    "Once upon a time two daughter sciences were born to the new science of cybernetics. One sister was natural, with features inherited from the study of the brain, from the way nature does things. The other was artificial, related from the beginning to the use of computers. Each of the sister sciences tried to build models of intelligence, but from very different materials. The natural sister built models (called neural networks) out of mathematically purified neurones. The artificial sister built her models out of computer programs.

    In the first bloom of their youth the two were equally successful and equally pursued by suitors from other fields of knowledge. They got on very well together. Their relationship changed in the early sixties when a new monarch appeared, one with the largest coffers ever seen in the kingdom of the sciences: Lord DARPA ... The artificial sister grew jealous and was determined to keep for herself the access to Lord DARPA's research funds. The natural sister would have to be slain.

    The bloody work was attempted by two staunch followers of the artificial sister, Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, cast in the role of the huntsmen sent to slay Snow White and bring back her heart as proof of the deed. Their weapon was not the dagger but the mightier pen, from which came a book, Perceptrons -purporting to prove that neural nets could never fill their promise of building models of mind: only computer programs could do this. Victory seemed assured ..."

Seymour Papert's fairy tale, of course, ends with the holists triumphant, not a view that is very widely shared in the 'Al community' at present. As will become clear, my own view is that Papert's fairy-tale metaphor is as flawed as his memory/ intelligence metaphors. Neither fairy-tale sister is Cinderella - nor even Prince Charming; both modeling approaches are flawed if their intention is to provide structural metaphors for the way real brains work and real memories are stored. But it is worth looking a little more closely at the pretensions of both protagonists....

(Excerpt from "Metaphors of Memory" by STeven ROse.)

---

21 Feb 09 - 10:45 AM (#2572461)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Kampervan

And following on from Amos's mention of Charles Wheatstone, not only was he a wizz with the electricals, but he also invented the concertina and the stereoscope.

I wish that I could invent something, but I can't even think of something that needs to be invented, let alone inventing it.

Doesn't seem fair that some poeple are so talented and others......

---

21 Feb 09 - 09:35 PM (#2572836)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1742. Its unusual name relates to Robert Jenkins, captain of a British merchant ship, who exhibited his severed ear in Parliament following the boarding of his vessel by Spanish coast guards in 1731. This affair and a number of similar incidents sparked a war against the Spanish Empire, ostensibly to encourage the Spanish not to renege on the lucrative asiento contract (permission to sell slaves in Spanish America).[5]. After 1742 the war merged into the larger War of the Austrian Succession.

---

25 Feb 09 - 02:42 PM (#2575744)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Our brains—or worse, children's brains—could be rewired from the fast pace of modern social networking sites, TV shows, and video games, says Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield. The researcher said this week that kids seem to have more trouble understanding each other (in real life, that is) and focusing in school, and that it could be due to the proliferation of short, bite-sized clips of information in the online world that is causing their brains to physically change.

Greenfield said that sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Twitter may be forcing kids' brains back into an infant-like state, as infants need constant stimulation to remind them that they exist. She added that she worries that "real" conversation will eventually give way to these little snippets of text dialogue, indicating that our normal language might eventually turn into pokes, wall shout-outs, and 140-character snark fests. (Ars Technica)

---

25 Feb 09 - 03:01 PM (#2575755)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

If the aforementioned quantum gate, that allows a quantum action to occur despite observation, does in fact exist...

Then what of free will?

Is free will a mega scale illusion?

The finger on the button of the quantum gate can now control free will?

The uncertainty principle can now be bypassed?


all I have are questions
very few days are there answers.

---

25 Feb 09 - 03:20 PM (#2575772)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Folding paper into shapes such as a crane or a butterfly is challenging enough for most people. Now imagine trying to fold something that's about a hundred times thinner than a human hair and then putting it to use as an electronic device.

A team of researchers led by George Barbastathis, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is developing the basic principles of "nano-origami," a new technique that allows engineers to fold nanoscale materials into simple 3-D structures. The tiny folded materials could be used as motors and capacitors, potentially leading to better computer memory storage, faster microprocessors and new nanophotonic devices.

Traditional micro- and nano-fabrication techniques such as X-ray lithography and nano-imprinting work beautifully for two-dimensional structures, and are commonly used to build microprocessors and other micro-electrical-mechanical (MEMS) devices. However, they cannot create 3-D structures.

---

25 Feb 09 - 03:41 PM (#2575795)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

computer components can now be made without silicon and are etched into a chip via an etch a sketch technique by controling the charge of the atomic microscope needle.

Besides being able to sketch transitors and resitors it is totally re writable.

npr - science fridays.

---

26 Feb 09 - 03:01 PM (#2576609)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Footprints uncovered in Kenya show that as early as 1.5 million years ago an ancestral species, almost certainly Homo erectus, had already evolved the feet and walking gait of modern humans.

An international team of scientists, in a report Friday in the journal Science, said the well-defined prints in an eroding bluff east of Lake Turkana "provided the oldest evidence of an essentially modern humanlike foot anatomy" and added to the picture of Homo erectus as the prehumans who took long evolutionary strides — figuratively and, now it seems, also literally.

Where the individuals who made the tracks were going, or why, is beyond knowing by the cleverest scientist. The variability of the separation between some steps, researchers said, suggests that they were picking their way over an uneven surface, muddy enough to leave a mark as an unintended message from an extinct species for the contemplation of its descendants.

Until now, no footprint trails had ever been associated with early members of our long-legged genus Homo. Preserved ancient footprints of any kind, sometimes called "fossilized behavior," are rare indeed.

The only earlier prints of a protohuman species were found in 1978 at Laetoli, in Tanzania. Dated at 3.7 million years, they were made by Australopithecus afarensis, the diminutive species to which the famous Lucy skeleton belonged. The prints showed that the species already walked upright, but its short legs and long arms and its feet were in many ways apelike. (NYT)

---

It's only been 1.5 million years, but let me remind you we didn't wear no shoon back then, the lyre had not been invented, and the only fast food was animals too quick to catch. A

---

26 Feb 09 - 04:06 PM (#2576666)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Based on drawings made at the site of the actual fossils, Creation Science has proven once and for all that man walked side by side with his domesticated Brontosaurus. So there

There are also more Creation Science Museums in America than there are so called gay homo erectus footprints.


I'll get me hat as I wipe up my muddy footprints.

---

26 Feb 09 - 04:24 PM (#2576687)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

How would you know, from the foot prints, if Home erectus was gay or not, Donuel? Swishy strides?



A

---

02 Mar 09 - 10:48 PM (#2579921)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Here's an very interesting video on the nature of money as exponential debt in easy to understand format. Recommended.


A

---

05 Mar 09 - 04:05 PM (#2582044)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"It's a long way from Kazakhstan to Kentucky, but the equestrian journey to the Derby may have started among a pastoral people on the Kazakh steppes who appear to have been the first to domesticate, bridle and perhaps ride horses - around 3500 B.C., a millennium earlier than previously thought.

Archaeologists say the discovery may revise thinking about the development of some pre-agricultural Eurasian societies and put an earlier date to their dispersal into Europe and elsewhere. These migrations are believed to have been associated with horse domestication and the spread of Indo-European languages.

At the very least, on the first Saturday in May the winning thoroughbred should be toasted not with a julep but a taste of koumiss, the fermented mare's milk favored by equestrians in Central Asia. It's an acquired taste, so keep bourbon on hand just in case.

Evidence for the earlier date for equine domestication was set to be described Friday in the journal Science by an international team of archaeologists. The report's lead author is Alan Outram of the University of Exeter in England.

The archaeologists wrote of uncovering ample horse bones and artifacts from which they derived "three independent lines of evidence demonstrating domestication" of horses by the semisedentary Botai culture, which occupied sites in northern Kazakhstan for six centuries, beginning at about 3600 B.C.

The shape and size of the skeletons from four sites were analyzed and compared with bones of wild horses in the region from the same time, with domestic horses from the Bronze Age, centuries later, and with Mongolian domestic horses. The researchers said the Botai animals were "appreciably more slender" than robust wild horses and resembled domestic horses more closely.

Outram said in an interview that it was not clear from the research if the breeding of the tamed Botai horses had by then led to the origin of a genetically distinct new species. But their physical attributes were strikingly different, he added, and this made the animals more useful to the people as meat, milk sources and beasts of burden and locomotion.

The second pieces of evidence were the marks on the horses' teeth and damage to skeletal tissue in the mouths. The researchers said this represented the wear of mouthpieces - or bits - inserted for harnessing with a bridle or similar restraint to control working animals.

Other archaeologists, digging at other sites, have detected similar traces of what they said was bit wear, but this has been disputed as evidence of domestication. Outram said that some of the damage to the Botai teeth and jaw bones could only have been caused by bit wear." (International Herald Tribune)

---

06 Mar 09 - 11:44 AM (#2582648)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,couldntresist

700

---

06 Mar 09 - 03:49 PM (#2582833)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

BRUSSELS, March 5 (Reuters) - A Canadian filmmaker plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye to make documentaries and raise awareness about surveillance in society.

Rob Spence, 36, who lost an eye in an accident as a teenager, said his so-called Project Eyeborg is to have the camera, a battery and a wireless transmitter mounted on a tiny circuit board. www.eyeborgblog.com/

"Originally the whole idea was to do a documentary about surveillance. I thought I would become a sort of super hero ... fighting for justice against surveillance," Spence said.

"In Toronto there are 12,000 cameras. But the strange thing I discovered was that people don't care about the surveillance cameras, they were more concerned about me and my secret camera eye because they feel that is a worse invasion of their privacy."

Spence, in Brussels to appear at a media conference, said no part of the camera would be connected to his nerves or brain.

---

06 Mar 09 - 05:40 PM (#2582887)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...For 19 days, ATIC circled the South Pole, studying cosmic rays coming from space. Then, nearly a year later, the ATIC team made a stunning announcement: they found that more high-energy electrons had left their mark on the experiment than expected. That might not sound like much, but the result is remarkable because it might be a telltale sign of dark matter, the invisible stuff thought to make up about 85 per cent of matter in the universe.

And it's not the only one. Just months before, an Italian-led collaboration reported that their satellite-based experiment, called PAMELA, had seen a similar excess of electrons, along with an excess of positrons. Add to this earlier results from gamma-ray satellites and experiments searching for dark matter here on Earth, and suddenly we have an abundance of new clues about dark matter. "It is a very exciting time to be doing dark-matter physics," says Dan Hooper, a physicist at the Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

The bonanza of evidence suggests that dark matter might be far more complicated than we had ever imagined. For starters, the theoretician's favourite dark-matter candidate is falling out of favour, with the latest experiments making the case for new, exotic varieties of dark matter. If they are right, we could be living next to a "hidden sector", an unseen aspect of the cosmos that exists all around us and includes a new force of nature.

The bonanza of evidence suggests that dark matter might be more complicated than we ever imagined

Such hidden worlds might sound strange, but they emerge naturally from complex theories such as string theory, which attempts to mesh together the very small and the very large. Hidden worlds may, literally, be all around us. They could, in theory, be populated by a rich menagerie of particles and have their own forces. Yet we would be unaware of their existence because the particles interact extremely weakly with the familiar matter of our universe. Of late, physicists have been taking seriously the idea that particles from such hidden sectors could be dark matter.

We know precious little about dark matter, but we do know that its gravity is what keeps galaxies and clusters of galaxies from flying apart, despite the staggering speeds of the individual stars and galaxies within them. We also know that it must be made of particles that are massive and interact only very weakly with their surroundings. Anything that matches this description is known as a weakly interacting massive particle...." (New Scientist)

When I was in junior high the WIMPS were easy to find. They were the last ones out to recess and the first ones back in their seats...

---

08 Mar 09 - 04:43 PM (#2584079)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"At the director David Cromer's shattering rendition of the play (Our Town) now running in Greenwich Village, it's impossible not to be moved by that Act III passage where the Stage Manager comes upon the graves of Civil War veterans in the town cemetery. "New Hampshire boys," he says, "had a notion that the Union ought to be kept together, though they'd never seen more than 50 miles of it themselves. All they knew was the name, friends — the United States of America. The United States of America. And they went and died about it."

Wilder was not a nostalgic, sentimental or jingoistic writer. Grover's Corners isn't populated by saints but by regular people, some frivolous and some ignorant and at least one suicidal. But when the narrator evokes a common national good and purpose — unfurling our country's full name in the rhetorical manner also favored by our current president — you feel the graveyard's chill wind. It's a trace memory of an American faith we soiled and buried with all our own nonsense in the first decade of our new century.

Retrieving that faith now requires extraordinary patience and optimism. "

---

Thornton Wilder has a knack for surprising you brightly with the commonest words. "..and they went and died about it." My God.


A

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09 Mar 09 - 07:24 PM (#2585148)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The Humble Approach Initiative (Templeton Foundation)

Artifacts discovered at Blombos Cave in South Africa by Christopher Henshilwood and his team of archaeologists: shell beads (top) and a red ochre rock engraved with geometric patterns.

In January, a dozen scholars gathered in Cape Town, South Africa for a four-day symposium entitled "Homo Symbolicus: The Dawn of Language, Imagination, and Spirituality." They were there to discuss the implications of a recent discovery that sent shock waves through the archaeological world: 75,000-year-old shell beads and engraved ochre found at the Blombos Cave, about 200 miles east of the meeting site. The beads and engravings provide fairly conclusive evidence of symbolic expression among human beings 40,000 years earlier than many researchers had thought possible.
"

---

10 Mar 09 - 11:18 AM (#2585630)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The global sea level looks set to rise far higher than forecast because of changes in the polar ice-sheets, a team of researchers has suggested.

Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen said earlier UN estimates were too low and that sea levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100.

The projections did not include the potential impact of polar melting and ice breaking off, they added.

The implications for millions of people would be "severe", they warned.

Ten per cent of the world's population - about 600 million people - live in low-lying areas.
        
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, had said that the maximum rise in sea level would be in the region of 59cm.

Professor Konrad Steffen from the University of Colorado, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, highlighted new studies into ice loss in Greenland, showing it has accelerated over the last decade.

Professor Steffen, who has studied the Arctic ice for the past 35 years, told me: "I would predict sea level rise by 2100 in the order of one metre; it could be 1.2m or 0.9m.

"But it is one metre or more seeing the current change, which is up to three times more than the average predicted by the IPCC." BBC News

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11 Mar 09 - 02:16 PM (#2586508)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

BLOOMINGDALE, Ill. -- Police in a Chicago suburb say a Wal-Mart employee has died after setting himself on fire outside the store where he worked.

Police watch commander Randy Sater says 58-year-old Larry Graziano of Carol Stream set himself ablaze late Thursday outside the store in Bloomingdale. It was not immediately clear how he caught on fire, but Sater says lighter fluid was involved.

The Cook County Medical Examiner's office says Graziano was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead early Friday.

Sater says Graziano told police he "couldn't take it anymore."

Police say bystanders tried to help, but Graziano fought them off.

---

11 Mar 09 - 02:36 PM (#2586530)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Compact, high-capacity batteries are an essential part of portable electronics already, but improved batteries are likely to play a key role in the auto industry, and may eventually appear throughout the electric grid, smoothing over interruptions in renewable power sources. Unfortunately, battery technology often involves a series of tradeoffs among factors like capacity, charging time, and usable cycles. Today's issue of Nature reports on a new version of lithium battery technology that may just be a game-changer.

The new work involves well-understood technology, relying on lithium ions as charge carriers within the battery. But the lithium resides in a material that was designed specifically to allow it to move through the battery quickly, which means charges can be shifted in and out of storage much more rapidly than in traditional formulations of lithium batteries. The net result is a battery that, given the proper electrodes, can perform a complete discharge in under 10 seconds—the sort of performance previously confined to the realm of supercapacitors.   (Ars Technica)

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11 Mar 09 - 10:15 PM (#2586854)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The secret of long life? It's all down to how fast you react
  
  
  Mike Treder
  
  Ethical Technology
  
  Posted: Mar 11, 2009
  
  Are you planning (or hoping) to live for a very long time? One key factor, according to new research, may be your reaction time.
  
      People's reaction times are a far better indicator of their chances of living a long life than their blood pressure, exercise levels or weight, researchers have discovered.
  
      Men and women with the most sluggish response times are more than twice as likely to die prematurely.
  
      Edinburgh University and the Medical Research Council in Glasgow tracked 7,414 people nationwide over 20 years in a study which appears to confirm the adage that a healthy mind means a healthy body.
  
  So, if this research turns out to be accurate, then taking good care of your mind is as important—or more important—than going to the gym. (But I guess a flabby body is still not healthy. Oh, well.)
  
      The study, published in the respected journal Intelligence this week, is the first to look at reaction times and mortality, comparing the results with known risk factors like smoking and drinking.
  
      The authors say there is growing evidence that people with higher IQs tend to live longer and healthier lives.
  
      While this can partly be put down to differences in lifestyles because more intelligent people are less likely to smoke and be overweight, much of the gap has previously been unexplained.
  
  Although it may not be possible, at least yet, to significantly raise the IQ of an adult, there are ways to optimize your given level of intelligence and maximize your reaction speed. It's well known, of course, that low doses of caffeine (a cup or two of coffee, or a cola drink) will temporarily improve alertness and enhance reaction times. In addition, many experts recommend regular exercise for the brain, such as video games and crossword puzzles.
  
  We can also look forward to the day, perhaps in the near future, when medical research will provide approved, tested drugs that will safely, effectively, and substantially boost our IQs and reaction times. Beyond that, of course, is the potential for nanomedicine to functionally restructure our brain organization, making us much smarter—but that's probably a decade or two away, at least.
  
  Now, back to the study, and how it was conducted:
  
      The 7,414 volunteers in the study have been followed since the mid-80's, when their reaction times were measured with an electrical device fitted with a small screen and five numbered buttons.
  
      The volunteers had to press the matching button when a number appeared on screen. The time they took to react was measured and averages worked out.
  
      Since then, 1,289 have died, 568 of them from heart disease.
  
      The researchers then compared the reaction times, smoking habits, weight and other factors of those who had died with those who had survived.
  
      The results showed that people with slow reactions were 2.6 times more likely to die prematurely from any cause. Smoking was the only factor linked to a larger risk of death – as it made it 3.03 times more likely.
  
      Physical exercise, blood pressure, heart rate, waist-hip ratio, alcohol consumption and body-mass index all had a lesser effect.
  
      In deaths caused specifically by heart disease, reaction time was the most important factor after blood pressure, this time having a greater effect than smoking.
  
      The researchers said: 'It has been hypothesised that reaction time, as a measure of speed of the brain's information-processing capacity, may be a marker for bodily system integrity.
  
      'This way, slower reaction times, or poorer information-processing ability, might be an indication of suboptimal physiological functioning, which may in turn be related to early death.'
  
  This is by far the most interesting research I've ever seen on the correlation between intelligence and longevity. So, start thinking, build your reaction speed, and live longer! 

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12 Mar 09 - 04:54 PM (#2587449)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Atheist Bus Campaign Gets into Gear in Germany

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The brightly colored ads were part of a provocative campaign on British buses. Spain reacted with its own string of atheist slogans, and now a German group is following suit.

Those waiting by at bus stops in Berlin, Munich or Cologne later this year may be in for a surprise. In place of ordinary commercial ads, commuters will be greeted by hard-hitting atheist slogans. That at least is the plan of a new German atheism campaign, the latest European group to use buses as a vehicle for its provocative views.

Organizers are taking a leaf out of the book of Spanish and English groups that have run similar campaigns. Right now the German organizers are trying to raise money to embellish seven buses with their ads.


Atheists pledging a euro or more to the campaign can vote on a selection of slogans, some loosely based on the British signs. Phillip Möller, one of the campaign organizers, says the German group has collected €3,500 in the first four days of fundraising. They need €16,000 euros more to fund the project.

Möller, one of the six founders, doesn't see himself as any sort of missionary. "We just want to inform people," he said. "In an enlightened society you should be able to say something like that without being punished."

And many Germans do not subscribe to any particular religion, or even believe in God. Around a third of the population, according to official data -- in a country where official church membership is tithed through the tax office -- claim no religion. A survey carried out in 2005 showed that 22 percent of all Germans say they believe in God. Self-proclaimed atheists and agnostics accounted for 23 percent of the population. "We want to finally give these people a voice," said Möller.

Debate in the United Kingdom flared with the start of the world's first atheist campaign earlier this year. Around 200 buses caused a furore with their unconventional ads. Journalist and comedy writer Ariane Sherine unwittingly started the campaign last year with a blog on the website of the British newspaper The Guardian. She described her outrage after seeing a red London bus carrying a Bible quote, and details of a Web site. Non-Christians, the Web site pronounced, would burn in hell for all eternity. (Der Spiegel)

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14 Mar 09 - 09:49 PM (#2589033)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Many groups have been working devices that make objects invisible," Che Ting Chan tells PhysOrg.com. "Most of these devices, however, encompass the object to be cloaked." Chan, a scientist at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, believes that it is possible to create a cloaking device that would be able to render an object invisible without encompassing it.
"With the devices that encompass the object," Chan continues, "the cloaked subject is 'blind'. It can't 'see' out through the cloak. We can't see the object, but the object can't see us, either. We wanted to create a conceptual design that would let the object 'see' out through the cloak while hiding it from sight." Along with Yun Lai, Huanyang Chen and Zhao-Qing Zhang, Chan believes that this could be accomplished. Their ideas are published in Physical Review Letters: "Complementary Media Invisibility Cloak that Cloaks Objects at a Distance Outside the Cloaking Shell."

Right now, such a device exists only theory. "We haven't built the device," Chan says, "but we have shown mathematically how it could work. It is a very specific description of the materials needed. If you have the time and resources, we think it could be done." He points out that it might have interesting possibilities in a number of fields where invisibility might be desirable.

Theoretically, a device such as Chan suggests, would work through complementary media. "Our strategy is to put the cloaking device and the object to be cloak next to each other. The cloaking device is a kind of anti-object. The way the light is gathered and scattered by the two objects - the cloaking device and the object it is making invisible - would cancel each other out." Chan continues by explaining that the cloaking device would become invisible as well. "Both must be invisible in order for this to be effective, and I think we have shown in theory how this could work."

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14 Mar 09 - 11:38 PM (#2589068)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

n the life of many successful networks, the connections between elements increase over time. As connections are added, there comes a critical moment when the network's overall connectivity rises rapidly with each new link.
Now a trio of mathematicians studying networks in which the formation of connections is governed by random processes, has provided new evidence that super-connectivity can be appreciably delayed. But the delay comes at a cost: when it finally happens, the transition is virtually instantaneous, like a film of water abruptly crystallizing into ice.
The team's findings — described in a paper with an accompanying commentary in the March 13 issue of the journal Science —could be useful in a number of fields: from efforts by epidemiologists to control the spread of disease, to communications experts developing new products.
"We have found that by making a small change in the rules governing the formation of a network, we can greatly manipulate the onset of large-scale connectivity," said Raissa D'Souza, an associate professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at UC Davis.

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16 Mar 09 - 09:59 AM (#2590026)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In the early days of the twentieth century, particle physics was in its infancy, with only two types of particles known: the proton and the electron. From the 1930s on, physicists were inundated by a deluge of new particles. In his 1955 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Willis Lamb quipped that "the finder of a new elementary particle used to be rewarded by a Nobel Prize, but such a discovery now ought to be punished by a $10,000 fine." As time went on, particle physicists discovered the eightfold way—particle physics' equivalent of the periodic table—which ultimately led to the "standard model" of particle physics. To date, every particle predicted by the standard model has been experimentally verified, with the exception of the elusive Higgs particle.

The Higgs particle is theorized to be the reason why some particles, such as the W and Z bosons, have mass, while other force carriers, like the photon, are massless. Previous work has put lower and upper limits on the mass of this particle. CERN's Large Electron-Positron collider has been unable to find the Higgs particle at masses below 114 GeV, setting this as a lower bound for the mass. Studies of the electroweak force suggest that the Higgs particle must weigh less than 185 GeV. Now, work by a collaboration of the DZero and CDF particle discovery groups (each of those are collaborations in their own right) has narrowed this window even further". (Ars Technica)

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17 Mar 09 - 01:08 AM (#2590727)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Today the John Templeton Foundation announced the winner of the annual Templeton Prize of a colossal £1 million ($1.4 million), the largest annual prize in the world.

This year it goes to French physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d'Espagnat for his "studies into the concept of reality". D'Espagnat, 87, is a professor emeritus of theoretical physics at the University of Paris-Sud, and is known for his work on quantum mechanics. The award will be presented to him by the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace on 5 May.

D'Espagnat boasts an impressive scientific pedigree, having worked with Nobel laureates Louis de Broglie, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr. De Broglie was his thesis advisor; he served as a research assistant to Fermi; and he worked at CERN when it was still in Copenhagen under the direction of Bohr. He also served as a visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin, at the invitation of the legendary physicist John Wheeler. But what has he done that's worth £1 million?

The thrust of d'Espagnat's work was on experimental tests of Bell's theorem. The theorem states that either quantum mechanics is a complete description of the world or that if there is some reality beneath quantum mechanics, it must be nonlocal – that is, things can influence one another instantaneously regardless of how much space stretches between them, violating Einstein's insistence that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

But what d'Espagnat was really interested in was what all of this meant for discerning the true nature of ultimate reality. Unlike most of his contemporaries, d'Espagnat was one of the brave ones unafraid to tackle the thorny and profound philosophical questions posed by quantum physics.

Third view

Unlike classical physics, d'Espagnat explained, quantum mechanics cannot describe the world as it really is, it can merely make predictions for the outcomes of our observations. If we want to believe, as Einstein did, that there is a reality independent of our observations, then this reality can either be knowable, unknowable or veiled. D'Espagnat subscribes to the third view. Through science, he says, we can glimpse some basic structures of the reality beneath the veil, but much of it remains an infinite, eternal mystery.

Looking back at d'Espagnat's work, I couldn't help but wonder what the Templeton Foundation – an organisation dedicated to reconciling science and religion – saw in it that they thought was worth a £1 million. Then, scanning the press release, I found it:

"There must exist, beyond mere appearances … a 'veiled reality' that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments."... (New Scientist)

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17 Mar 09 - 01:12 AM (#2590729)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

00:00 17 March 2009 by Anil Ananthaswamy

Electrodes implanted in the brains of people with epilepsy might have resolved an ancient question about consciousness.

Signals from the electrodes seem to show that consciousness arises from the coordinated activity of the entire brain. The signals also take us closer to finding an objective "consciousness signature" that could be used to probe the process in animals and people with brain damage without inserting electrodes.

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world, or whether consciousness was the result of concerted activity across the whole brain. ... (New Scientist)

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17 Mar 09 - 02:43 PM (#2591227)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Latvian veterans of Hitler's Waffen SS marched through Riga on Monday, defying a ban by officials. The annual march divides the country. Latvians of Russian descent regard it as an insult, but many others honor the fighters for resisting Soviet occupation.


An honor guard leads the way as veterans of the Waffen SS marched through Riga on Monday.

Some 300 Latvian veterans of the Waffen SS and their supporters marched through Riga on Monday to commemorate their comrades who fought the Soviet Union in Adolf Hitler's fanatical combat unit during World War II.

Supporters regard the Latvians who fought in the Waffen SS as liberators from the Soviet occupation in the war. Russia and many ethnic Russians in Latvia regard the annual commemorative marches as a glorification of fascism.

The demonstration went ahead in defiance of a ban by the city. Dozens of protestors jeered at the veterans as they carried flowers to the base of the Freedom Monument in the Latvian capital.

...Police separated veterans from counter-demonstrators, who were mainly from Latvia's large ethnic Russian minority, as they shouted "Stalin kaputt" and "Hitler kaputt" at each other. A total of 13 people were detained but there was no violence reported....(Der Spiegel)

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17 Mar 09 - 03:56 PM (#2591276)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Boob-job biz sagging

Economic meltdown is causing many to delay cosmetic surgery, survey says

BY Bill Hutchinson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, March 17th 2009, 9:02 AM


Breast augmentations fell from nearly 400,000 in 2007 to 355,671 last year.

Manhattan cosmetic surgeon Lawrence Milgrim doesn't need to read the latest analysis of his industry to know he's getting nipped and tucked by the economy.

"We've had a dropoff just because of the economic environment," said Milgrim. "Some of the larger procedures have dropped off more than some of the smaller procedures."

"I think today the gestalt is, 'Don't change me, just make me look better than I am now.'"

A study released Monday shows Milgrim isn't the only plastic surgeon hurting.

Cosmetic surgical procedures have plummeted 15% in the past year, and nonsurgical procedures are down 12%, according to the survey by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

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17 Mar 09 - 05:23 PM (#2591343)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Galactic Mergers


PhysOrg.com) -- A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope offers a rare view of an imminent collision between the cores of two merging galaxies, each powered by a black hole with millions of times the mass of the sun.
The galactic cores are in a single, tangled galaxy called NGC 6240, located 400-million light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Millions of years ago, each core was the dense center of its own galaxy before the two galaxies collided and ripped each other apart. Now, these cores are approaching each other at tremendous speeds and preparing for the final cataclysmic collision. They will crash into each other in a few million years, a relatively short period on a galactic timescale.
The spectacular image combines visible light from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and infrared light from Spitzer. It catches the two galaxies during a rare, short-lived phase of their evolution, when both cores of the interacting galaxies are still visible but closing in on each other fast.
"One of the most exciting things about the image is that this object is unique," said Stephanie Bush of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., lead author of a new paper describing the observation in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal. "Merging is a quick process, especially when you get to the train wreck that is happening. There just aren't many galactic mergers at this stage in the nearby universe."

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17 Mar 09 - 05:28 PM (#2591346)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Salt water for Dejah

Liquid saltwater is likely present on Mars, new analysis shows
March 17th, 2009
Enlarge
Droplets on a leg of the Mars Phoenix lander are seen to darken and coalesce. Nilton Renno, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences says this is evidence that they are made of liquid water. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute
(PhysOrg.com) -- Salty, liquid water has been detected on a leg of the Mars Phoenix Lander and therefore could be present at other locations on the planet, according to analysis by a group of mission scientists led by a University of Michigan professor. This is the first time liquid water has been detected and photographed outside the Earth.
"A large number of independent physical and thermodynamical evidence shows that saline water may actually be common on Mars," said Nilton Renno, a professor in the U-M Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences and a co-investigator on the Phoenix mission.
"Liquid water is an essential ingredient for life. This discovery has important implications to many areas of planetary exploration, including the habitability of Mars."
Renno will present these findings March 23 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston.

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17 Mar 09 - 05:37 PM (#2591350)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The roads they are so muddy, we cannot gang about....



"A herd of young birdlike dinosaurs met their death on the muddy margins of a lake some 90 million years ago, according to a team of Chinese and American paleontologists that excavated the site in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.
The Sudden sudden death of the herd in a mud trap provides a rare snapshot of social behavior. Composed entirely of juveniles of a single species of ornithomimid dinosaur (Sinornithomimus dongi), the herd suggests that immature individuals were left to fend for themselves when adults were preoccupied with nesting or brooding.
"There were no adults or hatchlings," said Paul Sereno, professor at the University of Chicago and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. "These youngsters were roaming around on their own," remarked Tan Lin, from the Department of Land and Resources of Inner Mongolia."


Phys Org

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19 Mar 09 - 01:28 AM (#2592325)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Apr 9 2004, 01:00 AM




From MSNBC News: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4669114/

CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily - The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again — even though electricity to the village was cut off.

An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled "ghostbusters" have descended on the town, searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car.

The blazes, originally blamed on the devil, have not hurt anyone.

"We're working in the dark. We don't have a single lead so far," said Pedro Spinnato, mayor of the trio of Caronia towns.

"Every time some new scientist comes to town, they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they're going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They've all been wrong."

Electricians and exorcists
The 39 inhabitants of the town halfway between Palermo and Messina were evacuated after the regional government declared a state of emergency in Canneto, which occupies a single street nestled between a railway line and the sea.

But after weeks of sleeping in a nearby hotel and houses rented for them by the government, they're getting desperate.

"I've seen an air conditioner burst into flames and burn down in 30 seconds. These are not normal events, but I think we're going to have to start looking for a different kind of help," said Antonio Pezzino, whose house was first hit.

From the start, Gabriele Amorth, one of the Catholic Church's exorcists, suspected the devil was at work.

"I've seen things like this before," he told the daily Il Messaggero. "Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods."

Amorth urged the parish priest to take action.

The local priest, Don Antonio Cipriani, decided together with residents to let scientists have a first go at the fires.

After a brief visit to Canneto di Caronia, the head of the Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims has ruled out demons or poltergeists — at least for the time being.

"The fact that the phenomenon occurs only when there are people present makes it hard to believe that it is a natural, or even supernatural phenomenon," the committee's Massimo Polidoro said. "But we don't exclude further investigation if things aren't eventually explained."

Real-life 'X-Files'

Nobody can say the experts aren't trying. Canneto looks increasingly like a set for the TV hit "The X-Files."

Two fire trucks and a police jeep sit at the entrance of Canneto on alert for the next blaze, while a van with a large, rotating antennas on top measures the radio waves.

Three-legged instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic and electrostatic indicators sit in apartments and next to lemon trees in the gardens. Colored markings on the street indicate the presence of volcano experts.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a buildup of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare "natural phenomenon" in which surges of electricity rise from the earth's core.

The fires have even consumed unplugged lamps and an entire apartment. Black scorch marks still scar the apartment walls.

Italy's big utility, Enel, cut off electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator — but that caught fire as well.

More recently, cellular phones and cars have also been acting up, with lock and alarm systems being set off without any apparent reason.

Sacrificial goat?
The evacuated families of Canneto di Caronia who gather almost every night in the three-star hotel perched above their abandoned village are giving up hope.

"I just want to go home," said Rosi Cioffo, a shopkeeper and mother of two. "I don't know what's causing it and I don't care anymore — even if it's the devil."

Her 9-year-old daughter, who is frightened every time a TV or bathroom fan switches on, may not agree.

Spinnato, the mayor, sounds just as desperate.

---

19 Mar 09 - 12:42 PM (#2592684)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

We propose a comprehensive theory of dark matter that explains the recent proliferation of unexpected observations in high-energy astrophysics.

Cosmic ray spectra from ATIC and PAMELA require a WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle). with mass Mchi~500–800 GeV that annihilates into leptons at a level well above that expected from a thermal relic. Signals from WMAP and EGRET reinforce this interpretation. Limits on [overline p] and pi0-gamma's constrain the hadronic channels allowed for dark matter. Taken together, we argue these facts imply the presence of a new force in the dark sector, with a Compton wavelength mphi-1>~1 GeV-1.

The long range allows a Sommerfeld enhancement to boost the annihilation cross section as required, without altering the weak-scale annihilation cross section during dark matter freeze-out in the early universe. If the dark matter annihilates into the new force carrier phi, its low mass can make hadronic modes kinematically inaccessible, forcing decays dominantly into leptons. If the force carrier is a non-Abelian gauge boson, the dark matter is part of a multiplet of states, and splittings between these states are naturally generated with size alphamphi~ MeV, leading to the eXciting dark matter (XDM) scenario previously proposed to explain the positron annihilation in the galactic center observed by the INTEGRAL satellite; the light boson invoked by XDM to mediate a large inelastic scattering cross section is identified with the phi here.

Somewhat smaller splittings would also be expected, providing a natural source for the parameters of the inelastic dark matter (iDM) explanation for the DAMA annual modulation signal. Since the Sommerfeld enhancement is most significant at low velocities, early dark matter halos at redshift ~10 potentially produce observable effects on the ionization history of the universe.

Because of the enhanced cross section, detection of substructure is more probable than with a conventional WIMP. Moreover, the low velocity dispersion of dwarf galaxies and Milky Way subhalos can increase the substructure annihilation signal by an additional order of magnitude or more.

©2009 The American Physical Society

---

My relationship with papers like this is sort of "Don't ask, don't tell". I don't even know what to ask, and they don't tell me much. In spite of which I find them tantalizing.


A

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20 Mar 09 - 02:46 PM (#2593492)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers at UALR report they have developed a process involving nanostructure that shows great promise in boosting the efficiency of titania photoanodes used to convert solar energy into hydrogen in fuel cells.

Hydrogen, the third most abundant element on earths surface, has long been recognized as the ultimate alternative to fossil fuels as an energy carrier.

Automobiles using hydrogen directly or in fuel cells have already been developed, but the biggest challenge has been how to produce hydrogen using renewable sources of energy.

Scientists in Japan discovered in 1970 that semiconductor oxide photoanodes can harness the photons from solar radiation and used them to split a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen, but process was too inefficient to be viable.

The UALR team, working with researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority (ASTA), has reported an 80-percent increase in efficiency with a new process.

...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29761848/

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20 Mar 09 - 05:59 PM (#2593644)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

At 7:40 a.m. on March 5, the winged car taxied down a runway in Plattsburgh, N.Y., took off, flew for 37 seconds and landed further down the runway -- a maneuver it would repeat about a half dozen times over the next two days. In the coming months the company, a Woburn-based startup called Terrafugia, will test the plane in a series of ever-longer flights and a variety of maneuvers to learn about its handling characteristics.
Aviation enthusiasts have spent nearly a century pursuing the dream of a flying car, but the broader public has tended to view the idea as something of a novelty. Still, such a vehicle could have more practical appeal now that the Federal Aviation Administration has created a new class of plane -- Light Sport Aircraft -- and a new license category just for pilots of such craft, including Terrafugia's two-seater Transition. The "sport pilot" license required to fly the Transition takes only about 20 hours of training time, about half that required to earn a regular pilot's license. ...

Details at http://www.physorg.com/news156699617.html.

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21 Mar 09 - 01:56 AM (#2593871)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Evolutionary theorist Alastair Clarke has today published details of eight patterns he claims to be the basis of all the humour that has ever been imagined or expressed, regardless of civilization, culture or personal taste.

Clarke has stated before that humour is based on the surprise recognition of patterns but this is the first time he has identified the precise nature of the patterns involved, addressing the deceptively simple unit and context relationships at their foundation. His research goes on to demonstrate the universality of the theory by showing how these few basic patterns are recognized in more than a hundred different types of humour.

Clarke explains: "One of the most beautiful things about the theory is that, while denying all previous theories, it also unites them for the first time. For decades researchers have concentrated on limited areas of humour and have each argued for causality based on their specific interest. Now that we have pattern recognition theory, all previous explanations are accommodated by a single over-arching concept present in all of them. (PhysOrg.com).

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22 Mar 09 - 01:28 AM (#2594357)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Magnetic waves theorized to transfer heat from the surface of the sun to its atmosphere have been directly observed for the first time, researchers report in the March 20 Science.

Astrophysicists have long puzzled over why the sun's atmosphere is millions of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun itself. "It's counterintuitive — when you hold your hands in front of a fire, it's hottest closest to the flames," says David Jess, an astrophysicist at Queen's University Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and a study coauthor.

The magnetic waves, called Alfvén waves, are considered the most plausible explanation for the transfer of so much energy from the sun's surface to its atmosphere. First theorized by Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén in 1942, the waves could carry energy several hundred thousand kilometers from the sun's surface to the corona.

The new observation "is quite interesting," says astrophysicist Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "It means that we can get to the root of what's heating the corona."

Alfvén waves move along the sun's magnetic fields like "waves traveling along a string," Jess explains. The waves are created by magnetic reconnections, disturbances in the sun's magnetic field when magnetic lines twist, break apart and then snap back together again.
(Science NEws)

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22 Mar 09 - 04:43 PM (#2594739)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...A spectacular example of false courage is the decision by most of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives to vote down the first economic bailout bill proposed by the Treasury Department in October 2008. On first inspection, this opposition to a mammoth taxpayer-funded bailout seems oddly gutsy, suggesting that the balky congressmen were sticking to their guns and adhering to their principles come hell or high water. But on closer inspection, given the level of hatred directed toward Wall Street at the time of the proposed bailout, their decision to vote no required no courage whatsoever. They were merely channeling the attitudes of their constituencies. They were nothing more than ventriloquists.

False courage comes in many styles, all of them odious. Real courage stands out because it is rare, precious, and beautiful. Here are a few examples:

Defending Israel when your name is Abdul.

Defending Bush's tax cuts when you are a Goth, a professor at Bard, or the lead singer in a Clash tribute band.

Attacking the coal industry when you live in West Virginia.

Defending the coal industry when you live in West Hollywood.

Sporting a Bush-Cheney decal on the bumper of your car when you live in Baghdad.

Dissing Vladimir Putin in the Russian press.

Being a conservative columnist for the New York Times.

Wearing a Che Guevara shirt in certain parts of Miami.

Questioning the negotiating tactics of the Irish Republican Army while quaffing a pint or two in a Belfast pub.

Wearing a Confederate flag headband on Saturday night in a Detroit nightclub.

Wearing a "Red Sox Suck" T-shirt at Fenway Park.

Attending a NASCAR event in drag.

Shorting Wal-Mart anytime, anywhere.

The most wonderful story about false courage I have ever heard centers around the great Spanish painter Joan Miró. At the height of the surrealist movement in the 1920s, the leading lights were ordered to go out into the streets and make outlandish, inflammatory comments that might land them in the hoosegow. One surrealist went out and said "Bonjour, madame" to a priest. A second insulted a policeman, which got him arrested. A third went into a public park and exclaimed, "Down with France! Down with the government!" until he too landed in jail. At which point Miró, who never really had his heart in this thing, but who was determined to be one of the surrealistic boys, marched into the Jardins du Luxembourg and ceaselessly repeated the phrase, "Down with the Mediterranean!" This disgusted and infuriated his fellow surrealists, who chastised him for uttering an execration so general and vague it ultimately meant nothing whatsoever. Sound familiar?"

.....From Joe Queenan's essay on False Courage.

---

22 Mar 09 - 05:00 PM (#2594765)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html

---

26 Mar 09 - 12:16 AM (#2597501)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Human embryos will be used to make an unlimited supply for infection-free transfusions

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Monday, 23 March 2009

Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions.

A major research project is to be announced this week that will culminate in three years with the first transfusions into human volunteers of "synthetic" blood made from the stem cells of spare IVF embryos. It could help to save the lives of anyone from victims of traffic accidents to soldiers on a battlefield by revolutionising the vital blood transfusion services, which have to rely on a network of human donors to provide a constant supply of fresh blood.

The multimillion-pound deal involving NHS Blood and Transplant, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Wellcome Trust, the world's biggest medical research charity, means Britain will take centre stage in the global race to develop blood made from embryonic stem cells. The researchers will test human embryos left over from IVF treatment to find those that are genetically programmed to develop into the "O-negative" blood group, which is the universal donor group whose blood can be transfused into anyone without fear of tissue rejection.

This blood group is relatively rare, applicable to about 7 per cent of the population, but it could be produced in unlimited quantities from embryonic stem cells because of their ability to multiply indefinitely in the laboratory.

The aim is to stimulate embryonic stem cells to develop into mature, oxygen-carrying red blood cells for emergency transfusions. Such blood would have the benefit of not being at risk of being infected with viruses such as HIV and hepatitis, or the human form of "mad cow" disease. The military in particular needs a constant supply of fresh, universal donor blood for battlefield situations when normal supplies from donors can quickly run out. ... (Independent)

---

26 Mar 09 - 09:12 AM (#2597700)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Eastern Anatolia contains the oldest monumental structures in the world. For example, the monumental structures at Göbekli Tepe were built by hunters and gatherers, a thousand years before the development of agriculture. Eastern Anatolia is also a hearth region for the Neolithic revolution, one of the earliest areas in which humans domesticated plants and animals. Neolithic sites such as Çatalhöyük, Çayönü, Nevali Cori, and Hacilar represent the world's oldest known agricultural villages.

The earliest historical records of Anatolia are from the Akkadian Empire under Sargon in the 24th century BC. The region was famous for exporting various raw materials.[12] The Assyrian Empire claimed the resources, notably silver. One of the numerous Assyrian cuneiform records found in Anatolia at Kanesh uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines.[12]

Unlike the Akkadians and the Assyrians, whose Anatolian possessions were peripheral to their core lands in Mesopotamia, the Hittites were centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia. Speakers of an Indo-European language,[citation needed] they established a kingdom in the 18th century BC, and built an empire which reached its height in the 14th century BC. The empire included a large part of Anatolia, north-western Syria, and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, the empire disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until as late as the 8th century BC...

(Wikipaedia: "Anatolia"

---

26 Mar 09 - 11:23 PM (#2598286)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Now, as new research has shown, a fifth force could also be connected to dark matter. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, physicists Jo Bovy and Glennys Farrar were surprised to discover that a fifth force in the dark sector could place constraints on dark matter that essentially exclude its direct detection through spin-independent interactions. Conversely, if future experiments do detect a spin-independent interaction of dark matter, then any fifth force in the dark sector must be so weak as to be astrophysically irrelevant.

"Our study shows that we can strongly constrain some properties of dark matter, i.e., the combination of its interaction with the visible sector and the strength of a long-range fifth force between dark matter particles, through experiments with ordinary matter," Bovy, a Ph.D. student at New York University, told PhysOrg.com. As for which scenario appears to be more likely - a fifth force excluding direct detection of dark matter, or direct detection of dark matter excluding a relevant fifth force - Bovy and Farrar said that it's impossible to say in advance. "Both would be very interesting both theoretically as well as observationally," Bovy said.

Previous research has suggested the possibility that a new long-range, attractive fifth force might exist, which arises in several extensions of the standard model. Although most dark matter models predict that the force between dark matter particles is a short-range force, other models such as supersymmetry and string theory allow for the existence of a very light boson which could carry a long-range force in the dark sector.

---

26 Mar 09 - 11:26 PM (#2598289)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Large size and a fast bite spelled doom for bony fishes during the last mass extinction 65 million years ago, according to a new study to be published March 31, 2009, in the P

Today, those same features characterize large predatory bony fishes, such as tuna and billfishes, that are currently in decline and at risk of extinction themselves, said Matt Friedman, author of the study and a graduate student in evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago.

"The same thing is happening today to ecologically similar fishes," he said. "The hardest hit species are consistently big predators."

Studies of modern fishes demonstrate that large body size is linked to large prey size and low rates of population growth, while fast-closing jaws appear to be adaptations for capturing agile, evasive prey—in other words, other fishes. The fossil record provides some remarkable evidence supporting these estimates of function: fossil fishes with preserved stomach contents that record their last meals.

When an asteroid struck the earth at the end of the Cretaceous about 65 million years ago, the resultant impact clouded the earth in soot and smoke. This blocked photosynthesis on land and in the sea, undermined food chains at a rudimentary level, and led to the extinction of thousands of species of flora and fauna, including dinosaurs. (PhysOrg)

---

28 Mar 09 - 01:38 PM (#2599323)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

HEresy o fthe Day:

"ot that it's anything we think the New York Times Company should do, but we thought it was worth pointing out that it costs the Times about twice as much money to print and deliver the newspaper over a year as it would cost to send each of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead.

Here's how we did the math:

According to the Times's Q308 10-Q, the company spends $63 million per quarter on raw materials and $148 million on wages and benefits. We've heard the wages and benefits for just the newsroom are about $200 million per year.

After multiplying the quarterly costs by four and subtracting that $200 million out, a rough estimate for the Times's delivery costs would be $644 million per year.

The Kindle retails for $359. In a recent open letter, Times spokesperson Catherine Mathis wrote: "We have 830,000 loyal readers who have subscribed to The New York Times for more than two years." Multiply those numbers together and you get $297 million -- a little less than half as much as $644 million.

And here's the thing: a source with knowledge of the real numbers tells us we're so low in our estimate of the Times's printing costs that we're not even in the ballpark.

Are we trying to say the the New York Times should force all its print subscribers onto the Kindle or else? No. That would kill ad revenues and also, not everyone loves the Kindle.

What we're trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn't just expensive and inefficient; it's laughably so."

Silicon Valley Insider

---

28 Mar 09 - 08:38 PM (#2599545)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- "The concept of matter waves is at the heart of quantum mechanics," Oliver Morsch tells PhysOrg.com. "At the beginning of the last century, scientists discovered that solid particles could exhibit properties of waves, such as interference and diffraction. Until then, it was assumed that only light behaved as a wave. But in the quantum world everything is basically a wave."


Morsch is part of a group of scientists, including Alessandro Zenesini, Hans Lignier, Donatella Ciampini and Ennio Arimondo, at the University of Pisa in Italy. The group has discovered a way to more efficiently control matter waves in a setup that simulates a solid state system. "Once you have control over a quantum system," Morsch explains, "you can learn any number of things, especially from a fundamental point of view. Additionally, it is worth noting that almost all of our modern technology is related in some way to quantum mechanical principles." The group's technique is described in Physical Review Letters: "Coherent Control of Dressed Matter Waves."

In order to control the matter waves, Morsch and his colleagues created an optical lattice. "We, in effect, create a light crystal," Morsch says. "It's not a true solid, but it mimics the crystal lattice of a solid. It provides us with a sort of model system for solid state applications, allowing us to perform experiments without being bound by the naturally given physical properties of a solid." Once the lattice is created, using lasers and mirrors, the Pisa University group shook the mirrors - and hence the optical lattice - to create a phenomenon known as dynamic localization.

"It's very counter-intuitive," Morsch says of dynamic localization. "Before we shake the lattice, atoms move freely throughout by quantum tunneling. However, once we apply the shaking, they stop moving. For certain values, we can make sure that atoms stay put in one lattice site. We can also create a quantum phase transition so that the system changes its bulk properties when you change a parameter. In our experiment, we create a phase transition by shaking. That is our control over the matter waves."

---

29 Mar 09 - 12:23 AM (#2599603)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The US administration Friday announced updated automobile fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles starting with the 2011 model year that aim to reduce gasoline consumption and emissions.
   
The new rules aim at implementing a 2007 law mandating better fuel efficiency.
The new standards will raise the industry-wide combined average to 27.3 miles (43.9 kilometers) per gallon (3.8 liters), a increase of 2.0 miles per gallon over the 2010 model year average, the Transportation Department said in a statement.
The change "will save about 887 million gallons of fuel and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 8.3 million metric tonnes," the agency said.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that work on the multi-year fuel economy plan for model years after 2011 is already well underway.

The administration of president George W. Bush had proposed new standards but in January scrapped the effort, leaving the update until after the presidential transition.
On January 26, President Barack Obama directed the Transportation Department to finalize the 2011 model year standard by the end of March.

(c) 2009 AFP

---

29 Mar 09 - 12:59 AM (#2599614)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

THE EMPATHY GAP: BUILDING BRIDGES TO THE GOOD LIFE AND THE GOOD SOCIETY
By J.D. Trout April 11th, 2009; Vol.175 #8 (p. 30)    Text Size
Buy this book


The Empathy Gap: Building Bridges to the Good Life and the Good Society by J.D. Trout
This book argues that empathy and rationality are key to good personal and political decisions.

---

29 Mar 09 - 01:43 PM (#2599902)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"New cognitive research shows that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present, but instead call up the past as they need it. 'There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different,' says professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Munakata's team used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine mental effort to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The research concluded that while everything you tell toddlers seems to go in one ear and out the other, the study found that toddlers listen, but then store the information for later use. 'For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,' says doctoral student Christopher Chatham. 'You might expect the child to plan for the future, think "OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm." But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.'"

---

30 Mar 09 - 04:49 AM (#2600247)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IT must rate as the literary snub of the 20th century. T S Eliot, one of Britain's greatest poets, rejected George Orwell's Animal Farm for publication on the grounds of its unconvincing Trotskyite politics.

Eliot, a former director of Faber and Faber, the publisher, wrote his rejection in a highly critical letter in 1944, one of many private papers made available for the first time by his widow Valerie for a BBC documentary.

When Orwell submitted his novel, an allegory on Stalin's dictatorship, Eliot praised its "good writing" and "fundamental integrity".

However, the book's politics, at a time when Britain was allied with the Soviet Union against Hitler, were another matter.


"We have no conviction that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the current time," wrote Eliot, adding that he thought its "view, which I take to be generally Trotskyite, is not convincing".

Eliot wrote: "After all, your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm – in fact there couldn't have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed (someone might argue) was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs."

"It's a fascinating, yet very odd letter," said Anthony Wall, series editor of Arena, the BBC arts documentary, which will explore the papers. "What exactly does Eliot mean?"...(TImesOnline (UK))

---

30 Mar 09 - 05:01 AM (#2600251)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Anybody who was catapulted back in time to Ice Age Europe would stand a good chance of being intelligible to the locals by using words such as "I", "who" and "thou" and the numbers "two", "three" and "five", the work suggests.

More nuanced conversation would be more of a challenge. The analysis of language evolution suggests that none of the adjectives, verbs and nouns used in modern languages would have much in common with those used then.


Mark Pagel, of the University of Reading, who leads the research, said that it was nonetheless becoming possible to create a rudimentary Stone Age phrasebook made up of the oldest known words.

"If a time traveller wanted to go back in time to a specific date, we could probably draw up a little phrasebook of the modern words that are likely to have sounded similar back then," he told The Times. "You wouldn't be able to discuss anything very complicated, but it might be enough to get you out of a tight spot."

Dr Pagel's research also predicts which parts of modern vocabulary are likely to survive into English as it will be spoken 1,000 years in the future, and which will die out...."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5805522.ece

---

01 Apr 09 - 11:32 AM (#2602256)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Nevertheless, I am convinced that the decades-old dream of a useful, general-purpose autonomous robot will be realized in the not too distant future. By 2010 we will see mobile robots as big as people but with cognitive abilities similar in many respects to those of a lizard. The machines will be capable of carrying out simple chores, such as vacuuming, dusting, delivering packages and taking out the garbage. By 2040, I believe, we will finally achieve the original goal of robotics and a thematic mainstay of science fiction: a freely moving machine with the intellectual capabilities of a human being."

Future of Artificial Intelligence, Scientific American

---

01 Apr 09 - 01:40 PM (#2602400)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Oh, those Scandinavians.... (from a Danish newspaper):

"A survey of the sexual habits of 15-16 year-olds in Viborg shows that up to 20 percent of young people shun the use of condoms, despite education of the dangers of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

The survey, in which the sexual habits of school pupils are analysed over 21 years, shows that the use of condoms has fallen.

"Knowledge of and use of condoms is widespread among adolescents already at sexual debut," the report says but adds: "A considerable amount of adolescents (10-20 percent) still do not protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies at debut or later coitus".

Researchers say that while the use of condoms was widespread following the major AIDS campaigns of the 1980s, the focus on the role of condoms in safe sex has dropped and may explain the reduction.

P-pills
The survey, which is published today in the Danish medical journal Ugeskrift for Læger shows, however, that the knowledge and use of contraceptive pills is widespread among young girls already at the time of their sexual debut.

Nonetheless there is a marked change from the use of condoms in connection with first-time intercourse to the use of contraceptive pills in later sexual activity.

"A shift from of the use of condoms to more frequent use of the pill occurs from debut to later coitus," the report says.

Venereal diseases
The report found that knowledge of venereal disease such as HIV/AIDS, chlamydia and herpes simplex was high, with over 80 percent of respondents aware of the diseases.

"A total of 58 percent of boys and 76 percent of girls identified chlamydia as the most common venereal disease," the report said adding that 26 percent of the boys and 27 percent of the girls answered AIDS/HIV while 13 percent of boys and six percent of girls wrote 'don't know'.

Debut unchanged
The view that young people have their first sexual experiences increasingly earlier in life appears to be incorrect. The survey shows that the age of sexual debut has remained unchanged for many years.

The number of young people who had intercourse for the first time before the age of 15 was at 18 percent, unchanged from previous surveys.

Young people are, however, more sexually active than previously according to the researchers. "

---

There was a time when a debut was a social event...

---

02 Apr 09 - 08:16 PM (#2603552)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists have created a Robot Scientist which the researchers believe is the first machine to have independently discovered new scientific knowledge. The robot, called Adam, is a computer system that fully automates the scientific process. The work will be published tomorrow (03 April 2009) in the journal Science.

Prof Ross King, who led the research at Aberystwyth University, said: "Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists working together in laboratories".
The scientists at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge designed Adam to carry out each stage of the scientific process automatically without the need for further human intervention. The robot has discovered simple but new scientific knowledge about the genomics of the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an organism that scientists use to model more complex life systems.

The researchers have used separate manual experiments to confirm that Adam's hypotheses were both novel and correct.

"Because biological organisms are so complex it is important that the details of biological experiments are recorded in great detail. This is difficult and irksome for human scientists, but easy for Robot Scientists."

Using artificial intelligence, Adam hypothesised that certain genes in baker's yeast code for specific enzymes which catalyse biochemical reactions in yeast. The robot then devised experiments to test these predictions, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results and repeated the cycle.

Adam is a still a prototype, but Prof King's team believe that their next robot, Eve, holds great promise for scientists searching for new drugs to combat diseases such as malaria and schistosomiasis, an infection caused by a type of parasitic worm in the tropics.
Prof King continued: "If science was more efficient it would be better placed to help solve society's problems. One way to make science more efficient is through automation. Automation was the driving force behind much of the 19th and 20th century progress, and this is likely to continue."

---

03 Apr 09 - 01:06 PM (#2604006)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

As a matter of curiousity, does anyone read this thread?


Thanks,



A

---

04 Apr 09 - 01:57 PM (#2604629)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"David H. Newman, M.D. has an interesting article in the NY Times where he discusses common medical treatments that aren't supported by the best available evidence. For example, doctors have administered 'beta-blockers' for decades to heart attack victims, although studies show that the early administration of beta-blockers does not save lives; patients with ear infections are more likely to be harmed by antibiotics than helped — the infections typically recede within days regardless of treatment and the same is true for bronchitis, sinusitis, and sore throats; no cough remedies have ever been proven better than a placebo. Back surgeries to relieve pain are, in the majority of cases, no better than nonsurgical treatment, and knee surgery is no better than sham knee surgery where surgeons 'pretend' to do surgery while the patient is under light anesthesia. Newman says that treatment based on ideology is alluring, 'but the uncomfortable truth is that many expensive, invasive interventions are of little or no benefit and cause potentially uncomfortable, costly, and dangerous side effects and complications.' The Obama administration's plan for reform includes identifying health care measures that work and those that don't, and there are signs of hope for evidence-based medicine: earlier this year hospital administrators were informed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that beta-blocker treatment will be retired as a government indicator of quality care, beginning April 1, 2009. 'After years of advocacy that cemented immediate beta-blockers in the treatment protocols of virtually every hospital in the country,' writes Newman, 'the agency has demonstrated that minds can be changed.'"

---

05 Apr 09 - 10:30 PM (#2605380)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica is in the final stages of collapse and scientists are concerned the event shows climate change is happening faster than previously thought.

An ice bridge, up to 40 kilometres long but at its narrowest just 500 metres wide, was thought to be holding the giant shelf to the Antarctic continent but it recently snapped.

From above, parts of the Wilkins Ice Shelf now look like giant panes of shattered glass.

British Antarctic Survey glaciologist Professor David Vaughan has been monitoring the Wilkins Ice Shelf for some time with the help of satellite imagery.

"The ice shelf has almost exploded into a large number, hundreds of small icebergs," he said.

"The images on the European Space Agency website show that the ice bridge was relatively stable for the past month or two.

"In fact we visited the ice bridge - we landed on it with an aircraft and put a GPS, a satellite positioning system, onto the ice shelf. And that's another way we've been monitoring its movements over the last few weeks."

Researchers believe the ice bridge was an important barrier, keeping the rest of the ice shelf in place.

Dr Ted Scambos, the lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Colorado, told ABC Radio National he was concerned.

"The follow on is that large chunks of ice break away from the area that's become unstable because it's no longer braced," he said.

"And we see a retreat to a smaller ice shelf, or perhaps no ice shelf at all. It's in the last stages. Right now I think about half the Wilkins will remain after this is done.",,,"

(ABC News)

---

06 Apr 09 - 05:19 AM (#2605485)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie

As a matter of curiousity, does anyone read this thread?

I do, every time I visit Mudcat.

---

07 Apr 09 - 12:41 AM (#2606212)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Thanks very much, Eddie.

Bob Dylan, the mad poet of my generation, was talking about the Civil War in a London times interview. I was struck by this part.

BF: When you think back to the Civil War, one thing you forget is that no battles, except Gettysburg, were fought in the North.

BD: Yeah. That's what probably makes the Southern part of the country so different.

BF: There is a certain sensibility, but I'm not sure how that connects?

BD: It must be the Southern air. It's filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They're all screaming and forlorning. It's like they are caught in some weird web - some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can't rest. They can't live, and they can't die. It's like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It's all over the place. There are war fields everywhere … a lot of times even in people's backyards.

BF: Have you felt them?

BD: Oh sure. You'd be surprised. I was in Elvis's hometown – Tupelo. And I was trying to feel what Elvis would have felt back when he was growing up.

BF: Did you feel all the music Elvis must have heard?

BD:No, but I'll tell you what I did feel. I felt the ghosts from the bloody battle that Sherman fought against Forrest and drove him out. There's an eeriness to the town. A sadness that lingers. Elvis must have felt it too.

BF: Are you a mystical person?

BD: Absolutely.

BF: Any thoughts about why?

BD: I think it's the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I'm more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

BF: But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.

BD: Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Bob Dylan's new album Together Through Life is out April 27 on Columbia Records

---

07 Apr 09 - 09:38 AM (#2606457)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The year in which mankind will have a handle on relative immortality through the use of turning on or off certain genes as well as having nanobots handle disease and a complete internal interface with internet knowledge is 2045,   is called the time of 'singularity'.

---

07 Apr 09 - 09:41 AM (#2606460)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

---

07 Apr 09 - 09:43 AM (#2606461)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SOrry foir the blank post.

Donuel, these bald statements jar resoundingly, because you provide no context, source, or justification, so your choice of a future date seems arbitrary and random. PRithee, have pity on your readers, and take their views into account, and make of your communication a bridge to better understanding!


A

---

07 Apr 09 - 02:49 PM (#2606703)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The inventor and futurist Kurzweil points to an accelerating advance of converging technologies that he has pinned 2040 as the year of singularity when astounding human capabilities will will add depth and bredth to the enlarged lives of AI enhanced people.

http://accelerating.org/ac2005/downloads/AC2005_PressRelease(SingNear).pdf



here is some more singularity speculation by some guy named Kevin Kelly. If its the Kevin Kelly I grew up with, he was always pretty wierd.
http://www.veneermagazine.com/01-18/01/the_group/singularity.html






PS

you have 7 more days to hide your assets offshore and or move your Swill, I mean Swiss bank account before the new transpareancy rules take effect.

---

07 Apr 09 - 04:58 PM (#2606836)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

"As a matter of curiousity, does anyone read this thread?"

I too, do.

---

07 Apr 09 - 05:01 PM (#2606838)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

"Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it."

Great quote from his Bobness.

---

07 Apr 09 - 07:05 PM (#2606916)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Algae is widely touted as the next best source for fueling the world's energy needs. But one of the greatest challenges in creating biofuels from algae is that when you extract the oil from the algae, it kills the organisms, dramatically raising production costs. Now researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University have developed groundbreaking "nanofarming" technology that safely harvests oil from the algae so the pond-based "crop" can keep on producing.

Commercialization of this new technology is at the center of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between the Ames Laboratory and Catilin, a nano-technology-based company that specializes in biofuel production. The agreement targets development of this novel approach to reduce the cost and energy consumption of the industrial processing of non- food source biofuel feedstock. The three-year project is being funded with $885,000 from DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and $216,000 from Catilin and $16,000 from Iowa State University in matching funds.

The so-called "nanofarming" technology uses sponge-like mesoporous nanoparticles to extract oil from the algae. The process doesn't harm the algae like other methods being developed, which helps reduce both production costs and the production cycle. Once the algal oil is extracted, a separate and proven solid catalyst from Catilin will be used to produce ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) and EN certified biodiesel.

---

07 Apr 09 - 08:59 PM (#2606987)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

"Sponge Like Mesoporous nanoparticles " _ awkward, how about
SLIMe for short

If these were stored in Leaking Underground storage tanks they would be slime sluts


Another algae energy process uses a catalyst and small electric currents that actually produces a profit of energy at the end.
as heard on Science Fridays npr.

---

08 Apr 09 - 10:03 AM (#2607309)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

but seriously folks ...

the next reformation of our advanced industrial revolution is going to grow out of the virus battery develped by Andrea Belcher at MIT.

A prototype bio engineered virus is now designed to cut and splice molecules in such a way as to produce a lithium like rechargable battery currently capable of 100 full recharges for computers or all electric cars. The processes of the virus can also be applied to manufacturing materials great and small be it computer chips or side panels for cars. The organic nature of the product makes it a greener alternative to other batteries.

Michiu Kaku calls this breakthrough a keystone to the next generation of an industrial revolution.

---

09 Apr 09 - 11:25 AM (#2608062)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The scientific study of probability is a modern development. Gambling shows that there has been an interest in quantifying the ideas of probability for millennia, but exact mathematical descriptions of use in those problems only arose much later.

According to Richard Jeffrey, "Before the middle of the seventeenth century, the term 'probable' (Latin probabilis) meant approvable, and was applied in that sense, univocally, to opinion and to action. A probable action or opinion was one such as sensible people would undertake or hold, in the circumstances."[4]

Aside from some elementary considerations made by Girolamo Cardano in the 16th century, the doctrine of probabilities dates to the correspondence of Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal (1654). Christiaan Huygens (1657) gave the earliest known scientific treatment of the subject. Jakob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi (posthumous, 1713) and Abraham de Moivre's Doctrine of Chances (1718) treated the subject as a branch of mathematics. See Ian Hacking's The Emergence of Probability for a history of the early development of the very concept of mathematical probability.

The theory of errors may be traced back to Roger Cotes's Opera Miscellanea (posthumous, 1722), but a memoir prepared by Thomas Simpson in 1755 (printed 1756) first applied the theory to the discussion of errors of observation. The reprint (1757) of this memoir lays down the axioms that positive and negative errors are equally probable, and that there are certain assignable limits within which all errors may be supposed to fall; continuous errors are discussed and a probability curve is given.

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1774) made the first attempt to deduce a rule for the combination of observations from the principles of the theory of probabilities. He represented the law of probability of errors by a curve y = φ(x), x being any error and y its probability, and laid down three properties of this curve:

   1. it is symmetric as to the y-axis;
   2. the x-axis is an asymptote, the probability of the error \infty being 0;
   3. the area enclosed is 1, it being certain that an error exists.

He also gave (1781) a formula for the law of facility of error (a term due to Lagrange, 1774), but one which led to unmanageable equations. Daniel Bernoulli (1778) introduced the principle of the maximum product of the probabilities of a system of concurrent errors.

The method of least squares is due to Adrien-Marie Legendre (1805), who introduced it in his Nouvelles méthodes pour la détermination des orbites des comètes (New Methods for Determining the Orbits of Comets). In ignorance of Legendre's contribution, an Irish-American writer, Robert Adrain, editor of "The Analyst" (1808), first deduced the law of facility of error,

    \phi(x) = ce^{-h^2 x^2},

h being a constant depending on precision of observation, and c a scale factor ensuring that the area under the curve equals 1. He gave two proofs, the second being essentially the same as John Herschel's (1850). Gauss gave the first proof which seems to have been known in Europe (the third after Adrain's) in 1809. Further proofs were given by Laplace (1810, 1812), Gauss (1823), James Ivory (1825, 1826), Hagen (1837), Friedrich Bessel (1838), W. F. Donkin (1844, 1856), and Morgan Crofton (1870). Other contributors were Ellis (1844), De Morgan (1864), Glaisher (1872), and Giovanni Schiaparelli (1875). Peters's (1856) formula for r, the probable error of a single observation, is well known.

In the nineteenth century authors on the general theory included Laplace, Sylvestre Lacroix (1816), Littrow (1833), Adolphe Quetelet (1853), Richard Dedekind (1860), Helmert (1872), Hermann Laurent (1873), Liagre, Didion, and Karl Pearson. Augustus De Morgan and George Boole improved the exposition of the theory.

---

09 Apr 09 - 11:50 AM (#2608088)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Physicists Ho-Tsang Ng and Sougato Bose of the University College London have recently proposed a method to generate entangled light using a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in an optical cavity. If the system works, it would enable researchers to control the degree of entanglement. Entangled light, which is regarded as the ideal entity for sharing entanglement between distant parties, has many future applications in quantum communications. Ng and Bose's study is published in the New Journal of Physics.
"I would say that the significance of the work is two-fold: firstly, it provides an immediate application of a novel setup (namely the BEC in a cavity) that has been recently realized in experiments," Bose told PhysOrg.com. "Secondly, it is the application of a mesoscopic system to do something which is normally done using a macroscopic system such as a crystal."
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is a group of atoms that are cooled to near absolute zero, which causes the atoms' wavelengths to increase and overlap so that the group acts like a single atom. Although the atomic cluster has a relatively large size, it's considered to be a single quantum state and it obeys quantum laws.

(PhysOrg)

---

09 Apr 09 - 08:49 PM (#2608407)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Biomimetic adhesives aren't new, but a PhD graduate in British Columbia has developed a new method of creating microscopic, mushroom-like plastic structures in order to produce a dry adhesive that mimics the stickiness of gecko feet—and is prepping his glue-free innovation for outer space. A research group at his university, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, is engineering a spider-like, sticky-footed climbing robot destined to explore Mars, and it is also developing reusable attaching systems for astronauts to use where magnetic and suction systems generally fail. In the future, he says, single-use versions could be used in any number of medical applications as well as for replacements for everyday sticky needs, such as Post-It notes and Scotch tape.".." (Slashdot)

---

10 Apr 09 - 10:21 AM (#2608654)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason." Charles Darwin in "The Descent of Man."

---

10 Apr 09 - 10:28 AM (#2608656)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Scientists have long been interested in the ability of gecko lizards to scurry up walls and cling to ceilings by their toes. The creatures owe this amazing ability to microscopic branched elastic hairs in their toes that take advantage of atomic-scale attractive forces to grip surfaces and support surprisingly heavy loads. Several research groups have attempted to mimic those hairs with structures made of polymers or carbon nanotubes.

---

10 Apr 09 - 11:29 PM (#2609026)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Speaking of stick-to-it-ivity:

"Adam Engler, a bioengineering assistant professor from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering, is the first author of the Review article entitled "Multiscale Modeling of Form and Function" published in the April 10 issue of the journal Science. According to Engler, there is something inherent in the nature of the ever-present tasks of sticking together and responding to forces that causes common form and function to emerge. For example, even though the cells within bacteria, fungi, sponges, nematodes and humans do not use exactly the same proteins to stick together, all of these organisms rely on fundamental components of cell-cell adhesions for survival. For this reason, the capacity to form complex multilayer organisms through cell-cell interactions is likely based on the evolutionary advantage to adhere to new environments and survive in potentially hostile environments, the authors say.
The team also described a universal need for cells, tissues, organs and organisms to respond to forces. Two examples of very different biological structures that nevertheless rely on responsiveness to forces for proper function are leg bones and breast acini. Breast acini are hollow spherical objects at the ends of breast ducts that are made of a layer of cells that secrete milk proteins. Breast acini form hollow spheres, according to Engler, because this form maximizes the surface to volume ratio. When pressure builds up, acini can hold more and more volume until they need to push the milk proteins down the duct.
"This kind of structure is conserved in a variety of dissimilar systems that respond to forces in a manner similar," said Engler. The long bones of the human skeleton are another example, where their elongated and cylindrical form optimizes the distribution of body weight while remaining very light.
Thinking Wide
Engler hopes that the observations and connections he and his coauthors make regarding the ubiquitous need for vastly different cells, tissues, organs and organisms to use common biological modules will encourage other scientists and engineers to think beyond their specific areas of specialization."

(PhysOrg.com:)

---

13 Apr 09 - 01:32 AM (#2609987)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Evolution at the Vatican
"Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories," held in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University (above), March 3-7, 2009.

In the Catholic world, all roads still lead to Rome, particularly when it comes to the vexed relationship between science and faith. In 2003, the Pontifical Council for Culture, with major grant support from the Templeton Foundation, began a project at the Vatican called Science, Theology, and the Ontological Quest (STOQ). As a result, six of the pontifical universities in Rome, where most Cardinals and other Church leaders receive training, have incorporated more science into their curricula and have initiated extensive dialogues on how Catholic theology should approach modern science. Courses have been designed on such topics as evolution, the philosophy of quantum mechanics, technology, and medicine.

The most notable recent instance of these activities was a five-day conference held last month in Rome under the auspices of STOQ and the Pontifical Gregorian University. "Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories" drew some 200 attendees from around the world. Speakers included such prominent figures in the field of evolutionary biology as Francisco Ayala (University of California, Irvine), Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University), Jeffrey Feder (University of Notre Dame), Douglas Futuyma (Stony Brook University), Scott Gilbert (Swarthmore College), Stuart Kauffman (University of Calgary), Lynn Margulis (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), and David Sloan Wilson (Binghamton University), as well as the historians of science Ronald Numbers (University of Wisconsin, Madison) and Philip Sloan (University of Notre Dame), philosopher David Depew (University of Iowa), and the archeologist Colin Renfrew (Cambridge University).
Clockwise from upper left: Francisco Ayala, Stuart Kauffman, Colin Renfrew, and Ronald Numbers.

Gennaro Auletta, a professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the scientific coordinator for STOQ, was pleased by the number of high-ranking Church officials who attended the conference, including Cardinal Levada, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Such interest, Auletta said, is a clear sign of the Church's eagerness to see clergy "play a major role in the context of modern society." As he continued, "The STOQ project is facing what we think is the most relevant challenge the Church has today: continuing to play a guiding role in our society as it is becoming more dependent on scientific developments. This requires the Church to open and pursue a real dialogue with the natural sciences. This does not mean renouncing its own strong and well-grounded philosophical and theological background but, rather, enriching and deepening it thanks to that dialogue."

(Report from the Templeton Foundation)

---

13 Apr 09 - 11:36 AM (#2610193)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

'Girls Gone Wild' ad disrupts religious program

Glitch caused by required test of the Emergency Alert System, says Comcast.

The Associated Press
updated 5:05 p.m. CT, Sat., April 11, 2009

PHILADELPHIA - A Philadelphia cable network's early morning broadcast of a Good Friday service at the Vatican abruptly changed to something wildly different — a 30-second "Girls Gone Wild" ad.

Comcast spokesman Jeff Alexander says the 2 a.m. Friday programming glitch was due to a required test of the Emergency Alert System. He says such tests are usually done in the overnight hours.

The test automatically tunes viewers to a preselected channel that would provide information in the event of an emergency. But during tests, the channel airs regular programming, which in this case included a paid advertisement for the racy videos.

Alexander says the problem affected the network's entire local area, but only one person called to complain.

(In my area, the "preselected station," which also participates in the test, broadcasts a "dead carrier" with only an audio announcement that the test is being conducted. The "test transmission" must appear on all channels. Philadelphia Comcast must lack the technology to do this, so they probably flunked the test - which is of more interest than the "bit of skin" that the one faithful believer may have seen at 02:00 in the morning.)

John

---

13 Apr 09 - 12:44 PM (#2610239)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Proof of massive sea monster


Apr 3 - Just 800 miles (1287 km) from the North Pole, paleontologists believe they have found the fossilized remains of a massive sea monster that lived 150 million years ago.

Predator X -- a new species of a Pliosaur -- is said to have been the most dangerous creature to have lived under water.

The creature was about 50 feet (15 meters) long, weighed approximately 45 tonnes (40,823,000 kg), had a head ten feet (3 meters) long and jaws armed with teeth the size of cucumbers.

Dr. Jorn Hurum, and his team of paleontologists discovered Predator X in northern Norway last October and says the new species of a Pliosaur was more fearsome in power than the land-based Tyrannosaurus Rex.

---

13 Apr 09 - 06:06 PM (#2610479)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Science of Generosity
How do children learn to be generous? Why do some countries have higher rates of philanthropy than others? What effect does faith have on people's charitable giving? These are some of the questions that will be tackled by the Science of Generosity project at the University of Notre Dame, which was announced in January. With a four-year, $5-million grant from the Templeton Foundation, scholars will be studying the "sources, origins, and causes of generosity; the variety of manifestations and expressions of generosity; and the consequences of generosity for both the givers and receivers involved." The grant is the largest ever received by a faculty member in Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters.

The principal investigator on the project will be Christian Smith, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and director of the university's Center for the Study of Religion and Society. "The goal of the project is to mobilize top-quality research across various disciplines on the origins, expressions, and effects of generosity," Smith said, noting that the project defines generosity as the spirit and practice of giving good things to others freely and abundantly. "This includes time, aid, attention, blood, possessions, encouragement, emotional investment, and more. In countless ways, the world wants for significant growth in the virtue of giving."

See this curious RFP.


A

---

13 Apr 09 - 09:46 PM (#2610631)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NEW YORK - Sinners, take heed: There's a product available now in parts of New York that will leave you with that "almost baptized feeling."

It's called SoulWow — with the cleansing power of confession.

In a YouTube parody of the popular ads for ShamWow absorbent towels, a priestly pitchman named Father Vic calls on Roman Catholics in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island to partake. As Father Vic says, "Nothing soothes the soul like a true confession."

The ad campaign was launched before Palm Sunday by the dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre in an effort to increase the number of people who confess during Holy Week.

---

14 Apr 09 - 09:54 AM (#2610929)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...On the same day that the three Pittsburgh cops were murdered, a 34-year-old man in Graham, Wash., James Harrison, shot his five children to death and then killed himself. The children were identified by police as Maxine, 16, Samantha, 14, Jamie, 11, Heather, 8, and James, 7.

Just a day earlier, a man in Binghamton, N.Y., invaded a civic association and shot 17 people, 13 of them fatally, and then killed himself. On April 7, three days after the shootings in Pittsburgh and Graham, Wash., a man with a handgun in Priceville, Ala., murdered his wife, their 16-year-old daughter, his sister, and his sister's 11-year-old son, before killing himself.

More? There's always more. Four police officers in Oakland, Calif. — Dan Sakai, 35, Mark Dunakin, 40, John Hege, 41, and Ervin Romans, 43 — were shot to death last month by a 27-year-old parolee who was then shot to death by the police.

This is the American way. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when the country's attention understandably turned to terrorism, nearly 120,000 Americans have been killed in nonterror homicides, most of them committed with guns. Think about it — 120,000 dead. That's nearly 25 times the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the most part, we pay no attention to this relentless carnage. The idea of doing something meaningful about the insane number of guns in circulation is a nonstarter. So what if eight kids are shot to death every day in America. So what if someone is killed by a gun every 17 minutes.

The goal of the National Rifle Association and a host of so-called conservative lawmakers is to get ever more guns into the hands of ever more people. Texas is one of a number of states considering bills to allow concealed guns on college campuses.

Supporters argue, among other things, that it will enable students and professors to defend themselves against mass murderers, like the deranged gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech two years ago.

They'd like guns to be as ubiquitous as laptops or cellphones. One Texas lawmaker referred to unarmed people on campuses as "sitting ducks."

The police department in Pittsburgh has been convulsed with grief over the loss of the three officers. Hardened detectives walked around with stunned looks on their faces and tears in their eyes.

"They all had families," said Detective Antonio Ciummo, a father of four. "It's hard to describe the kind of pain their families are going through. And the rest of our families. They're upset. They're sad. They're scared. They know it could happen to anyone."

The front page of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review carried a large photo of Officer Mayhle's sad and frightened 6-year-old daughter, Jennifer. She was clutching a rose and a teddy bear in a police officer's uniform. There was also a photo of Officer Kelly's widow, Marena, her eyes looking skyward, as if searching.

Murderous gunfire claims many more victims than those who are actually felled by the bullets. But all the expressions of horror at the violence and pity for the dead and those who loved them ring hollow in a society that is neither mature nor civilized enough to do anything about it. "

---

14 Apr 09 - 07:19 PM (#2611317)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- By controlling the collective spin state of highly mobile electrons in semiconductors, researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have taken a major step forward in the technology of spintronics. At the same time they have discovered a new conservation law, an important advance in fundamental physics.

Details of this interesting story can be found on this page.

---

14 Apr 09 - 07:22 PM (#2611320)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And in other important developments:

We've heard it before: "Imagine yourself passing the exam or scoring a goal and it will happen." We may roll our eyes and think that's easier said than done, but in a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists Christopher Davoli and Richard Abrams from Washington University suggest that the imagination may be more effective than we think in helping us reach our goals.

A group of students searched visual displays for specific letters (which were scattered among other letters serving as distractors) and identified them as quickly as possible by pressing a button. While performing this task, the students were asked to either imagine themselves holding the display monitor with both hands or with their hands behind their backs (it was emphasized that they were not to assume those poses, but just imagine them).

The results showed that simply imagining a posture may have effects that are similar to actually assuming the pose. The participants spent more time searching the display when they imagined themselves holding the monitor, compared to when they imagined themselves with their hands behind their backs. The researchers suggest that the slower rate of searching indicates a more thorough analysis of items closer to the hands. Previous research has shown that we spend more time looking at items close to our hands (items close to us are usually more important than those further away), but this is the first study suggesting that merely imagining something close to our hands will cause us to pay more attention to it.

The researchers suggest these findings indicate that our "peripersonal space" (the space around our body) can be extended into a space where an imagined posture would take us. They note there may be advantages to having this ability, such as determining if an action is realistic (e.g., "Can I reach the top shelf?") and helping us to avoid collisions. The authors conclude that the present study confirms "an idea that has long been espoused by motivational speakers, sports psychologists, and John Lennon alike: The imagination has the extraordinary capacity to shape reality."

---

15 Apr 09 - 07:01 PM (#2612007)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,Donuel

That last one was the foundation to my hypnosis practice.

---

15 Apr 09 - 07:42 PM (#2612039)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- In the near future, a solar power satellite may be supplying electricity to 250,000 homes around Fresno County, California. Unlike ground-based solar arrays, satellites would be unaffected by cloudy weather or night, and could generate power 24 hours a day. If successful and affordable, the project could mark the beginning of space-based solar power in other locations, as well.

Solaren Corp., a solar power start-up, has convinced Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), California's largest utility company, to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity when its system is in place, which is expected to be 2016. According to Solaren, the system could generate 1.2 to 4.8 gigawatts of power at a price comparable to that of other renewable energy sources.
\
In Solaren's proposal, solar power satellites would be positioned in stationary orbit about 22,000 miles above the equator. The satellites - whose arrays of mirrors could be several miles across - would collect the sun's rays on photoelectric cells and convert them into radio waves. The radio waves would then be beamed to a receiving station on the ground, where they would be converted into electricity and delivered to PG&E's power grid. Because the radio beam is spread out over a wide area, it would not be dangerous to people, airplanes, or wildlife.

The plan requires a large area of land to host the ground receiving station's antenna array, and several square miles of scrubland in western Fresno County could provide an ideal location. In addition to being sparsely populated, the region is also near transmission lines and a load center. While many of today's land-based solar stations are located far out in the desert, a station closer to customers could offer greater convenience and economic advantages....(physorg)

---

15 Apr 09 - 07:54 PM (#2612044)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

This is something that any LSD-head in the Sixties knew intuitively: as above, so velow.

"PhysOrg.com) -- A Duke University professor and his graduate student have discovered a universal principle that unites the curious interplay of light and shadow on the surface of your morning coffee with the way gravity magnifies and distorts light from distant galaxies.

They think scientists will be able to use violations of this principle to map unseen clumps of dark matter in the universe.

Light rays naturally reflect off a curve like the inside surface of a coffee cup in a curving, ivy leaf pattern that comes to a point in the center and is brightest along its edge.
Mathematicians and physicists call that shape a "cusp curve," and they call the bright edge a "caustic," based on an alternative dictionary definition meaning "burning bright," explains Arlie Petters, a Duke professor of mathematics, physics and business administration. "It happens because a lot of light rays can pile up along curves."
Drawn by the mathematically-inclined artist Leonardo da Vinci in the early 16th century, caustics can be seen elsewhere in everyday life, including sunlight reflecting across a swimming pool's surface and choppy wave-light patterns reflecting off a boat hull.
Caustics also show up in gravitational lensing, a phenomenon caused by galaxies so massive that their gravity bends and distorts light from more distant galaxies. "It turns out that their gravity is so powerful that some light rays are also going to pile up along curves," said Petters, a gravitational lensing expert.

"Mother Nature has to be creating these things," Petters said. "It's amazing how what we can see in a coffee cup extends into a mathematical theorem with effects in the cosmos."
From the vantage point of Earth, the entire cosmos looks like a vast interplay of gravity and light that can extend far back into spacetime. "As with any illumination pattern, some areas will be brighter than others," Petters said. "And the brightest parts will be along these caustic curves.""

---

15 Apr 09 - 10:30 PM (#2612147)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

THIS is a tale of two spacecraft. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972; Pioneer 11 a year later. By now both craft should be drifting off into deep space with no one watching. However, their trajectories have proved far too fascinating to ignore.

That's because something has been pulling - or pushing - on them, causing them to speed up. The resulting acceleration is tiny, less than a nanometre per second per second. That's equivalent to just one ten-billionth of the gravity at Earth's surface, but it is enough to have shifted Pioneer 10 some 400,000 kilometres off track. NASA lost touch with Pioneer 11 in 1995, but up to that point it was experiencing exactly the same deviation as its sister probe. So what is causing it?

Nobody knows. Some possible explanations have already been ruled out, including software errors, the solar wind or a fuel leak. If the cause is some gravitational effect, it is not one we know anything about. In fact, physicists are so completely at a loss that some have resorted to linking this mystery with other inexplicable phenomena. (New Scientist)

---

16 Apr 09 - 01:15 AM (#2612195)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The current hpothesis regarding the acceleration of the spacecraft is that now that they are outside the heliosphere, the minute effects of dark energy's subtle antigravitational effect can now be seen.

Its like inside an aquarium the breeze of air in the room can not be felt but once outside, it can be.

IT may also be the effect of spacial expansion that was once called the great attractor 20 years ago when it was nociticed that galaxies in our group as well as the great Megallanic clould are all being pulled in the same direction.

---

18 Apr 09 - 11:53 AM (#2613833)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In Baghdad:

" At the Ahalan Wasahalan Club on Al Nidhal Street one recent night, the owner, Tiba Jamal, was holding court, as she usually does, on the dais at the front of a room with a mostly empty dance floor and lots of tables.

Ms. Jamal calls herself the Sheikha — a confection she uses to mean female sheik, which does not actually exist in Arab culture. She dresses in a head-to-toe, skin-tight black chador, and she is adorned with several pounds of solid gold bracelets, pendants, necklaces, earrings and rings, her response to the financial crisis.

The female workers in the nightclub wore rather less clothing, but nothing that would be considered risqué on a street in Europe — in August. At one point in the evening they outnumbered the men, as they sat in a big group until being summoned to one of the men's tables.

"It's nice to see people having fun again," Ms. Jamal said.

One regular customer said, "You can have any of those girls to spend the night with you later, only $100." First, though, patrons are expected to spend a few hours buying $20 beers or even more costly whiskey.

A young woman who said she was 28 but looked 18 sat smoking, and downing soft drinks while her "date" drank Scotch. A university student, she would give her name only as Baida, but she was frank about her nighttime profession. Had something happened to force her into this? "No," she said. "I go out with men so I can get money." To support her family? She seemed stunned by the question. "No, for myself."

One police detective said he would not dream of enforcing the law against prostitutes. "They're the best sources we have," said the detective, whose name is being withheld for his safety. "They know everything about JAM and Al Qaeda members," he said, using the acronym for Jaish al-Mahdi or Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia.

The detective added that the only problem his men had was that neighbors got the wrong idea when detectives visited the houses where prostitutes were known to live. They really do just want to talk, he said.

"If I had my way, I'd destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more," the detective said. "At least they're not sectarian.""... NYT

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19 Apr 09 - 11:31 AM (#2614389)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The ancient Persians developed a gruesome practice called scaphism, which involved force-feeding a person milk and honey, lashing him to a boat or hollow tree trunk, and then allowing flies to infest the victim's anus and increasingly gangrenous flesh. Siberian tribes simply tied a naked prisoner to a tree and allowed mosquitoes and other biting flies to deliver as many as 9,000 bites per minute — a rate sufficient to drain a person's blood by half in about two hours. And the stories of Apaches staking captives on anthills to ensure lingering and painful deaths are not merely the stuff of Hollywood westerns.

The epitome of insectan torture was developed by a 19th-century emir of Bukhara, in present-day Uzbekistan. He threw political enemies into a bug pit, a deep hole covered with an iron grille and stocked with sheep ticks and assassin bugs. The bite of the latter has been compared to being pierced with a hot needle, and the injected saliva digested the victims' tissues until, in the words of the emir's jailer, "masses of their flesh had been gnawed off their bones." (NYT)

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19 Apr 09 - 05:40 PM (#2614633)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

eading automotive and energy companies have reached agreement on a common "plug" to recharge electric cars, a spokeswoman for German energy company RWE said Sunday.
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The three-point, 400-volt plug, which will allow electric cars to be recharged anywhere in a matter of minutes, is set to be unveiled Monday at the world's biggest industrial technology fair in Hanover, northern Germany.
"A car must be able to be recharged in Italy in exactly the same way as in Denmark, Germany or France," an RWE spokeswoman, Caroline Reichert, was quoted as saying in an edition of Die Welt to appear Monday.
She gave no timeframe for the introduction of the plug, saying that talks between the companies were ongoing.
The agreement on a common standard for the plug comprises several major automakers, including Volkswagen, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Fiat, Toyota and Mitsubishi.
Energy firms signed up to the accord include Eon, Vattenfall, EDF, Npower, Endesa and Enel.
Berlin hopes that one million electric cars will be on the road by 2020. RWE and Daimler launched a pilot project in Berlin in September.
The development of a common plug is a major step towards the mass production of electric cars, Reichert told Die Welt.

---

19 Apr 09 - 05:50 PM (#2614637)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Is technology undermining the evolutionary mandate? Hmmmmm:

"A New York woman has won a race-against-the-clock legal bid to harvest her dead fiance's sperm.

Gisela Marrero told a Bronx court her partner had spoken about having another child with her only the day before his death from a suspected heart attack.
She had only 36 hours to collect 31-year-old Johnny Quintana's semen before it would have become unusable.

As the couple were unmarried she needed a court order, which was granted just four hours before the deadline.
After the Bronx State Supreme Court approved her request, sperm bank employees raced to a local medical centre, where the body of the dead mechanic, who died on Thursday, was stored.

'Last wish'

Ms Marrero, who has a two-year-old son by Mr Quintana, said: "The day before he passed away, we talked about planning for our future, buying an apartment and having another child," reported the New York Daily News.

"This was his wish. It's the last thing I can do for him."

There were emotional scenes in the court as Ms Marrero and her dead fiance's family celebrated Friday afternoon's decision.

Earlier this month, a mother in Texas won a legal bid to have her dead son's sperm harvested after he died in a fight outside a bar, so she could have the option of carrying out his wish to have children."

---

20 Apr 09 - 05:32 PM (#2615137)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas

Lake Webster

The Associated Press
updated 4:02 p.m. CT, Mon., April 20, 2009
WEBSTER, Mass

Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg in Webster (Massachusetts) has one of the world's longest place names. It's been spelled many different ways over the years. Some locals have given up and simply call it Lake Webster.

But after researching historical spelling combinations, the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester said local Chamber of Commerce officials agreed that some signs were wrong. There was an "o" at letter 20 where a "u" should have been, and an "h" at letter 38 where an "n" should go.

Officials have agreed to correct spelling errors in road signs pointing to ... (the lake).

There are many stories and legends about the origin of the Indian name. One popular myth — later debunked — holds that the name translates roughly to 'You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle.'

%@!%@*!! Pedants!

John

---

21 Apr 09 - 03:52 PM (#2615810)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

John,
My mother in law is from there so my wife knows the indian name well enough to show off from time to time for the kids.

---

21 Apr 09 - 08:14 PM (#2616029)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

After more than four years of observations using the most successful low-mass-exoplanet hunter in the world, the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6m ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile, astronomers have discovered in this system the lightest exoplanet found so far: Gliese 581-e (foreground) is only about twice the mass of our Earth.

The Gliese 581 planetary system now has four known planets, with masses of about 1.9 (planet e, left in the foreground), 16 (planet b, nearest to the star), 5 (planet c, center), and 7 Earth-masses (planet d, with the bluish color). The planet furthest out, Gliese 581 d, orbits its host star in 66.8 days, while Gliese 581 e completes its orbit in 3.15 days. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

(PhysOrg.com) -- Exoplanet researcher Michel Mayor announces the discovery of the lightest exoplanet found so far. The planet, "e," in the system Gliese 581, is only about twice the mass of our Earth. The team also refined the orbit of the planet Gliese 581-d, first discovered in 2007, placing it well within the habitable zone, where liquid water oceans could exist. These amazing discoveries are the outcome of observations using the HARPS spectrograph attached to the 3.6m ESO telescope at La Silla, Chile.

---

21 Apr 09 - 08:18 PM (#2616033)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Thinking your memory will get worse as you get older may actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that senior citizens who think older people should perform poorly on tests of memory actually score much worse than seniors who do not buy in to negative stereotypes about aging and memory loss.

In a study published earlier this month, psychology professor Dr. Tom Hess and a team of researchers from NC State show that older adults' ability to remember suffers when negative stereotypes are "activated" in a given situation. "For example, older adults will perform more poorly on a memory test if they are told that older folks do poorly on that particular type of memory test," Hess says. Memory also suffers if senior citizens believe they are being "stigmatized," meaning that others are looking down on them because of their age.

"Such situations may be a part of older adults' everyday experience," Hess says, "such as being concerned about what others think of them at work having a negative effect on their performance - and thus potentially reinforcing the negative stereotypes." However, Hess adds, "The positive flip side of this is that those who do not feel stigmatized, or those in situations where more positive views of aging are activated, exhibit significantly higher levels of memory performance." In other words, if you are confident that aging will not ravage your memory, you are more likely to perform well on memory-related tasks.

The study also found a couple of factors that influenced the extent to which negative stereotypes influence older adults. For example, the researchers found that adults between the ages of 60 and 70 suffered more when these negative stereotypes were activated than seniors who were between the ages of 71 and 82. However, the 71-82 age group performed worse when they felt stigmatized.

Finally, the study found that negative effects were strongest for those older adults with the highest levels of education. "We interpret this as being consistent with the idea that those who value their ability to remember things most are the most likely to be sensitive to the negative implications of stereotypes, and thus are most likely to exhibit the problems associated with the stereotype." "The take-home message," Hess says, "is that social factors may have a negative effect on older adults' memory performance." (PhysOrg.com)

---

22 Apr 09 - 08:52 PM (#2616662)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A sign on a building at Durham University in the UK says "No smoking outside these doors". Martin Dehnel observes that since smoking is banned inside, too, the university is claiming jurisdiction over the universe...

---

23 Apr 09 - 04:51 PM (#2617233)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The bovine genome for one particular cow has now ben completely mapped. A large step for mankind a small step for bovinity.

---

23 Apr 09 - 05:33 PM (#2617264)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Interesting graphs comparing China to USA
click here


economy


military

people

---

23 Apr 09 - 08:09 PM (#2617371)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at McGill University have found for the first time that novelty seeking personality types enjoy a stronger "placebo response," or pain relief caused by the administration of a sham treatment, than people with reserved personalities. The study hypothesizes that the anticipation of pain relief, in this case triggered by the administration of a placebo, is a special case of reward anticipation. Since dopamine is a key neurotransmitter in reward processing, personality traits linked to dopamine, such as novelty seeking, were studied.

Their study is published in the current issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
Petra Schweinhardt, a researcher at the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain, McGill Faculty of Dentistry, and Faculty of Medicine, (Neurology and Neurosurgery), and colleagues tested a group of 22 healthy males, injecting them with a pain-inducing saline solution into their left and right legs for twenty minutes.

Prior to testing, participants were told that the research team was testing an experimental analgesic cream, which was really just skin lotion. The researchers then told participants that they would test one leg with the treatment and one leg with a non-medicated lotion.
The researchers asked the participants to rate their pain across both trials, and the difference amounted to the placebo response. Not everyone reported pain relief from the placebo, but those who did scored higher on tests that gauged novelty-seeking personalities.

The other component of the research looked at the ventral striatum, an important brain region for the processing of reward. An MRI was taken of all subjects and a three-way relationship was found between the placebo response, the personality traits and the amounts of gray matter in this particular brain region.

"Our study links clearly these personality traits with the placebo analgesic effect. It will potentially help us one day to exploit the placebo effect clinically - more than we are doing today," says Schweinhardt. "The more knowledge we have about the placebo effect, the more it will be accepted - this is important, because we know that it is a true physiological phenomenon. My aim is to raise the acceptance of the placebo effect as a therapeutic tool".

---

Ain't that a piece of work, though? Here you take the results of the test and you place them into a highly prejudicial framework and they come out looking a bit wonky!!

Here's another way of writing the same results:

"Scientists have discovered that individuals who were able to anticipate the future better were also more able to impose healing on their own bodies using mental suggestion alone, while those who thought mostly about the past, or at best the present, were more likely not to be healed by mental abilities."

Anyway, it is certainly an interesting experiment no matter how oddly-worded the results were.


A

---

24 Apr 09 - 08:23 PM (#2618219)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scripps Institution of Oceanography / University of California, San Diego
An international collaborative of scientists led by Peter Niiler, a physical oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, and Nikolai Maximenko, a researcher at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii, has detected the presence of crisscrossing patterns of currents running throughout the world's oceans. The new data could help scientists significantly improve high-resolution models that help them understand trends in climate and marine ecosystems.

The basic dimensions of these steady patterns called striations have slowly been revealed over the course of several research papers by Niiler, Maximenko and colleagues. An analysis by Maximenko, Niiler and colleagues appearing today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters has produced the clearest representation of these striated patterns in the eastern Pacific Ocean to date and revealed that these complex patterns of currents extend from the surface to at least depths of 700 meters (2,300 feet). The discovery of similarly detailed patterns around the world is expected to emerge from future research.


Scripps physical oceanographer Peter Niiler
Niiler credits the long-term and comprehensive ocean current measurements made over more than 20 years by the Global Drifter Program, now a network of more than 1,300 drifting buoys designed by him and administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for detecting these new current patterns on a global basis. Niiler added that the foresight of the University of California to provide long-term support to scientists was crucial to the discovery.

"I'm most grateful to the University of California for helping to support the invention and the 20-year maintenance of a comprehensive program of ocean circulation measurements," he said. "Scripps Institution of Oceanography is unique because of its commitment to long-term observations of the climate. Instrumental measurements of the ocean are fundamental to the definition of the state of the climate today and improvement of its prediction into the future."

In portions of the Southern Ocean, these striations-also known as ocean fronts-produce alternating eastward and westward accelerations of circulation and portions of them nearly circumnavigate Antarctica. These striations also delineate the ocean regions where uptake of carbon dioxide is greatest. In the Atlantic Ocean, these flows bear a strong association to the Azores Current along which water flowing south from the North Atlantic circulation is being subducted. The spatial high-resolution view of the linkage between the striations and the larger scale patterns of currents could improve predictions of ocean temperatures and hurricane paths.

In addition, the striations are connected to important ecosystems like the California and Peru-Chile current systems. Off California, the striations are linked to the steady east-west displacements, or meanders, of the California Current, a major flow that runs from the border of Washington and Oregon to the southern tip of Baja California. The striations run nearly perpendicular to the California Current and continue southwestward to the Hawaiian Islands. (Scripps newsletter. Apologies for late entry).

---

27 Apr 09 - 10:58 AM (#2619606)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The southern Asian continent was an area rich in developed civilizations thousands of years ago, which spoke numerous languages and dialects and left behind impressive monuments to attest for their worth. At this point, however, the archaeological and linguistic remains are so scarce, that experts can't even figure out if they are dealing with a language or with a pretty picture. Such a circumstance applies to a script that belonged to an Indus Valley civilization, which was used between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C.

Ever since it was first discovered, linguists and archaeologists have been having a hard time seeing past the seemingly simple composition of the drawings. In addition, discussions over the origins and the evolution of the language, coupled with the lack of archaeological evidence, means that the experts have remained divided as regards the issue until the present day. Their "salvation" has come from an Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine, which has managed to break the code that has been underlying the symbols found on most artifacts. ...
From this page

---

THere is something quite poignant about an artificial intelligence device cracking thecode of a lost human language, is there not?

---

27 Apr 09 - 12:19 PM (#2619673)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I noticed that people who made the best hypnotic subjects indeed had certain traits in common.



***********************************
As science research requests pour in to apply for stimulous money there are political pit falls that are being avoided. Since the religious right are constantly looking for words to twist the Obama adminstration with, one can't be too careful.
For example when one scientist wanted to know if women who have drunk alcohol on the very day of conception, would there be any health hazards to the fetus... but the study would have to be done with primates. When giving a title to this experimental research one can't be too litteral. "Effects on Babies from Drunk Monkey Sex"
was dropped in lieu of "Alcohol related health abberations on primate blastospores"

---

27 Apr 09 - 01:46 PM (#2619761)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Beneath an Antarctic glacier in a cold, airless pool that never sees the sun seems like an unusual place to search for life.

But under the Taylor Glacier on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, near a place called Blood Falls, scientists have discovered a time capsule of bacterial activity.

At chilling temperatures, with no oxygen or sunlight, these newly found microbes have survived for the past 1.5 million years using an "iron-breathing" technique, which may show how life could exist on other planets.

For years the reddish waterfall-like feature on the side of Taylor Glacier captured the attention of explorers and scientists. Earlier research indicates the color of Blood Falls is due to oxidized iron, but how the iron got to the surface of the glacier remained a mystery.

"When I saw iron, I thought, 'Wow -- that's an energy source for microbes. There has got to be microbes associated with that,' " said Jill Mikucki, lead author of a study about the strange bacteria, published this week in the journal Science. Video Watch Mikucki talk about the discovery »

Scientists found these isolated microorganisms use iron leached from the glacial bedrock in a series of energy-producing metabolic reactions. With the help of sulfate, the iron is transformed and eventually deposited on the surface of the glacier. Air oxidizes the iron, giving Blood Falls its redish hue.

"We don't fully understand the extremities of life: What cuts off life? What are the upper and lower temperatures limits? What are the parameters that life can handle?" said Mikucki, a geomicrobiologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

"Microbes really defy those limits and can get into the extreme environments and tell us a little bit about the natural history of our earth." (CNN)

---

27 Apr 09 - 08:08 PM (#2620068)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

the missing sun activity

The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time it's gone on far longer than anyone expected – and there is no sign of the Sun waking up. "This is the lowest we've ever seen. We thought we'd be out of it by now, but we're not," says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. And it's not just the sunspots that are causing concern. There is also the so-called solar wind – streams of particles the Sun pours out – that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun's magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree. "This is the quietest Sun we've seen in almost a century," says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming.

---

28 Apr 09 - 05:30 PM (#2620747)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The last time a human ate Mastadon meat was


in 1926.

Amazingly some explorers in the Artic found a Mastadon that had emerged from the ice. They cooked and ate the meat and took pictures. When one man was later asked what it talted like he said it tasted like half rotted meat but being that it had been frozen for tens of thousands of years it was still decidedly edible.

---

30 Apr 09 - 10:15 AM (#2621911)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"A fossilized skeleton of what researchers are calling a walking seal has been uncovered in the Canadian Arctic. The remains of this previously unknown mammal could shed light on the evolution of pinnipeds, the group that includes seals, sea lions and walruses, researchers report in the April 23 Nature.

The animal, named Puijila darwini, had a long tail and an otterlike body with webbed feet and legs like a terrestrial animal, the researchers report. But P. darwini also had a pinniped-like skull.

"We realized there was no way this was an otter," says study coauthor Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. The walking seal probably lived about 20 million years ago and was adept at moving both on land and in water, the team reports.


LResearchers describe Puijila darwini (illustration shown) as a walking seal, with the legs of a terrestrial animal, a seal-like skull and webbed feet. Illustrations by Stefan Thompson

Scientists had theorized that pinnipeds evolved from land-dwelling ancestors but had little fossil evidence to support that claim. The new finding could be the missing link in pinniped evolution, the researchers report.

"This is a fantastic discovery," comments evolutionary biologist Annalisa Berta of San Diego State University.

The finding may also indicate that the Arctic was a geographic center for pinniped evolution, the researchers speculate." LAT

---

30 Apr 09 - 05:34 PM (#2622203)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer

I thought this bit about the "walking seal" discovery was fun:

(from ScienceNow)

"It took a balky, all-terrain vehicle with a broken gas gauge to help reveal the missing piece. In 2007, vertebrate paleontologist Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and her colleagues were returning to their camp from a long day of fieldwork in the Canadian Arctic when they ran out of fuel. While Rybczynski left to get more gas, her graduate student, who was supposed to make sure that the vehicle was refueled, scuffed the ground in irritation and uncovered part of a shin bone. By the time Rybczynski returned, her colleagues' hands were filled with little black bones, and they were doing what Rybczynski refers to as "the fossil dance." Within a few days, the team had recovered most of the skeleton."

---

01 May 09 - 10:10 AM (#2622584)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Seals are so much like aquatic dogs its amazing. They tag along with humans just like a dog, except a dog would find it difficult to sit on your kayak. I wonder if thier is an evolutionary link.

---

06 May 09 - 04:48 PM (#2625767)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Hobbits 'are a separate species'

Scientists have found more evidence that the Indonesian "Hobbit" skeletons belong to a new species of human - and not modern pygmies.

The 3ft (one metre) tall, 30kg (65lbs) humans roamed the Indonesian island of Flores, perhaps up to 8,000 years ago.

Since the discovery, researchers have argued vehemently as to the identity of these diminutive people.

Two papers in the journal Nature now support the idea they were an entirely new species of human.

The team, which discovered the tiny remains in Liang Bua cave on Flores, contends that the population belongs to the species Homo floresiensis - separate from our own grouping Homo sapiens .

They argue that the "Hobbits" are descended from a prehistoric species of human - perhaps Homo erectus - which reached island South-East Asia more than a million years ago.

Over many years, their bodies most likely evolved to be smaller in size, through a natural selection process called island dwarfing, claim the discoverers, and many other scientists.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8036396.stm

---

07 May 09 - 10:32 AM (#2626244)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Stilly River Sage

Keeping Amos' thread afloat (so to speak). :)

---

07 May 09 - 12:53 PM (#2626380)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: heric

A thing about the hobbit is - did they get to the island (which apparently has always required water transportation) more than a million years ago as homo erectus, or did they arrive much later as homo sapiens (~100,000 years ago)?

---

07 May 09 - 01:09 PM (#2626405)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Stilly River Sage

800!

---

11 May 09 - 08:19 AM (#2628923)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

African tribe populated rest of the world
The entire human race outside Africa owes its existence to the survival of a single tribe of around 200 people who crossed the Red Sea 70,000 years ago, scientists have discovered.


By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 9:10AM BST 09 May 2009

Research by geneticists and archaeologists has allowed them to trace the origins of modern homo sapiens back to a single group of people who managed to cross from the Horn of Africa and into Arabia. From there they went on to colonise the rest of the world.

Genetic analysis of modern day human populations in Europe, Asia, Australia, North America and South America have revealed that they are all descended from these common ancestors.

It is thought that changes in the climate between 90,000 and 70,000 years ago caused sea levels to drop dramatically and allowed the crossing of the Red Sea to take place.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5299351/African-tribe-populated-rest-of-the-world.html

---

11 May 09 - 09:43 AM (#2628975)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Sage, ahem you just wanted to snag 800, so to speak ;^/

---

11 May 09 - 09:52 AM (#2628978)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The Hobbit's foot is more Chimpanzee like than human. Fair jumpers and good climbers but poor runners. They lacked the locking bone underneath for efficient walking and were decidedly more flat footed.

The tribal legends rearding "Hobbits" among the current indiginous people speak of the tiny people stealing everything from food to young children.

---

12 May 09 - 06:56 PM (#2630347)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Push-ups, crunches, gyms, personal trainers -- people have many strategies for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But what can one do to build a bigger brain?
Meditate.

That's the finding from a group of researchers at UCLA who used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate. In a study published in the journal NeuroImage and currently available online (by subscription), the researchers report that certain regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger than in a similar control group.

Specifically, meditators showed significantly larger volumes of the hippocampus and areas within the orbito-frontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus — all regions known for regulating emotions.

"We know that people who consistently meditate have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behavior," said Eileen Luders, lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. "The observed differences in brain anatomy might give us a clue why meditators have these exceptional abilities."

Research has confirmed the beneficial aspects of meditation. In addition to having better focus and control over their emotions, many people who meditate regularly have reduced levels of stress and bolstered immune systems. But less is known about the link between meditation and brain structure.

In the study, Luders and her colleagues examined 44 people — 22 control subjects and 22 who had practiced various forms of meditation, including Zazen, Samatha and Vipassana, among others. The amount of time they had practiced ranged from five to 46 years, with an average of 24 years.

More than half of all the meditators said that deep concentration was an essential part of their practice, and most meditated between 10 and 90 minutes every day.
The researchers used a high-resolution, three-dimensional form of MRI and two different approaches to measure differences in brain structure. One approach automatically divides the brain into several regions of interest, allowing researchers to compare the size of certain brain structures. The other segments the brain into different tissue types, allowing researchers to compare the amount of gray matter within specific regions of the brain.   (PhysOrg)

---

13 May 09 - 08:03 PM (#2631227)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer

No Laughing Matter
(from Science magazine 8 May 2009, Vol 324, Issue 5928, "Random Samples" section)

In Central Europe, homeland of psychoanalysis, psychologists have been exploring a hitherto uncodified facet of the human personality: gelotophobia, the fear of being laughed at.

In the latest of a spate of papers on the condition, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, Ilona Papousek of the University of Graz, Austria, and colleagues report that people with gelotophobia (from gelos, Greek for laughter) have weak control over their emotions and are hypersensitive to others' negative moods.

Co-author Willibald Ruch of the University of Zurich in Switzerland says researchers have developed a 15-item scale that can distinguish the problem from social phobias or "shame-based" neuroticism. For example, he says, gelotophobes "distrust smiling faces" and "are not able to discriminate between friendly and hostile laughter" or between teasing and ridicule. That can lead to serious consequences, says Ruch, citing two recent school shootings in Germany in which the perpetrators reportedly had a horror of being mocked. About 10% of the population has some degree of gelotophobia, he says.

In tests of the scale in 74 countries, Scandinavians ranked among the least gelotophobia-prone groups, whereas people in Muslim countries and in Africa tended to score high. The highest scores in Europe were from the United Kingdom—suggesting, Ruch says, that "maybe a well-developed sense of humor does not help [where] mock[ery] and ridicule are cultivated too."

---

13 May 09 - 08:43 PM (#2631247)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers in condensed matter physics at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago have created an experimental and computer model to study how jamming, the physical process in which collections of particles are crammed together to behave as solids, might affect the behavior of systems in which thermal motion is important, such as molecules in a glass.

The study presents the first experimental evidence of a vestige of the zero temperature jamming transition — the density at which large, loose objects such as gas bubbles in liquid, grains of sand or cars become rigid solids such as foam, sand dunes or traffic jams — in a system of small particles where thermal energy is important. This demonstrates that despite the fact that the size of constituent particles differ by many orders of magnitude, molecules in a glass retain an echo of the phenomenon of how boulders coming to rest to form a solid rock pile.

"We have been testing the speculation that jamming has a common origin in these different systems," Andrea Liu, an author of the study and professor in the Department of Physics at Penn, said.

The paper appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.

The idea of jamming is that slow relaxations in many different systems, ranging from glass-forming liquids to suspensions of particles such as bits of ice in a milkshake to foams and granular materials, can be viewed in a common framework. For example, one can define jamming to occur when a system develops a yield stress or extremely long stress relaxation time in a disordered state. Foams and granular materials flow when a large shear stress is applied but jam when the shear stress is lowered below the yield stress. But systems of large particles such as foams and granular materials can be considered zero-temperature systems because the energy associated with a typical temperature, such as room temperature, is negligible compared to the energy required to shift the particles.

As a result, it is not known whether the jamming of such systems is related to the jamming of systems of small particles, such as molecular liquids, which jam as temperature is lowered through the glass transition.

From PhysOrg

http://www.physorg.com/news161439954.html

---

13 May 09 - 11:30 PM (#2631322)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Late one night in a small Alabama cemetery, Vance Vanders had a run-in with the local witch doctor, who wafted a bottle of unpleasant-smelling liquid in front of his face, and told him he was about to die and that no one could save him.

Back home, Vanders took to his bed and began to deteriorate. Some weeks later, emaciated and near death, he was admitted to the local hospital, where doctors were unable to find a cause for his symptoms or slow his decline. Only then did his wife tell one of the doctors, Drayton Doherty, of the hex.

Doherty thought long and hard. The next morning, he called Vanders's family to his bedside. He told them that the previous night he had lured the witch doctor back to the cemetery, where he had choked him against a tree until he explained how the curse worked. The medicine man had, he said, rubbed lizard eggs into Vanders's stomach, which had hatched inside his body. One reptile remained, which was eating Vanders from the inside out.

Doherty then summoned a nurse who had, by prior arrangement, filled a large syringe with a powerful emetic. With great ceremony, he inspected the instrument and injected its contents into Vanders' arm. A few minutes later, Vanders began to gag and vomit uncontrollably. In the midst of it all, unnoticed by everyone in the room, Doherty produced his pièce de résistance - a green lizard he had stashed in his black bag. "Look what has come out of you Vance," he cried. "The voodoo curse is lifted."

Vanders did a double take, lurched backwards to the head of the bed, then drifted into a deep sleep. When he woke next day he was alert and ravenous. He quickly regained his strength and was discharged a week later.

The facts of this case from 80 years ago were corroborated by four medical professionals. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that Vanders survived. There are numerous documented instances from many parts of the globe of people dying after being cursed.

With no medical records and no autopsy results, there's no way to be sure exactly how these people met their end. The common thread in these cases, however, is that a respected figure puts a curse on someone, perhaps by chanting or pointing a bone at them. Soon afterwards, the victim dies, apparently of natural causes.

Voodoo nouveau
You might think this sort of thing is increasingly rare, and limited to remote tribes. But according to Clifton Meador, a doctor at Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, who has documented cases like Vanders, the curse has taken on a new form.

Take Sam Shoeman, who was diagnosed with end-stage liver cancer in the 1970s and given just months to live. Shoeman duly died in the allotted time frame - yet the autopsy revealed that his doctors had got it wrong. The tumour was tiny and had not spread. "He didn't die from cancer, but from believing he was dying of cancer," says Meador. "If everyone treats you as if you are dying, you buy into it. Everything in your whole being becomes about dying."

He didn't die from cancer but from believing he was dying of cancer
Cases such as Shoeman's may be extreme examples of a far more widespread phenomenon. Many patients who suffer harmful side effects, for instance, may do so only because they have been told to expect them. What's more, people who believe they have a high risk of certain diseases are more likely to get them than people with the same risk factors who believe they have a low risk. It seems modern witch doctors wear white coats and carry stethoscopes.

The idea that believing you are ill can make you ill may seem far-fetched, yet rigorous trials have established beyond doubt that the converse is true - that the power of suggestion can improve health. This is the well-known placebo effect. Placebos cannot produce miracles, but they do produce measurable physical effects.

The placebo effect has an evil twin: the nocebo effect, in which dummy pills and negative expectations can produce harmful effects. The term "nocebo", which means "I will harm", was not coined until the 1960s, and the phenomenon has been far less studied than the placebo effect. It's not easy, after all, to get ethical approval for studies designed to make people feel worse.

What we do know suggests the impact of nocebo is far-reaching. "Voodoo death, if it exists, may represent an extreme form of the nocebo phenomenon," says anthropologist Robert Hahn of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, who has studied the nocebo effect...


(New Scientist)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.100-the-science-of-voodoo-when-mind-attacks-body.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20227081.100

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14 May 09 - 10:23 AM (#2631648)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The decision on which names to accept and which to reject is generally left to the local registrar, but that decision can be contested in court. And sometimes the court's ruling can seem rather arbitrary. While the names Stompie, Woodstock and Grammophon have been rejected by German courts in the past, the similarly creative parents of Speedy, Lafayette and Jazz were granted their name of choice.

In Sweden, a couple fighting to name their son Q – not, it seems, in homage to James Bond's exasperated gadget purveyor – recently appealed to the country's supreme court to approve their choice. According to The Telegraph:

Q's parents are hoping that they can benefit from a reform to the legislation last year, allowing parents to use previously banned names.

The reforms followed a political row over arbitrary decisions by the authorities.

In one 2007 case parents were forbidden to name their daughter Metallica after the heavy metal rock band while another couple were allowed to name their son Google, after the internet search engine.

In a 1996 protest at the law a couple tried and failed to call their son "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116" – pronounced Albin.

(In 2008, a judge in New Zealand ordered that a nine-year-old girl be made a ward of court so that the name bestowed upon her by her parents – Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii – could be changed.)

NYT

---

14 May 09 - 02:56 PM (#2631901)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A British Scientist has apparently broken the code on how pre-life could have migrated into the key biological molecules of RNA. Here's a graphic of his breakthrough which supports the notion of pre-biotic life forming into the key ingredients of life.


A

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14 May 09 - 03:45 PM (#2631935)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Boy air-freights himself home in a box from New Jersey to Dallas, and lives to be busted for it...

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15 May 09 - 12:19 PM (#2632622)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A robot has shown it can find its way across town by asking people for directions. It interprets armwaving, semantics, etc. to build a map. It had to ask 35 times, though, so men are still safe... :D



A

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19 May 09 - 02:16 PM (#2635890)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"A discovery of a 47 million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced Tuesday at a press conference in New York City.

Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution.

It shows characteristics from the very primitive non-human evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but is more related to the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes and humans), said Norwegian paleontologist Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

The fossil, called Darwinius masillae and said to be a female, provides the most complete understanding of the paleobiology of any Eocene primate so far discovered, Hurum said. An analysis of the fossil mammal is detailed Tuesday in the journal PLoS ONE.

"This is the first link to all humans ... truly a fossil that links world heritage," Hurum said. "

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19 May 09 - 03:37 PM (#2635957)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

A 35,000 year old ivory statuette of a rotund female human was found in six pieces. It looks like a typical Pre Columbian fertility symbol.

Steven Colbert called it ancient porn.

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20 May 09 - 08:17 PM (#2637098)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg reports:


This image shows the design of a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics." (Purdue University)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have created a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in "transformation optics."


Whereas previous cloaking designs have used exotic "metamaterials," which require complex nanofabrication, the new design is a far simpler device based on a "tapered optical waveguide," said Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue University's Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Waveguides represent established technology - including fiber optics - used in communications and other commercial applications.

The research team used their specially tapered waveguide to cloak an area 100 times larger than the wavelengths of light shined by a laser into the device, an unprecedented achievement. Previous experiments with metamaterials have been limited to cloaking regions only a few times larger than the wavelengths of visible light.

Because the new method enabled the researchers to dramatically increase the cloaked area, the technology offers hope of cloaking larger objects, Shalaev said.

Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing May 29 in the journal Physical Review Letters. The paper was written by Igor I. Smolyaninov, a principal electronic engineer at BAE Systems in Washington, D.C.; Vera N. Smolyaninova, an assistant professor of physics at Towson University in Maryland; Alexander Kildishev, a principal research scientist at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center; and Shalaev.

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22 May 09 - 03:41 PM (#2638739)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sequim woman first known assisted-suicide patient in state

By VANESSA HO
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

A 66-year-old Sequim woman diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer became the first known person to use the state's assisted-suicide law Thursday night, after ingesting a lethal dose of medication with her family, dog, and physician by her bedside, a patient-advocacy group said Friday.

"The pain became unbearable, and it was only going to get worse," said the woman, Linda Fleming, before she died, according to a statement from the group, Compassion & Choices of Washington.

"I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death."

Fleming, who had worked with homeless and mentally ill people, was diagnosed with the advanced cancer roughly a month ago. Soon after, she made her first of three required requests to receive medication under the Death with Dignity Act, said her friend, Virginia Peterhansen.

Fleming made her final request -- a written one witnessed by two people -- on May 15, six days before she died, Peterhansen said. "I know she was not scared about making this choice, but scared about what other people might do," said Peterhansen, explaining that her friend had been worried about people criticizing her.

Passed last November by nearly 60 percent of voters, the law allows doctors to give lethal medication to terminally ill patients they can ingest themselves. Patients receiving the medication must be terminally ill with six months to live or less; mentally competent; at least 18 years old; and a resident of the state. They must make two oral requests 15 days apart, and a written request witnessed by two people.

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22 May 09 - 03:44 PM (#2638741)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

* News
    * World news
    * Race issues

Mississippi town breaks with its past to elect first black mayor

James Young's victory stands in stark contrast to climate which bred racism and segregation in the 1960s

    * Buzz up!
    * Digg it

    * Chris McGreal in Washington
    * guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 May 2009 18.40 BST
    * Article history

Mayoral candidate James Young, left, and supporters celebrate as his campaign claimed the win on election night

James Young, left, and supporters celebrate as his campaign claimed the win in Philadelphia, Mississippi's mayoral election. Photograph: Jim Prince/AP

James Young is just old enough to remember the era that seared his small Mississippi town of Philadelphia on to the national consciousness.

The infamous murders of three civil rights activists in 1964 laid bare the bitter racism and official complicity in the lawlessness underpinning segregation in the south, and years later prompted the film Mississippi Burning.

But the racists soon lost the struggle to prevent Philadelphia's black residents from voting and this week it resulted in exactly what old Mississippi had tried to prevent – the election of Young as the town's first African-American mayor with white votes helping deliver him victory.

"Philadelphia has some of the worst history and now some of the best. This is a reversal of some of the views that have been dominant in the community," Young said today. "There was a time when this could not have happened. Now it is accepted by everyone. There's not a major riot in the streets because I'm black."

The 53 year-old Pentecostal minister's victory was perhaps more evolution than revolution in the town of 7,300 people, about 40% of them black. African Americans have been filling elected positions in Philadelphia and the state for years with white support, including Young who served on the local legislature. The old racists who controlled the council and police, and won popular support by opposing civil rights, are dying off and their successors are marginalised.

Still, Young's election has an important symbolism in a town that came to represent all that was wrong with the old south.

"It will erase the thought that we're just a southern racist town," Dorothy Webb, 72, a white retired school principal told the local newspaper.

The 1964 murders of the three civil rights workers – an African-American man from Mississippi and two white New Yorkers, all in their twenties - shocked the country not only because of the crime but because of the complicity of local officials in the killing and cover up.

As the FBI hunted for the missing activists, the local sheriff, Lawrence Rainey, said they had gone into hiding to embarrass Mississippi. The state governor, Paul Johnson, suggested they were in Cuba.

During the search, the FBI discovered the bodies of seven other black people who had been murdered in and around Philadelphia without inquiry by the local police. Even after the civil rights workers corpses were found six weeks after they were shot, justice was slow in coming. Mississippi officials declined to prosecute. Seven people, including a police deputy and a Ku Klux Klan leader eventually convicted on federal civil rights charges, served only light sentences.

Mississippi took action for the first time only in 2005 when Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen, a KKK organiser who is now 84, was convicted of the three murders and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

For years Philadelphia lived with the legacy of the killings. Ronald Reagan chose the town to launch his 1980 presidential campaign with a speech about states' rights, taken as a stand with southern whites opposed to federal civil rights laws.

But however Philadelphia was still seen, it was also changing as Young's own progress showed. He trained as a paramedic and rose to head the county ambulance service for 20 years. He was also elected to the local legislature four times and served on the planning board for 12 years.

That helped make him a safe choice in the election....

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24 May 09 - 10:58 AM (#2639864)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Once defined as everything that exists, the term "universe" now often refers to just one of an infinite number of space-time bubbles.

"What we've all along been calling the universe," says Arizona State University cosmologist Paul Davies, may be "just an infinitesimal fragment in a much larger, more elaborate system for which want of a better word we call the multiverse."

A generation ago, such multiple universes existed only in science fiction, not science textbooks. Nowadays, the multi-verse is a hot topic at real-world scientific conferences, including a recent symposium on "Origins" at Arizona State, in Tempe. There Davies and other experts explored the anthropic implications of a multiplicity of universes, which owe their newfound importance to a popular astrophysical theory called inflation.

Among the Origins symposium's speakers was Alan Guth of MIT, who invented the inflation idea in 1980. It explained several mysteries about the Big Bang, the cosmic explosion 13.7 billion years ago marking the birth of today's one known universe.

For a tiny fraction of a second, Guth proposed, the universe expanded exponentially, explaining why the visible cosmos is now so uniform in temperature and structure. That exponential inflation would have stretched spacetime enough to eliminate all but the tiniest lumps in the original amalgamation of matter and energy, resulting in smooth skies today. Inflation would also have provided the impetus for the universe to grow to its current size from its minute origin.

"Inflation explains how the universe got to be so big, which is something we might take for granted, but there isn't really any other theory I know of which comes close to actually explaining it," Guth said at the Arizona conference.

Inflation is driven, Guth explains, by a repulsive form of gravity, generated by an energy field residing in space. As spacetime inflates, some of that field loses its strength — so a local region can expand more gradually, allowing stars and galaxies to develop and stick together. But at the same time, other regions of the inflating field continue to grow exponentially. There is always more inflating material available to spawn new spacetime bubbles — Guth calls them "pocket universes" — and no way for that process to ever stop.

"So once started, inflation goes on literally forever, with pieces of the inflating region breaking off and producing these pocket universes," Guth says. "And if this is right, we would be living in one of these infinity of pocket universes."

Goldilocks bubbles

Most experts today believe that inflation is the best explanation available for the visible universe's appearance and contents. And if it's the right explanation for the one known universe, there must be an infinite number of others.

"The question arises as to whether all these other universes are going to be like ours," says Davies, "or whether they may have different laws and the laws in our universe are in some sense special."

Arguments based on string theory, a favorite candidate (although unsubstantiated by experiment) for explaining all of physical law, suggest that the multiverse encompasses bubbles hosting various sorts of physics. Andrei Linde of Stanford University, another pioneer of inflation theory, noted at the Arizona symposium that string theory predicts the existence of an enormous number of different "vacuum states," or spacetime bubbles with different properties, such as physical constants or particle masses. Of an infinite number of bubbles, Linde says, there could be 10500 different varieties. And though any underlying basic law of physics would remain the same, the bubbles could nonetheless exhibit vast physical diversity. "It is the same fundamental law of physics, but different realizations," Linde says.

Some of those bubbles would not have lasted long enough for life, inflating but then shrinking before any interesting chemistry commenced. Others would expand forever, as seems the case with the bubble that humans occupy. In some, the local laws of physics would have welcomed living things; others would have permitted none of the particles and forces that conspire to build atoms, molecules and metabolic mechanisms. It seems that universes come in all sizes and flavors, with the human bubble being the Goldilocks version, just right for life.

It's not possible, or at least it's very unlikely (SN: 6/7/08, p. 22), for any of those other universes to make its presence physically known. So at first glance there is no obvious way to prove that they exist apart from inflation's equations. But in fact, Guth and others argue, applying anthropic reasoning to the multiverse allows calculations of some observable properties of the known universe, otherwise inexplicable. Success in such calculations would validate the assumption that the multiverse is real.

"Whether you like it or not, we may be living in a multiverse —the question is whether or not it will be possible to tell one way or the other," says Alex Vilenkin of Tufts University in Medford, Mass. "Some people complain that this theory is completely untestable. I think it can be tested."..."

From this much longer and more thorough article on infinity, in Science News.

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24 May 09 - 12:24 PM (#2639905)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"At or around the ninth century, Western civilization began to greatly expand its range of externalization of symbolization of thought through the practice of silent reading, greatly aided by the invention of the Carolingian miniscule, with ascender, standard, and descender letters graphically separated into easily distinguishable words, obviating the need to analyze each letter into its phonetic segments. This silent-reading-made-easy technique increased exponentially the value of reading, becoming a human faculty (Fischer 2003: 161).

Combine that innovation with an earlier bureaucratic invention of the library cataloguing system by Callimachus of Cyrene (c. 305-340 BCE) a little over a thousand years before at Alexandria, and a people can start collecting and organizing enough texts to create entire domains of knowledge. Drama, oratory, lyric poetry, legislation, medicine, history, and philosophy were just a few knowledge domains reflected in the original bureaucracy of the library at Alexandria (Fischer 2003: 59). Such innovations in the production and consumption of the external symbol systems made it possible to organize later generations into even larger groups, such as constitutional monarchies, republics, nations and states, all held together by the "magical powers" of the written word..."

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27 May 09 - 10:34 AM (#2641912)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Happiness is not quantitative or measurable and it is not the object of any science, old or new. It cannot be gleaned from empirical surveys or programmed into individuals through a combination of behavioral therapy and anti-depressants. If it consists in anything, then I think that happiness is this feeling of existence, this sentiment of momentary self-sufficiency that is bound up with the experience of time

Look at what Rousseau writes above: floating in a boat in fine weather, lying down with one's eyes open to the clouds and birds or closed in reverie, one feels neither the pull of the past nor does one reach into the future. Time is nothing, or rather time is nothing but the experience of the present through which one passes without hurry, but without regret. As Wittgenstein writes in what must be the most intriguing remark in the "Tractatus," "the eternal life is given to those who live in the present." Or ,as Whitman writes in "Leaves of Grass": "Happiness is not in another place, but in this place…not for another hour…but this hour."

Rousseau asks, "What is the source of our happiness in such a state?" He answers that it is nothing external to us and nothing apart from our own existence. However frenetic our environment, such a feeling of existence can be achieved. He then goes on, amazingly, to conclude, "as long as this state lasts we are self-sufficient like God."..." (NYT)

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28 May 09 - 10:43 AM (#2642753)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

1959 Millionaire-Murderer

VRIDSLOESELILLE, Denmark Denmark's newest prospective millionaire today [May 28] had nothing to do but spend his life in prison. Convicted murderer Anders Jorgensen stood only a slim chance of ever spending a penny of the royalties from his new invention. He is serving a life sentence for two murders. Jorgensen invented a device for alerting fishing trawlers when their nets are full of fish. Commercial fishing firms said the gadget will save them a fortune in nets, which often burst because of snagging too many fish. The inventor has applied for a patent on his new device. Fishing circles said royalties on it could get him millions. But Vridsloeselille Prison Warden Borgschmidt Hansen said a million dollars will do convict Jorgensen no good. Danish law insures that crime does not pay. (NYT Flashback)

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03 Jun 09 - 07:40 PM (#2647787)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A robotic submarine named Nereus has become the third craft in history to reach the deepest part of the world's oceans, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.

The dive to Challenger Deep, an abyss within the Mariana Trench that reaches 11,000 metres beneath the waves, was completed on 31 May by a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Massachussetts, US.

For the expedition, the team had to build a new breed of remotely-operated submarine, called Nereus, which is capable of going deeper than any other while still filming and collecting samples. Sunday's dive makes it the world's deepest-diving vehicle, and the first vehicle to explore the Mariana Trench since 1998.

So far only a single picture taken by Nereus at the bottom of the trench has been released,

Vast explorations

"Nereus is like no other deep submergence vehicle," says oceanographer Tim Shank of WHOI.

"It allows vast areas to be explored with great effectiveness. Our true achievement is not just getting to the deepest point in our ocean, but unleashing a capability that enables deep exploration, unencumbered by a heavy tether and surface ship, to investigate some of the richest systems on Earth."

"With a robot like Nereus, we can now explore virtually anywhere in the ocean," adds project manager Andy Bowen.

Third in line

Only two other vehicles have ever reached the bottom of Challenger Deep: US bathyscaphe Trieste, which carried Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in 1960, and the Japanese robot Kaiko, which made three unmanned expeditions to the trench between 1995 and 1998. Trieste was retired in 1966, and Kaiko was lost at sea in 2003.

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03 Jun 09 - 07:56 PM (#2647807)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT engineers have built a fast, ultra-broadband, low-power radio chip, modeled on the human inner ear, that could enable wireless devices capable of receiving cell phone, Internet, radio and television signals.

Rahul Sarpeshkar, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his graduate student, Soumyajit Mandal, designed the chip to mimic the inner ear, or cochlea. The chip is faster than any human-designed radio-frequency spectrum analyzer and also operates at much lower power.

"The cochlea quickly gets the big picture of what's going on in the sound spectrum," said Sarpeshkar. "The more I started to look at the ear, the more I realized it's like a super radio with 3,500 parallel channels."

Sarpeshkar and his students describe their new chip, which they have dubbed the "radio frequency (RF) cochlea," in a paper in the June issue of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. They have also filed for a patent to incorporate the RF cochlea in a universal or software radio architecture that is designed to efficiently process a broad spectrum of signals including cellular phone, wireless Internet, FM, and other signals.

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03 Jun 09 - 07:59 PM (#2647810)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have demonstrated entanglement--a phenomenon peculiar to the atomic-scale quantum world--in a mechanical system similar to those in the macroscopic everyday world. The work extends the boundaries of the arena where quantum behavior can be observed and shows how laboratory technology might be scaled up to build a functional quantum computer.


The research, described in the June 4 issue of Nature, involves a bizarre intertwining between two pairs of vibrating ions (charged atoms) such that the pairs vibrate in unison, even when separated in space. Each pair of ions behaves like two balls connected by a spring (see figure), vibrating back and forth in opposite directions. Familiar objects that vibrate this way include pendulums and violin strings.

The NIST achievement provides insights into where and how "classical" objects may exhibit unusual quantum behavior. The demonstration also showcased techniques that will help scale up trapped-ion technology to potentially build ultra-powerful computers relying on the rules of quantum physics. If they can be built, quantum computers may be able to solve certain problems, such as code breaking, exponentially faster than today's computers.

"Where the boundary is between the quantum and classical worlds, no one really knows," says NIST guest researcher John Jost, a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder and first author of the paper. "Maybe we can help answer the question by finding out what types of things can—and cannot be—entangled. We've entangled something that has never been entangled before, and it's the kind of physical, oscillating system you see in the classical world, just much smaller."

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04 Jun 09 - 10:14 AM (#2648176)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

1934 Editor Sued for Hitler's Book

PARIS A suit, alleged to have been instigated by Chancellor Adolf Hitler, came up in the Paris commercial court yesterday [June 4], when the action of a Munich publishing house against the Paris editor of "Mein Kampf" (My Battle) was heard. The Munich firm is seeking to prevent the sale of the French translation of the book and demands 1,000 francs indemnity for each copy of the book already published. After arguments yesterday the court postponed judgment for eight days. Hitler's book, written ten years ago, mostly while he was in prison on a political charge, and expressing the chancellor's opinions on European problems with extreme frankness, has, since his rise to power, had an almost equal success, millions of copies having been sold in Germany, while translations into English and Italian also have had large sales. In consequence of the interest in the book, a Paris editor requested the right to publish a French translation. This demand was refused but the Paris publisher decided to go ahead. The German publisher then brought suit. The French publisher's attorney insisted that Hitler's book could not be considered an ordinary work and that it was the program of a public figure. Hitler had declared that he has abandoned his rights as an author and the argument of material prejudice could not therefore be defended.

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04 Jun 09 - 02:59 PM (#2648423)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Jane Goodall's Animal Planet is an extensive interview with the groundbreaker primatologist who learned the ways of chimpanzees in the wild. Well worth a read!



A

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05 Jun 09 - 10:22 PM (#2649618)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- Millions of people today carry around pocket-sized music players capable of holding thousands of songs, thanks to the discovery 20 years ago of a phenomenon known as the "giant magnetoresistance effect," which made it possible to pack more data onto smaller and smaller hard drives. Now scientists are on the trail of another phenomenon, called the "colossal magnetoresistance effect" (CMR) which is up to a thousand times more powerful and could trigger another revolution in computing technology.

Understanding, and ultimately controlling, this effect and the intricate coupling between electrical conductivity and magnetism in these materials remains a challenge, however, because of competing interactions in manganites, the materials in which CMR was discovered. In the June 12, 2009, issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, a team of researchers report new progress in using high pressure techniques to unravel the subtleties of this coupling.

To study the magnetic properties of manganites, a form of manganese oxide, the research team, led by Yang Ding of the Carnegie Institution's High Pressure Synergetic Center (HPSync), applied techniques called x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) and angular-dispersive diffraction at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. High pressure XMCD is a newly developed technique that uses high-brilliance circularly polarized x-rays to probe the magnetic state of a material under pressures of many hundreds of thousands of atmospheres inside a diamond anvil cell.

The discovery of CMR in manganite compounds has already made manganites invaluable components in technological applications. An example is magnetic tunneling junctions in soon-to-be marketed magnetic random access memory (MRAM), where the tunneling of electrical current between two thin layers of manganite material separated by an electrical insulator depends on the relative orientation of magnetization in the manganite layers. Unlike conventional RAM, MRAM could yield instant-on computers. However, no current theories can fully explain the rich physics, including CMR effects, seen in manganites.

"The challenge is that there are competing interactions in manganites among the electrons that determine magnetic properties," said Ding. "And the properties are also affected by external stimuli, such as, temperature, pressure, magnetic field, and chemical doping."

"Pressure has a unique ability to tune the electron interactions in a clean and theoretically transparent manner," he added. "It is a direct and effective means for manipulating the behavior of electrons and could provide valuable information on the magnetic and electronic properties of manganite systems. But of all the effects, pressure effects have been the least explored."

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08 Jun 09 - 11:34 PM (#2651920)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers, philologists, psychologists, biologists, and neurologists, along with whatever blood can be got out of grammarians."

Russ Rymer

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10 Jun 09 - 08:32 PM (#2653620)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Sanjay Gupta reported on CNN:
Measuring 1 mm wide and 6 mm long Isreali researchers are developing a remote controlled robot to disperse medicine inside blood vessels or broncia. Magnified it looks lke a classic Greek galley ship with six oars on each side. To the naked eye it looks like a bug.

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11 Jun 09 - 08:57 AM (#2653904)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Periodic table gets a new element
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

The ubiquitous periodic table will soon have a new addition - the "super-heavy" element 112.

More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of the element, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery.

The team, led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research, must propose a name for their find, before it can be formally added to the table.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8093374.stm

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11 Jun 09 - 11:08 AM (#2654001)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Web 2.0 beats Jai Ho, N00b and Slumdog as the 1,000,000th English Word

English passed the Million Word mark earlier today, June 10 at 10:22 am GMT

Word Number 1,000,001: Financial Tsunami

Austin, Texas June 10, 2009 â€" The Global Language Monitor today announced that Web 2.0 has bested Jai Ho, N00b and Slumdog as the 1,000,000th English word or phrase. added to the codex of the fourteen hundred-year-old language. Web 2.0 is a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services. It has crossed from technical jargon into far wider circulation in the last six months. Two terms from India, Jai Ho! and slumdog finished No. 2 and 4. Jai Ho! Is a Hindi exclamation signifying victory or accomplishment; Slumdog is an impolite term for children living in the slums. Just missing the top spot was n00b, a mixture of letters and numbers that is a derisive term for newcomer. It is also the only mainstream English word that contains within itself two numerals. Rounding out the final five were another technical term, cloud computing, meaning services that are delivered via the cloud (or Internet), and a term from the Climate Change debate, carbon neutral. At its current rate, English generates about 14.7 words a day or one every 98 minutes.

“As expected, English crossed the 1,000,000 word threshold on June 10, 2009 at 10:22 am GMT. However, some 400 years after the death of the Bard, the words and phrases were coined far from Stratford-Upon-Avon, emerging instead from Silicon Valley, India, China, and Poland, as well as Australia, Canada, the US and the UK,â€쳌 said Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst of the Global Language Monitor. “English has become a universal means of communication; never before have so many people been able to communicate so easily with so many others.â€쳌

The English language is now being studies by hundreds of millions around the globe for entertainment, commercial or scientific purposes.â€쳌 In 1960 there were some 250 million English speakers, mostly in former colonies and the Commonwealth countries. The future of English as a major language was very much in doubt. Today, some 1.53 billion people now speak English as a primary, auxiliary, or business language, with some 250 million acquiring the language in China alone.

These are the fifteen finalists for the one millionth English word, all of which have met the criteria of a minimum of 25,000 citations with the necessary breadth of geographic distribution, and depth of citations.

1,000,000: Web 2.0 â€" The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.

999,999: Jai Ho! â€" The Hindi phrase signifying the joy of victory, used as an exclamation, sometimes rendered as “It is accomplishedâ€쳌. Achieved English-language popularity through the multiple Academy Award Winning film, “Slumdog Millionaireâ€쳌.

999,998: N00b â€" From the Gamer Community, a neophyte in playing a particular game; used as a disparaging term.

999,997: Slumdog â€" a formerly disparaging, now often endearing, comment upon those residing in the slums of India.

999,996: Cloud Computing â€" The ‘cloud’ has been technical jargon for the Internet for many years. It is now passing into more general usage.

999,995: Carbon Neutral â€" One of the many phrases relating to the effort to stem Climate Change.

999,994: Slow Food â€" Food other than the fast-food variety hopefully produced locally (locavores).

999,993: Octomom â€" The media phenomenon relating to the travails of the mother of the octuplets.

999,992: Greenwashing â€" Re-branding an old, often inferior, product as environmentally friendly.

999,991: Sexting â€" Sending email (or text messages) with sexual content.

999,990: Shovel Ready â€" Projects are ready to begin immediately upon the release of federal stimulus funds.

999,989: Defriend â€" Social networking terminology for cutting the connection with a formal friend.

999,988: Chengguan â€" Urban management officers, a cross between mayors, sheriff, and city managers.

999,987: Recessionista â€" Fashion conscious who use the global economic restructuring to their financial benefit.

999,986: Zombie Banks â€" Banks that would be dead if not for government intervention and cash infusion.

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11 Jun 09 - 02:47 PM (#2654189)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

he moment of the universe's birth created both matter and an expanding space-time in which this matter could exist. While gravity pulled the matter together, the expansion of space drew particles of matter apart - and the further apart they drifted, the weaker their mutual attraction became.

It turns out that the struggle between these two was balanced on a knife-edge. If the expansion of space had overwhelmed the pull of gravity in the newborn universe, stars, galaxies and humans would never have been able to form. If, on the other hand, gravity had been much stronger, stars and galaxies might have formed, but they would have quickly collapsed in on themselves and each other. What's more, the gravitational distortion of space-time would have folded up the universe in a big crunch. Our cosmic history could have been over by now.

Only the middle ground, where the expansion and the gravitational strength balance to within 1 part in 1015 at 1 second after the big bang, allows life to form. That is down to the size of the gravitational constant G, also known as Big G.

G is the least well-defined of all the constants of nature. It has been pinned down to only 1 part in 10,000, which makes it look pretty rough and ready next to the fundamental number called the Planck constant, which is accurate to 2.5 parts in 100 million. It's gravity's weakness that makes G difficult to measure more accurately - but that's just a laboratory issue. The important question is, where does this value come from? Why does G have the value that allowed life to form in the cosmos?

The simple but unsatisfying answer is that we could not be here to observe it if it were any different. As to the deeper answer - no one knows. "We can make measurements that determine its size, but we have no idea where this value comes from," says John Barrow of the University of Cambridge. "We have never explained any basic constant of nature."

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15 Jun 09 - 10:33 AM (#2656924)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Medical Marvels

Russian surgeons said what they first believed was a tumor in a man's lungs turned out to be a living, growing fir tree, according to reports in the Russian media. The doctors said they found a tree measuring nearly 2 inches long inside the lung tissues of 28-year-old Artyom Sidorkin. Horticulturalists remain skeptical, however. Tricia Diggins of the Wellesley College Botanical Gardens in Boston told ABCNews.com that while it may be possible for such trees to grow without light, she doubted whether such an environment could yield an apparently normal, green plant.

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15 Jun 09 - 10:38 AM (#2656929)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

More Medical Marvels

For nearly four decades, Sanju Bhagat carried the body of his own twin inside him. Doctors discovered Bhagat had one of the world's most bizarre medical conditions — fetus in fetu, an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin.
(ABC)

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15 Jun 09 - 11:07 AM (#2656947)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Ain't nature wonderful.

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15 Jun 09 - 02:56 PM (#2657096)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The traffic here is shocking: Or at least like a shock wave. Researchers have used the equations that describe the behavior of post-explosion pressure waves to model the flow of congestion when it forms on roads that aren't suffering from a specific, traffic-causing incident, such as construction or an accident. Apparently, these waves act as self-reinforcing attractors, which the authors term "jamitons." No word yet on whether these are the fundamental units of traffic, or if researchers will be waiting to see whether any jamitinos appear at the LHC. "   From http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/06/weird-science-ponders-angry-flies-and-guilty-dogs.ars

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15 Jun 09 - 06:24 PM (#2657251)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The first of the new features lets anyone, anywhere, recommend places on Mars to photograph with ASU's THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The second new feature shows the most recent infrared images of Mars sent back to Earth from the THEMIS camera.
THEMIS is the Thermal Emission Imaging System, a multiband infrared and visual camera designed at ASU by Dr. Philip Christensen. A Regents' Professor of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, Christensen is THEMIS' principal investigator and also director of the Mars Space Flight Facility on the Tempe campus.
"These two features, developed by our staff in cooperation with programmers at Google, will help everyone have a lot more fun exploring the Red Planet," says Christensen. "It's public engagement at its best."
Hey Mars, say cheese!
"We wanted to give the general public a way to suggest places on Mars for THEMIS to photograph," says Christensen. "Using the new feature, people can recommend sites, and these recommendations go to mission scientists who will decide what areas THEMIS images. If a public suggestion matches what the researchers choose, we'll notify the person who suggested the site and let them see the image as soon as we do."
To suggest a place for THEMIS to photograph, viewers need two things: Google Earth 5.0 and a file that is updated each week giving the spacecraft's Mars orbital groundtrack. Google Earth 5.0 is available at http://earth.google.com.
To get the orbital track, users should go to http://suggest.mars.asu.edu and follow the simple steps to register. Registering takes users to a page to download each week's orbital track file and it also lets them make image suggestions without having to enter an e-mail address with each image suggestion.
Registering also creates a customized page where users can see their past image suggestions and find links to their successful ones.
With the orbital track file downloaded, viewers start Google Earth and switch the globe to Mars (via the Planets toolbar button, which resembles the planet Saturn). Then viewers open the orbital track file from within Google Earth. Viewers can also just double-click on the orbital file once Google Earth has been set to Mars as its planet.

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16 Jun 09 - 12:39 PM (#2657829)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scripps scientists have solved the mystery of fish disappearing from long-lines after they were caught but while still at depth. They used video cams attached to the long lines and discovered the cause was Bandit Sperm Whales!! Pictures and story from Fox News.

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17 Jun 09 - 10:57 AM (#2658580)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Fusion falters under soaring costs

By Matt McGrath
Science reporter, BBC World Service

An international plan to build a nuclear fusion reactor is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges.

Emails leaked to the BBC indicate that construction costs for the experimental fusion project called Iter have more than doubled.

Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away.

At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter council will review the plans and may agree to scale back the project.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8103557.stm

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17 Jun 09 - 12:26 PM (#2658642)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

* Warp drive enabling faster-than-light travel is a sci-fi staple and an offense against the laws of nature as we now know them, but physicist Richard Obousy says there's some theoretical science behind the concept — it's just a matter of harnessing "dark energy" and taking advantage of additional dimensions predicted by string theory in a way that would allow a vessel to envelope itself in a bubble of spacetime, which, if the Big Bang is any indication, should be capable of moving far faster than light. Or something like that. He's even mocked up a concept of how such a vessel might look — less like the Enterprise and more like a couple of bicycle tires.

http://dsc.discovery.com/space/im/warp-drive.html

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17 Jun 09 - 09:07 PM (#2659028)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Associated Press
$2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found
Big, government-funded studies show most work no better than placebos
        
BETHESDA, Md. - Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.

Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.

As for therapies, acupuncture has been shown to help certain conditions, and yoga, massage, meditation and other relaxation methods may relieve symptoms like pain, anxiety and fatigue.

However, the government also is funding studies of purported energy fields, distance healing and other approaches that have little if any biological plausibility or scientific evidence.

Taxpayers are bankrolling studies of whether pressing various spots on your head can help with weight loss, whether brain waves emitted from a special "master" can help break cocaine addiction, and whether wearing magnets can help the painful wrist problem, carpal tunnel syndrome.

The acupressure weight-loss technique won a $2 million grant even though a small trial of it on 60 people found no statistically significant benefit — only an encouraging trend that could have occurred by chance. The researcher says the pilot study was just to see if the technique was feasible.

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18 Jun 09 - 07:26 PM (#2659846)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of very fast hydrogen atoms coming from the moon, following decades of speculation and searching for their existence.


During spacecraft commissioning, the IBEX team turned on the IBEX-Hi instrument, built primarily by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which measures atoms with speeds from about half a million to 2.5 million miles per hour. Its companion sensor, IBEX-Lo, built by Lockheed Martin, the University of New Hampshire, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the University of Bern in Switzerland, measures atoms with speeds from about one hundred thousand to 1.5 million mph.
"Just after we got IBEX-Hi turned on, the moon happened to pass right through its field of view, and there they were," says Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division. "The instrument lit up with a clear signal of the neutral atoms being detected as they backscattered from the moon."

The solar wind, the supersonic stream of charged particles that flows out from the sun, moves out into space in every direction at speeds of about a million mph. The Earth's strong magnetic field shields our planet from the solar wind. The moon, with its relatively weak magnetic field, has no such protection, causing the solar wind to slam onto the moon's sunward side.

From its vantage point in space, IBEX sees about half of the moon -- one quarter of it is dark and faces the nightside (away from the sun), while the other quarter faces the dayside (toward the sun). Solar wind particles impact only the dayside, where most of them are embedded in the lunar surface, while some scatter off in different directions. The scattered ones mostly become neutral atoms in this reflection process by picking up electrons from the lunar surface.

The IBEX team estimates that only about 10 percent of the solar wind ions reflect off the sunward side of the moon as neutral atoms, while the remaining 90 percent are embedded in the lunar surface. Characteristics of the lunar surface, such as dust, craters and rocks, play a role in determining the percentage of particles that become embedded and the percentage of neutral particles, as well as their direction of travel, that scatter.
(From PhysOrg.org)

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19 Jun 09 - 09:51 PM (#2660633)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists in Canada and India are proposing a surprising new solution to the global energy crisis —"milking" oil from the tiny, single-cell algae known as diatoms, renowned for their intricate, beautifully sculpted shells that resemble fine lacework. Their report appears online in the current issue of the ACS' bi-monthly journal Industrial Engineering & Chemical Research.

Richard Gordon, T. V. Ramachandra, Durga Madhab Mahapatra, and Karthick Band note that some geologists believe that much of the world's crude oil originated in diatoms, which produce an oily substance in their bodies. Barely one-third of a strand of hair in diameter, diatoms flourish in enormous numbers in oceans and other water sources. They die, drift to the seafloor, and deposit their shells and oil into the sediments. Estimates suggest that live diatoms could make 10−200 times as much oil per acre of cultivated area compared to oil seeds, Gordon says.

"We propose ways of harvesting oil from diatoms, using biochemical engineering and also a new solar panel approach that utilizes genetically modifiable aspects of diatom biology, offering the prospect of "milking" diatoms for sustainable energy by altering them to actively secrete oil products," the scientists say. "Secretion by and milking of diatoms may provide a way around the puzzle of how to make algae that both grow quickly and have a very high oil content."

More information: Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Journal Article: "Milking Diatoms for Sustainable Energy: Biochemical Engineering Versus Gasoline-Secreting Diatom Solar Panels"

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21 Jun 09 - 12:40 AM (#2661294)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"SCIENCE PAST FROM THE ISSUE OF JULY 4, 1959 of Science News:

Brides and grooms are younger than ever — Today's brides and grooms are younger than any others in the nation's history, the Population Reference Bureau reported. The average age for first marriages in the U.S. last year was 23 for men and 20 for women. More girls married at 18 than at any other age. In 1890, men averaged 26 at first marriage and women averaged 22. Since then, the average age has been declining slowly but steadily.… The Bureau offered no reason for the trend toward early marriages. Factors believed to contribute, however, are the nation's continued economic prosperity, teen-agers "going steady" at progressively younger ages, and a significant percentage of pre-marital pregnancies in young girls."

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23 Jun 09 - 02:52 PM (#2662884)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...Last year, in an opening address at a conference in Rome, called "Science 400 Years After Galileo Galilei," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state of the Vatican, praised the church's old antagonist as "a man of faith who saw nature as a book written by God." In May, as part of the International Year of Astronomy, a Jesuit cultural center in Florence conducted "a historical, philosophical and theological re-examination" of the Galileo affair. But in the effort to rehabilitate the church's image, nothing speaks louder than a paper by a Vatican astronomer in, say, The Astrophysical Journal or The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

On a clear spring night in Arizona, the focus is not on theology but on the long list of mundane tasks that bring a telescope to life. As it tracks the sky, the massive instrument glides on a ring of pressurized oil. Pumps must be activated, gauges checked, computers rebooted. The telescope's electronic sensor, similar to the one in a digital camera, must be cooled with liquid nitrogen to keep the megapixels from fuzzing with quantum noise.

As Dr. Corbally rushes from station to station flicking switches and turning dials, he seems less like a priest or even an astronomer than a maintenance engineer. Finally when everything is ready, starlight scooped up by the six-foot mirror is chopped into electronic bits, which are reconstituted as light on his video screen.

"Much of observing these days is watching monitors and playing with computers," Dr. Corbally says. "People say, 'Oh, that must be so beautiful being out there looking at the sky.' I tell them it's great if you like watching TV."

Dressed in blue jeans and a work shirt, he is not a man who wears his religion on his sleeve. No grace is offered before a quick casserole dinner in the observatory kitchen. In fact, the only sign that the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope is fundamentally different from the others on Mount Graham, the home of an international astronomical complex operated by the University of Arizona, is a dedication plaque outside the door.

"This new tower for studying the stars has been erected on this peaceful site," it says in Latin. "May whoever searches here night and day the far reaches of space use it joyfully with the help of God." At that point, religion leaves off and science begins.

The Roman Catholic Church's interest in the stars began with purely practical concerns when in the 16th century Pope Gregory XIII called on astronomy to correct for the fact that the Julian calendar had fallen out of sync with the sky. In 1789, the Vatican opened an observatory in the Tower of the Winds, which it later relocated to a hill behind St. Peter's Dome. In the 1930s, church astronomers moved to Castel Gandolfo, the pope's summer residence. As Rome's illumination, the electrical kind, spread to the countryside, the church began looking for a mountaintop in a dark corner of Arizona.

Building on Mount Graham was a struggle. Apaches said the observatory was an affront to the mountain spirits. Environmentalists said it was a menace to a subspecies of red squirrel. There were protests and threats of sabotage. It wasn't until 1995, three years after the edict of Inquisition was lifted against Galileo, that the Vatican's new telescope made its first scientific observations. ... (NYT Science)

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23 Jun 09 - 11:20 PM (#2663258)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Problems of Living with Robots (Phys Org)

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23 Jun 09 - 11:40 PM (#2663265)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

We have our new lunar satillite in orbit and sending back pictures and water data.

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26 Jun 09 - 03:32 PM (#2665437)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The physics of the first kiss were off. I knew where I needed to be, but it was hard to reconcile the differences"

Noah Fulmor on getting married on board a parabolic flight – reported as the world's first wedding in zero gravity (Reuters, 20 June)

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01 Jul 09 - 01:01 PM (#2669028)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Friday Jan. 26, 1866

All hands turned to this morning at four o'clock to get the Ship ready to haul into the stream   at five a tug came and towed us into the stream where we lay until about one o'clock p.m. when two tugs came and towed us to sea   it has been cloudy all day. tonight the Officers chose their watches I being chosen in the Starboard watch.


Sunday Jan. 28th 1866

This day comes in pleasant this morning washed down decks the wind having died away we are becalmed.

About one o'clock a breeze sprung up which tonight has increased almost to a gale we are running under reefed topsails.

So ends this day with heavy winds.


Wednesday Jan. 31st 1866

The wind is not blowing very hard this morning and we are running with all sail set.

This afternoon it has been squally and we are now running under fore and main lower topsails and fore and upper topsail reefed.

So ends these twenty four hours

...

Sunday Mar 11th 1866

This day comes in clear with a head wind.

This AM. at four Oclock tacked ship crossed the Royal yard and set the sail. This P.M. saw a Brazilian fishing boat ahead the Mate motioned for them to come along side but they droped under our stern when we hove to when the Capt went aboard taking some bread and meat all of us boys sent letters here by them. they said they were going to Cape Frio in a day or two and would take the letters they gave the Capt quite a number of fish.

...Saturday Mar 31st 1866

This day comes in clear with a good breeze.

This A.M. the watch have been engaged in ship duty.

This P.M. the watch engaged the same as in the A.M. the wind has breezed up considerable since morning at six Oclock took in the Royals.

We keep in company with the Bark pretty well although she can whip us in fact most anything can that has a hull and a little piece of canvas.

The Ivanhoe was a big thing on little wheels in New York but at sea she is not what she was cracked up to be.

...Friday Apr 27th 1866



This day comes in cloudy with a head wind. Last night at six Oclock tacked ship   while were going around the wind shifted and a put us on our course again but it blew pretty fresh so of course we must put her under close reefs the way they do every fair wind   toward morning the wind hauled ahead and so we made sail. No wonder she never gets anywhere. This AM tacked again   This P.M. I have been Holystoning the Capt office   The men have been holystoning all day. This morning for breakfast we had hash and hard tack for dinner bean soup (dishwater) hard tack salt horse a fair specimen of our grub   when we get hash I could eat every bit of it myself but it is sent here for six   we have such poor grub that Ross is sick for the second time on account of it   I have seen the time that I have turned up my nose at bread and butter and mother told me that I might see the time when I would be glad to get it. I see that time now.



Excerpts from Mitchell Journal on board the Ivanhoe

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01 Jul 09 - 01:12 PM (#2669041)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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Seventy-four thousand years ago, humanity nearly went extinct. A super-volcano at what's now Lake Toba, in Sumatra, erupted with a strength more than a thousand times that of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Some 800 cubic kilometers of ash filled the skies of the Northern Hemisphere, lowering global temperatures and pushing a climate already on the verge of an ice age over the edge. Some scientists speculate that as the Earth went into a deep freeze, the population of Homo sapiens may have dropped to as low as a few thousand families.

The Mount Toba incident, although unprecedented in magnitude, was part of a broad pattern. For a period of 2 million years, ending with the last ice age around 10,000 B.C., the Earth experienced a series of convulsive glacial events. This rapid-fire climate change meant that humans couldn't rely on consistent patterns to know which animals to hunt, which plants to gather, or even which predators might be waiting around the corner.

How did we cope? By getting smarter. The neuro­physi­ol­ogist William Calvin argues persuasively that modern human cognition—including sophisticated language and the capacity to plan ahead—evolved in response to the demands of this long age of turbulence. According to Calvin, the reason we survived is that our brains changed to meet the challenge: we transformed the ability to target a moving animal with a thrown rock into a capability for foresight and long-term planning. In the process, we may have developed syntax and formal structure from our simple language. ..."

Excerpted from The Atlantic magazine.


A

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01 Jul 09 - 03:40 PM (#2669145)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

July 1, 2009, Der Spiegel

Pina Bausch turned the dance world on its head and became one of the most internationally influential representatives of contemporary German culture. She died at 68 on Tuesday and left behind a major oeuvre.

Her productions were unforgettable. It might even be just one scene branded on my memory: a woman with closed eyes, running over tables and chairs, again and again, oblivious of the pain.

These were the creations of the great choreographer Pina Bausch, who died on Tuesday at the age of 68 -- people running but never getting anywhere. Repeat offenders desperately hoping for redemption. The obsessed. People from today's world.

The figures in Pina Bausch' dance pieces are driven, tortured and determined. They are -- often literally -- slamming up against a hostile world. But they're depicted with a droll sense of humor and, sometimes, biting irony. In the end, though, there is a heart-warming tenderness. It's a sensibility in the artist that stems from a deep understanding of mankind's shortcomings and fragility.

Pina Bausch has left behind a major oeuvre. She revolutionized dance theater. But it remains to be seen what her exact legacy will be. ...

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07 Jul 09 - 11:48 AM (#2673948)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The coming months will see a crescendo of anniversary commemorations of communism's end, culminating with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. For many, Americans especially, it was a glorious moment, emblematic of the West's victory in the Cold War. It seemed to come out of the blue. But if you watched the Eastern bloc's disintegration from the ground, as I did over the course of that epic year, you know that the process was far longer and more complex than most people realize. Often, it unfolded in melodramatic little chapters, unnoticed by the rest of the world, as on that fine summer day in Bucharest two decades ago.

To grasp the full dimension of that drama, you must remember how Europe was still locked in the old order defined by the Cold War—and glimpse the changes afoot that would, abruptly, transform it. Nemeth arrived on the scene in late November 1988 as a new-generation "reform" Communist in the mold of Gorbachev himself. But if his titular master in Moscow remained a committed socialist, however liberal by contrast to his old-guard predecessors, Nemeth was the real deal.

Moving quickly, he had drafted a new constitution for Hungary—modeled on America's, complete with a Bill of Rights and guarantees of free speech and human rights. Then he allowed new political parties to form and promised free elections. And if the Communist Party should lose, hard-liners asked, what then? Why, said Nemeth, with perfect equanimity, "We step down." Worst, just a few months before, in early May, Nemeth had announced that Hungary would tear down the fence along its frontier with Austria. At the height of the Cold War, he cut a hole in the Iron Curtain.

In the Communist world, this was heresy. It had to be punished. And so it was that the Warsaw Pact's leaders assembled in Bucharest. Seated in a great hall, surrounded by banners and the full pomp of Communist circumstance, they launched their attack. Ceausescu went first, brandishing his fists and shouting an impassioned indictment: "Hungary will destroy socialism." His "dangerous experiments" will destroy the entire Socialist Union! Honecker, Jakes, and Zhivkov followed. Only Jaruzelski of Poland sat quiet, sphinxlike behind his dark sunglasses, betraying no emotion.

Nemeth had been in office for only seven months. This was his first Warsaw Pact summit. He was nervous, but he knew his enemies would act only with Soviet support. The man who could give it sat roughly opposite him, 30 feet away on the other side of a large rectangle of flag-draped conference tables. As Ceausescu and the others ranted on, calling for armed intervention in Hungary, Nemeth glanced across at the Soviet leader. Their eyes met, and Gorbachev … winked.

"This happened at least four or five times," Nemeth later told me. "Strictly speaking, it wasn't really a wink. It was more a look, a bemused twinkle. Each time he smiled at me, with his eyes, it was as if Gorbachev were saying, 'Don't worry. These people are idiots. Pay no attention.' " And so he didn't. As the dogs of the Warsaw Pact brayed for his head, Nemeth went outside to smoke a cigarette.

On this small moment, history turned. Nemeth flew back to Budapest and continued his reforms, dissolving the country's Communist Party and opening Hungary's borders so that tens of thousands of East Germans could famously escape to the West—and causing, four months later, the Berlin Wall to topple. Erich Honecker went home a spent political force who would be ousted in a coup d'état that began taking shape even before he left Bucharest. As for Nicolae Ceausescu, he would die by firing squad during the revolution that convulsed Romania at year's end." (Slate)

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07 Jul 09 - 11:28 PM (#2674379)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

his summer, how would you like to lean back in your lawn chair and toss back a brew made from what may be the world's oldest recipe for beer? Called Chateau Jiahu, this blend of rice, honey and fruit was intoxicating Chinese villagers 9,000 years ago—long before grape wine had its start in Mesopotamia.

University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Northern China. Soon after, McGovern called on Sam Calagione at the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del., to do the ancient recipe justice. Later this month, you can give it a try when a new batch hits shelves across the country. The Beer Babe blog was impressed, writing that it is "very smooth," and "not overly sweet."

But that's not the only strange brew Dogfish is shipping out this summer. Next week, the brewery will be bottling up the first large batch of Sah'tea for the general public—a modern update on a ninth-century Finnish beverage. In the fall, The New Yorker documented the intricate research and preparation that went into making the beer, which was first offered on tap at the brewery in May. In short, brewmasters carmelize wort on white hot river rocks, ferment it with German Weizen yeast, then toss on Finnish berries and a blend of spices to jazz up this rye-based beverage. Reviewers at the BeerAdvocate universally praised Sah'tea, comparing it to a fruity hefeweizen. One user munched on calamari as he downed a pint and described the combo as "a near euphoric experience."

And Dogfish is also bringing back one of their more unusual forays into alcohol-infused time travel. Called Theobroma, this cocoa-based brew was hatched from a chemical analysis of 3,200-year-old pottery fragments from the Cradle of Chocolate, the Ulua Valley in Honduras. Archaeologist John Henderson at Cornell University first described the beverage in 2007 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pushing the first use of the chocolate plant back by 600 years. Dogfish first sold Theobroma in May 2008, and the next batch—made from a blend of cocoa, honey, chilies, and annatto—will be on shelves and in taps in July. The chocolate beer was apparently too sweet for Evan at The Full Pint, who writes that it contained "a ton and a half of sugary sweetness" with "an insane amount of gooeyness left behind on the roof of your mouth." (Scientific AMerican)

---

08 Jul 09 - 07:12 PM (#2675234)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Human sperm have been created using embryonic stem cells for the first time in a scientific development which will lead researchers to a better understanding of the causes of infertility.


Researchers led by Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) have developed a new technique which has made the creation of human sperm possible in the laboratory.

The work is published today (8th July 2009) in the academic journal Stem Cells and Development.

The NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) is a collaboration between Newcastle and Durham Universities, Newcastle NHS Foundation Trust and other partners.
Professor Nayernia says: "This is an important development as it will allow researchers to study in detail how sperm forms and lead to a better understanding of infertility in men - why it happens and what is causing it. This understanding could help us develop new ways to help couples suffering infertility so they can have a child which is genetically their own."

"It will also allow scientists to study how cells involved in reproduction are affected by toxins, for example, why young boys with leukaemia who undergo chemotherapy can become infertile for life - and possibly lead us to a solution."

The team also believe that studying the process of forming sperm could lead to a better understanding of how genetic diseases are passed on.

In the technique developed at Newcastle, stem cells with XY chromosomes (male) were developed into germline stem cells which were then prompted to complete meiosis - cell division with halving of the chromosome set. These were shown to produce fully mature, sperm called scientifically, In Vitro Derived sperm (IVD sperm).

---

09 Jul 09 - 01:26 PM (#2675823)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From Mars is Our Planet of Destiny in der SPIEGEL:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Puttkamer, the first person set foot on the moon exactly 40 years ago. Why does NASA want to return to that barren, lifeless place?

Puttkamer: The Apollo astronauts were only able to spend a couple of days up there -- that was just a quick visit. When we fly there again in 2019-2020, we'll stay much longer. The four-person team will gain experience for the real long-term goal -- the journey to Mars. We want to build a lunar station where people could live for weeks or even months, as preparation for the larger Mars project.

SPIEGEL: So NASA is not preparing to populate the moon?

Puttkamer: No, the lunar station won't be capable of continuous operation 365 days a year, since we'll need to supply it constantly with air, water and food from Earth, and that would be insanely expensive. But the living conditions on Mars are actually very different. There are many natural resources there, and our probe just recently discovered traces that could originate from liquid water. It's also been known for a long time that water in solid form -- in other words, ice -- exists there in large quantities.

SPIEGEL: Will America fly to the moon alone again?

FROM THE MAGAZINE
Find out how you can reprint this DER SPIEGEL article in your publication.
Puttkamer: Certainly not -- and especially not when we want to reach more distant destinations. The age of going it alone is over. The Apollo project took place during the Cold War, when we were involved in a dramatic race with the Soviets. But a lot has changed since then. We've moved away from that competitive way of thinking, and everyone is invited to take part in future missions. It functions that way already on the International Space Station, where 16 countries work together in an exemplary way. We've created a kind of United Nations in space.

SPIEGEL: Yet the United States is going to build the new moon rockets alone again.

Puttkamer: Unfortunately it can't be done any other way. After our shuttle fleet is withdrawn from service next year, we're going to need a new space carrier of our own as quickly as possible. To that end, we needed to commission industry to develop the new Ares rocket and the accompanying Orion spaceship as soon as possible. Then there's also the Altair lunar lander. But in any case, the European Space Agency is already very interested in helping with the construction of infrastructure on the moon later. Our Russian partners would definitely participate as well. And I personally would be very happy to also see Germany involved."...

---

09 Jul 09 - 04:54 PM (#2676020)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A group of Illinois grave diggers were charged Thursday with running a morbid scam in which they exhumed corpses in a black cemetery so they could resell the empty plots, cops said.

Investigators suspect more than 300 bodies were dug up in the suburban Chicago graveyard and discarded in a pit so the ghouls could cash.

"There should be a special place in hell" for the perpetrators, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said during a press conference at the desecrated grave yard.

The famed Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip is the final resting place of Civil Rights lynching victim Emmett Till and his mother, as well as jazz legend Dinah Washington and bluesman Willie Dixon.

While the graves of the notables were believed to be intact, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said that doesn't lessen the outrage.

"All of us who were working on this for the last week were pretty distraught," Dart told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Arrested in the sinister scheme were the cemetery's manager Carolyn Towns, 49, and grave diggers Keith Nicks, 45, and Terrence Nicks, 39, and Maurice Dailey, 61.

They were all charged with felony counts of dismembering a human body.

Dart said the schemers targeted older and unmarked graves, and kept track which ones hadn't been visited for a long time.

He said the bodies were reburied - caskets, concrete vaults and all - in a massive hole at the rear of the cemetery.

"There were plenty of concrete vaults that were shattered," Dart said. "More than we could count."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/07/09/2009-07-09_four_nabbed_in_ghoulish_scheme_to_plunder_graves_in_history_illinois_cemetary.html#ixzz0KnWXzAQb&C

---

09 Jul 09 - 07:40 PM (#2676124)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Four galaxies are involved in this pile-up 280 million light years from Earth. The bright spiral galaxy at the center of the image is punching through the cluster at almost two million miles per hour.

That speeding galaxy may be what is causing the curved swath of X-rays, shown in blue near the center of the image, which were captured by NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. The three other yellowish galaxies in the collision are optically visible and were imaged by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on the summit of the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii.

The fifth, bluish galaxy on the lower left of the group is actually in the foreground of the image, around 40 million light years away from Earth, and not involved in the collision. All together, the galaxies are known as Stephan's Quintet, named after astronomer Édouard Stephan who discovered them in 1877.

---

09 Jul 09 - 09:30 PM (#2676205)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An interesting study on the flow of arms into Mexico from such varied sources as the US and Yemen, and the dynamics of arms markets in general.


A

---

11 Jul 09 - 01:00 PM (#2677536)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Infections of wounds, pneumonia, etc. in hospitals in particular are often caused by bacteria called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Once they reach a certain density, colonies of Pseudomonas aeruginosa produce virulence factors and can enter into a slimy state, a biofilm, which prevents antibiotics from penetrating. The process of quorum sensing, which cells use to "sense" cell density, is triggered when the concentration of certain signaling compounds generated by the bacteria reaches a threshold level.

A team working with Rustem F. Ismagilov at the University of Chicago has now demonstrated that the absolute number of cells is irrelevant; only the number of bacteria in a given volume plays a role. As the researchers report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, they were even able to trigger quorum-sensing processes in single cells when these were confined in extremely small volumes.

The term, quorum sensing, is derived from the Latin quorum; in politics, this is the number of votes that must be cast for an election or referendum to be valid. In biology, quorum sensing is defined as a process by which cells are able to detect the accumulation of a released signal and then change their behavior when the signal concentration exceeds a threshold level. Traditionally, quorum sensing is thought to help microorganisms to coordinate processes that would be inefficient in single cells, such as the formation of biofilms.

Quorum sensing can also prevent too many bacteria from colonizing too small an area. However, the work of Ismagilov's team has shown that quorum sensing is also activated by a single cell if the cell finds itself in an extremely enclosed space, which raises questions as to how quorum-sensing-regulated processes are relevant both to large colonies of cells and to single cells in confined spaces....(PhysOrg)

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11 Jul 09 - 03:17 PM (#2677679)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

String theory has come under fire in recent years. Promises have been made that have not been lived up to. Leiden (The Netherlands) theoretical physicists have now for the first time used string theory to describe a physical phenomenon. Their discovery has been reported in Science Express.


'This is superb. I have never experienced such euphoria.' Jan Zaanen makes no attempt to hide his enthusiasm. Together with Mihailo Cubrovic and Koenraad Schalm, he has successfully managed to shed light on a previously unexplained natural phenomeon using the mathematics of string theory.

Electrons can form a special kind of state, a so-called quantum critical state, that plays a role in high-temperature super-conductivity. Super-conductivity at high temperatures has long been a 'hot issue' in physics. In super-conductivity, discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in Leiden, electrons can zoom through a material without meeting any resistance. In the first instance, this only seemed possible at very low temperatures close to absolute zero, but more and more examples are coming up where it also occurs at higher temperatures. So far, nobody has managed to explain high temperature super-conductivity. Zaanen: 'It has always been assumed that once you understand this quantum-critical state, you can also understand high temperature super-conductivity. But, although the experiments produced a lot of information, we hadn't the faintest idea of how to describe this phenomenon.' String theory now offers a solution.

This is the first time that a calculation based on string theory has been published in Science, even though the theory is widely known. 'There have always been a lot of expectations surrounding string theory,' Zaanen explains, having himself studied the theory to satisfy his own curiosity. 'String theory is often seen as a child of Einstein that aims to devise a revolutionary and comprehensive theory, a kind of 'theory of everything'. Ten years ago, researchers even said: 'Give us two weeks and we'll be able to tell you where the big bang came from. The problem of string theory was that, in spite of its excellent maths, it was never able to make a concrete link with the physical reality - the world around us.'

---

12 Jul 09 - 11:33 AM (#2678237)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The sperm whale, for example, which has the largest brain on earth, weighing as much as 19 pounds, has been found to live in large, elaborately structured societal groups, or clans, that typically number in the tens of thousands and wander over many thousands of miles of ocean. The whales of a clan are not all related, but within each clan there are smaller, close-knit, matriarchal family units. Young whales are raised within an extended, multitiered network of doting female caregivers, including the mother, aunts and grandmothers, who help in the nurturing of babies and, researchers suspect, in teaching them patterns of movement, hunting techniques and communication skills. "It's like they're living in these massive, multicultural, undersea societies," says Hal Whitehead, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and the world's foremost expert on the sperm whale. "It's sort of strange. Really the closest analogy we have for it would be ourselves."

Whitehead has even discovered distinct clan dialects using different codas, what he describes as a "Morse code-like pattern of clicks" that the whales make with their long head cavities and use to communicate with one another over many miles, reinforcing social bonds and declaring clan affiliation. Whitehead, who has been tracking and recording sperm whales around the globe since the early 1980s, has positively identified five distinct clan dialects and studied two extensively. "The regular clan," he told me in a phone conversation from his lab in Nova Scotia, "makes three to eight equally spaced clicks. And then there are the Plus-One clans. They have two to eight clicks and then a pause and an added click at the end, kind of like the Canadian 'eh.' We've also noticed that these clans ply the water differently. Regular groups move in wiggly tracks closer to shore, while the Plus-Ones swim further from shore in straight lines." ..."

From this remarkable article in the New York Times.

---

12 Jul 09 - 11:35 AM (#2678238)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"He showed me an extraordinary video of sperm whales pilfering catch from fishermen's lines in Alaska, 50-foot-long, massive-jawed behemoths delicately snatching a single black cod from a longline's dangling hook, like an hors d'oeuvre from a cocktail toothpick. Fishermen are currently losing 5 to 10 percent of their yearly haul and fear the problem could become worse because whales who have mastered the technique are busily teaching it to others. The news seems to be rapidly spreading, as reports of similar fish-snatching are coming in from fishermen all over the world." (Ibid)

---

12 Jul 09 - 11:51 AM (#2678249)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sorry, but I cannot resist:

"The pangeros, for their part, have seen enough remarkable whale behavior to know better than to prejudge any explanation, however mind-bending, for what is going on in the lagoons of Baja. A 25-year-old named Alberto Haro Romero, known as Beto, told me of something he saw a month earlier while kayaking off Cabo San Lucas. A group of southward-migrating gray whales were suddenly surrounded and attacked by a pod of pilot whales. Out of nowhere, a group of humpbacks — who, like grays, are baleen whales — appeared and began going at the pilot whales, a highly coordinated counterattack. "It was unbelievable," Beto said. "One baleen whale coming in on the behalf of another. It was, like, tribal."

As Beto spoke, I thought of another bit of interspecies cooperation involving humpbacks that I recently read about. A female humpback was spotted in December 2005 east of the Farallon Islands, just off the coast of San Francisco. She was entangled in a web of crab-trap lines, hundreds of yards of nylon rope that had become wrapped around her mouth, torso and tail, the weight of the traps causing her to struggle to stay afloat. A rescue team arrived within a few hours and decided that the only way to save her was to dive in and cut her loose.

For an hour they cut at the lines and rope with curved knives, all the while trying to steer clear of a tail they knew could kill them with one swipe. When the whale was finally freed, the divers said, she swam around them for a time in what appeared to be joyous circles. She then came back and visited with each one of them, nudging them all gently, as if in thanks. The divers said it was the most beautiful experience they ever had. As for the diver who cut free the rope that was entangled in the whale's mouth, her huge eye was following him the entire time, and he said that he will never be the same...." (Ibid)

---

13 Jul 09 - 08:21 PM (#2679557)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

I have always felt that part of the skill of assessing information is the ability to recognize relative weights and values, how important one or another bit of data is relative to others.

From which perspective, three tidbits from the current mailing of Physics.Org:

1. Singapore's Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) has discovered a new environmentally friendly method to synthesize a wide variety of nanoparticles inexpensively. This new chemical synthesis has been recently published in Nature Materials.
IBN researchers have developed a protocol to transfer metal ions from an aqueous solution to an organic solution such as toluene. Metal compounds that can dissolve in water are inexpensive and commonly available.
Many useful metals and scarce materials that are soluble in water may now become readily employed in the synthesis of nanoparticles. This new approach developed by IBN is a simple, room-temperature process that does not produce toxic chemicals.


2. "Researchers achieve major breakthrough with water desalination system
July 13th, 2009 By Wileen Wong Kromhout
(PhysOrg.com) -- Concern over access to clean water is no longer just an issue for the developing world, as California faces its worst drought in recorded history. According to state's Department of Water Resources, supplies in major reservoirs and many groundwater basins are well below average. Court-ordered restrictions on water deliveries have reduced supplies from the two largest water systems, and an outdated statewide water system can't keep up with population growth.

With these critical issues looming large, researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science are working hard to help alleviate the state's water deficit with their new mini-mobile-modular (M3) "smart" water desalination and filtration system.

In designing and constructing new desalination plants, creating and testing pilot facilities is one of the most expensive and time-consuming steps. Traditionally, small yet very expensive stationary pilot plants are constructed to determine the feasibility of using available water as a source for a large-scale desalination plant. The M3 system helps cut both costs and time.

"Our M3 water desalination system provides an all-in-one mobile testing plant that can be used to test almost any water source," said Alex Bartman, a graduate student on the M3 team who helped to design the sensor networks and data acquisition computer hardware in the system. "The advantages of this type of system are that it can cut costs, and because it is mobile, only one M3 system needs to be built to test multiple sources. Also, it will give an extensive amount of information that can be used to design the larger-scale desalination plant."

The M3 demonstrated its effectiveness in a recent field study in the San Joaquin Valley in which it desalted agricultural drainage water that was nearly saturated with calcium sulfate salts, accomplishing this with just one reverse osmosis (RO) stage.

3. "(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Yale University researchers has discovered a "repulsive" light force that can be used to control components on silicon microchips, meaning future nanodevices could be controlled by light rather than electricity.

The team previously discovered an "attractive" force of light and showed how it could be manipulated to move components in semiconducting micro- and nano-electrical systems—tiny mechanical switches on a chip. The scientists have now uncovered a complementary repulsive force. Researchers had theorized the existence of both the attractive and repulsive forces since 2005, but the latter had remained unproven until now. The team, led by Hong Tang, assistant professor at Yale's School of Engineering & Applied Science, reports its findings in the July 13 edition of Nature Photonics's advanced online publication.

"This completes the picture," Tang said. "We've shown that this is indeed a bipolar light force with both an attractive and repulsive component."

The attractive and repulsive light forces Tang's team discovered are separate from the force created by light's radiation pressure, which pushes against an object as light shines on it. Instead, they push out or pull in sideways from the direction the light travels.
Previously, the engineers used the attractive force they discovered to move components on the silicon chip in one direction, such as pulling on a nanoscale switch to open it, but were unable to push it in the opposite direction.

Using both forces means they can now have complete control and can manipulate components in both directions. "We've demonstrated that these are tunable forces we can engineer," Tang said.

---

It really is a wunnerful universe in some ways!


A

---

14 Jul 09 - 11:16 AM (#2679970)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IN this remarkable story a young girl's failing heart was given a ten-year rest, by the surgical addition of a second, donor heart; during which time the original heart appears to have completely restored itself to natural full operation. THe girl, now 16, has been given a clean bill of health with the donor heart removed and the original article in full deployment.

I suppose I'd be in pretty good knick after a ten year vacation, too.



A

---

14 Jul 09 - 01:34 PM (#2680095)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

John Demjanjuk, 89, who is accused of being a guard at a Nazi death camp and was extradited to Germany from the United States in May, was charged Monday with 27,900 counts of accessory to murder, Munich prosecutors said in a statement. The accused, who denies any role in the Holocaust, was deemed fit to stand trial by German doctors, on the condition that the questioning be no longer than two sessions, each of 90 minutes, per day. Mr. Demjanjuk's family says that he is suffering from an incurable bone disease and has only about 15 months to live. The court did not say when the trial would begin.

---

14 Jul 09 - 03:15 PM (#2680196)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Tony Marshall
Kimberly Anyadike is greeted after landing at Compton Woodley Airport on Saturday. She is believed to be the youngest African American female to complete the flight across the country.
L.A. teenager who flew single-engine plane across the country lands in Compton

By My-Thuan Tran
July 12, 2009

A 15-year-old Los Angeles girl who navigated a single-engine Cessna through thunderstorms in Texas and took in breathtaking aerial views of Arizona's sunsets landed her plane to cheering crowds at Compton Woodley Airport on Saturday. She is believed to be the youngest African American female pilot to fly solo across the country.

Kimberly Anyadike took off from Compton 13 days ago with an adult safety pilot and Levi Thornhill, an 87-year-old who served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. They flew to Newport News, Va., making about a dozen stops along the way.

Anyadike learned to fly a plane and helicopter when she was 12 with the Compton-based Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum, which offers aviation lessons to at-risk youth and economically disadvantaged students through an after-school program. The organization owns the small plane Anyadike flew.

Anyadike said she loved the feeling of streaking across the sky. She told her mother that it was like a wild ride at Magic Mountain.

She came up with the idea to fly across the country a few months after learning to fly. Robin Petgrave, the aeronautical museum's founder, warned her that it would take a lot of preparation.

"I told her it was going to be a daunting task," he said, "but she just said, 'Put it on. I got big shoulders.' "

The organization said there is no official group that tracks such records, but their research showed that her trip at age 15 is rare among pilots.

Anyadike said she didn't want to make the trip to set a record or become some kind of celebrity.

"I wanted to inspire other kids to really believe in themselves," she said. She also wanted to honor the Tuskegee Airmen, the U.S. Army Air Corps' all-black combat unit that served during World War II.


(LAT)

---

15 Jul 09 - 10:43 AM (#2680753)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

(not science)

finger spray painting

Remember in 1st grade when they had you crayon many colors then cover it with black crayon and then scrape off sections?

This technique demands you work and think backwards sometimes but if you can stand the fumes its fun and easy. Sometimes when I do these I use chrome reflective paper.

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15 Jul 09 - 11:20 AM (#2680776)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

"I have always felt that part of the skill of assessing information is the ability to recognize relative weights and values, how important one or another bit of data is relative to others."

You are right.

I am currently exploring my thoughts on what I call the general theory of relationships. It is far reaching as a teaching technique and should be an essential foundation of all ongoing research. The Relationships explored are not just between bits of data but between all things and everything else.

This is not a new idea but its presentation is captivating and thought provoking especially in the area of helping to decide what is safe, feasible and beneficial in applying new science as in the field of synthetic biology and nano technology.

Far too often we are not considering any interconnected relationships when we release new drugs or technologies. Instead of taking a Cartesian view or relying only on a cost risk POV we need a new General Theory of Relationships. Some scientists don't even think in terms of the effect that can spread to every other "networked" system in the universe by way of 6 degrees.

We stand between the very small quantum scale and very large multiverse branes. It seems that these two vastly different size scales are like two locked boxes with the key to open them in the other box. We are getting closer to being able to pick the lock of one or both boxes.

As humans we may never be able to see a google moves ahead in the cosmic chess game but we damn well better get started.
Even a rudimentary Relationship Theory smell test could make the difference between a wondrous advance or extinction.

whadduyathink

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15 Jul 09 - 11:24 AM (#2680778)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

the underlined links are not my own. Are they some kind of new spam technique?

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15 Jul 09 - 10:59 PM (#2681164)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- The discovery of a new primate fossil in Myanmar (formerly Burma) lends weight to the hypothesis that the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes (anthropoid primates) originated in Asia, and not in Africa. To support the hypothesis, an international team of paleontologists, including two French researchers, has shown that these primates, which are 37 million years old and named Ganlea megacanina, had an ability observed today in modern monkeys, but not in lemurs: they pried open and ate seeds in a specific way by using their greatly enlarged canine teeth, like certain South American monkeys today. This ability is one of the reasons that justifies them being placed in the family of anthropoid primates.

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15 Jul 09 - 11:29 PM (#2681178)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

---

During liftoff, this crew recorded a space exploration milestone. Before this flight, 498 people had been in space, beginning with Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Colonel Hurley, in the pilot's seat, became No. 499, as the Endeavour passed through the 100-kilometer altitude, the arbitrary boundary of outer space. Because of his seating position, Commander Cassidy was the 500th. Dr. Marshburn and Colonel Kopra, both also first-time fliers, brought the total to 502.

---

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16 Jul 09 - 10:44 AM (#2681441)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Protesters are planning a second "kiss-in" near the Salt Lake City Temple to support two gay men who said they were stopped by LDS Church security after one man kissed the other on the cheek.

The event will take place at noon Sunday, according to a listing on Facebook. At 12:15 p.m., organizers will sound a whistle or bell as a signal to step onto a former public easement and kiss.

Supporters of Derek Jones and Matthew Aune staged a similar show of support July 12, when about 100 people gathered at Main Street plaza for "gentle" displays of public affection. Church security watched the protesters, and called police when they crossed onto the property, but there were no altercations.

Jones and Aune argued with guards July 8 after they were stopped at about 10 p.m. on Main Street Plaza, and later were cited for trespassing by police. The LDS Church has said the two men were stopped for "inappropriate behavior" and treated like any other couple.

Located next to Temple Square, Main Street Plaza was public land sold by the city to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about 10 years ago. The sale allowed the church to ban speech and actions it disagreed with from the area between Temple Square and the Church Office Building.

[e-mail]

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18 Jul 09 - 10:39 AM (#2682806)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The NY Times reports:

"This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

The MobileReference edition of the novel, "Nineteen Eighty-four," by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.
But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people's Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is "rare," but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we've been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we've learned that they're not really like books, in that once we're finished reading them, we can't resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it's like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we've been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were "1984" and "Animal Farm."

Scary."

---

20 Jul 09 - 11:30 AM (#2683893)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From a long-lost letter from Ernest Hemingway describing life in Madrid when it was being shelled by Franco's forces, which was eventually published in part in the New York TImes:

"Something you can't put on the stage but that would be good in a picture was the first big shelling of the Florida. The hotel was packed when the shelling started just at daylight and after the first shell hit the front of the building, (seven more hit it that day and over eleven hundred were fired into the town), there was a sort of mass migration from the rooms on the side that faced the lines. Couples carrying their mattresses over their backs scuttled across the halls on every floor like a movement of the lemmings. Then in the crashing and the rolling clouds of dust Antoine de Saint Exupéry started to give away grapefruits. He had brought two bushel of them from Valencia and this was his first bombardment and he was handling it by giving away grapefruits.

"Est-ce-que vous voulez une pamplemousse?"

Crash. More dust. People lying under the mattresses. Screams from ladies awakened too early and abruptly.

"Est-ce-que vous voulez une pamplemousse?"

Crash. More dust. Strong smell of cordite and blasted granite. Pieces of masonry fall through skylight. Ladies under mattresses who have not thought of facing eternity until awakened give serious thoughts to same.

The letter ends with Hemingway describing what it was like to work on a play for a change:

About writing the play itself: I was excited and happy to be able to write the dialogue without having to write about places. That is you could say a place was such and so. You did not have to really make it as in a novel so that the reader can walk in and know it is true. A set designer would have to make it from your knowledge.

I can write dialogue on a typewriter because it goes faster than I can use a pencil. But when I make country, or a city, or a river in a novel it is slow work because you have to always make it, then it is alive. But nobody makes anything quickly nor easily if it is any good.

The making part of a play comes after the writing of it. Other people do all the great detail that you just indicate when you write. Right now I have been working steadily for a year and a month on a novel. In that no one can help you. But in a play the credit for all the really hard work goes to those who stage, direct, and act in it. I had all the fun. They had all the work. Well, that is a nice kind of an exchange for once.

The one good lucky thing was that I happened to have a room in the Hotel Florida from March 1937 to May 1938 at a time when you could learn as much at the Hotel Florida in those years as you could learn anywhere in the world. I did not spend all those months in that room. But each time I came back to that room I had learned something. And the shelling and the rest of it were very good to keep you from kidding yourself about many things."

(Letter text printed with the permission of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation.)

(From this article.

---

20 Jul 09 - 07:24 PM (#2684165)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Infants just 6 months old can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language.
The new findings come on the heels of a study from the same Brigham Young University lab showing that infants can detect mood swings in Beethoven's music.
Though the mix of dogs and babies sounds silly, experiments of this kind help us understand how babies learn so rapidly. Long before they master speech, babies recognize and respond to the tone of what's going on around them.
"Emotion is one of the first things babies pick up on in their social world," said BYU psychology professor Ross Flom, lead author of the study.

Flom and two BYU students report their latest "amazing baby" findings in the journal Developmental Psychology.

"We chose dogs because they are highly communicative creatures both in their posture and the nature of their bark," Flom said.

In the experiment, the babies first saw two different pictures of the same dog, one in an aggressive posture and the other in a friendly stance. Then the researchers played - in random order - sound clips of a friendly and an aggressive dog bark.
"They only had one trial because we didn't want them to learn it on the fly and figure it out," Flom said.

While the recordings played, the 6-month-old babies spent most of their time staring at the appropriate picture. Older babies usually made the connection instantly with their very first glance." From Phys.org

---

21 Jul 09 - 06:59 PM (#2684879)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- Quantum key distribution (QKD) could be the next commercial success of quantum physics, and a recent study has taken the field a step closer to this reality. Researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Corning Incorporated in New York have demonstrated a new QKD prototype that can distribute quantum keys over a distance of 250 km in the lab, improving upon the previous record of 200 km. The scientists hope that the achievement will lead to the goal of distributing quantum keys over intercity distances of 300 km in the near future.

As the researchers explained, the purpose of QKD schemes is to distribute a secret quantum key between two distant locations with security relying on the laws of quantum physics. The idea of QKD was first proposed in 1984, and in 1992, scientists could distribute quantum keys over 32 cm, while the technology has improved from there. Despite these advances, the scientists say, the main challenge is still to achieve higher bit rates over longer distances.
To reach their new record of 250 km, the scientists made three significant improvements to their QKD technique. First, they developed a coherent one way (COW) protocol tailored specifically for quantum communication over optical fiber networks. In addition, they used an improved superconducting single-photon detector to decrease noise, as well as ultra low loss fibers made by Corning to minimize channel loss and improve the distribution rate.

By making these improvements, the physicists could distribute quantum keys in the lab at a rate of 15 bits per second over 250 km of optical fiber, or 6,000 bits per second over 100 km, with low error rates. The system is also fully automated, and can run for hours without human intervention.

In the COW protocol, Alice, the transmitter, sends a pair of pulses, one empty and one non-empty (containing a mean photon number of 0.5). The bits are encoded in the pair of pulses, with the bit value define by the position of the non-empty pulse: first position = 0 and second position = 1.

Bob, the receiver, uses a detector to distinguish the pulses.
For true quantum communication, Alice and Bob also verify the coherence of the pulses. Bob randomly selects a small fraction of pulses, not used as data, to send to an interferometer, which measures the coherence between adjacent qubits. Due to this security measure, an eavesdropper could not perform "photon number splitting attacks," such as removing or blocking photons, without disturbing the system and being detected. ..."

---

I had a Cow, and the Cow pleased me,
I ran my Cow up to 6 K B.

And the Cow went bleep, bleep,
Times the root of pi r 3.



I dunno. Quantum bit structure using photons means potentially huge multiples in bandwidth. We might be able to keep the MOAB going after all!


A

---

21 Jul 09 - 07:26 PM (#2684912)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- An analysis of Martian meteorites has led scientists to believe that Mars was molten for up to 100 million years after it formed, thwarting the evolution of early life on the planet.
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The research, just published in the prestigious international journal Nature Geoscience, has shown that the red planet remained excessively hot - with temperatures in excess of 1000 degrees Celsius - for 100 million years following its formation.

The team of international scientists from the USA, Belgium, and Australia, and spearheaded by workers at NASA's Johnson Space Center, studied the radioactive clocks ticking away in a particularly rare and ancient type of Martian meteorite called a Nakhlite (named after Nakhla in Egypt where the first one was found).

They have made the most precise measurements yet on rare isotopes of exotic elements such as Hafnium, Lutetium, and Neodymium. These isotopes allow scientists to date ancient events deep in Mars' earliest history.

"We were able to reconstruct the timescale for Mars' earliest evolution," says Macquarie University planetary scientist Dr Craig O'Neill, the only Australian scientist on the study.
Contrary to the popular belief that it only took a few thousand years for Mars to cool and solidify from an initially molten ball, their study suggests that there was a thick steam atmosphere on Mars very early in the planet's history that kept the surface a magma ocean for 100 million years - and essentially sterile the whole time.

---

22 Jul 09 - 10:42 AM (#2685271)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The typical human is home to a vast array of microbes. If you were to count them, you'd find that microbial cells outnumber your own by a factor of 10. On a cell-by-cell basis, then, you are only 10 percent human. For the rest, you are microbial. (Why don't you see this when you look in the mirror? Because most of the microbes are bacteria, and bacterial cells are generally much smaller than animal cells. They may make up 90 percent of the cells, but they're not 90 percent of your bulk.)

This much has been known for a long time. Yet it's only now, with the revolution in biotechnology, that we're able to do detailed studies of which microbes are there, which genes they have, and what they're doing. We're just at the start, and there are far more questions than answers. But already, the results are astonishing, and the implications profound.

Even on your skin, the diversity of bacteria is prodigious. If you were to have your hands sampled, you'd probably find that each fingertip has a distinct set of residents; your palms probably also differ markedly from each other, each home to more than 150 species, but with fewer than 20 percent of the species the same. And if you're a woman, odds are you'll have more species than the man next to you. Why should this be? So far, no one knows.

But it's the bacteria in the digestive tract, especially the gut, that intrigue me most. Many of these appear to be true symbionts: they have evolved to live in guts and (as far as we know) are not found elsewhere. In providing their habitat — a constant temperature, some protection from hostile lifeforms and regular influxes of food — we are as essential to them as they are to us.

And they definitely are essential to us. Gut bacteria play crucial roles in digesting food and modulating the immune system. They make small molecules that we need in order for our enzymes to work properly. They interact with us, altering which of our genes get turned on and off in cells in the intestinal walls. Some evidence suggests that they are essential for the building of a normal heart. Finally, it seems likely that gut bacteria will turn out to affect appetite, as well as other aspects of our behavior, though no one has shown this yet. (Imagine the plea: I'm sorry, sir, my microbes made me do it.)

Together, your gut microbes provide you with a pool of genes far larger than that found in the human genome. Indeed, the gut "microbiome," as it is known, is thought to contain at least 100 times more genes than the human genome. Moreover, whereas humans are extremely similar to one another at the level of the genome, the microbiome appears to differ markedly from one person to the next. "

Olivia Judson in the NYT

---

23 Jul 09 - 03:23 PM (#2686233)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For centuries, scientists have puzzled over why the toucan's bill is so remarkably large - but now one team thinks it might have an answer.

Writing in the journal Science, the researchers say that the toucan uses its enormous beak to stay cool.

They used infrared cameras to show the bird dumping heat from its body into its bill, helping it to regulate its body temperature.

The toucan has the largest bill of any bird, relative to body size.

It makes up about one-third of its total body length.

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27 Jul 09 - 08:14 PM (#2688453)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

..."In one series of experiments, the researchers watched as the beads moved up and down tiny tubes of lipid molecules by Brownian motion. In a second series of experiments, the researchers watched as the beads diffused through a porous membrane of entangled macromolecule filaments, again by Brownian motion.

In both sets of experiments, there were many features in full agreement with Einstein and the bell-shaped curve; but there were also features in significant disagreement. In those cases, the beads moved much farther than the common curve could predict. In those extreme displacements, diffusion behavior was not Gaussian, the researchers report. The behavior was exponential.

"These large displacements happen less often, but when they do occur, they are much bigger than we previously thought possible," Granick said.

The new findings "change the rules of the diffusion game," Granick said. "Like the emperor's new clothes, now that we know the bell-shaped curve isn't always the right way to think about a particular problem, process, or operation, we can begin to design around it, and maybe take advantage of it. And, we can correct the textbooks."..." (PhysOrg)

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28 Jul 09 - 01:33 AM (#2688557)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

PM offline

trivia factoid from NIH

There are laws that supercede other laws in our own DNA.

While elctromagnetic charges should push certain DNA strands apart...they attract.





Learning by way of the interconnectedness of all things will help us understand better than the old Cartesian way of breaking things down into individual parts. A tree viewed as a partner in a system of soil, insects, atmosphere and a myriad of lifeforms far from its branches tells us more than just knowing leaves, wood and the Krebs cycle.

Paul Burke in his book Connections hinted at the non liniear quality of invention itself. Gaia theory is more of a relgion than a science and the laws of 6 degrees of separation are just begging to gain credence. This is why I believe that a new theory called the general theory of relationsips may be evolving as we speak.

Such a theory leading to an empirical science could aid teaching, communication, political systems and discovery of the new and unexpected.


Now that we have built a massive cyber neural net called the internet we may be able to make programs that invent hypothetical inventions of its own and discover links between vast near and divergent systems that will invent the new physics for us...

If we make it it will create.

The results of a general theory of relationships could demonstrate that xenophobia itself is not only false, it is one of the few impossibilities in the universe.

(something we might hear in a sci fi monster movie)

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31 Jul 09 - 10:20 AM (#2691043)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

# Marginal Revolution: Tyler Cowen says "the best sentence I read last night" is from a review of William Vollman's new book, "Imperial," in New York magazine by Sam Anderson:

   " "Imperial" is like Robert Caro's "The Power Broker" with the attitude of Mike Davis's "City of Quartz," if Robert Caro had been raised in an abandoned grain silo by a band of feral raccoons, and if Mike Davis were the communications director of a heavily armed libertarian survivalist cult, and if the two of them had somehow managed to stitch John McPhee's cortex onto the brain of a Gila monster, which they then sent to the Mexican border to conduct ten years of immersive research, and also if they wrote the entire manuscript on dried banana leaves with a toucan beak dipped in hobo blood, and then the book was line-edited during a 36-hour peyote séance by the ghosts of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Sinclair Lewis, with 200 pages of endnotes faxed over by Henry David Thoreau's great-great-great-great grandson from a concrete bunker under a toxic pond behind a maquiladora, and if at the last minute Herman Melville threw up all over the manuscript, rendering it illegible, so it had to be re-created from memory by a community-theater actor doing his best impression of Jack Kerouac."

---

Now THAT is a sentence.

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31 Jul 09 - 09:40 PM (#2691377)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, at the event "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus", from the 2009 World Science Festival, June 12, 2009.

CLICK

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02 Aug 09 - 05:17 PM (#2692404)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The next level of robot is currently in the research and development stage in Japan's National Institute of Information and Communication Technology. The next level of robot untethered by human omnipresence allows it to take cues from gestures and make immediate and appropriate responses.

The Japanese, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology is working on a project wherein machines can learn and teach themselves what to do. Presently, robots are tethered to human commands or guided by programs in advance that operate in real time. The new level of robot will take cues from gestures and operate more autonomously through a learning process.

The Institutes's Spoken Language Division is in the development stage of creating a robot that measure 155 cm and weighs 85 kg that learns through gestures, thereby creating a more autonomous robot. The Spoken Language Group´s main focus is to develop an information communication system that understands when people talk correctly and automatically takes appropriate actions to people and other machines. The actions are based on the knowledge they receive from the talk by people in their presence.

According to the Institute, the current research is involved in producing stress-free unambiguous communication that a machine understands immediately and tells its understanding immediately to a person or another machine. Its primary goal is to establish a technology to give messages to network terminals by people's natural expressions, such as gestures, hand signals and body language that transcend language differences and allow for approximations.

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03 Aug 09 - 11:05 AM (#2692783)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Valley Authority has raised its estimate for cleaning up a huge coal ash spill to $1.2 billion and partly blamed the cleanup for its third-quarter loss of $167 million.

The authority, the nation's largest public utility, gave the new estimate Friday in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On Dec. 22, nearly 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic ash breached a holding pond at a coal-fired power plant near Kingston.

No one was injured, but millions of tons of ash and sludge swept into a river, damaged two dozen homes, covered 300 acres, raised health concerns in the area and brought Congressional attention to the lack of regulation of similar sites throughout the country.

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03 Aug 09 - 10:05 PM (#2693229)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...A former winner of the BBC quiz show "Mastermind" recently took part in a pub quiz which came down to a tiebreaker between his team and a group of young people who were relying on BlackBerrys. Anyone familiar with quizzes these days knows that this can happen, whether it is under the table or outside in the smokers' zone; the combination of wireless internet access and Google searching is simply too powerful for some to resist and for others to prevent. In this case, happily, virtue triumphed and the team led by the Mastermind champion won. Then afterwards a young woman from the losing side came over and asked in baffled tones: "How did you get that?" So attuned was she to the idea that answering quiz questions was a task to be outsourced to the internet that she seemed not to understand the idea of general knowledge that was kept in the head."

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04 Aug 09 - 12:00 AM (#2693268)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Latin cōnātus comes from the verb cōnor, which is usually translated into English as, "to endeavor"; but the concept of the conatus was first developed by the Stoics (333–264 BCE) and Peripatetics (c. 335 BCE) before the Common Era. These groups used the word ὁρμή (hormê, translated in Latin by impetus) to describe the movement of the soul towards an object, and from which a physical act results.[7]

Classical thinkers, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) and Diogenes Laertius (c. 235 BCE), expanded this principle to include an aversion to destruction, but continued to limit its application to the motivations of non-human animals. Diogenes Laertius, for example, specifically denied the application of the term to plants.

Before the Renaissance, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274 CE), Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308 CE) and Dante Alighieri (1265–1321 CE) expressed similar sentiments using the Latin words vult, velle or appetit as synonyms of conatus; indeed, all four terms may be used to translate the original Greek ὁρμή. Around 1700, Telesius and Campanella extended the ancient Greek notions and applied them to all objects, animate and inanimate.[8]

First Aristotle, then Cicero and Laertius each alluded to a connection between the conatus and other emotions. In their view, the former induces the latter. They maintained that humans do not wish to do something because they think it "good", but rather they think it "good" because they want to do it. In other words, the cause of human desire is the natural inclination of a body to augment itself in accordance with the principles of the conatus.[9]   (Wikipedia article on conatus)

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04 Aug 09 - 07:41 PM (#2693893)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

General Fusion has recently raised enough financial support - $13.5 million - from public and private investors to start the project. Rather than using expensive superconducting magnets (tokamaks) like the $14-billion ITER project in France or powerful lasers like those used by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, General Fusion plans to try a relatively low-tech approach called magnetized target fusion.
The reactor consists of a metal sphere with a diameter of three meters. Inside the sphere, a liquid mixture of lithium and lead spins to create a vortex with a vertical cavity in the center. Then, the researchers inject two donut-shaped plasma rings called spheromaks into the top and bottom of the vertical cavity - like "blowing smoke rings at each other," explains Doug Richardson, chief executive of General Fusion.
The last step is mainly well-timed brute mechanical force. 220 pneumatically controlled pistons on the outer surface of the sphere are programmed to simultaneously ram the surface of the sphere one time per second. This force sends an acoustic wave through the spinning liquid that becomes a shock wave when it reaches the spheromaks in the center, triggering a fusion burst. Specifically, the plasma's hydrogen isotopes - deuterium and tritium - fuse into helium, releasing neutrons that are trapped by the lithium and lead mixture. The neutrons cause the liquid to heat up, and the heat is extracted through a heat exchanger. Part of the resulting heat is used to make steam to spin a turbine for power generation, while the rest goes back to recharge the pistons.
The biggest challenge with the design will likely be showing that the technique actually works; no one has ever demonstrated that spheromaks can be compressed enough - while maintaining their donut shape - to create fusion. The design also takes advantage of digital control technologies that have only recently been developed, which are required to ensure that all 220 pistons strike the sphere at once.
General Fusion has just started developing simulations of the project, and hopes to build a test reactor and demonstrate net gain within five years. If everything goes according to plan, they will then build a 100-megawatt prototype reactor to be finished five years after that, which would cost an estimated $500 million.

---

06 Aug 09 - 01:19 PM (#2694860)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

< a href=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo>Breathtaking beauty at the hands of a young Russian woman.

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07 Aug 09 - 11:08 AM (#2695479)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer

Breathtaking beauty at the hands of a young [you mean...] Ukranian woman

Don't know the full info behind the story she's telling, but I'm willing to bet that nationality plays into it heavily...

It is an amazing piece of work.

~ Becky in Tucson

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07 Aug 09 - 11:12 AM (#2695481)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer

I wrote that before I'd gotten to the very end -- 1945, she wrote.

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10 Aug 09 - 12:28 PM (#2697027)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Denialogues

Journalist George Monbiot's term for those who adopt an ideology of denial.

Conceding that denial has its place, and that "without denial there is no hope," George Monbiot recently argued in The Guardian:

But some people make a doctrine of it. American conservatism could be described as a movement of denialogues, people whose ideology is based on disavowing physical realities. This applies to their views on evolution, climate change, foreign affairs and fiscal policy. The Vietnam war would have been won, were it not for the pinko chickens at home. Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaida. Everyone has an equal chance of becoming C.E.O. Universal healthcare is a communist plot. Segregation wasn't that bad. As one of George Bush's aides said: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."...

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10 Aug 09 - 01:07 PM (#2697052)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Archaeologists are slowly unearthing the ghastly secrets of Cahokia, an ancient city under the American heartland

By Andrew O'Hehir


Aug. 6, 2009 | Ever since the first Europeans came to North America, only to discover the puzzling fact that other people were already living here, the question of how to understand the Native American past has been both difficult and politically charged. For many years, American Indian life was viewed through a scrim of interconnected bigotry and romance, which simultaneously served to idealize the pre-contact societies of the Americas and to justify their destruction. Pre-Columbian life might be understood as savage and brutal darkness or an eco-conscious Eden where man lived in perfect harmony with nature. But it seemed to exist outside history, as if the native people of this continent were for some reason exempt from greed, cruelty, warfare and other near-universal characteristics of human society.

As archaeologist Timothy Pauketat's cautious but mesmerizing new book, "Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi," makes clear, Cahokia -- the greatest Native American city north of Mexico -- definitely belongs to human history. (It is not "historical," in the strict sense, because the Cahokians left no written records.) At its peak in the 12th century, this settlement along the Mississippi River bottomland of western Illinois, a few miles east of modern-day St. Louis, was probably larger than London, and held economic, cultural and religious sway over a vast swath of the American heartland. Featuring a man-made central plaza covering 50 acres and the third-largest pyramid in the New World (the 100-foot-tall "Monks Mound"), Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people. If that doesn't sound impressive from a 21st-century perspective, consider that the next city on United States territory to attain that size would be Philadelphia, some 600 years later.

In a number of critical ways, Cahokia seems to resemble other ancient cities discovered all over the world, from Mesopotamia to the Yucatán. It appears to have been arranged according to geometrical and astronomical principles (around various "Woodhenges," large, precisely positioned circles of wooden poles), and was probably governed by an elite class who commanded both political allegiance and spiritual authority. Cahokia was evidently an imperial center that abruptly exploded, flourished for more then a century and then collapsed, very likely for one or more of the usual reasons: environmental destruction, epidemics of disease, the ill will of subjugated peoples and/or outside enemies.

Some archaeologists might pussyfoot around this question more than Pauketat does, but it also seems clear that political and religious power in Cahokia revolved around another ancient tradition. Cahokians performed human sacrifice, as part of some kind of theatrical, community-wide ceremony, on a startlingly large scale unknown in North America above the valley of Mexico. Simultaneous burials of as many as 53 young women (quite possibly selected for their beauty) have been uncovered beneath Cahokia's mounds, and in some cases victims were evidently clubbed to death on the edge of a burial pit, and then fell into it. A few of them weren't dead yet when they went into the pit -- skeletons have been found with their phalanges, or finger bones, digging into the layer of sand beneath them.

Full story here: Sacrificial Virgins of the Mississippi.

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10 Aug 09 - 09:47 PM (#2697406)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

These "light-liked, spin-locked" electrons, called helical Dirac fermions, had been proposed in theory, but never before found in three-dimensional materials. By tuning the electrons to act in this way, the scientists are able to calibrate the surface conductivity of the topological insulator.

"This is a major breakthrough in that they showed how you could control the material to get to the sweet spot [featuring the light-like behavior of electrons] where the surfaces are most interesting," said theoretical physicist Charles Kane of the University of Pennsylvania, who is not affiliated with the research. "Two things had to be done -- first, the bulk of the material had to be made a good insulator, and second, the energy of the surface states had to be adjusted to be precisely at the right point. By tuning the surface to the sweet spot, it opens the door to a whole host of new things you can try to do."

(Phys Org)

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11 Aug 09 - 03:04 PM (#2697845)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Here on the Nicola Peninsula in Costa Rica, the medical news that dominates headlines today is not swine flu but a mysterious affliction called grisi siknis (or "jungle madness," in the language of the Miskito). In neighboring Nicaragua, an outbreak of grisi siknis that sickened 120 teenage girls and closed three schools in the village of Kamla has apparently receded after an angry mob captured a drifter suspected of practicing black magic, bound him with rope, and nearly beat him to death. The police took the man into custody and burned his spell books in a public square, but he was soon released because witchcraft is not a crime in Nicaragua.

Grisi siknis is a contagious collective hysteria that strikes indigenous people in Nicaragua, primarily young pubescent women, who fall into a trance, become manic or violent, and often imagine that the devil is sexually possessing them.

Western medicine, while acknowledging the disease, has had difficulty explaining it.   The American Psychiatric Association's DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) describes grisi siknis as "a psychological disorder due to stress, upheaval, and despair." According to Phil Dennis at Texas Tech University, the disorder is "a wild, orgiastic rite of sex and violence." Western physicians who have traveled to villages where grisi siknis is epidemic have been unable to help those afflicted. The Miskito believe that grisi siknis is caused by evil spirits conjured up by sorcerers, and that herbahttp://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=104378&messages=342&page=1&desc=yes#replylists and witch doctors can exorcise the spirits and cure the disease. The epidemic that just claimed 120 teenage women in Kamila, Puerto Cabezas, may be the largest on record.

http://bigthink.com/paulhoffman/grisi-siknis

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11 Aug 09 - 11:54 PM (#2698273)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- If humans ever create a lunar base, one of the biggest challenges will be figuring out how to breathe. Transporting oxygen to the moon is extremely expensive, so for the past several years NASA has been looking into other possibilities. One idea is extracting oxygen from moon rock.



Recently, Derek Fray, a materials chemist from the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues have built a reactor that uses oxides in Moon rocks as the cathode in an electrochemical process to produce oxygen.
The design is based on a process that the researchers invented in 2000 that produces carbon dioxide. In this design, the scientists pass a current between the cathode and an anode made of carbon, with both electrodes sitting in an electrolyte solution of molten calcium chloride, a common salt. The current removes oxygen atoms from the cathode, which are then ionized and dissolve in the molten salt. The negatively charged oxygen is attracted to the carbon anode, where it erodes the anode and produces carbon dioxide.
To produce oxygen rather than carbon dioxide, the researchers made an unreactive anode using a mixture of calcium titanate and calcium ruthenate instead of the carbon. Because this anode barely erodes, the reaction between the oxygen ions and anode produces oxygen.

Based on experiments with a simulated lunar rock developed by NASA, the researchers calculate that three one-meter-tall reactors could generate one tonne of oxygen per year on the Moon. Each tonne of oxygen would require three tonnes of rock to produce. Fray noted that three reactors would require about 4.5 kilowatts of power, which could be supplied by solar panels or possibly a small nuclear reactor on the Moon. The researchers are also working with the European Space Agency on developing an even larger reactor that could be operated remotely.

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13 Aug 09 - 11:08 AM (#2699431)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Warfare on the wane

Indeed, perhaps the best and most surprising news to emerge from research on warfare is that humanity as a whole is much less violent than it used to be (see our timeline of weapons technology). People in modern societies are far less likely to die in battle than those in traditional cultures. For example, the first and second world wars and all the other horrific conflicts of the 20th century resulted in the deaths of fewer than 3 per cent of the global population. According to Lawrence Keeley of the University of Illinois in Chicago, that is an order of magnitude less than the proportion of violent death for males in typical pre-state societies, whose weapons consist only of clubs, spears and arrows rather than machine guns and bombs.

There have been relatively few international wars since the second world war, and no wars between developed nations. Most conflicts now consist of guerilla wars, insurgencies and terrorism - or what the political scientist John Mueller of Ohio State University in Columbus calls the "remnants of war". He notes that democracies rarely, if ever, vote to wage war against each other, and attributes the decline of warfare over the past 50 years, at least in part, to a surge in the number of democracies around the world - from 20 to almost 100. "A continuing decline in war seems to be an entirely reasonable prospect," he says.
Most conflicts now consist of guerilla wars, insurgencies and terrorism - the remnants of war

"Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history," agrees psychologist Steven Pinker of Harvard University. Homicide rates in modern Europe, for example, are more than 10 times lower than they were in the Middle Ages. Decreases in the rate of warfare and homicide, Pinker notes, cannot be explained by changes in human nature over such a relatively short period. Cultural changes and changes in attitude must be responsible, he says.

Pinker gives several reasons for the modern decline of violence in general. First, the creation of stable nations with effective legal systems and police forces. Second, increased life expectancies that make us less willing to risk our lives through violence. Third, increasing globalisation and improvements in communications technology, which have increased our interdependence with, and empathy towards, those outside of our immediate "tribes". "The forces of modernity are making things better and better," he says.

However, while war might not be inevitable, neither is peace. Nations around the world still maintain huge arsenals, including weapons of mass destruction, and armed conflicts still ravage many regions (see our timeline of weapons technology). Major obstacles to peace include the lack of tolerance inherent in religious fundamentalism, which not only triggers conflicts but often contributes to the suppression of women; global warming, which will produce ecological crises that may spark social unrest and violence; overpopulation, particularly when it produces a surplus of unmarried, unemployed young men, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. "Humans can easily backslide into war," Pinker warns.

Fortunately, understanding the environmental conditions that promote war also suggests ways to limit it. LeBlanc points out that the modern focus of human competition - and the warfare that can accompany it - has shifted somewhat from food, water and land to energy. Two keys to peace, he suggests, are population control and cheap, clean, reliable alternatives to fossil fuels. Promoting the spread of participatory democracy clearly wouldn't hurt, either.

Richard Wrangham of Harvard University takes another line, and makes a case for the empowerment of women. It is well known that as female education and economic opportunities rise, birth rates fall. A stabilised population decreases demands on governmental and medical services and on natural resources and, by extension, lessens the likelihood of social unrest and conflict. Since women are less prone to violence then men, Wrangham hopes that these educational and economic trends will propel more women into government....

Full article at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.500-winning-the-ultimate-battle-how-humans-could-end-war.html?full=true.

A

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13 Aug 09 - 11:21 AM (#2699436)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Paco Rabanne

Fascinating!

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13 Aug 09 - 02:59 PM (#2699619)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Thanks, Paco!

"The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.

Over generations, the scientists argue, this has led to women becoming steadily more aesthetically pleasing, a "beauty race" that is still on. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans.

In a study released last week, Markus Jokela, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, found beautiful women had up to 16% more children than their plainer counterparts. He used data gathered in America, in which 1,244 women and 997 men were followed through four decades of life. Their attractiveness was assessed from photographs taken during the study, which also collected data on the number of children they had.

This builds on previous work by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who found that good-looking parents were far more likely to conceive daughters. He suggested this was an evolutionary strategy subtly programmed into human DNA.

He cited two findings from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a US government-backed study that is monitoring more than 15,000 Americans. The measurements include objective assessments of physical attractiveness.

One finding was that women were generally regarded by both sexes as more aesthetically appealing than men. The other was that the most attractive parents were 26% less likely to have sons.

Kanazawa said: "Physical attractiveness is a highly heritable trait, which disproportionately increases the reproductive success of daughters much more than that of sons.

"If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men." "

Women Are Getting More Beautiful, TImes Online

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14 Aug 09 - 03:02 PM (#2700357)
Subject: Retirement income planning raleigh
From: GUEST,Rune

Hello! I was wondering if anyone could help me by giving me some arabic preyers so I can copy them out as I am making a torah for school! Please email me or reply on this Guestbook! Thank you! I love the website by the way!.
I am from Uruguay and bad know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Unfortunately, jobs never pay you enough to work without enjoying life."

With best wishes :-), Rune.

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16 Aug 09 - 12:16 AM (#2701408)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- Excavations led by a University of Toronto archaeologist at the site of a recently discovered temple in southeastern Turkey have uncovered a cache of cuneiform tablets dating back to the Iron Age period between 1200 and 600 BCE. Found in the temple's cella, or 'holy of holies', the tablets are part of a possible archive that may provide insights into Assyrian imperial aspirations.

"The assemblage appears to represent a Neo-Assyrian renovation of an older Neo-Hittite temple complex, providing a rare glimpse into the religious dimension of Assyrian imperial ideology," says Timothy Harrison, professor of near eastern archaeology in the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and director of U of T's Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP). "The tablets, and the information they contain, may possibly highlight the imperial ambitions of one of the great powers of the ancient world, and its lasting influence on the political culture of the Middle East." The cella also contained gold, bronze and iron implements, libation vessels and ornately decorated ritual objects.
Partially uncovered in 2008 at Tell Tayinat, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Palastin, the structure of the building where the tablets were found preserves the classic plan of a Neo-Hittite temple. It formed part of a sacred precinct that once included monumental stelae carved in Luwian (an extinct Anatolian language once spoken in Turkey) hieroglyphic script, but which were found by the expedition smashed into tiny shard-like fragments.

"Tayinat was destroyed by the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 738 BCE, and then transformed into an Assyrian provincial capital, equipped with its own governor and imperial administration," says Harrison. "Scholars have long speculated that the reference to Calneh in Isaiah's oracle against Assyria alludes to Tiglath-pileser's devastation of Kunulua - ie, Tayinat. The destruction of the Luwian monuments and conversion of the sacred precinct into an Assyrian religious complex may represent the physical manifestation of this historic event."

---

Those who do know their history are doomed to repeat it...



A

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16 Aug 09 - 08:48 PM (#2701934)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ON THE night of 30 June 2005, the sky high above La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands crackled with streaks of blue light too faint for humans to see. Atop the Roque de los Muchachos, the highest point of the island, though, a powerful magic eye was waiting and watching.

MAGIC - the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope - scans the sky each night for high-energy photons from the distant cosmos. Most nights, nothing remarkable comes. But every now and again, a brief flash of energetic light bears witness to the violent convulsions of a faraway galaxy.

What MAGIC saw on that balmy June night came like a bolt from the blue. That is because something truly astounding may have been encoded in that fleeting Atlantic glow: evidence that the fabric of space-time is not silky smooth as Einstein and many others have presumed, but rough, turbulent and fundamentally grainy stuff.

It is an audacious claim that, if verified, would put us squarely on the road to a quantum theory of gravity and on towards the long-elusive "theory of everything". If it were based on a single chunk of MAGIC data, it might easily be dismissed as a midsummer night's dream. But it is not. Since that first sighting, other telescopes have started to see similar patterns. Is this a physics revolution through the barrel of a telescope?

Such incendiary thoughts were far away from Robert Wagner's mind when the MAGIC data filtered through to the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich, Germany, the morning after. He and his fellow collaborators were enjoying a barbecue. Not for long. "We put our beers aside and started downloading the full data set," says Wagner.

It was easy to pinpoint the source of the data blip - a 20-minute burst of hugely energetic gamma rays from a galaxy some 500 million light years away known as Markarian 501. Its occasional tempestuous outbursts had already made it familiar to gamma-ray telescopes worldwide.

This burst was different. As Wagner and his colleagues analysed the data in the weeks and months that followed, an odd pattern emerged. Lower-energy photons from Markarian 501 had outpaced their higher-energy counterparts, arriving up to 4 minutes earlier (Physics Letters B, vol 668, p 253).

This should not happen. If an object is 500 million light years away, light from it always takes 500 million years to get to us, no more, no less. Whatever their energy, photons always travel at the same speed, the implacable cosmic speed limit: the speed of light.

Perhaps the anomaly has a mundane explanation. We do not really understand the processes within objects such as Markarian 501 that accelerate particles to phenomenal energies and catapult them towards us. They are thought ultimately to have something to do with the convulsions of supermassive black holes at the objects' hearts. It could be that these mechanisms naturally spew out low-energy particles before high-energy ones.

Or they might not. "The more fascinating explanation would be that this delay is not intrinsic to the source, but that it happens along the way from the source to us," says Wagner.

What piqued the interest of Wagner and his colleagues was that the MAGIC observations were showing just the sort of effect that quite a few models of quantum gravity predict. Physicists have been on the lookout for experimental signposts to the right theory for the best part of a century (see "Quantum gravity: why we care").

Physicists have been on the lookout for signposts to the right theory of quantum gravity for the best part of a century
"All approaches to quantum gravity, in their own very different ways, agree that empty space is not so empty after all," says theorist Giovanni Amelino-Camelia of Sapienza University of Rome in Italy. Many models based on string theory suggest that space-time is a foamy froth of particles, and even microscopic black holes, that spark up out of nothing and disappear again with equal abandon. The alternative approach favoured by Amelino-Camelia, loop quantum gravity, posits that space-time comes in indivisible chunks of about 10-35 metres, a size known as the Planck length. (...) (New Scientist)

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16 Aug 09 - 10:55 PM (#2701983)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers have created the tiniest laser since its invention nearly 50 years ago. Because the new device, called a "spaser," is the first of its kind to emit visible light, it represents a critical component for possible future technologies based on "nanophotonic" circuitry. The color diagram (a) shows the nanolaser's design: a gold core surrounded by a glasslike shell filled with green dye. Scanning electron microscope images (b and c) show that the gold core and the thickness of the silica shell were about 14 nanometers and 15 nanometers, respectively. A simulation of the SPASER (d) shows the device emitting visible light with a wavelength of 525 nanometers. (Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University)

Such circuits will require a laser-light source, but current lasers can't be made small enough to integrate them into electronic chips. Now researchers have overcome this obstacle, harnessing clouds of electrons called "surface plasmons," instead of the photons that make up light, to create the tiny spasers.

Findings are detailed in a paper appearing online Sunday (Aug. 16) in the journal Nature, reporting on work conducted by researchers at Purdue, Norfolk State University and Cornell University.

Nanophotonics may usher in a host of radical advances, including powerful "hyperlenses" resulting in sensors and microscopes 10 times more powerful than today's and able to see objects as small as DNA; computers and consumer electronics that use light instead of electronic signals to process information; and more efficient solar collectors.
"Here, we have demonstrated the feasibility of the most critical component - the nanolaser - essential for nanophotonics to become a practical technology," Shalaev said.

(PhysOrg.com) --

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17 Aug 09 - 08:49 PM (#2702698)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A new technique for cloaking objects from all kinds of waves is illustrated with animation on http://vimeo.com/5406206. An explation is at Phys.org.

..."We have shown that it is numerically possible to cloak objects of any shape that lie outside the cloaking devices, not just from single-frequency waves, but from actual pulses generated by a multi-frequency source," says Graeme Milton, senior author of the research and a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Utah.
"It's a brand new method of cloaking," Milton adds. "It is two-dimensional, but we believe it can be extended easily to three dimensions, meaning real objects could be cloaked. It's called active cloaking, which means it uses devices that actively generate electromagnetic fields rather than being composed of 'metamaterials' [exotic metallic substances] that passively shield objects from passing electromagnetic waves."
Milton says his previous research involved "just cloaking clusters of small particles, but now we are able to cloak larger objects.""...

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18 Aug 09 - 02:04 AM (#2702860)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

1909 Aviation Week at Rheims

PARIS For the next week the eyes of the whole world will be turned towards Rheims. The capital of Champagne has shown a keen sense of actualité and realized that the psychological moment in aviation had come, and that the art of flight is now out of its swaddling clothes and able to take its place in a well-ordered creation. The Rémois have also shown themselves, now as ever, good business people. The first aviation meeting is an event in the world's history, and as such can count on the attendance of thousands of strangers, so that commercially it will have its reward — a well-deserved reward, be it said — for its enterprise.

1934 Hitler Promises Strong Régime

HAMBURG Speaking in the grand Council Chamber of the Hamburg Rathaus tonight [Aug. 17] Adolf Hitler outlined to the German people in his only speech during the present referendum campaign the kind of government he will give them as an absolute dictator of the Third Reich, in which he will combine the powers of both Kaiser and Dictator. The Nazi Leader promised his audience of uncounted millions of Germans, who listened-in on a nation-wide radio hookup, an authoritative régime resting upon the confidence of a united German people and independent alike from private interests and shifting parliamentary majorities, and so capable of taking decisions at long range. His reign, Hitler promised, would be based on two pillars — the National-Socialist movement, serving as a political support of the government, and the Reichswehr as its military buttress.

(From the NYT's wayback page)

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24 Aug 09 - 05:20 PM (#2707613)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MT, August 10, 2009 - Saw large rectangular shape with 1-2 constant white light in front & one rotating/blinking red light towards the rear. MUFON Case # 18834.

I was a security officer waiting for my relief to show up at 2345 hours, in Troy, Mt. on August 10, 2009. While waiting for him I looked skyward & saw this object moving left to right across the sky North-South?

About this time my relief arrived & I pointed this object out to him. He claims to have seen UFO's before & when he saw this object he went running down the street to tell two other security officers watching another site. I don't believe the other two security officers witnessed this event, but we did.

It was a large/huge rectangle shaped object (reminded me of a gigantic gum eraser) with 1-2 constant white lights towards the front & one rotating/blinking(not sure which)red light towards the rear. Absolutely no noise & stayed at a constant speed. It was probably in view for 5-10 minutes & then disappeared over a mountain range.

The sky was clear & starlit. It appeared to be between the North star & our observation. We were standing on Spokane Avenue in the middle of the city of Troy, Mt.

Never having observed a "UFO" before I can't tell you what it was, but it WASN'T an airplane and didn't see any wings! My initial reaction was "gee, look at that" The following days up to today I'm starting to get more excited. I'm more of a maybe there is-maybe there isn't type of person. This sighting is pushing me towards a believer. - Bill M

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25 Aug 09 - 01:06 PM (#2708247)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Asceticism is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.
— Ali Ibn Abu Talib

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27 Aug 09 - 12:18 AM (#2709575)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Here is an interesting presentation of what the different dimensionalities mean in theory--1, 2, 3, 4,6, 8, 10 dimensional space, etc.

Unfortunately they seem to have no form idea of what "a dimension" really is. I assume this is because they cannot disentangle space from viewpoints, and viewpoints are notoriously uncooperative, tending toward volatility, creativity, opinions, and other things anathematic to good science.


A

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27 Aug 09 - 10:46 AM (#2709842)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I agree that dimensions are challenging to picture at certain points.

but In my mind.. :,)

As people, we do have an easy time of understanding the viewpoint of scale. We can even come close to unbelivable differences in scale.

I spend time observing concepts of a "theory of everything" supposedly where Einstein left off. Twelve years ago I envisioned the multiverse in which some types of universes spawn other univeres through Massive Black Holes, that may or may not create offspring universes of their own. Some of these "offspring" seem to only interact with the parent universes weakly through residual gravity. Picture it like a fractal tree dropping seeds in which some new trees sprout and some do not. Eventually older universes die out.

Since then...

I have gone on to visualize , as we all can, how the very small resembles the very large like an atom with electron orbits and solar systems with planetary orbits. Along the continuem of the very small to the very large there are several apparent breaks in which resemblance between different scales and the "our human life experience" SEEM to break down, as in the quantum scale. I believe this is only an illusion and the fractal laws of organization are still at play but along the lines of our own thought processes or dreaming.

Today we have arrived at string theory in which tiny membranes vibrate in various shapes and frequencies. On the very large fractal scale of size and shape there are membranes of seperate universes which we call 'Branes', Strings begin again to resemble the very large branes of entire universes.

While mathmatics can easily juggle differnt dimensions with different numbers, the human mind can get jumbled. However the human mind can in fact get a hold of these concepts of dimension merely by picturing it as a matter of size/scale as easily as we can magnify a fractal with a computer.

Amos, you once postualted a great fractal attractor of the universe. Getting a hold of that equation would make quite a computer program indeed.
Afterall, life is a self organizing process just as a simple fractal is mathmaticly self organizing.

The Large Hadron Collider is a tool which could help us see a larger picture but is still too weak to create a universe. It is theorized that as little as 23 kilgrams of mass subjected to black hole like pressure is enough for the matter to pinch itself out of our universe/dimension and start expanding into its own seperate space time continum. Voila/Eureka!

Is that new universe real or artificailly man made?
It won't matter to the new universe, it simply 'is' by then.

This idea is great stuff for future ethicists, don't you think?

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27 Aug 09 - 10:50 AM (#2709846)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Gene replacement therapy works in monkeys

By Marlowe Hood (AFP) � 21 hours ago

PARIS � US scientists have replaced genetic material in monkeys using a method that could prevent dozens of incurable hereditary diseases from being passed from mother to child, said a new study on Wednesday.

"We think this technique could be applied very quickly in humans, and that it will work," said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, who led a team of researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center.

"Many of the procedures we developed could be simply mirrored to existing clinical in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures used in humans," he told journalists by phone.

In experiments on rhesus monkey, hereditary material was removed from an egg containing defective mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, and inserted into a healthy donor egg stripped of its own heriditary package, called a spindle.

The modified eggs were then fertilised with sperm, implanted in females and carried to term.

"So far we have produced four infants by this method" -- named Mito, Tracker, Spindler and Spindy -- "and they are all healthy," said lead author Masahito Tachibana.

In humans, the new procedure would allow a couple to have a child who is biologically their own, but who is free of any condition associated maternal mtDNA.

Mitochondria, found in the fluid inside an egg cell, are tiny structures that produce energy to power the cell's activities.

Unlike DNA, which is a merger of male and female chromosomes, mitochondria are transmitted exclusively from mother to child.

Over the last 20 years, mtDNA has been directly linked to more than 150 incurable human conditions.

Earlier studies have estimated one newborn in 200 carry mtDNA mutations which -- even if they do not cause disease in that individual -- can become more concentrated over generations.

One in 3,500-to-6,000 people are thought to have mutations in the mtDNA that may or will cause disease.

Some are rare and crippling degenerative disorders uniquely caused by mutations in mtDNA.

MERRF, for example, begins in childhood and leads to epilepsy, muscle wasting, deafness and dementia.

Another condition, known by the acronym LHON, causes blindness, impaired coordination, mild dementia and heart defects.

But mtDNA have also been linked to cancer and diabetes, along with neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's.

Whether mutation in mtDNA can cause any of these diseases by itself, or whether it always acts in concert with other genetic or environmental factors, is still unclear.

In either case, though, the technique could pave the way for gene replacement therapy that simply removes disease-causing mitochondria from a family's hereditary chain.

"This type of therapy actually involves replacing genes in germline, which will be translated to the next generation," said Mitalipov.

So-called "germline gene therapy" has long been a holy grail of medicine, but making it work has proven far more difficult than once anticipated.

At this point, the barriers to clinical trials on humans are more legal and financial than scientific, the authors said.

Human gene replacement therapy is banned in many countries, including the United States and Britain, due to safety and ethical concerns.

"So far, this procedure looks really efficient and safe," said Mitalipov. "We believe that the data we have now are sufficient for FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) approval."

Because clinical gene therapy clinical trials -- if approved -- cannot be federally funded in the United States, Mitalipov said he is seeking private money to set up a new laboratory.

Copyright � 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

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27 Aug 09 - 11:11 AM (#2709873)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos post
" ON THE night of 30 June 2005, the sky high above La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands crackled with streaks of blue light...
It was easy to pinpoint the source of the data blip - a 20-minute burst of hugely energetic gamma rays from a galaxy some 500 million light years away known as Markarian 501. Its occasional tempestuous outbursts had already made it familiar to gamma-ray telescopes worldwide."

__________________________________________________________________


A 4 minute time distortion?

Truly remarkable!

These may be the first astronmers to quantify a focused gravity time wave. (I have made illustrations of these hypothetical waves)

If the inverse square law applies...the time distortion would be much greater the closer to the enormous cataclysmic explosion.

Imagine
"Surfing" the gravity time wave closer to its source, but not so close as to be incinerated by gamma rays, one might be able to go "somewhen" and not just somewhere.



Amos stop it; you're gonna make my brain explode.

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27 Aug 09 - 11:35 AM (#2709891)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

bobad,

I wrote a novel 8 years ago called "The Best Intentions" about gene line therapy in which a company Genvac Inc. sold "Gene Vaccines" that would be passed on to all their future descendents.

Healing all future descendents as well as oneself was heralded as the greatest medical breakthrough of all time in which at first only the super wealthy could afford the treatment.

plot:
It wasn't until the seventh generation that the true danger of gene vaccines became known, and several more generations until we knew why. The second part of my plot was used in the screenplay 'The Last Mimzy'.


Now that scientists are starting to break their vow to keep their hands off gene line therapy...
Perhaps now is the time I should submit the entire book to a publisher. My ongoing problem is I still haven't found an editor that could help or understand my stories since I know with the right help these stories could be good enough to reach into the future like Jules Verne.

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28 Aug 09 - 03:00 AM (#2710431)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,seth in Olympia

Amos, this thread is more than just a thread.It is amazing. Thank you so much.
seth

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28 Aug 09 - 11:28 AM (#2710684)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Thanks, gents!

Also from the NYT:

On Aug. 28, 1963, 200,000 people participated in a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

On Aug. 28, 1828, Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author considered one of history's greatest novelists was born., Following his death on Nov. 7, 1910, his obituary appeared in The Times.

On August 28, 1886, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about a scandal involving the Department of Public Works in New York City.

1609           English sea explorer Henry Hudson and his ship, the Half Moon, reached present-day Delaware Bay.

1828            Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was born near Tula.

1917           Ten suffragists were arrested as they picketed the White House.

1922            The first radio commercial aired on WEAF in New York City. It was a 10-minute advertisement for the Queensboro Realty Co., which had paid $100.

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28 Aug 09 - 11:32 AM (#2710692)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Other dimensions are of course more than just a different scale in size as I said earlier.

Do you want to see as a 4th dimensional being could?

As humans we get a sense of the 4th dimension as a passing of time but if you were a fourth dimensional being what would your wqorld look like?

poof -

you are now 4 dimensional and have somthing akin to eyes.
You are driving down the interstate highway. You pass other cars but what you see is all the visible sides of the cars you pass all at once. In 3D you would first see the back of a car then the side and lastly in your rear view mirror. But as a 4th dimensional being you see every observation as a discrete whole. A wrap around vision is just the everyday way you "see".

Beings and places you know well are seen as an entire enhanced wrap around 3D with the addition of all the changes that have happened and going slightly past the present and seeing what you soon see in the future. You don't actually see the future which has not yet occurred but your 4D mind smooths out the experience so you see the whole memory of the landscape. Just like in 3D you expect where the ball will land when you drop it but it still may take an unexpected bounce.


Now as a 5 D person you seein a direction that realizes the future more literally than it was seen in 4 D.

Beyond 5 D or more dimensions, you would have a sensory organ far different than eyes so lets call them knowing ports. From your knowing ports you know every point in directions both small and curled up within other dimensions, and large dimensions spread out around other dimensions in such a way that every point in space is in contact "virtually touches" every other point in space.

Naturally in higher dimensions you know that a single object can and is in two or more places in space at the same time. This "knowing" is as natural as we see a bird on a branch and the next time we look it has flown away. In higher diminsions you may even be able to go/know past event horizons of black holes... but beyond that if you try to enter another universe you become a fish out of water in the way we as 3D beings find it challenging to see in directions we can not physically point to.
By the way the energy required to go out of our universe and pass into the brane of another universe would be near the total energy of a universe. So while it is mathmatically certain other intelligent beings exist somewhere in our universe in great numbers and variety over various time spans, it is virtually impossible to be visited by aliens from another universe, unless their universe has different laws that more easily allow for such travel. In other words they may be able to get here from there but we can't get there from here.


yet

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28 Aug 09 - 12:06 PM (#2710731)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

exerpt from 'Best Intentions' by Don Hakman

Forward:

With new knowledge
we need new wisdom
To guide mankind
with new ethics to last

We need new myths
that apply to the world
and not just fight each other
over whose religion was soiled

The cost of conquest is lost
on each generation.
Exploiting resources or each other
is a sad veneration.

Man against nature
nature against man
God casting man from Eden
Such confusing commands

The ineffable is beyond
the gaze of our scientists
Our civilization has forgotten
what truly did exist.

No doubt there was wisdom
and inventions like magic
that let anyone go anywhere.
That they are lost is tragic

Ethnocentricity
like electricity
is a brief spark in time
like ruins that were once a city.

Since the last apocalypse
there are hints in folklore for you.
Its not that the good books collapse,
In some ways they are too new.


Presently our scientists have taken a vow to not pursue germ line therapies which can add or subtract new genes and life instructions in a person and subsequently change the genes for all of their thier children and so forth into the future. One can only expect that there will at least person to break that vow.
In our near future we joyfully began the quest to rid man of all disease with gene vaccines. After 7 generations problems begin to emerge.

The wealthiest families whose ancestors were able to afford the Gen Vac gene vaccines were the strongest healthiest with an envious longevity for generations until the weakest links which multiplied with each generation reached a tipping point.

The unvaccinated meek should have inherited the Earth but after years of mandatory vaccinations and endless war for New World Order it was evident that not even back breeding could restore an uncorrupted genome. It was really never given a chance since back breeding was officially condemned by the government. Many felt the decision was a racist covenant. The state argued the scant few unvaccinated populations were synonymous with terrorist enemies of the state and they should not be integrated with the general population or elevated to a genetic savior of mankind status.

After several more generations any reference to curing the deficiencies caused by the gene vaccine was met with complete skepticism. Some labeled the disaster as the Humpty Dumpty Syndrome. Eventually   Human fertility is challenged to the point where clones are considered by some to be a more viable alternative. There always seemed to be a consensus against the creation of human clones. Like an act of ultimate inbreeding, cloning was considered taboo until it became the lesser of two evils.

In the beginning genetic science crept in on kitten paws.
There were some ethical concerns and political interference regarding stem cells but over time the greater good and competition arguments won the day.

There is nothing wrong with genetic science or the stem cell in particular. It is us, it is food or it is an enemy. That has always been the way for all life. In extreme circumstances people learn the same lessons as the Aztec, the familes at Donner pass and soccer team in the Andes.
People often asked why we didn't see it coming. There were a few visionaries. There was a Dr. Ellen Broadbarn who said from the outset, "Ethics committees are innately ill equipped to predict the unknowable". Like a balloon as the young were squeezed the old bulged out the other side. Without the fertility crises perhaps the advances in longevity would have been delayed for centuries.

Despite the hopelessness of many there are a few undaunted explorers who span thousands of years to explore the illusive nature of health and a science that stretch the borders of immortality in the real world. If there was an answer to prolong the existence of humanity, it was feared it might be somplace where no man could go. Such a place might be a God like 4th dimensional mastery of time. The good and evil done with such powers has always been a matter of concern.

One man's good is another man's evil. Good and evil are the temporal giants that man has wrestled for millions of years.
To a timeless immortal, good and evil is not a struggle, but only building blocks. Should man become nearly immortal, there are questions to be asked, answers to be questioned, heaven to be praised and eventually, hell to be paid.

We have eaten the apple of knowledge and will find ourselves desperately gorging ourselves with more apples to atone for our early mistakes. No evil was done intentionally. For the most part we all had the best of intentions.

In the year 2100 we still have our intentions at heart.

Ch.1
Genetic Vaccines, a form of recombinant DNA modification, were hailed as the singular greatest advancements since ORTs; organ regeneration transplants. ORT hearts, lungs and livers were only a close third to the second greatest advancement of knitting nerves together with crystalline. Although crossed nerve pathways often left the "healed" with strange new synthesethia challenges but at least paraplegics could walk and the nerve blind to somewhat see.

Some claimed these advancements actually hindered an evolution of a survival of the fittest. Some religious sects called it a medical evilution but were marginalized by all those who wished to enjoy good health for themselves and children.

   
Gene Vaccines had an advantage over traditional vaccines by passing on the disease resistance to the next generation. They were proven quite powerful and at times seen to have an ability to adapt a resistance to similar strains of disease be it bacterial of viral that the original vaccine had not been designed to combat.

It was not that traditional vaccines were not strong enough but rather that the pathogens got the upper hand and often mutated into even more powerful bugs. There were many outstanding examples of success with the Gene Vaccine method.   Originally researchers at the U.N.S.F. Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases created a mouse by adding a gene from a parasite that causes malaria to the rodent's genetic code. Delivering the protein isolated from the mouse's milk produced immunity from malaria in 98% of the human subjects.

    An opposite approach was to transplant genes of naturally immune individuals into people of low or no immunity. In a way the people were now the mouse. People were not just getting a protein of protection but their very genes were changed.

This so called Genetic Vaccine technique was extremely profitable since the people with the super immune genes were paid nothing while drug corporations patented the genes for the minimal cost of identifying them. The prices they demanded for Gen. Vac. were justified with the idea that the vaccine was not just for the individual but all their ancestors. Passing on immunity occurred in only a minority of cases at first but was refined in later years. It did not appear that the bugs were getting an upper hand in this technique.

    Gen Vac was of course not without its detractors. Initially the Gen Vac hype didn't inflame conservatives but they had found a leader (or visa versa) with Dr. Broadbarn. Her notion that genetic vaccines would cause humanity to lose its soul one gene at a time was thought to be a religious argument. In reality each genetic addition sometimes subtracted tiny bits of one's original genome. Few people were alarmed. One molecule at a time out of billions was virtually nothing but after dozens of regenerations, small changes were being multiplied. She painted humanity's greatest hope to be disease free, with a broad brush of eugenic abuse. Depending on your view she focused, inspired or duped millions of followers.

Her hypothetical conclusions were so far out in many cases she was easily scoffed at or manipulated by Gen Vac proponents and was eventually made to say, on a popular late night talk radio show, "I prefer people die of preventable disease, for the common good".
That pretty much did her in. She was even likened to Kevorkian, a euthanasia provider who died in prison centuries ago.

Over the next 50 years the few vaccine mistakes never caused alarm. The only scandal that people remembered was the fact that the very first Gen. Vac. treatments were made available over the course of seven years at the price of $1,000,000 per person.   The arguments and justifications raged for years.   The most common argument one heard was that there was not enough for everyone so the rich were subsidizing the eventual mass Gen. Vac. inoculation when stocks were available. Truth was there could be enough replicated in six to eight weeks to inoculate the world against seven of the deadliest pathogens known to man.

    The benefits so far outweighed the risks that medicine was in a supreme golden age. The one area that remained most difficult and was suspected of growing epidemic was infertility and embryonic disorders. With such dramatically increased life spans and survival rates, some considered occasional fertility challenges a blessing in disguise. The worry about population explosion had become moot.

The elephant in the room could not be ignored any longer. The breakthroughs of immortality research began to outweigh the concerns of infertility. Every aging heart new there was no replacement for youth no matter what justifications could be made for the miraculous benefits of virtual immortality. The gradual horrific extinction of youth was often tossed aside with the common catch phrase, "Old age beats the alternative".

As longevity records were being broken, childbirth by any means was accepted as being an exceedingly rare and blessed event. Even when fewer than ten percent of couples could have children there was no outrage. People hoped an environmental culprit would be caught and fertility would return. Those that were infertile felt a personal deficiency and had little or no urge to lash out or call attention to themselves. Some of the infertiles actually felt an undeserved guilt that they were trading the lives of their children and future generations to fulfill a quest for personal immortality.

The fertility research that did continue was multifaceted, exclusively funded by the state and of course beyond secret.
Deep in the class four bio weapon lab, Amos was taking a break and was saving posts for the mudcat forum when his shift was over and he could return to the surface next week. He pasted his last saved post with flourish and swung his arm overhead arcing down on 'Enter' which pasted:

Classical thinkers, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) and Diogenes Laertius (c. 235 BCE), expanded this principle to include an aversion to destruction, but continued to limit its application to the motivations of non-human animals. Diogenes Laertius, for example, specifically denied the application of the term to plants.

Before the Renaissance, Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274 CE), Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308 CE) and Dante Alighieri (1265–1321 CE) expressed similar sentiments using the Latin words vult, velle or appetit as synonyms of conatus; indeed, all four terms may be used to translate the original Greek ὁñìÞ. Around 1700, Telesius and Campanella extended the ancient Greek notions and applied them to all objects, animate and inanimate.[8]

First Aristotle, then Cicero and Laertius each alluded to a connection between the conatus and other emotions. In their view, the former induces the latter. They maintained that humans do not wish to do something because they think it "good", but rather they think it "good" because they want to do it. In other words, the cause of human desire is the natural inclination of a body to augment itself in accordance with the principles of the conatus.

Ch.2

---

30 Aug 09 - 03:41 AM (#2711948)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

OK its 3 AM and I just pieced together an idea based on the Amos post of an observation of a 4 minute discrepency in the time it took gamma rays to reach Earth from a super nova source as seen this July.
(The high energy particles arrived 4 minutes after the low energy parcicles instead of the other way around)

I speculated that surfing that energy wave could equate to some form of time travel. Not just having time slow down at great speed compared to a staic observer and therefore going into the future at a younger age, but rather having a means to go back in time compared to a static observer. Going back in time for 4 minutes or perhaps days.

While trying to bring this idea to a logical outcome I realized that you can't surf a wave that you don't know is coming.
Afterall you have to be going near the speed of light to catch this gamma (time/gravity) wave.
Then Eureka.
What you need is instant faster than light communication which can in fact CAN be done with quantum entangled particles since what you do to one partical will happen to the other particle NO MATTER how far away it is.

With enough of these entangled parlcles acting as sensors you might be able to get advanced warning of where one of these waves is passing and in what direction.

Now you can meet that gamma time distortion wave and surf it for whatever period of time you are able to keep up with it.

Getting towed into the wave at near the speed of light is certainly a challenge but even at half the speed of light you should be able to be within the wave for 8 minutes based on the one we observed this July.

I assumed that the effect of the wave would be stronger the closer it is to its source so there is reason to believe that the time distortion could be great.

Even 4 minutes is a lot of time to create advance action - ahead of time.

With super Novas happening throughout the universe all the timea galactic network of travel could be possible. The thing about this kind of travel is that you have to wait for a wave and seems more risky than trying to catch an 80 ft wave.

Since it is now 3:30 AM, I can be forgiven if all this appears to be total absolute nonsense in the light of day.
Maybe people who like science fiction would like the above idea.
Today Garrison Keilor said certain people like science fiction because they aren't doing that well on Earth.

---

01 Sep 09 - 07:48 AM (#2713581)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Poland Marks 70th Anniversary of WWII Beginning

   GDANSK, Poland (AP) -- Officials from across Europe and the U.S. gathered in northern Poland on Tuesday to mark the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, bringing together former foes to honor the tens of millions killed in the conflict.

Earlier, Polish leaders met at dawn on Gdansk's Westerplatte peninsula to mark the exact time the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein, in the war's opening salvo, shelled a tiny Polish military outpost housing the navy's arsenal.

Red and white Polish flags fluttered as the officials at 4:45 a.m. (0245GMT) placed wreaths at the foot of the monument to the defenders of Westerplatte. An honor guard looked on.

''Westerplatte is a symbol, a symbol of the heroic fight of the weaker against the stronger,'' President Lech Kaczynski said. ''It is proof of patriotism and an unbreakable spirit. Glory to the heroes of those days, glory to the heroes of Westerplatte, glory to all of the soldiers who fought in World War II against German Nazism, and against Bolshevik totalitarianism.''

Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned of the dangers of forgetting the war's lessons.

''We meet here to remember who started the war, who the culprit was, who the executioner in the war was, and who was the victim of this aggression,'' Tusk said.

''We meet here to remember this, because we Poles know that, without this memory -- honest memory about the truth, about the sources of World War II -- Poland, Europe and the world will not be safe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, representatives of the two countries that invaded Poland in September 1939, were scheduled to take part in the commemoration later in the day.

Merkel told Germany's ARD television Tuesday that her country would never forget the ''causes and effects'' of the war.

''Germany triggered the Second World War,'' she said. ''We brought endless suffering to the world.''

Within a month of the Sept. 1 attack, Poland was overwhelmed by the Nazi blitzkrieg from the west, and an attack two weeks later from the east by the Soviet Union, which had signed a pact with Hitler's Germany.

Putin downplayed Russia's responsibility, saying that other countries had also negotiated with Nazi Germany before the war broke out. He emphasized instead the Soviet Union's role in fighting the Nazis.

''Today is a special day ... the day of the beginning of the second world war during which Russians and Poles together were fighting against one enemy, the Nazis,'' Putin said.

Tusk acknowledged the Red Army's defeat of the Nazis in Poland and vowed his nation and Russia would investigate the ''painful elements of our common history.''

''If, in the past, it was possible for the Poles and the Germans and the Russians and the Germans, for God's sake, why isn't it possible for the Poles and the Russians?'' he said. ''This meeting today ... is another step in building the fair foundations for an increasingly good dialogue.''

The initial German attack on Poland started more than five years of war that would engulf the world and result in the slaughter of more than 50 million people as the German war machine rolled over Europe.

Poland alone lost 6 million citizens, half of them Jews. During the German occupation, the country was used as a base for the Nazis' genocide machinery. It was home to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Sobibor and other death camps built for the annihilation of Europe's Jews.

At the height of the war, the European theater stretched from North Africa to the outskirts of Moscow, and pitted Germany and its allies, including Italy, against Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States, along with a host of other countries, including Polish forces in exile.

The war in Europe ended May 8, 1945, with Germany's unconditional surrender.

About 20 European leaders and officials, including French Premier Francois Fillon and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, will join Merkel and Putin for the ceremonies.

The U.S. will be represented by National Security Adviser James Jones. The delegation, which is lower-ranking than that of most European nations, has disappointed some in Poland who view Washington as a historical ally.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said it was no indication of a chill in relations between the two nations.

''There are very deep and extensive ties between the U.S. and Poland. We are bound by, by not only ethnic and cultural ties, but also by our membership in NATO,'' he said.

''We appreciate the, the tremendous sacrifice that the people of Poland made in World War II.''

---

01 Sep 09 - 11:37 AM (#2713729)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Murray Gell-Mann, who firstposited the notion of the quark, is still alive and working in NEw Mexico. According to Science News:

Gell-Mann, meanwhile, remains active in research at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, where he continues to pursue ideas that are sometimes at odds with establishment views. He is particularly interested in linguistics, for instance, and collaborates with researchers at Santa Fe and in Moscow studying distant (in time) relationships among human languages.

"In that collaboration we seem to be finding more and more evidence … that a very large fraction of the world's languages, although probably not all, are descended from one spoken quite recently … something like 15,000 to 20,000 years ago," Gell-Mann says.

Language surely originated much earlier than that, he says, but most languages still around today may have descended from this mother of (nearly) all mother tongues, tentatively labeled Borean (as in "the north wind").

Of course, many experts resist the idea.

"For some reason, in this country and in Western Europe, most tenured professors of historical and comparative linguistics hate the idea of distant relationships among human languages, or at least the idea that those can be demonstrated," Gell-Mann says. "They put a tremendous burden of proof on anyone who wants to say that languages are related in this way, by this common descent." And so once again Gell-Mann faces what he calls the "negative principles of the establishment."

"Eventually I think everybody will be convinced that these relationships really exist," he says. "In the meantime, we're fighting one of these battles." And just as there's no evidence of constituents of quarks, there's no evidence that Gell-Mann will stop fighting such battles anytime soon.

---

01 Sep 09 - 10:45 PM (#2714234)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

and then processed into fuel. But the process is expensive and difficult. Now a company in Texas, LiveFuels, Inc., hopes that it will be able to change all that. The idea is to create a biofuel based on the oils from the fish that eat the algae.


LiveFuels plans to make use of natural food chains in order to get biofuels. Gas 2.0 reports on the facilities used by the Brownsville company:

The company-who develops renewable algae-based biofuels-has a test facility in Brownsville, TX. At the location they have 45 acres of open saltwater ponds which will be used for optimizing the algal production.... LiveFuels plans to grow a mix of regional species in low-cost, open-water systems. The algae will be "harvested" with filter-feeding fish and other aquatic herbivores.

The idea is that the fish can harvest the algae, grazing on it, and then those fish can in turn be processed for the biofuel base. This is a different approach from current algae-based biofuel processes that may have some merit. After all, something similar is being done in Greenland, where sharks caught in fishing nets are being processed as biofuel.
It will be interesting to see whether this process saves on costs and creates a more cost-efficient biofuel.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com

---

The verdict by Britain's prestigious Royal Society came little more than three months before a UN showdown in Copenhagen on how to reduce the carbon emissions that drive climate change.

John Shepherd, a professor at Britain's University of Southampton, who chaired a 12-member panel which assessed the evidence, said geo-engineering was filling a perilous political void.

"Our research found that some geo-engineering techniques could have serious unintended and detrimental effects on many people and ecosystems -- yet we are still failing to take the only action that will prevent us from having to rely on them," he said.
The report cautiously said some geo-engineering schemes were technically feasible but were shadowed by safety worries and doubts about affordability.

Provided these questions were answered, such projects could be a useful tool as part of a worldwide switch to a low-carbon economy, it said.

But, the report warned, other geo-engineering schemes are so costly or so freighted with risk and unknowns that they should only be considered a last-ditch fix.
Just five years ago, geo-engineering was widely dismissed by mainstream climate scientists as quirky or delusional. As recently as 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cautioned of its potential risk and unquantified cost.
But the schemes are now getting a serious hearing in many quarters, helped by mounting evidence that climate change is advancing faster than thought while progress towards a carbon-curbing UN treaty is moving at glacial speed.

Supporters say geo-engineering can buy time to let politicians hammer out a deal or wean the global economy off polluting fossil fuels.

The report, "Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty," was based mainly on peer-reviewed literature.

It took a year to carry out, and the Royal Society came under fire from green groups who accused it of handing a cloak of respectability to a once-mocked scientific fringe.

Ibid

---

---

01 Sep 09 - 10:46 PM (#2714236)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists using a continent-wide array of radio telescopes have made an extremely precise measurement of the curvature of space caused by the Sun's gravity, and their technique promises a major contribution to a frontier area of basic physics.
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"Measuring the curvature of space caused by gravity is one of the most sensitive ways to learn how Einstein's theory of General Relativity relates to quantum physics. Uniting gravity theory with quantum theory is a major goal of 21st-Century physics, and these astronomical measurements are a key to understanding the relationship between the two," said Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri.

Kopeikin and his colleagues used the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio-telescope system to measure the bending of light caused by the Sun's gravity to within one part in 30,000. With further observations, the scientists say their precision technique can make the most accurate measure ever of this phenomenon.

Bending of starlight by gravity was predicted by Albert Einstein when he published his theory of General Relativity in 1916. According to relativity theory, the strong gravity of a massive object such as the Sun produces curvature in the nearby space, which alters the path of light or radio waves passing near the object. The phenomenon was first observed during a solar eclipse in 1919.

---

03 Sep 09 - 10:18 AM (#2715389)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In scientific circles where solar flares, magnetic storms and other unique solar events are discussed, the occurrences of September 1-2, 1859, are the star stuff of legend. Even 144 years ago, many of Earth's inhabitants realized something momentous had just occurred. Within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth's North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole.

What happened in 1859 was a combination of several events that occurred on the Sun at the same time. If they took place separately they would be somewhat notable events. But together they caused the most potent disruption of Earth's ionosphere in recorded history. "What they generated was the perfect space storm," says Bruce Tsurutani, a plasma physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.


To begin to understand the perfect space storm you must first begin to understand the gargantuan numbers with which plasma physicists like Tsurutani work every day. At over 1.4 million kilometers (869,919 miles) wide, the Sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system: well over a million Earths could fit inside its bulk. The total energy radiated by the Sun averages 383 billion trillion kilowatts, the equivalent of the energy generated by 100 billion tons of TNT exploding each and every second.

But the energy released by the Sun is not always constant. Close inspection of the Sun's surface reveals a turbulent tangle of magnetic fields and boiling arc-shaped clouds of hot plasma dappled by dark, roving sunspots.

Once in a while--exactly when scientists still cannot predict--an event occurs on the surface of the Sun that releases a tremendous amount of energy in the form of a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection, an explosive burst of very hot, electrified gases with a mass that can surpass that of Mount Everest.



What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150 million-kilometer (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a solar flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled.

"With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection," said Tsurutani. "Not all coronal mass ejections head toward Earth. Those that do usually take three to four days to get here. This one took all of 17 hours and 40 minutes," he noted.

Below: SOHO coronagraphs captured this movie of a coronal mass ejection (CME) heading toward Earth on Oct. 22nd. NOAA forecasters expect the CME to cause a geomagnetic storm when it reaches Earth on or about Oct. 24th, but not as severe as the superstorm of 1859.

see captionNot only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover, the magnetic fields contained within it were extremely intense and in direct opposition with Earth's magnetic fields. That meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed Earth's own magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth's upper atmosphere. The endgame to such a stellar event is one heck of a light show and more -- including potential disruptions of electrical grids and communications systems.

Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and society's electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

"The question I get asked most often is, 'Could a perfect space storm happen again, and when?'" added Tsurutani. "I tell people it could, and it could very well be even more intense than what transpired in 1859. As for when, we simply do not know," he said.

---

03 Sep 09 - 10:51 AM (#2715412)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

N THE summer of 1997, an array of underwater microphones, or hydrophones, owned by the US government picked up a strange sound. For a minute, it rose rapidly in frequency; then it disappeared. The hydrophones, a relic of cold-war submarine tracking, picked up this signal again and again during those summer months, then it was never heard again. No one knows what made the sound, now known as "The Bloop" (hear it at www.thebloop.notlong.com).

It's not the only mysterious sound heard in the ocean. In May 1997, hydrophones picked up the "Slowdown" sound. Over the course of about 7 minutes, it slowly dropped in pitch, rather like the sound of an aeroplane flying past (www.theslowdown.notlong.com). Its origin has been only loosely pinned down: it seems to have originated from somewhere off the west coast of South America, and could be heard from 2000 kilometres away.

So what's behind the strange noises? The Bloop sounds like it might have been created by an animal, but it is far louder than any whale song, so a marine creature that made it would either be bigger than any whale, or a much more efficient producer of sound. The most popular speculation about Slowdown is that it was caused by the break-up of Antarctic ice - which means it might give an indication of climate change.

There is still no consensus, however, and these two mysteries are just a drop in the ocean, according to Sharon Nieukirk of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We have hydrophones in the Atlantic, the Arctic, off Greenland, in the Bering Sea and in the Antarctic now, and I am constantly amazed at the variety of sounds coming from the sea," she says. "There are hundreds of mystery sounds." (Hear more at www.oceansounds.notlong.com.)

---

04 Sep 09 - 04:23 PM (#2716360)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Yet if the Wittgensteins were among the most cultivated and privileged of families, they were far from the most cheerful. Hermine, the oldest child, never married and became increasingly depressed and reclusive as she grew older; Gretl, the most intelligent, most adventurous daughter -- immortalized in a painting by Klimt that now hangs in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich -- entered into a disastrous marriage with an impoverished American who turned out to be a paranoid hysteric, is rumored to have consulted Freud about her frigidity, and spent most of her life searching restlessly for a cause or project to devote her energies to. Nor were the sons any happier.

Hans, the eldest boy -- a prodigy in both music and mathematics, who translated the world into mathematical formulae from an early age and mastered the violin, piano, and organ to such a degree that Mahler's teacher proclaimed him a genius -- disappeared during a trip to America at the age of twenty-four, a presumed suicide, after a protracted struggle with his father: Karl had insisted, despite Hans's obvious unsuitedness for such a career, that his firstborn son go into business rather than pursue his passion for music. Rudolf, the third son, entered a restaurant in Berlin, where he was studying chemistry (probably at his father's insistence -- his real interests were music and theater), asked the pianist to play a melancholy song that was fashionable at the time, ordered two glasses of milk, emptied the contents of a packet of cyanide into one of them, and drank it. Kurt, the second son, who had always seemed the most cheerful (and least gifted) of the brothers, shot himself in the final weeks of the First World War -- perhaps because he feared a court-martial after disobeying an order to send his men into a battle that was already lost.

The Wittgensteins' youngest son, too, contemplated suicide "continually," as he told a friend when he was twenty-three; he was, he said, ashamed of lacking the courage to end his life. Instead, Ludwig Wittgenstein went on to become one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, revolutionizing philosophy not once but twice: first, in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus -- the only book he published in his lifetime -- by applying rigorous logical techniques to the question of language's relationship to reality and truth, while insisting on the limits of what descriptive language could express (a matter of ethics as much as logic, with, in the final section of the book, mystical overtones); then, in unpublished lectures circulated by his students in samizdat versions, by subverting all the received wisdom about language and thought through an anti-essentialist, anti-dogmatic view of how language functioned in "the stream of life."

As a student at Cambridge in the period just before the First World War, he was hailed by Bertrand Russell as "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense and dominating." (John Maynard Keynes, who also met him at this time, referred to him as "God.") In his later years, his own students at Cambridge aped his mannerisms and regarded it as a privilege to be subjected to his scathing critiques. Since his death in 1951, he has increasingly become a legendary figure even to many who have never read him, in large part because of his ferocious life-long quest for moral purity.

He enlisted in the Austrian army during the First World War, though he was convinced that the Allies would win, and volunteered for the most dangerous postings; when captured by the Italians, he indignantly refused to let his family use their connections to have him released from the prisoner-of-war camp. On returning to civilian life, he gave up his entire share of the fortune his father had bequeathed to the surviving children and for the rest of his life owned virtually nothing. He spent six years teaching elementary school in poor villages in the mountains of Austria, worked as an assistant gardener in a monastery, and was only reluctantly persuaded to return to Cambridge to teach. During the Second World War, he quit his academic post and served as a porter in a London hospital, where he fervently sought to preserve his anonymity.

This fascinates me; it is my opinion that Wittgenstein was not, in fact, a genius, but a raving neurotic. His linguistic philosophy was unmanageable and unproductive, and a burden on the minds of his readers. It does not surprise me that he was the scion of a top-heavy, fabulously well-to-do family, nor that he did not handle it well.


A

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07 Sep 09 - 02:07 PM (#2718185)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A relatively nearby galaxy that closely resembles our own Milky Way can be seen edge-on in a new image.

Observations of the galaxy, NGC 4945, suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region.

But that's where the similarity seems to end: NGC 4945 has a brighter center than the Milky Way; the look-alike's center likely harbors a supermassive black hole that is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space.

The new portrait of NGC 4945, which lies some 13 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus, was taken by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) instrument at the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

NGC 4945 appears cigar-shaped from our perspective on Earth, but the galaxy is actually a disc many times wider than it is thick, with bands of stars and glowing gas spiraling around its center. Other spiral galaxies, like ours, are similarly flattened and typically contain a central bulge of stars around a black hole.

Special filters on the telescope isolate the color of light emitted by heated gases such as hydrogen, showing sharp contrasts in NGC 4945 that indicate areas of star formation.

Other observations have revealed that NGC 4945 has an active galactic nucleus, meaning its central bulge emits far more energy than calmer galaxies like the Milky Way.

Black holes gravitationally draw gas and dust into them, accelerating and heating this attracted matter until it emits high-energy radiation, including X-rays and ultraviolet light. Most large, spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way, host a black hole in their centers, though many of these dark monsters no longer actively "feed" at this stage in galactic development.

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08 Sep 09 - 12:38 PM (#2719006)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

FOLLOW THE GREEN DOT

As one stares only at the cross what is there will fade away into nothingness. Only the after image of what is no longer there is visible as a green dot. This is the result of the bio chemical nature of vision taking place in our retina. Look away however and both the real image and the after images overlap revealing the virtual and real co existing for a short time.

One can imagine this is also the tricky nature of human perception in other aspects of life.

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08 Sep 09 - 01:25 PM (#2719045)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

No question it is!


A

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08 Sep 09 - 08:49 PM (#2719422)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine has been inaugurated in the North Sea off the coast of Norway, Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro said Tuesday.

The turbine known as Hywind, which measures 65 metres (213 feet) tall and weighs 5,300 tonnes, lies some 10 kilometres (seven miles) off the island of Karmoey near the Scandinavian country's southwestern coastline, the company said.
It rests upon a floating stand that is anchored to the seabed by three cables. Water and rocks are placed inside the stand to provide balast.
StatoilHydro plans to test Hywind over the next two years before it looks to set up any more floating wind turbines with international partners.
StatoilHydro sees Japan, South Korea, California, the east coast of the United States and Spain as some of the potential markets to where this technology could be exported.
Hywind can be used in waters from 120 metres to 700 metres deep allowing it to be placed much further away from the shore than static wind turbines already in operation.
StatoilHydro's Anne Stroemmen Lycke told AFP that the floating turbine has "great advantages."
"It is not so easily seen from the coast, it can be placed in areas not used by others," she said.
"We could use such wind turbines in countries where coastal waters are very deep or where there is little space left for land-based turbines," Stroemmen Lycke added.

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09 Sep 09 - 08:10 PM (#2720227)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A skull that rewrites the history of man
It has long been agreed that Africa was the sole cradle of human evolution. Then these bones were found in Georgia...

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Wednesday, 9 September

The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man.

The skulls, jawbones and fragments of limb bones suggest that our ancient human ancestors migrated out of Africa far earlier than previously thought and spent a long evolutionary interlude in Eurasia – before moving back into Africa to complete the story of man.

Experts believe fossilised bones unearthed at the medieval village of Dmanisi in the foothills of the Caucuses, and dated to about 1.8 million years ago, are the oldest indisputable remains of humans discovered outside of Africa.

But what has really excited the researchers is the discovery that these early humans (or "hominins") are far more primitive-looking than the Homo erectus humans that were, until now, believed to be the first people to migrate out of Africa about 1 million years ago.

The Dmanisi people had brains that were about 40 per cent smaller than those of Homo erectus and they were much shorter in stature than classical H. erectus skeletons, according to Professor David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgia National Museum. "Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1 million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different," Professor Lordkipanidze said.

"The Dmanisi hominins are the earliest representatives of our own genus – Homo – outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus to date. They might be ancestral to all later Homo erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of Homo erectus."

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Guildford, where he gave the British Council lecture, Professor Lordkipanidze raised the prospect that Homo erectus may have evolved in Eurasia from the more primitive-looking Dmanisi population and then migrated back to Africa to eventually give rise to our own species, Homo sapiens – modern man.
...(Independent, UK)) Full story here.

My, my, my!!

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11 Sep 09 - 02:11 PM (#2721749)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Britain passes intelligence test, belatedly apologizes to Turing:

It took an online petition signed by more than 30,000 people to make it happen, but the British government has finally apologized for the homophobic hounding that helped drive computer science pioneer and WWII hero Alan Turing to an early grave in 1954.

A statement issued Thursday by Prime Minister Gordon Brown reads in part: "Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ?gross indecency' — in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence — and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison — was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

"Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction. ... On behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

Nowadays, Turing is most closely associated with the Turing test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence and the prestigious technical award that bears his name. His code-breaking work came as one of the mathematicians, engineers, linguists and puzzle fiends who were brought together during the war at the super-secret Bletchley Park intelligence facility. Now managed by a trust, the historical site has struggled for years to scrape together enough money to keep it from falling further into disrepair. Computer scientist John Graham-Cumming, who started the Turing apology petition, is among those suggesting that the government could add substance to its sentiments by restoring Bletchley to a condition that would better honor Turing and all the others who labored anonymously on its grounds.

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11 Sep 09 - 02:22 PM (#2721757)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The magic of Mathematicians -- a slide show provides interesting comments and photos of those who live in the universe of Math, where most of us rarely wander far.


A

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11 Sep 09 - 02:28 PM (#2721760)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Great Australian Adjective:

I thought he would be an alright bloke for the job so I appointed him... I didn't consult me bloody cabinet!

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke commenting on his appointment of Governor General Bill Hayden, 14 October 1999

So I went into the kitchen, and came face-to-face with a big bloody roo.

Mr Olsen, Toorbul, Sunday Mail, 23 July, 2000

That bloody crocodile has just bitten me!

Victim tells of croc attack terror, News.com.au, 8 April 2005

So, we have met the future of men's tennis. He is blue-eyed, blond, wears his cap backward, says "mate" and "bloody" a lot and looks as if he'd be perfect in the Olympic halfpipe

Hewett Walks Open Road, LA Times, 18 March 2002

"Gallipoli was a bastard of a place," he said. "I never understood what we were fighting for. All I could think of was that I never wanted to go back to the bloody place."

Albert White, aged 100, Brisbane, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 May 2002

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11 Sep 09 - 02:29 PM (#2721764)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

David Harold Blackwell, Mathematical Statistics
University of California, Berkeley

"I came across one of my old papers the other day and I could barely understand it. I thought, 'Wow this guy is good! How could he think of that?' The mind changes. When I look at what I've done, I'm impressed. I've been very lucky."

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11 Sep 09 - 03:46 PM (#2721818)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

LOS ANGELES — Gertrude Baines, who lived to be the world's oldest person on a steady diet of crispy bacon, fried chicken and ice cream, died Friday at a nursing home. She was 115.

Baines, who remarked last year that she enjoyed life so much she wouldn't mind living another 100 years, died in her sleep, said Emma Camanag, administrator at Western Convalescent Hospital.

The centenarian likely suffered a heart attack, said her longtime physician, Dr. Charles Witt. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death.

"I saw her two days ago, and she was just doing fine," Witt told The Associated Press. "She was in excellent shape. She was mentally alert. She smiled frequently."

Born in 1894 in Shellman, Ga., Baines claimed the title of the world's oldest living person when a 115-year-old woman, Maria de Jesus, died in Portugal in January.

"I'm glad I'm here. I don't care if I live a hundred more," Baines said in November after casting her vote for Barack Obama in the presidential election. "I enjoy nothing but eating and sleeping."

The oldest person in the world is now Kama Chinen, 114, who lives in Japan, according to Dr. L. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks claims of extreme old age. Chinen was born May 10, 1895, Coles said.

The oldest person who has ever lived is Jeanne-Louise Calment, according to Coles. She was 122 when she died Aug. 4, 1997, in Arles, France.

Baines outlived her entire family, including her only daughter, who died of typhoid.

Baines worked as a maid in Ohio State University dormitories until her retirement and has lived at the Western Convalescent Hospital in Los Angeles for more than 10 years.

"Living that long is like winning the genetic lottery," Robert Young, a scientist and senior consultant with Guinness World Records, said at her birthday party in April.

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12 Sep 09 - 01:06 PM (#2722373)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, has decreed a new holiday for his country: Programmer's Day. Appropriately enough, it will be celebrated on the 256th day of the year: September 13th (September 12th for a leap year). Do programmers deserve their own holiday ahead of other professions? Should the rest of the world follow suit?"

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12 Sep 09 - 02:08 PM (#2722422)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The history of wire-tapping before and after Federal involvement. Interesting timeline on on face of little brother.


A

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12 Sep 09 - 05:41 PM (#2722549)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- A tiny bit of genetic material with no previously known function may hold the key to stopping the spread of cancer, researchers at Yale School of Medicine and Sichuan University in Chengdu, China report in two papers in the September 7-11 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the papers, Alan Garen of the Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale and his colleague Xu Song explain how cancer may overcome an organism's natural "stop sign" for cell division.

During early development, stem cells give rise to other cells that differentiate into all types of tissue. New cell division and proliferation stop as the organism matures. However, cancer can hijack this process and trigger the uncontrolled cell division that produces cancer tumors.

One mechanism that stops cell proliferation is a family of tumor-suppressor proteins (TSP) that bind to and block the function of proto-oncogenes, or genes that have the potential to trigger cancer.

Garen's team working with mice found that an RNA molecule from an area of the genome that does not produce proteins prevents a type of TSP from inactivating these incipient cancer genes. The TSP protein they studied, called PSF, is virtually identical in mice and humans, he said.

The Yale team succeeded in preventing the formation of tumors in mice by either increasing the amount of PSF or decreasing the amount of the non-coding RNA in a cell.
"The tumor cell stops proliferating and the tumor regresses in a mouse model of cancer, suggesting that both procedures could be the basis of a clinical protocol," Garen said.... (Phys. Org.)

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12 Sep 09 - 05:46 PM (#2722555)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Here are some guys trying to figure out how to rtell where the unknown unknowns are:


"In their study, James Crutchfield, Physics Professor at the University of California at Davis, and graduate students Christopher Ellison and John Mahoney, have developed the analogy of scientists as cryptologists who are trying to glean hidden information from Nature. As they explain, "Nature speaks for herself only through the data she willingly gives up." To build good models, scientists must use the correct "codebook" in order to decrypt the information hidden in observations and so decode the structure embedded in Nature's processes.

In their recent work, the researchers adopt a thorough-going informational view: All of Nature is a communication channel that transmits the past to the future by storing information in the present. The information that the past and future share can be quantified using the "excess entropy" - the mutual information between the past and the future.

Since the present mediates between the past and future, it is natural to think that the excess entropy must somehow be stored in the present, the researchers explain. And while this is true, the researchers showed that, somewhat surprisingly, the present typically contains much more information than just the excess entropy. The information stored in the present is known as the "statistical complexity." The more information Nature must store to turn her noble gears, the more structured her behavior.
The information that manages to go unaccounted for - the difference between the stored information (statistical complexity) and the observed information (excess entropy) - is the "crypticity". It captures a new and under-appreciated complexity of a process, something that goes above and beyond what is directly measured in observations. At a more general level, the researchers provide an explicit way to understand the difference between simply making predictions from data versus modeling the process's underlying structure.

"The results are at the crossroads of several research threads, from causal inference to new forms of computing," Crutchfield told PhysOrg.com. "But here are a couple of things we highlight: One can look at all of nature as a communication channel: Nature communicates the past to the future, by storing information in the present. In addition, information about how a system is structured can be available in observations, but very hard to extract. Crypticity measures the degree of that difficulty. Even in equilibrium there are temporal asymmetries."

Although excess entropy, statistical complexity and crypticity are straightforward to define, their direct calculation has been a long-standing puzzle. Crutchfield, Ellison, and Mahoney developed a novel approach to its solution. The process, interpreted as a communication channel, is scanned in both the forward and reverse time directions to create models for prediction and retrodiction. By analyzing the relationship between predicting and retrodicting, they were able to uncover not only the external, time-symmetric information (excess entropy), but also the internal, asymmetric information (statistical complexity and crypticity). By looking inside Nature's communication channel, they discovered a rather non-intuitive asymmetry: Even processes in equilibrium commonly harbor temporally asymmetric structures.

"The basic idea is that a process can appear to not transmit much information from its past to its future, but still require a large amount of hardware to keep the internal machine going," Crutchfield said. "For example, imagine that you have two coins: Coin A is a fair coin and Coin B is slightly biased. Now the output of this process is a series of heads and tails. That's all the observer gets to see. The observer doesn't know when A is used or B is used. To an observer this process is very close to a fair coin - the heads and tails from B just don't differ much in their statistics from the heads and tails from A. So, the observed process has little mutual information (the heads and tails are pretty much independent of the past). That is, the process has very low excess entropy. Nonetheless, there is one bit of internal stored information: Which coin, A or B, is flipped at each step? You can take this example to an extreme where you have hundreds of internal coins, all slightly biased, all slightly different in their bias, and therefore distinct coins. The large number of coins gives you an arbitrarily large statistical complexity. But the small biases mean the excess entropy is as close to zero as you like."

These fundamental results should impact research across a wide range of disciplines, from statistical modeling to novel forms of computing. As the researchers explain, when a process contains hidden information, the process cannot be directly represented using only raw measurement data. Rather, a model must be build to account for the degree of hidden information that is encrypted within the process's observed behavior. Otherwise, analyzing a process only in terms of observed information overlooks the process's structure, making it appear more random than it actually is.

"In statistical modeling, if you ignore a process's crypticity, you will conclude that nature is more random and less structured than she really is," Crutchfield said. "We suspect that this general principle will be seen (or is even operating) in many scientific domains, from biosequence analysis to dark energy modeling."" (Ibid)

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14 Sep 09 - 11:34 AM (#2723410)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Received 29 April 2009; revised 8 August 2009; published 8 September 2009

Quantum Darwinism recognizes that we—the observers—acquire our information about the "systems of interest" indirectly from their imprints on the environment. Here, we show that information about a system can be acquired from a mixed-state, or hazy, environment, but the storage capacity of an environment fragment is suppressed by its initial entropy. In the case of good decoherence, the mutual information between the system and the fragment is given solely by the fragment's entropy increase. For fairly mixed environments, this means a reduction by a factor 1-h, where h is the haziness of the environment, i.e., the initial entropy of an environment qubit. Thus, even such hazy environments eventually reveal the state of the system, although now the intercepted environment fragment must be larger by ~(1-h)-1 to gain the same information about the system.

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14 Sep 09 - 12:21 PM (#2723448)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In some sense we can begin to understand human emotions like happiness the way we might study the stampeding of buffalo," Christakis said. "You don't ask an individual buffalo, 'Why are you running to the left?' The answer is that the whole herd is running to the left. Similarly, you can see pockets of unhappy and happy people clustered in the network. They don't even know each other necessarily," but their moods rise and fall together.

The subconscious nature of emotional mirroring might explain one of the more curious findings in their research: If you want to be happy, what's most important is to have lots of friends. Historically, we have often thought that having a small cluster of tight, long-term friends is crucial to being happy. But Christakis and Fowler found that the happiest people in Framingham were those who had the most connections, even if the relationships weren't necessarily deep ones.

The reason these people were the happiest, the duo theorize, is that happiness doesn't come only from having deep, heart-to-heart talks. It also comes from having daily exposure to many small moments of contagious happiness. When you frequently see other people smile — at home, in the street, at your local bar — your spirits are repeatedly affected by your mirroring of their emotional state. Of course, the danger of being highly connected to lots of people is that you're at risk of encountering many people when they are in bad moods. But Christakis and Fowler say their findings show that the gamble of increased sociability pays off, for a surprising reason: Happiness is more contagious than unhappiness. According to their statistical analysis, each additional happy friend boosts your good cheer by 9 percent, while each additional unhappy friend drags you down by only 7 percent. So by this logic, adding more links to your network should — mathematically — add to your store of happiness. "If you're at the center of a network, you are going to be more susceptible to anything that spreads through it," Fowler said. "And if happiness is spreading more reliably, then on average you're going to be catching happy waves more often than you catch sad waves."

Full article on the contagion of happiness here (NYT)

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14 Sep 09 - 08:03 PM (#2723754)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers from the Helmholtz Centre Berlin, in cooperation with colleagues from Dresden, St. Andrews, La Plata and Oxford, have for the first time observed magnetic monopoles and how they emerge in a real material. They publish this result in the journal Science within the Science Express web site on Sept. 3.

Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles proposed by physicists that carry a single magnetic pole, either a magnetic North pole or South pole. In the material world this is quite exceptional because magnetic particles are usually observed as dipoles, north and south combined. However there are several theories that predict the existence of monopoles. Among others, in 1931 the physicist Paul Dirac was led by his calculations to the conclusion that magnetic monopoles can exist at the end of tubes - called Dirac strings - that carry magnetic field. Until now they have remained undetected.

This is a schematic diagram of the neutron scattering experiment: Neutrons are fired towards the sample, and when a magnetic field is applied the Dirac strings align against the field with magnetic monopoles at their ends. The neutrons scatter from the strings providing data which show us the strings properties. Credit: HZB / D.J.P. Morris & A. Tennant Jonathan Morris, Alan Tennant and colleagues (HZB) undertook a neutron scattering experiment at the Berlin research reactor. The material under investigation was a single crystal of Dysprosium Titanate.

This material crystallises in a quite remarkable geometry, the so called pyrochlore-lattice. With the help of neutron scattering Morris and Tennant show that the magnetic moments inside the material had reorganised into so-called „Spin-Spaghetti". This name comes from the ordering of the dipoles themselves, such that a network of contorted tubes (Strings) develops, through which magnetic flux is transported. These can be made visible by their interaction with the neutrons which themselves carry a magnetic moment. Thus the neutrons scatter as a reciprocal representation of the Strings.

During the neutron scattering measurements a magnetic field was applied to the crystal by the researchers. With this field they could influence the symmetry and orientation of the strings. Thereby it was possible to reduce the density of the string networks and promote the monopole dissociation. As a result, at temperatures from 0.6 to 2 Kelvin, the strings are visible and have magnetic monopoles at their ends...."

From Phys.Org. Diagrams and the original article can be found here.

A

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14 Sep 09 - 08:10 PM (#2723758)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

FIRST-EVER CALCULATION PERFORMED ON OPTICAL QUANTUM COMPUTER CHIP, September 03
(PhysOrg.com) -- A primitive quantum computer that uses single particles of light (photons) whizzing through a silicon chip has performed its first mathematical calculation. This is the first time a calculation has been performed on a photonic chip and it is major step forward in the quest to realise a super-powerful quantum computer.
Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news171213314.html

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15 Sep 09 - 10:00 AM (#2724110)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Inspired by the high profile of its Christian American counterpart, Muslim creationism is becoming increasingly visible and confident. On scores of websites and in dozens of books with titles like The Evolution Deceit and The Dark Face of Darwinism, a new and well-funded version of evolution-denialism, carefully calibrated to exploit the current fashion for religiously inspired attacks on scientific orthodoxy and "militant" atheism, seems to have found its voice. In a recent interview with The Times Richard Dawkins himself recognises the impact of this new phenomenon: "There has been a sharp upturn in hostility to teaching evolution in the classroom and it's mostly coming from Islamic students."

The patron saint of this new movement, the ubiquitous "expert" cited and referenced by those eager to demonstrate the superiority of "Koranic science" over "the evolution lie", is the larger-than-life figure of Harun Yahya.

Operating from Istanbul, Yahya is the founder of the Science Research Foundation, an impressive publishing empire that boasts more than 60 websites dedicated to his writings. It provides documentary films and audio recordings in fifteen languages, including Turkish, English, Russian, Amharic and Arabic, and claims to sell more than half a million books a year, including the infamous 850-page, fully illustrated Atlas of Creation, which was sent free in two volumes to dozens of universities, libraries and prominent scientists (including Richard Dawkins) across the world. In painstaking detail, with a mass of photos, graphs and statistics interspersed with verses from the Koran, the Atlas purports to prove that Darwin was utterly mistaken, that each plant and animal was created intact, and that no modification through natural selection ever took place.

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15 Sep 09 - 11:46 AM (#2724162)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Possibly as an act of vengeance, a history professor--compiling, verbatim, several decades' worth of freshman papers--offers some of his students' more striking insights into European history from the Middle Ages to the present.

History, as we know, is always bias, because human beings have to be studied by other human beings, not by independent observers of another species.

During the Middle Ages, everybody was middle aged. Church and state were co-operatic. Middle Evil society was made up of monks, lords, and surfs. It is unfortunate that we do not have a medivel European laid out on a table before us, ready for dissection. After a revival of infantile commerce slowly creeped into Europe, merchants appeared. Some were sitters and some were drifters. They roamed from town to town exposing themselves and organized big fairies in the countryside. Mideval people were violent. Murder during this period was nothing. Everybody killed someone. England fought numerously for land in France and ended up wining and losing. The Crusades were a series of military expaditions made by Christians seeking to free the holy land (the "Home Town" of Christ) from the Islams.

In the 1400 hundreds most Englishmen were perpendicular. A class of yeowls arose. Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras. It was spread from port to port by inflected rats. Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. The plague also helped the emergance of the English language as the national language of England, France and Italy.

The Middle Ages slimpared to a halt. The renasence bolted in from the blue. Life reeked with joy. Italy became robust, and more individuals felt the value of their human being. Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world, thanks to northern Europe. Man was determined to civilise himself and his brothers, even if heads had to roll! It became sheik to be educated. Art was on a more associated level. Europe was full of incredable churches with great art bulging out their doors. Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike.

The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man's quest for ressurection above the ­not-­just-­social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.

After the refirmation were wars both foreign and infernal. If the Spanish could gain the Netherlands they would have a stronghold throughout northern Europe which would include their posetions in Italy, Burgangy, central Europe and India thus serrounding France. The German Emperor's lower passage was blocked by the French for years and years.

Louis XIV became King of the Sun. He gave the people food and artillery. If he didn't like someone, he sent them to the gallows to row for the rest of their lives. Vauban was the royal minister of flirtation. In Russia the 17th century was known as the time of the bounding of the serfs. Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great. Peter filled his government with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. Orthodox priests became government antennae.

The enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare wrote a book called Candy that got him into trouble with Frederick the Great. Philosophers were unknown yet, and the fundamental stake was one of religious toleration slightly confused with defeatism. France was in a very serious state. Taxation was a great drain on the state budget. The French revolution was accomplished before it happened. The revolution evolved through monarchial, republican and tolarian phases until it catapulted into Napolean. Napoleon was ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained.

History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815. Throughout the comparatively radical years 1815–1870 the western European continent was undergoing a Rampant period of economic modification. Industrialization was precipitating in England. Problems were so complexicated that in Paris, out of a city population of one million people, two million able bodies were on the loose. "

Full article at The Wilson Quarterly

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15 Sep 09 - 11:59 AM (#2724171)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An interesting analysis on why we can't build affordable housing the way our grandfathers did.


A

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15 Sep 09 - 08:13 PM (#2724475)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- Generally, scientists prefer to avoid the concept of perpetual motion. The idea of a machine that could produce movement that goes on forever, and using that movement to generate an endless stream of energy, is usually considered more science fiction than science. But recently, physicist Pavel Ivanov has investigated previous speculation that an exotic fluid with unusual properties could cause energy to flow continuously between different regions of space, resulting in a runaway transfer of energy. If an advanced civilization were able to construct a device to capture this energy, it might finally possess its own "perpetuum mobile" -- or perpetual motion.


Ivanov, from both the University of Cambridge and the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, has analyzed this possibility in a study accepted to Physics Letters B. The idea is that a one-dimensional exotic fluid, whose unique properties such as violating the weak energy condition in particle physics, leads to a scenario in which there is a light cone with regions of negative and positive total energies. Ivanov has calculated the equations of state which give a continuous energy transfer from the negative regions to the positive regions, resulting in what he calls "perpetuum mobile of the third kind." However, Ivanov conjectures that theories "plagued" by solutions involving continuous energy flows should be discarded as inherently unstable.

The concept of exotic matter - matter that violates certain physical laws - is not new. Exotic matter is at the basis of many intriguing theoretical possibilities, such as wormholes, time machines, and even so-called cosmological doomsday models of the universe in which the universe's energy density continually increases. Here, Ivanov shows that, in a class of models containing a certain kind of exotic matter, there could be ever-expanding regions of space with positive and negative total energies. Since the absolute values of the energies in both these regions grow indefinitely with time, the energy of the whole physical system is conserved.

"In the setting outlined in the paper, the perpetuum motion is a new effect, as far as I am aware of," Ivanov told PhysOrg.com. "But the number of published papers on exotic matter is quite large, and therefore, there could be some papers on this unknown to me.
"There are so-called cosmological doomsday solutions where an expanding spatially homogeneous universe filled by an exotic matter evolves in such a way that the density, and accordingly, the energy density, grows with time," he explained. "The energy density may even grow infinite during a finite period of time - the effect dubbed 'the cosmological doomsday.' However, the notion of total energy is, in general, rather ambiguous for the universe as a whole, and in any case one should accurately define and use the energy associated with a gravitational field when considering cosmological solutions, so in this case it is not clear (for me, at least) whether this situation may be called 'perpetuum motion' or not. In my case, the fluid expands in a flat space-time, where the notion of energy is well defined, so one can use standard definitions to classify solutions."

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16 Sep 09 - 12:54 PM (#2724855)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

WASHINGTON - Astronomers have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system but none of them have been proven to be solid until now.

A team of European astronomers has confirmed that a planet discovered earlier this year about 500 light years away is more than a big gas ball. One of the scientists describes it "as close to something like the Earth" that's been found so far.

Scientists have long figured that for life to begin on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on. So, experts outside the team say finding such a planet is a big deal.

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20 Sep 09 - 05:17 PM (#2727591)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From Science NEws:

Depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol dependence and marijuana dependence affect roughly twice as many people as had previously been estimated, a new study finds. Nearly 60 percent of the population experiences at least one of these mental disorders by age 32, say study directors and psychologists Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, both of Duke University in Durham, N.C.

That figure probably gets higher by the time people reach middle age, Moffitt suggests, as additional people develop at least one of these four ailments for the first time.

In a paper published online September 1 and in an upcoming Psychological Medicine, Moffitt and Caspi present results from a study of more than 1,000 New Zealanders assessed for mental disorders 11 times between ages 3 and 32. This study took a prospective approach, following people as they aged, and assessed prevalence rates based on long-term data. Moffitt's team focused most intensely on the period from age 18 to 32, when these disorders first start to appear. Earlier prevalence estimates for mental disorders in the United States and New Zealand relied on self-reports and therefore adults' ability to remember and willingness to recount their own past emotional problems.

"Like flu, if you follow a cohort of people born in the same year, as they age almost all of them will sooner or later have a serious bout of depression, anxiety or a substance abuse problem," Moffitt says.

It comes as no surprise that, compared with one-time survey responses, the new prospective study identified considerably more people who have had mental disorders, comments epidemiologist Ronald Kessler of Harvard Medical School. But self-report responses remain valuable, he says. Evidence indicates that individuals who report past mental disorders in surveys display an increased likelihood of developing such ailments in the future. Kessler directs ongoing U.S. surveys of mental disorders based on self-reports.

Half of the people diagnosed in the new study had a mental disorder for a relatively short period or in a single episode. Moffitt nonetheless regards these cases as serious, since short-term symptoms often led to work problems, efforts to get mental-health care or suicide attempts.

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21 Sep 09 - 01:39 PM (#2728149)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Islamists in Pakistan Recruit Entire Families from Europe

By Yassin Musharbash and Holger Stark

The German government is trying to secure the release of a group of suspected German Islamists who were arrested by Pakistani authorities while making their way to a jihadist colony in the Waziristan region along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Entire families from Germany are moving to the region to join the jihad.

The young speaker, who calls himself "Abu Adam," praises the stay in the mountains -- almost as if he were shooting an ad for a family holiday camp. "Doesn't it appeal to you? We warmly invite you to join us!" Abu Adam says, raising his index finger. He lists all the things this earthly paradise has to offer: hospitals, doctors, pharmacies as well as a daycare center and school -- all, of course, "a long way from the front." After all, they don't want the children to be woken up by the roar of guns.

The latest recruitment video from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is a half-hour in length and is addressed to our "beloved" brothers and sisters back in Germany. The video is presented by, among others, Mounir Chouka, alias "Abu Adam," who grew up in the western German city of Bonn.

The video shows shacks erected against a backdrop of lush greenery and craggy rock formations. Women wearing blue burqas are seen surrounded by their children. One small girl is holding an artillery gun.

Welcome to the wild world of Waziristan, the region along the Afghan-Pakistani border controlled by Pashtun tribes, al-Qaida and other splinter groups which has become a regular target of US drones and their remote-controlled missiles.

Islamists Recruiting Entire Families

The ad for Waziristan appears to be finding fertile ground in Germany. Security officials here believe the IMU is currently the largest and most active Islamic group recruiting in the country. But there's an unusual development here, too -- militants don't normally recruit women and children as the IMU appears to be doing. The families move to mujahedeen villages in the rough terrain which are used as bases for supporting the battle against the US troops and the Afghan army.

The German government in Berlin is also examining the propaganda offensive. For several weeks, diplomats in the German Foreign Ministry have been negotiating with Islamabad over the fate of a group of suspected Islamists from Germany's Rhineland region who have been held in custody in Pakistan for several months now. The group includes a young Tunisian and six Germans, including Andreas M. of Bonn, a Muslim convert, and his Eritrean wife Kerya.

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21 Sep 09 - 06:37 PM (#2728411)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

cientists find that individuals in vegetative states can learn
September 20th, 2009
Scientists have found that some individuals in the vegetative and minimally conscious states, despite lacking the means of reporting awareness themselves, can learn and thereby demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. Their findings are reported in today's (20 September) online edition of Nature Neuroscience.
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It is the first time that scientists have tested whether patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states can learn. By establishing that they can, it is believed that this simple test will enable practitioners to assess the patient's consciousness without the need of imaging.
This study was done as a collaborative effort between the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), the University of Cambridge (UK) and the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (Argentina). By using classical Pavlonian conditioning, the researchers played a tone immediately prior to blowing air into a patient's eye. After some time training, the patients would start to blink when the tone played but before the air puff to the eye.
This learning requires conscious awareness of the relation between stimuli - the tone precedes and predicts the puff of air to the eye. This type of learning was not seen in the control subjects, volunteers who had been under anaesthesia.

The researchers believe that the fact that these patients can learn associations shows that they can form memories and that they may benefit from rehabilitation.
Lead author Dr Tristan Bekinschtein, from the University of Cambridge's Wolfson Brain Imaging Unit, said: "This test will hopefully become a useful, simple tool to test for consciousness without the need for imaging or instructions. Additionally, this research suggests that if the patient shows learning, then they are likely to recover to some degree."

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21 Sep 09 - 06:43 PM (#2728416)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Whether gazing into lava lamps or watching balsamic vinegar mix with olive oil, people have long been transfixed by the seemingly mystical way that droplets of one liquid find each other within another liquid and join together. Conventional scientific wisdom has held that this merging of liquid droplets, a process called coalescence, is enhanced by applying an electrical field, but a new study, which will be published in the Sept. 17 issue of the journal Nature, shows that an increased electrical field actually can prevent droplets from merging.


"These surprising results could lead to improved applications in diverse fields including petroleum purification, food-oil processing and even biodiesel production," said Andrew Belmonte, an associate professor of mathematics at Penn State and one of the leaders of the project. "The results also could increase our understanding of atmospheric high-voltages that are generated in thunderstorms."

According to William Ristenpart, an assistant professor at the University of California at Davis and another of the project's leaders, "It has long been assumed that oppositely charged droplets experience an attractive force that encourages them to coalesce. This study, however, demonstrates that while droplets move toward each other when a low-strength electrical field is applied, those same droplets actually are repelled from one another after they make contact under higher-strength electrical fields."

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23 Sep 09 - 02:24 PM (#2729794)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years' time.

The 61 year old American said that this new immortality will be thanks to nanotechnology and an increased understanding of how the body works.

Kurzweil said that humanity is starting to understand genes and computer technology at an accelerating rate. He said that nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be in the shops in 20 years' time. He points out that artificial pancreases and neural implants are starting to become available.

You want to live here forever?

According to the Daily Telegraph, Kurzweil says that in 20 years we will have the means to reprogram our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever. Nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.

He said that within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen. This will be handy because with global warming you will not be able to breathe the air.

Apparently nanotechnology will improve our brains to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes. Of course there is no guarantee that anyone will want to read them.

In virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. Hologram-like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening so we can make the right decisions.

Humans will effectively become cyborgs. Resistance is futile.

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24 Sep 09 - 09:13 AM (#2730368)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Analysis of the lunar surface by three different spacecraft has provided "unambiguous evidence" of water on the Moon, Space.com reports.

India's Chandrayaan-1, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and the agency's Deep Impact probe have all detected the presence of either water or hydroxyl - one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom linked by a single bond.

The NASA-built Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) aboard Chandrayaan-1 "detected wavelengths of light reflected off the surface that indicated the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen".

The M3 suggested water/hydroxyl in the top few millimetres of the lunar surface - the limit of its penetrative capability - and detected a water signal which "got stronger toward the polar regions".

Cassini passed by the Moon in 1999, en route to Saturn, and also noted a globally-distributed water/hydroxyl signal, once again stronger towards the poles.

Deep Impact, meanwhile, detected the same signal at all latitudes above 10 degrees N, and confirmed the poles showed the strongest signals. The probe made multiple passes of the Moon on its way to a planned rendezvous flyby of comet 103P/Hartley 2 in November 2010.

Commenting on the trio of studies, Paul Lacey of the University of Hawaii said the findings "provide unambiguous evidence for the presence of hydroxyl or water" - data which "prompts a critical re-examination of the notion that the moon is dry".

There are two possible sources for lunar water - from water-bearing comets hitting the surface, or an "endogenic" process. Space.com explains that since the material which makes up the lunar surface is roughly 45 per cent oxygen, "combined with other elements as mostly silicate minerals", it could interact with the solar wind to produce water.

According to the M3 team, if the solar wind's positively-charged hydrogen atoms impact against the Moon's surface with sufficient force they can "break apart oxygen bonds in soil materials", and "where free oxygen and hydrogen exist, there is a high chance that trace amounts of water will form".

Regarding just why there appears to be more water/hydroxyl at the poles, Deep Impact was able to "observe the same regions at different times of the lunar day", and found that "when the sun's rays were strongest, the water feature was lowest, while in the morning, the feature was stronger".

This leads the researchers to suggest "the daily dehydration and rehydration of the trace water across the surface could lead to the migration of hydroxyl and hydrogen towards the poles where it can accumulate in the cold traps of the permanently shadowed regions

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24 Sep 09 - 05:42 PM (#2730712)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And from the Dark Side:

I is investigating worker's death in Kentucky. Is crime-scene reference to 'fed' a clue or a feint?

By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the September 24, 2009 edition
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Bill Sparkman knew his seemingly innocuous job – Census Bureau worker – had its risks.

In fact, a retired state trooper had warned Mr. Sparkman that not everybody may look kindly upon a government proxy walking the rural routes near Manchester, Ky.

The discovery of Sparkman's body Sept. 12 in the deep woods of eastern Kentucky – hanging from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest – not only is a grim reminder of the everyday risks that door-to-door workers face on the job. It also has the government again worried that disaffection and anger with Washington may be morphing into extremism, even domestic terrorism, and may be directed at government representatives. Sparkman's death has been called "an apparent homicide."

Judging from reports so far, the apparent murder "may [have] political motivation," says James Alan Fox, a veteran criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. "But although a lot of Americans are disenchanted with the economy the way it is, and there's lots of anger, we shouldn't be quick to jump to conclusions to somehow say that this is now open season on government workers. It absolutely isn't."

The FBI and Washington promise to investigate aggressively. Sparkman, a middle-age Scout leader, was found near a cemetery in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

"If this is an attack on a federal employee, I can assure you that no resources will be spared to find the perpetrators," John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, said Thursday morning, according to the Washington Post. "We cannot tolerate essentially domestic terrorism, if that is what it is."
...(Christian Science Monitor)

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25 Sep 09 - 02:18 PM (#2731265)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years' time


Hey, I actually posted this one first.

Amos 690
Don 1

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26 Sep 09 - 01:10 PM (#2731847)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Wow, and I forgot!! Take 5 points!! :D


(PhysOrg.com) -- At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco Wednesday, the company announced a new optical cable that will be able to transfer data, between electrical devices, starting at speeds of 10 gigabits per second.
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Vice president, Dadi Perlmutter, of Intel's Mobility Group, hopes to ship an optical cable, called Light Peak, by 2010. Light Peak will first be introduced into the market as being able to transfer data at 10 gigabits per second. Future versions will be able to transfer data at 40 and 100 gigabits per second as the manufacturing process becomes cheaper.
A single Light Peak cable will be capable of transporting multiple types of data simultaneously such as transferring data to a hard drive, connecting to the internet and transferring video.

Each end of the Light Peak cable will be connected to chips that contain light producing devices, encode data, and transmit data. The chips will also amplify data and convert the light to electrical signals.

Researchers are hopeful that silicon photonics will eventually replace copper wires on motherboards and microprocessors by making high-bandwidth connectors cheaper.

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26 Sep 09 - 01:15 PM (#2731850)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Computer scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif., have for the first time successfully demonstrated the ability to run more than a million Linux kernels as virtual machines.

The achievement will allow cyber security researchers to more effectively observe behavior found in malicious botnets, or networks of infected machines that can operate on the scale of a million nodes. Botnets, said Sandia's Ron Minnich, are often difficult to analyze since they are geographically spread all over the world.

Sandia scientists used virtual machine (VM) technology and the power of its Thunderbird supercomputing cluster for the demonstration.

Running a high volume of VMs on one supercomputer — at a similar scale as a botnet — would allow cyber researchers to watch how botnets work and explore ways to stop them in their tracks. "We can get control at a level we never had before," said Minnich.
Previously, Minnich said, researchers had only been able to run up to 20,000 kernels concurrently (a "kernel" is the central component of most computer operating systems). The more kernels that can be run at once, he said, the more effective cyber security professionals can be in combating the global botnet problem. "Eventually, we would like to be able to emulate the computer network of a small nation, or even one as large as the United States, in order to 'virtualize' and monitor a cyber attack," he said.
A related use for millions to tens of millions of operating systems, Sandia's researchers suggest, is to construct high-fidelity models of parts of the Internet.

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26 Sep 09 - 01:18 PM (#2731852)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ALso from PhysOrg:

(PhysOrg.com) -- Chinese scientists today reveal the discovery of five remarkable new feathered dinosaur fossils which are significantly older than any previously reported. The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, at last providing hard evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Talking from the conference in Bristol, Dr Xu Xing, lead scientist on the report published online in Nature today, said: "These exceptional fossils provide us with evidence that has been missing until now. Now it all fits neatly into place and we have tied up some of the loose ends".


Professor Michael Benton, from the University of Bristol and one of the world's leading experts on dinosaurs, commented: "This is one of the most exciting fossil discoveries in recent years. It's like finding a missing piece of the jigsaw - suddenly the picture looks much more complete".

Previous discoveries of dinosaur fossils with exquisitely preserved remains of feathers were undoubtedly some of the most important fossil finds ever made. At the time, many paleontologists considered this to be the Holy Grail that demonstrated once and for all that birds are highly derived dinosaurs.

However, the oldest undisputed bird, Archaeopteryx, is older than the feathered dinosaurs previously found. Therefore, critics claimed, feathered dinosaurs could not have been ancestral to birds.

The new fossils are from two separate areas, named the Tiaojishan and Daohugou formations. Comparison of the Tiaojishan and Daohugou fossils suggests that they probably all belong to the same fauna. The isotopic dates range from 168 to 151 million years old for the Tiaojishan and 164 to 158 million years for the Daohugou Formation. Archaeopteryx lived 150-145 million years ago, so was significantly younger than these new dinosaurs.

One of the dinosaurs, named Anchiornis huxleyi has extensive plumage and profusely feathered feet. It provides important new information on the origins of birds and the evolution of feathers.

"This fossil provides confirmation that the bird-dinosaur hypothesis is correct and supports the idea that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs, the group of predatory dinosaurs that include Allosaurus and Velociraptor", said Xu.
Provided by University of Bristol

A

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26 Sep 09 - 02:07 PM (#2731887)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For nearly a century, his problem has remained a quixotic quest for physicists. Particle physics has always held that matter can only exist at one state in one time. That is why particles are classified as moving with an up or down spin but nothing in between. In recent years that rule has been bent with the superposition of atoms and other nonliving things. Superposition is the term for an object that is not being observed that exists as both possibilities: up and down, dead and alive. This allows physicists to observe the matter in two different states at the same time. However, thus far it has only been done with non-living things. A life-form has never been superimposed. Now, one physicist says he may have an answer.

Oriol Romero-Isart is at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Physics in Garching in Germany. Along with his team he is proposing a "Schrodinger's virus" experiment that would follow the same general principles of Schrodinger's Cat. Using an electromagnetic field created by a laser, the virus would be trapped in a vacuum. Then, using another laser, the virus will be slowed down until it lies motionless in its lowest possible energy state.

Now that the virus is fixed, a single photon is used to put the virus into a superposition of two states, moving and non-moving. Up until the point is measured it is in both states. Only after a measurement is it found to be in one state and one alone. The team has suggested that the tobacco mosaic virus be used. The virus is rod-shaped and measures 50 nanometers wide and approximately 1 micrometer long. There is debate however, whether the virus can truly be classified as "alive." However the scientists are confident that the treatment could be extended to tiny micro-organisms such as tardigrades who can survive in vacuum for days, making them suitable for the "Schrodinger treatment."

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26 Sep 09 - 10:27 PM (#2732190)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.

Photos of cloth and spiders

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28 Sep 09 - 06:01 PM (#2733576)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

'Time telescope' could boost fibre-optic communication

17:48 28 September 2009 by Colin Barras
A "telescope" that can magnify time could dramatically increase the amount of data that can be sent through fibre optic cables, speeding up broadband internet and other long-distance communications.

It isn't possible to speed up the flashes of light that stream through the global network of optical fibres at around 200 million metres per second. But more information can be squeezed into each burst of light, says Mark Foster at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, using what he and his colleague Alexander Gaeta call a "time telescope" fitted with "time lenses".

Time lenses
"A time lens is essentially like an optical lens," says Foster. An optical lens can deflect a light beam into a much smaller area of space; a time lens deflects a section of a light beam into a smaller chunk of time.

The Cornell team made their time lenses using a silicon waveguide that can channel light. An information-carrying pulse made from a series of small laser bursts signalling digital 1s and 0s travels through an optical fibre and into the waveguide. As it enters, it is combined with another laser pulse from an infrared laser. The infrared pulse vibrates the atoms of the waveguide, which in turn shifts the frequencies of the data-carrying pulse before it exits the waveguide and passes into an optical fibre beyond.

"The front of the [data-carrying] pulse is shifted down in frequency and the end is shifted up in frequency within the silicon waveguide," says Foster. Because the speed of light passing through a medium depends on its frequency, the front of the pulse is slowed down while its rear speeds up. At the time lens's focal point the rear of the pulse catches up with the front, producing a fleeting image with a spectrum encoding the entire light pulse. ... (New Scientist)

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28 Sep 09 - 08:05 PM (#2733660)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Image from Phys.Org illustrating boundaries of the Earth system

These are estimates of how the different control variables for seven planetary boundaries have changed from 1950 to present. The green shaded polygon represents the safe operating space. Human activities have already pushed the Earth system beyond three of the planet's biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world; six others may well be crossed in the next decades, conclude 29 European, Australian and US scientists in an article in the September 24 issue of the scientific journal Nature. Credit: Image courtesy of Courtesy of Stockholm Resilience Centre

Human activities have already pushed the Earth system beyond three of the planet's biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world; six others may well be crossed in the next decades, conclude 29 European, Australian and U.S. scientists in an article in the Sept. 24 issue of the scientific journal Nature.

Scientists have been warning for decades that the explosion of human activity since the industrial revolution is pushing the Earth's resources and natural systems to their limits. The data confirm that 6 billion people are capable of generating a global geophysical force the equivalent to some of the great forces of nature - just by going about their daily lives.

This force has given rise to a new era - Anthropocene - in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change.

"On a finite planet, at some point, we will tip the vital resources we rely upon into irreversible decline if our consumption is not balanced with regenerative and sustainable activity," says co-author Sander van der Leeuw who directs the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. Van der Leeuw is an archaeologist and anthropologist specializing in the long term impacts of human activity on the landscape. He also co-directs ASU's Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative that focuses ASU's interdisciplinary strength on large-scale problems where an integrated effort is essential to finding solutions.

Defining planetary boundaries

It started with a fairly simple question: How much pressure can the Earth system take before it begins to crash?

"Until now, the scientific community has not attempted to determine the limits of the Earth system's stability in so many dimensions and make a proposal such as this. We are sending these ideas out through the Nature article to be vetted by the scientific community at large," explains van der Leeuw, whose experience includes leading interdisciplinary initiatives in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

"We expect the debate on global warming to shift as a result, because it is not only greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our planet's equilibrium. There are many other systems and they all interact, so that crossing one boundary may make others even more destabilized," he warns.

Nine boundaries were identified, including climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution. The study suggests that three of these boundaries -climate change, biological diversity and nitrogen input to the biosphere - may already have been transgressed.

"We must make these complicated ideas clear in such a way that they can be widely applied. The threats are so enormous that it is too late to be a pessimist," says van der Leeuw.

"A safe operating space for humanity"

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers looked at the data for each of the nine vital processes in the Earth system and identified a critical control variable. Take biodiversity loss, for example, the control variable is the species extinction rate, which is expressed in extinctions per million species per year.

They then explored how the boundaries interact. Here, loss of biodiversity impacts carbon storage (climate change), freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, and land systems. (click link above for complete article)

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07 Oct 09 - 01:46 PM (#2740549)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MURDER MOST ROYAL
The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn
By Alison Weir (Jonathan Cape 416pp £20)

(Literary Review)

"It was Jimmy Goldsmith who said that when you marry your mistress you create a job vacancy, but it could just as easily have been Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn's great folly lay in her inability to adapt to the role of consort when, after a six-year-long struggle and the fracturing of Christendom, she finally married her man. She refused to temper her feisty, flirty spirit, she neglected to look the other way when Henry's eye wandered and, fatally, she failed to produce a male heir. Had she behaved more like a wife and less like a mistress, Anne Boleyn might not have ended her days as 'the lady in the Tower'.

Alison Weir's title is taken from a letter, almost certainly forged, purportedly from Anne to Henry VIII. It is also shared with a Jean Plaidy novel, but unlike the fiction, which covered the rise as well as the fall of Anne Boleyn, Weir's work of non-fiction concentrates on the first five months of 1536, which began with Anne miscarrying a fifteen-week-old foetus and ended with her head in the straw. She was accused of adultery with five men, including her own brother George, and the low-born musician Mark Smeaton (in an age of strict hierarchy, this was almost as heinous). She was also charged with plotting regicide, which was, Weir writes, 'the ultimate treason'. Despite the fact that on the dates of more than half of the twenty-one offences cited in the indictment, it can be proved that Anne or her alleged accomplice was not at the stated location, the catch-all phrase 'and divers days before and after' was inserted to generalise the specifics. She was found guilty by her peers on 15 May and executed four days later.

It is a familiar tale and raises the question: do we really need to read about it again? Absolutely, argues Weir, who points out that it is precisely because it is such a popular story, so beloved of novelists and filmmakers, that common misconceptions and myths abound. She has a point: I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked if Anne really miscarried her brother's baby. Weir sets the record straight in her captivating, intelligent, no-nonsense prose. No, Anne wasn't accused of being a witch (though it may have been implicit in one article in the indictment); no, there is no evidence to suggest that the foetus she miscarried in January was deformed; nor is it likely that Anne would have wanted to seduce five men when she was either pregnant or recovering from childbirth on the dates cited.

This book is not just about dispelling myths. Weir allows the possibility that George was homosexual and reminds us that another of Anne's alleged lovers, Henry Norris, initially confessed to something before retracting it. She also counsels against the default position of assuming that Anne was so obviously innocent that to believe otherwise, then and now, is absurd. The case against Anne had to be 'credible and convincing', Weir writes, and the letter of the law, if not the spirit, was followed. Overall, though, she largely agrees with Eric Ives, whose magisterial biography of Anne contended that she was the victim of a Cromwellian coup. 'In the absence of any real proof of Anne's guilt,' Weir concludes, 'and with her having been convicted only on suspicious evidence, there must be a very strong presumption that she went to her death an innocent woman.'/p>

What of Henry VIII in all this? Did he set in motion the events that led to his wife's execution, at the very least hinting that he would appreciate her removal so he could get on with marrying Jane Seymour and siring an heir? Or did he believe the charges when they were presented to him and react with genuine outrage? Weir thinks the latter and argues that Henry's seemingly callous behaviour - dallying with ladies while his wife languished in the Tower and marrying Seymour only ten days after Anne's execution - was a face-saving exercise after such a monumental humiliation.

Not only had Henry been exposed as a cuckold, but he had also had his sexual prowess questioned in open court. Little wonder that the famous Whitehall Mural of 1537, the iconic image of Henry that is familiar to every schoolchild, displayed such an emphatic codpiece: virility restored...."

---

07 Oct 09 - 07:57 PM (#2740840)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

EARLIER this year, a puzzling report appeared in the journal Sleep Medicine. It described two Italian people who never truly slept. They might lie down and close their eyes, but read-outs of brain activity showed none of the normal patterns associated with sleep. Their behaviour was pretty odd, too. Though largely unaware of their surroundings during these rest periods, they would walk around, yell, tremble violently and their hearts would race. The remainder of the time they were conscious and aware but prone to powerful, dream-like hallucinations.

Both had been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder called multiple system atrophy. According to the report's authors, Roberto Vetrugno and colleagues from the University of Bologna, Italy, the disease had damaged the pair's brains to such an extent that they had entered status dissociatus, a kind of twilight zone in which the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness completely break down (Sleep Medicine, vol 10, p 247).

That this can happen contradicts the way we usually think about sleep, but it came as no surprise to Mark Mahowald, medical director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis, who has long contested the dogma that sleep and wakefulness are discrete and distinct states. "There is now overwhelming evidence that the primary states of being are not mutually exclusive," he says. The blurring of sleep and wakefulness is very clear in status dissociatus, but he believes it can happen to us all. If he is right, we will have to rethink our understanding of what sleep is and what it is for. Maybe wakefulness is not the all-or-nothing phenomenon we thought it was either...."

New Scientist

---

08 Oct 09 - 01:56 PM (#2741299)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(CBS) Cryonics is a controversial science involving freezing human remains.

Its believers hope that, one day, those remains can be bought back to life.

Now, a former employee of the nation's largest cryonics center is speaking up, claiming he witnessed bizarre and unbelievable acts while he was working there.

The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation is the worldwide leader in cryonics. Its lab is said to house corpses, including the remains of baseball great Ted Williams -- frozen to minus 321 degrees, all at a cost of about $120,000 each.

Larry Johnson, a former chief operating officer at Alcor, says in a new book that Williams' corpse was mistakenly decapitated and gruesomely mistreated.

Through internal documents, photos and secretly recorded conversations obtained by Johnson, he also alleges the company participated in the premature deaths of two Alcor clients, who were close to dying.

In one recorded conversation, Johnson is head asking, "So, what did he do? Did he just..."

And the response Alcor Vice President Joe Hovey is heard giving is, "He killed her."

Alcor denies any wrongdoing and released a statement about the claims made in Johnson's book. In part, it says, "Alcor is a non-profit organization, a pioneer in the field of cryonics and categorically denies the false allegations contained in Mr. Johnson's book."

On "The Early Show" Thursday, Johnson explained to co-anchor Harry Smith that, "Typically, what would happen is they would have a member, a member of Alcor, would pass away, would die. They would bring that individual to the facility and begin the cool-down process. Depending on what option you would take depends on what they'd do to you. If you take the whole-body option, they freeze your whole body. If you want just the head-only option, they just freeze the head."

So it was quite common for them to decapitate the corpses?

"Yes, that's correct," Johnson confirmed.

Saying, "I saw his (Williams') head," Johnson asserted that, "What happens is they had had his head in one -- looked like a freezer chest ... and it was malfunctioning, there were some issues. So they wanted to move his head into another vessel to lower the temperature of his head down it minus 321 Fahrenheit, so they went to put his head in that vessel. Obviously, the head's round, it's not gonna sit upright.

"So, they got a tuna fish can, and they put it in the bottom of that vessel. They set the head on top of the can and then filled the vessel with liquid nitrogen. Well, obviously, after two or three days of being in that state, when they pull you out, that can is stuck to the top of the head and in Williams' case, that's exactly what happened.

"They pulled him out, the tuna can was stuck on the top of his head, a technician grabbed a monkey wrench, took a swing at the can, missed it, missed the can, hit the head, drew back again, (took) a second swing, hit the can, sent it flying across the room."

---

08 Oct 09 - 08:49 PM (#2741632)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A study earlier this year found that saints and sinners both tend to find a moral balance, the former by breaking rules and the latter by following the rules.

Carry that theme to the extreme, and you might think, at least, that a sociopath and an extreme altruistic do-gooder are opposites personality-wise.

Increasingly, however, research suggests you'd be wrong.

"After all, the chances of a serial killer running into a burning building to save a child are pretty slim, right?" writes Andrea Kuszewski at ScientificBlogging. "And wouldn't a hero-type be one of the last people likely to break rules?"

Not so, according to a new study Kuszewski cites.

"Personality has consistently shown to be extremely heritable," she writes. "However, the same genetic material arranged and weighted in a slightly different way, may at times express as vastly different phenotypes: the 'extremely good' and the 'extremely bad' individual."

In fact, scientists say natural selection leaves us all at least a little bit crazy — a byproduct, perhaps, of our oversized brains. One might wonder to what extent nurturing determines whether a person ends up on this or that side of the line. (New Scientist)

---

09 Oct 09 - 06:10 PM (#2742411)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I strangely winced at the image of hitting a dead frozen head with a wrench. I thought it would have spintered at minus 351

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11 Oct 09 - 02:25 PM (#2743595)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

To send a quantum message, it helps to have a photon six-pack.

When bound together by a process called quantum entanglement, a set of six photons can withstand the hard knocks that ordinarily would erase quantum information, researchers have shown.

Papers describing the new experiment appear in the Oct. 9 Physical Review Letters and the October Physical Review A.

"This is an exciting landmark in experimental capabilities," comments physicist Aephraim Steinberg of the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the work. Creating the six-photon entanglement is an impressive technical achievement, he says. "This is the first demonstration of such large entangled states" with high quality.

Quantum communication offers an absolutely secure way to send secret messages, such as encoded military secrets or financial transactions. But quantum information is fragile, quickly destroyed by even slight interactions with the environment.

While a conventional bit of information can have only one value, 0 or 1, a quantum bit, or qubit, exists as a combination of 0 and 1 simultaneously. A qubit stays in this undecided state until something, whether a stray atom or a scientist trying to measure its properties, interacts with it, forcing it into a single state. This collapse of possibilities, known as quantum decoherence, can be detected farther down the line to catch eavesdroppers. But it can also keep qubits from reaching their destination intact.

Fortunately, theorists have shown that some quantum-mechanical systems are immune to certain interactions. One of these resilient systems is a set of four or more photons that are intimately bound, or entangled, a property of quantum systems that links particles' fates even when they are separated by large distances. (Science News)

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11 Oct 09 - 07:19 PM (#2743770)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

This month's Oct 09 Scientific American Magazine features Quantum Internet advances.



WHAT IS NEW IN MUSIC?
How about a little hand held music composer that makes really cool modern music tracks at your command for under $40 or the full computer version for $300?

Also view the Eigen Basson which is really out of this world...


http://createdigitalmusic.com/?option=com_content&task=view&id=136&Itemid=44


The hand held electronic composer was discussed on npr but after 2 hours I still do not have a successful search on the interview and demonstration of this device.



Prof. Cope from Santa Cruz has a new composing software called Emily Howell. His earlier version EMI could simulate any famous composer with gorgeous results. The new version makes more contempory music which is often impossible to play by a mere mortal pianist.

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12 Oct 09 - 02:51 AM (#2743939)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Museum to show Mary Rose sailors' remains
Human bones and Tudor artefacts are to go on display for the first time

By Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent
Monday, 12 October 2009S



More than 450 years after they drowned in a battle with a French invasion force, the remains of 90 crew members of the Mary Rose warship are to be put on public display.

Alexandra Hildred, a curator at the the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, said discussions are underway to mount a major exhibition in which objects found on the ship will be showcased next to their original owners.

On 19 July 1545, the Mary Rose, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir George Carew, set out from Portsmouth, along with some 80 other English vessels, to confront a fleet of 225 ships, carrying 30,000 soldiers, sent by King Francis I of France to attempt an invasion.

She sank with the loss of more than 400 lives, in circumstances which remain unclear to this day. A dismayed King Henry VIII watched the battle from onshore, in Southsea Castle.

The underwater wreck was discovered in 1836 by a fisherman in the Solent. It became an officially protected site in 1974, and was excavated in 1982. Only 1,000 objects have so far been seen by the public, from a stock of 19,000 underwater finds. This is about to change, at the renovated museum in Portmouth's Historic Dockyard zone.

The project is due to be completed by 2010, depending on a further £4m of funding being secured. "We are discussing the possibility of displaying human remains next to the objects," Ms Hildred said. Another option is to have the human remains in a separate area, to be viewed by appointment only.

None of the remains have been seen before, except for two skulls shown earlier this year. "Displaying bones is something that causes huge controversy," Ms Hildred acknowledged. "We have not yet decided how we will do it."

The previously unseen relics include Europe's oldest fiddle and bow, a beautifully preserved leather "man bag" (the height of Tudor fashion), a giant wooden spoon used to stir the crew's porridge pot, arrows, longbows and backgammon boards.

Rear Admiral John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose Trust, said: "The importance of these Tudor artefacts, many of which we have never had the space to put on public display, cannot be over-estimated. Nowhere else is a single moment in Tudor life captured as it is with the Mary Rose."

(UK Independent)

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12 Oct 09 - 10:47 AM (#2744139)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In 1906, famous composer John Philip Sousa took to Appleton's Magazine to pen an essay decrying the latest piratical threat to his livelihood, to the entire body politic, and to "musical taste" itself. His concern? The player piano and the gramophone, which stripped the life from real, human, soulful live performances.
menace_mech_music.png

"From the days when the mathematical and mechanical were paramount in music, the struggle has been bitter and incessant for the sway of the emotional and the soulful," he wrote. "And now in this the twentieth century come these talking and playing machines and offer again to reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful living breathing daughters."

In fact, things were so bad that amateur music-making was threatened, something that could lead indirectly to the rampant sissification of the entire country. "Under such conditions," Sousa believed, "the tide of amateurism cannot but recede until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant. Singing will no longer be a fine accomplishment; vocal exercises so important a factor in the curriculum of physical culture will be out of vogue. Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?"

This sounds ridiculous, and in many ways it was. (Sousa opened the piece by admitting he might well be "reckoned an alarmist" on this topic.) But it wasn't completely crazy—recorded music did have an effect on the Victorian middle-class practice of singing songs around the piano for evening entertainment, and many Americans today don't sing regularly in groups at all unless they attend church or join a school choir.

Sousa's interest went beyond the "national throat and chest," though. What he really cared about was the rampant copying of his compositions for use of player pianos and other playback devices without any payment for the use of his work. "When I add to this that I myself and every other popular composer are victims of a serious infringement on our clear moral rights in our own work I but offer a second reason why the facts and conditions should be made clear to everyone alike in the interest of musical art and of fair play," he wrote.


His piece concluded, "Do they not realize that if the accredited composers who have come into vogue by reason of merit and labor are refused a just reward for their efforts a condition is almost sure to arise where all incentive to further creative work is lacking and compositions will no longer flow from their pens or where they will be compelled to refrain from publishing their compositions at all and control them in manuscript? What, then, of the playing and talking machines?"

Sousa was making the argument at the heart of copyright: that it promotes innovation, and that without any protection for works, many will never be created. Though player pianos didn't put an end to composition and gramophones certainly didn't put an end to music—indeed, we're lost in our own personal libraries today—Sousa's "alarmist" rhetoric about the effects of new technology continued throughout the twentieth century and into our own. Indeed, the rhetoric increased both in volume and apocalyptic fervor, even as copyright law granted ever more rights to creators."

---

12 Oct 09 - 03:42 PM (#2744360)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A new genetic analysis has confirmed that the "royal disease" suffered by the male descendants of Queen Victoria was in fact a rare type of hemophilia, the genetic disease marked by a deficiency in blood clotting. Queen Victoria had several sons that died from blood loss after seemingly minor injuries. The disease spread as her descendants married into other royal families across Europe, altering Western history.

Based on the sons' reported symptoms, modern researchers had already hypothesized that the royals had hemophilia, but there was never any concrete evidence. Now, new DNA analysis on the bones of the last Russian royal family, the Romanovs, indicates the Royal disease was indeed hemophilia, a rare subtype known as hemophilia B [ScienceNOW Daily News]. The genotyping study was published in the journal Science.

To pinpoint the exact form of the disorder, the scientists extracted DNA from the skeletal remains of Queen Victoria's great grandson Crown Prince Alexei of Russia's Romanov family and decoded the genetic information. (The bones were found in 2007, and it was only earlier this year that they were confirmed to have belonged to the murdered prince, who was killed during the Russian revolution.) The new analysis discovered a mutation in a gene on the X chromosome that codes for the production of Factor IX, a substance that causes blood to clot [BBC News]. Since the mutation is on the X chromosome, the disease is carried by females but usually shows up only in male descendants, because they don't have a second X chromosome with a working copy of the gene. Researchers say the finding of hemophilia B in the Romanov's closes the case on the cause of "royal disease."

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14 Oct 09 - 08:09 PM (#2746087)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Tiny microscopic creatures commonly known as water bears (also called Tardigrades), along with a few other life forms, will be sent to the Martian moon Phobos to test whether organisms can survive for long periods of time in deep space. The mission, called the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), was originally going to be launched earlier this month, but it has been delayed due to safety and technical issues. Currently, the scientists hope to launch the specimens on the Russian Phobos-Grunt spacecraft in 2011, the next time that the orbits of Earth and Mars offer a launch window.

The LIFE experiment is being developed by The Planetary Society, a publicly supported organization founded in part by Carl Sagan that now has 125 member countries. The researchers will send 10 individual organisms (three of each, for a total of 30 samples) from all three domains of life - bacteria, eukaryota, and archaea - along with some native soil samples to Mars' largest moon on the three-year mission. According to the scientists, the experiment will test part of the theory of transpermia, specifically investigating life's ability to move between planets. In an earlier experiment in 2007, water bears flew on a spacecraft and survived the major hardships of radiation and the vacuum.

In 2011, the life forms will be packed up inside a puck-like container called a BioModule with a total mass of 100 grams, which is designed to resemble a meteorite that may have carried earlier life forms between planets. After the 10-month journey to Phobos, the specimens will undergo a 4,000-g impact on the moon's surface, spend a few weeks there in their sealed containers, and then return to Earth on board a robotic interplanetary lander that would crash-land in Kazakhstan. Scientists would then open the containers and see what was still alive.

"If no microbes survive, this does not necessarily rule out the possibility of transpermia, but it certainly calls it into question more," according to The Planetary Society's website. "But if some of the organisms do make it alive to Phobos and back, then at least we would know that some life could indeed survive an interplanetary journey over a three-year period inside a rock."

The experiment would mark the longest time that biological samples have spent in deep space; the Biostack 1 and 2 experiments, flown during the Apollo 16 and 17 missions to the moon, traveled outside the Earth's magnetosphere for about two weeks.

---

15 Oct 09 - 03:06 PM (#2746793)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

FORT COLLINS. Colo. - Authorities were trying to determine Thursday how to safely bring down a 6-year-old boy who reportedly clambered into his family's experimental balloon-powered aircraft and floated away from home, sheriff's officials said.

The Larimer County Sheriff's Department said the boy's family had been building an experimental aircraft that had a large helium balloon attached to it at their home, KUSA-TV reported. The aircraft was approximately 20 feet by 5 feet and covered in tin foil, the station said.

On Thursday morning, according to the family and officials, the boy got onto the aircraft and detached the rope holding it in place. Sheriff's spokeswoman Eloise Campanella said the boy climbed into the access door and the airborne device took off.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here

Several people in the neighborhood said they saw the aircraft floating over their homes and some snapped pictures.

Television news helicopters were tracking the craft, which was last seen floating south of Milliken, about 40 miles north of Denver.

Officials were scrambling to figure out how to rescue the boy.

The craft, which is shaped like a flying saucer, has the potential to rise to 10,000 feet, Campanella said.

---

15 Oct 09 - 03:57 PM (#2746848)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In 2007, Canadian researchers amazed us with the discovery that plants can distinguish whether nearby plants are their siblings —in other words, if they've grown from seeds from the same source.

Now, University of Delaware professor Harsh Bais has identified just how plants do this: by secreting chemical signals to other plants.

Plants grow more horizontal roots when they're in the presence of "strangers," better enabling them to compete for necessary nutrients. However, when plants are near their "siblings," they grew fewer roots—leaving researchers to think that plants don't need to grow as many roots to survive when they know they're among "kin."

In a series of experiments, the researchers exposed young seedlings of Arabidopsis thaliana to the root secretions from their "siblings" as well as to those of "strangers." When exposed to unfamiliar root secretions, the test plants grew more roots. However, when the plants were around kin, they "knew" that they would be competing for nutrients, so their roots didn't grow as much. Additionally, when the researchers treated the first group of plants (the ones next to strangers) with sodium orthovanadate—a chemical that stops secretion but doesn't stop roots from growing—the plants seemed to loose their sense of "strangers."

Physorg reports:

    "Plants have no visible sensory markers, and they can't run away from where they are planted," Bais says. "It then becomes a search for more complex patterns of recognition…"

    Bais says he and his colleagues also have noticed that as sibling plants grow next to each other, their leaves often will touch and intertwine compared to strangers that grow rigidly upright and avoid touching.

    The study leaves a lot of unanswered questions that Bais hopes to explore further. How might sibling plants grown in large "monocultures," such as corn or other major crop plants, be affected?

In a related study, when plants were planted next to "strangers," their growth was stunted—because all their energy was spent growing more roots, the rest of the plant suffered. Siblings, on the other hand, fared better overall. So like humans, plants often do best when they're among family.

---

15 Oct 09 - 06:44 PM (#2747047)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"In this week's issue of Nature, scientists from Princeton University trained mice to navigate around a virtual environment using a setup that resembles a combination of a giant trackball and a mini-iMax theater displaying a virtual world rendered using a modified version of the Quake 2 open source game engine. (Here's the academic paper, subscription required.) They hold the mouse's head still atop a giant trackball, which the mouse turns by running. The scientists use the rotations to move the mouse around in the virtual environment, and when he reaches certain places, he gets a reward. Because they are able to hold the head still, they can stick microscopic glass electrodes into individual neurons in the hippocampus of this mouse as it 'navigates.' They find the neural activity that resembles activity during real life navigation, and learned new things about the inputs and computations that are going on inside these neurons, which weren't known before. No word as of yet whether the scientists plan on giving the mice control of the gun. Wonder whether John Carmack ever envisioned this when he opened up the Quake code?" (Slashdot)

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18 Oct 09 - 01:09 PM (#2747221)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

You will be happy to learn that the sperm whales of the Southern Ocean have been adjudicated to be net carbon neutral or even carbon-negative despite their massive exhalations of CO2. This is because they bring up large amounts of iron from the sea depths when they do their deep feeding, which iron re-mingles with the waters higher in the column and feeds plankton, who absorb CO2.

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18 Oct 09 - 01:12 PM (#2747229)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A long and interesting exposition of the Holographic Paradigm of reality, well worth reading for those who need a bit of a spiritual jolt from time to time. (Plus it is Scientific!!)


A

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19 Oct 09 - 12:56 PM (#2748012)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A curious experiment has given scientists an unprecedented look into the human brain as it goes about a vital and everyday task: processing and speaking words. The study, published in Science, found that the brain carries out three steps of the task in about half a second, and that all the activity happens sequentially in the same small brain region, known as Broca's area.

The researchers took advantage of a rare procedure in which epilepsy patients allow doctors to implant dozens of electrodes directly into their brains. While they are awake, the patients answer questions so that doctors can determine which parts of the brain are necessary to maintain language and which parts can be safely removed to treat epileptic seizures [Los Angeles Times]. Three such patients agreed to take part in the language experiment, were given long lists of verbs, and were asked to change some of them to the past or present tense before saying them out loud.

The electrodes picked up regular pulses of activity in the brain region called Broca's area, which lies beneath the left temple. The area of the brain is named after a 19th century physician named Pierre Paul Broca, who became famous for his study of two patients who couldn't speak [NPR News]. While neuroscientists have long believed Broca's area plays an important role in speech, they've previously had little luck in determining exactly what goes on inside the brain region, since standard brain scans like fMRIs don't have enough resolution.

Electrical activity spiked 200 milliseconds, 320 milliseconds and 450 milliseconds after being presented with a new word. The researchers concluded that those peaks corresponded to the times when the brain decided on the appropriate word to use, picked the proper grammatical form, and figured out how to pronounce it [Los Angeles Times]. The findings negate a previous theory that Broca's area is involved only in speaking, and another region, Wernicke's area, handles reading and hearing.

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19 Oct 09 - 02:01 PM (#2748076)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A University of Michigan professor is developing an electric rocket thruster (NanoFET) that uses nanoparticle electric propulsion and enables spacecraft to travel faster and with less propellant than previous technology allowed. Credit: Michael Rayle, Electrodynamic Applications, Inc.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research is funding Professor Alec D. Gallimore's research because particle electric propulsion, with its half-inch thruster, increases velocity by several hundred or thousand miles an hour and is expected to have a dramatic impact on nanosatellites and larger spacecraft. These electric fields help to create thrust when the particles are charged, accelerated and propelled into space.

"Particles used in this technology are initially 10 to 50 nanometers in size (approximately a thousand times smaller than a human hair in diameter), and we scale them up to between one and ten microns (1/20th to about half the size of a human hair) because at that size, we can see and use them for advanced propulsion research," said Gallimore.

Even with the modifications there are still challenges in doing NanoFET research.

"There are material science aspects of designing the right materials that can withstand high voltages and close proximity to each other," Gallimore said. "There's also a challenge of making certain that all materials are in a form that fits on a satellite that's not much larger than a baseball." Currently the materials are more functional than form-fitting.

"We're hoping that we can actually resolve a lot of these issues in the next three to four years," said Gallimore.

In the meantime, the researchers have tested the nanoparticle, electric-based propulsion in air and in a vacuum chamber on an aircraft that replicates conditions of limited gravity.

"It has the potential to be a revolutionary propulsion concept, especially regarding nanosatellites and larger satellites, but there's also a possibility of applying the technology to non-space vehicle applications as well," he said.

AFOSR Program Manager, Dr. Mitat Birkan who oversees the research, agrees. "Electrostatic acceleration of charged nanoparticles has many potential applications besides space propulsion, including manufacturing and biomedical technologies."

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19 Oct 09 - 08:42 PM (#2748421)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Time in a Bottle--Watching Evolution Happen


Charles Darwin's seminal Origin of Species first laid out the case for evolution exactly 150 years ago. Now, MSU professor Richard Lenski and colleagues document the process in their analysis of 40,000 generations of bacteria, published this week in the international science journal Nature.

Lenski, Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology at MSU, started growing cultures of fast-reproducing, single-celled E. coli bacteria in 1988. If a genetic mutation gives a cell an advantage in competition for food, he reasoned, it should dominate the entire culture. While Darwin's theory of natural selection is supported by other studies, it has never before been studied for so many cycles and in such detail.

"It's extra nice now to be able to show precisely how selection has changed the genomes of these bacteria, step by step over tens of thousands of generations," Lenski said.
Lenski's team periodically froze bacteria for later study, and technology has since developed to allow complete genetic sequencing. By the 20,000-generation midpoint, researchers discovered 45 mutations among surviving cells. Those mutations, according to Darwin's theory, should have conferred some advantage, and that's exactly what the researchers found.

The results "beautifully emphasize the succession of mutational events that allowed these organisms to climb toward higher and higher efficiency in their environment," noted Dominique Schneider, a molecular geneticist at the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France.

Lenski's long-running experiment itself is uniquely suited to answer some critical questions -- such as whether rates of change in a bacteria's genome move in tandem with its fitness to survive.

---

20 Oct 09 - 01:27 PM (#2748807)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

By manipulating a single protein found in the brains of mice, researchers can wipe out a mouse's specific, traumatic memory without damaging brain cells, a new study reports. While the process is nowhere near ready for testing in humans, researchers say it does raise the possibility of novel treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions. "While memories are great teachers and obviously crucial for survival and adaptation, selectively removing incapacitating memories, such as traumatic war memories or an unwanted fear, could help many people live better lives," said [lead researcher] Joe Tsien [Telegraph].

Humans have the same so-called "memory molecule" in our brains, and the announcement is certain to prompt speculation that sci-fi scenarios of memory erasure are almost upon us. The concept was the premise of the popular 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which two former lovers pay a "memory-erasure" service to expunge the unhappy affair from their minds [HealthDay News].

In the study, published in the journal Neuron [subscription required], researchers created genetically engineered mice that had elevated levels of a brain protein called CaMKII, and also fashioned a chemical inhibitor that allowed them to turn the protein "off" and "on" at will. They then traumatized the mice by placing them in a chamber where they shocked their paws, causing the mice to associate the chamber with pain. Mice that had the CaMKII protein turned on before they were brought to the chamber the next time showed no fear, but they retained their memories of other habitats and objects.

A month later, the effect still held: Whereas the month-old memories of foot-shock … caused normal mice to freeze with fear when placed in original testing environment, mice with overexpressed αCaMKII appeared comparatively blasé in the same environment. Many researchers believe CaMKII to be "the key molecule underlying learning and memory," commented neuroscientist Mark Mayford [The Scientist], and the new study elegantly reaffirms that belief.

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21 Oct 09 - 11:11 PM (#2749973)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Microsoft, Dell, Spectrum Bridge launch first public white spaces network
First ever public white spaces broadband network is alive in Virginia -- like WiFi on steroids.
By Microsoft Subnet on Wed, 10/21/09 - 4:23pm.

The first public white spaces network officially launched on Wednesday in Claudville, Virginia. It is uses sensing technology from Spectrum Bridge with software and Web cams supplied by Microsoft and PCs supplied by Dell. The project was funded the TDF Foundation.

White spaces are services that run in the unused portion of television spectrum, and have been called "WiFi on steroids" by Google founder Larry Page. The battle for white spaces has been going on for years. IT companies like Microsoft, Dell and Google lobbied in favor of opening up the spectrum for data services, particularly broadband Internet access, while those in the broadcasting industry vehemently opposed the idea, even going so far as to create a FUD advertising campaign to make consumers believe that white spaces would hurt television quality.

Almost a year ago, in November, 2008, the FCC actually did the right thing and voted to allow carriers and other vendors to deploy devices in the unlicensed white spaces spectrum at up to 100 milliwats, and up to 40 milliwats on white space spectrum adjacent to TV channels. Unlike WiFi, white spaces will support a bigger bandwidth for faster downloads over longer distances. It also is less prone to interference from walls and other obstacles.

One condition the FCC placed on would-be white spaces providers at the time is that the devices would need sensing capabilities that would automatically shut them down should they interfere with television. Devices were also to have access to a geo-location database to track them by their IP address or media-access-control address or a radio-frequency identification tag. Once the database had a fix on the device's location, it was to be able to select the optimal white-space spectrum for the device and switch the spectrum as the device moves.

Spectrum Bridge provided the database that ensures the white spaces devices in Claudville do not cause interference with local TV signals. "The database assigns non-interfering frequencies to white spaces devices, and can adapt in real time to new TV broadcasts, as well as to other protected TV band users operating in the area," the company explains.

Dell was surprisingly quiet about its specific contribution to this white spaces network. Microsoft had original developed a prototype device that was trounced on at the time by the enemies of the idea, the National Association of Broadcasters. Tests of those early devices by the FCC were said to show that they did indeed cause the feared interference with television signals, though Microsoft said that the device tested must have been defective. A second roun

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22 Oct 09 - 12:06 PM (#2750313)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The edge of the solar system is tied up with a ribbon, astronomers have discovered. The first global map of the solar system reveals that its edge is nothing like what had been predicted. Neutral atoms, which are the only way to image the fringes of the solar system, are densely packed into a narrow ribbon rather than evenly distributed.

"Our maps show structure and energy spectra that are completely different from what any model has predicted," says study coauthor Herbert Funsten of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite, or IBEX, discovered the narrow ribbon, which completes nearly a full circle across the sky. The density of neutral atoms in the band is two to three times that in adjacent regions.

These and related findings, reported in six papers posted online October 15 in Science, will not only send theorists back to the drawing board, researchers say, but may ultimately provide new insight on the interaction between the heliosphere — the vast bubble in which the solar system resides — and surrounding space.

The bubble is inflated by solar wind, the high-speed stream of charged particles blowing out from the sun to the solar system's very edge. For 48 years, researchers have assumed that the solar wind sculpted the structure at the heliosphere's boundary with interstellar space, says Tom Krimigis of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.. But the newly found ribbon's orientation suggests that the galaxy's magnetic field, just outside the heliosphere, seems to be the chief organizer of structure in this region, says theorist Nathan Schwadron of Boston University, a lead author of one of the studies.

It's not known whether the ribbon lasts for just a few years or is a permanent feature.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48456/title/Solar_systems_edge_surprises_astronomers

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22 Oct 09 - 02:03 PM (#2750406)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Heil Heidegger!

Martin Heidegger in 1961: Twenty-eight years earlier, the German philosopher told his students of Nazism's "inner truth and greatness," declaring that Hitler alone "is the present and future of German reality, and its law."

By Carlin Romano

How many scholarly stakes in the heart will we need before Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), still regarded by some as Germany's greatest 20th-century philosopher, reaches his final resting place as a prolific, provincial Nazi hack? Overrated in his prime, bizarrely venerated by acolytes even now, the pretentious old Black Forest babbler makes one wonder whether there's a university-press equivalent of wolfsbane, guaranteed to keep philosophical frauds at a distance.

To be sure, every philosophy reference book credits Heidegger with one or another headscratcher achievement. One lauds him for his "revival of ontology." (Would we not think about things that exist without this ponderous, existentialist Teuton?) Another cites his helpful boost to phenomenology by directing our focus to that well-known entity, Dasein, or "Human Being." (For a reified phenomenon, "Human Being," like the Yeti, has managed to elude all on-camera confirmation.) A third praises his opposition to nihilism, an odd compliment for a conservative, nationalist thinker whose antihumanistic apotheosis of ruler over ruled helped grease the path of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Next month Yale University Press will issue an English-language translation of Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy, by Emmanuel Faye, an associate professor at the University of Paris at Nanterre. It's the latest, most comprehensive archival assault on the ostensibly magisterial thinker who informed Freiburg students in his infamous 1933 rectoral address of Nazism's "inner truth and greatness," declaring that "the Führer, and he alone, is the present and future of German reality, and its law."

Faye, whose book stirred France's red and blue Heidegger départements into direct battle a few years back, follows in the investigative footsteps of Chilean-Jewish philosopher Victor Farias (Heidegger et le Nazisme, 1987), historian Hugo Ott (Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu Zeiner Biographie, 1988) and others. Aim? To expose the oafish metaphysician's vulgar, often vicious 1930s attempt to become Hitler's chief academic tribune, and his post-World War II contortions to escape proper judgment for his sins. "We now know," reports Faye, "that [Heidegger's] attempt at self-justification of 1945 is nothing but a string of falsehoods."

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23 Oct 09 - 12:22 PM (#2751116)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- A bear on ice skates attacked two people during rehearsals at a circus in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, killing one of them, Kyrgyz officials said Friday.

In the incident, which happened Thursday, the 5-year-old animal killed the circus administrator, Dmitry Potapov, and mauled an animal trainer, who was attempting to rescue him.

"The incident occurred during a rehearsal by the Russian state circus company troupe which was performing in Bishkek with the program, Bears on Ice," Ministry of Culture and Information director Kurmangazy Isanayev told reporters.

It is unclear what caused the bear to attack Potapov, 25, nearly severing one of his legs while dragging him across the ice by his neck. Medical personnel were unable to save Potapov, who died at the scene.

The 29-year-old circus trainer Yevgeny Popov, who attempted to rescue Potapov, was also severely injured, according to doctors.

"The victim has sustained serious injuries - deep scalp lacerations, bruising of the brain, lacerations on his body. His condition is considered critical," Dr. Gulnara Tashibekova told reporters on Russian state television.

After the incident, the circus was cordoned off by police and emergency service workers. Experts have been brought in to examine the bear, which was shot and died at the scene.

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23 Oct 09 - 02:13 PM (#2751204)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Snooty wine pairing rules, such as the edict that one must only drink white wine with fish, now have a little data behind them, according to a new study. Researchers found a correlation between the high iron content of red wine and a nasty, fishy aftertaste when the reds are sipped with seafood. In the experiment, tasters ate a bit of scallop, tasted some wine and evaluated the aftertaste on a scale of 1 to 4. The diners found the unpleasant aftertaste was more intense with wines that had a higher iron content, the researchers say [Los Angeles Times]. The researchers were able to block the aftertaste by adding a compound that masks the iron.

The iron content of a wine depends on the composition of the soil in which the grapes were grown, the dust on the berry, contamination during harvesting, transportation, and crushing, and the conditions during fermentation [Telegraph]. The new research, published in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, suggests that some low-iron red wines are OK to drink with fish. While red wines tend to have more iron than whites, it varies according to the type of grape, country of origin, and vintage.

But the iron is only half the story. The researchers report that they haven't yet isolated the compound in the scallops that reacts with the wine, but they suspect it's an unsaturated fatty acid, which could be breaking down rapidly and releasing the decaying fish smell when exposed to iron [ScienceNOW Daily News].

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24 Oct 09 - 08:01 AM (#2751608)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Revealed: The human genome in 3D

Scientists have worked out the 3D structure of the human genome.

Their findings, published in Science magazine, reveal how long strands of DNA code are folded and tightly packed into the nucleus of a human cell.

Unfolded, the cell's genome - those strands of DNA code - would be approximately 2m in length.

The team showed how this is organised into a tight ball to fit inside a nucleus, which is about one hundredth of a millimetre in diameter.

MORE

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24 Oct 09 - 08:04 AM (#2751610)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Genome analysis changes diagnosis

A critically ill Turkish boy has had his life saved after scientists were able to read his genome quickly and work out that he had a wrong diagnosis.

The scientists writing in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say they completed the analysis of his blood in just 10 days.

They were able to see that he had a mutation on a gene that coded for a gut disease and tell his doctors.

Clinical tests proved that the boy had the disease and he is now recovering.

MORE

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24 Oct 09 - 02:50 PM (#2751846)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- For more than 50 years, physicists have been intrigued by the concept of closed time-like curves (CTCs). Because a CTC returns to its starting point, it raises the possibility of traveling backward in time. More recently, physicists have theorized that CTC-assisted computers could enable ideal quantum state discrimination, and even make classical computers (with CTCs) equally as powerful as quantum computers. However, a new study argues that CTCs, if they exist, might actually provide much less computational benefit than previously thought.

A team of scientists consisting of Charles Bennett, Graeme Smith, and John Smolin from IBM, along with Debbie Leung from the University of Waterloo, argues that previous analyses of CTCs have fallen into the so-called "linearity trap," and have been based on physically irrelevant definitions that have led to incorrect conclusions about CTCs. The new study will be published in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters.
As the physicists explain, CTCs are difficult to think about because they make quantum evolution nonlinear, whereas standard quantum mechanics systems evolve linearly. (In linear systems, the evolution of a mixture of states is equal to the mixture of the evolutions of individual states; this is not the case in nonlinear systems.) It seems that much of the apparent power of CTCs has come from analyzing the evolution of pure quantum states, and extending these results linearly to find the evolution of mixed states. The physicists call this situation the "linearity trap," which occurs when nonlinear theories are extended linearly. In the case of CTC computations, Bennett and coauthors found that this problem was causing the output to be uncorrelated with the input, which isn't a very useful computation.

"The trouble with the earlier work is that it didn't take into account the physical processes by which the inputs to a computation are selected," Smith told PhysOrg.com. "In a nonlinear theory, the output of a computation depends not only on the input, but also on how it was selected. This is the strange thing about nonlinear theories, and easy to miss."

To overcome these problems, the scientists proposed that the inputs to the system should be selected by an independent referee at the start of the computation, rather than being built deterministically into the structure of the computer. In order to ensure that the proper input is selected, the physicists proposed the "Principle of Universal Inclusion." The principle states that the evolution of a nonlinearly evolving system may depend on parts of the universe with which it does not interact, ensuring that scientists do not ignore the parts of the universe that need to be used to select the inputs. The physicists hope that these criteria will lead to choosing the correct input, and then to generating the correct corresponding output, rather than simply evolving the system linearly based on incorrect inputs.

As the scientists note, one of the motivating factors for their investigation is the previous finding that CTCs can distinguish between two nonorthogonal pure states, which is impossible in standard quantum mechanics. Further, the previous results seemed to imply that CTCs could be used to distinguish between two identical states, which should be impossible no matter how you look at it. To investigate this problem, the scientists considered what would happen if they prepared and evolved quantum states according to a specific physical process. They found that two output states can be distinguished even without using a CTC, eliminating any advantage the CTC may have offered.

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26 Oct 09 - 03:28 PM (#2753081)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PLoS ONE, October 21
Finally, on a lighter note: A new study has determined that the testosterone levels of male John McCain supporters dropped dramatically on Election Night 2008, when Barack Obama soundly beat their candidate. Men who supported Obama's candidacy showed no corresponding boost in testosterone levels, and women's hormone levels also stayed steady. The results were based on saliva samples taken at regular intervals on election night, and a surveys also revealed that the McCain supporters felt submissive, controlled, and unhappy. Researchers say the findings are proof that politics can affect men in the same way that physical contests for dominance do.

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26 Oct 09 - 09:14 PM (#2753343)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I was thinking yesterday. That should be momentous enough but I thought about the phrase manna from heaven. Our energy from the sun is like manna from heaven but so is gravity. The desert regions have plenty of sun but here in the east we have rain. Rain falling is manna from heaven if we harness it for our energy needs.

I have engineered a huge rain tank that is supported on four pillars but all the weight is supported by a central pillar that squeezes a hydrolic system that can power a turbine or flywheel for electricity.

Gravity fed electric power in your backyard without the hassel of hydro electric complications.

Charging the system with municipal water from time to time is required but at least the only pollution is water - if it ever springs a leak.

When it rains it pours kilowatts.

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26 Oct 09 - 09:15 PM (#2753344)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I think I will

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26 Oct 09 - 09:15 PM (#2753346)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

reserve #1000 for

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26 Oct 09 - 09:16 PM (#2753347)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos

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26 Oct 09 - 09:16 PM (#2753348)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

helloo?

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26 Oct 09 - 10:21 PM (#2753369)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Huh? What? We're there already!!!! Sorry--I was dreaming about Kilowatts from heaven.....



A

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26 Oct 09 - 10:24 PM (#2753371)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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26 Oct 09 - 10:26 PM (#2753372)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


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

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

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

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

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

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27 Oct 09 - 10:24 AM (#2753616)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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27 Oct 09 - 10:53 AM (#2753628)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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28 Oct 09 - 10:57 AM (#2754110)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Seven questions that keep physicists up at night

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

Why this universe?

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

What is everything made of?

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

How does complexity happen?

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

Will string theory ever be proved correct?

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

What is the singularity?

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

What is reality really?

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

How far can physics take us?

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

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

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

(New Scientist article at link on title)

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28 Oct 09 - 04:44 PM (#2754341)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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29 Oct 09 - 12:50 PM (#2754930)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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29 Oct 09 - 01:31 PM (#2754964)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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29 Oct 09 - 02:55 PM (#2755034)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

---

29 Oct 09 - 03:34 PM (#2755079)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

---

29 Oct 09 - 09:50 PM (#2755368)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

30 Oct 09 - 10:14 AM (#2755638)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

---

30 Oct 09 - 01:44 PM (#2755836)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

---

30 Oct 09 - 06:42 PM (#2756148)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

---

01 Nov 09 - 11:02 AM (#2757261)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

---

01 Nov 09 - 11:28 AM (#2757282)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

01 Nov 09 - 11:50 AM (#2757300)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer

wow.

---

01 Nov 09 - 10:13 PM (#2757656)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


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

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

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

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

---

02 Nov 09 - 11:47 AM (#2757980)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

(From the NY Times)

---

02 Nov 09 - 12:58 PM (#2758030)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

02 Nov 09 - 01:23 PM (#2758045)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

---

02 Nov 09 - 04:21 PM (#2758185)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

There are 6500 kilomters of banks along the Yangtze.

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

---

02 Nov 09 - 06:53 PM (#2758323)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

02 Nov 09 - 08:45 PM (#2758381)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


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

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

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

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

---

02 Nov 09 - 10:57 PM (#2758416)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Desert Dancer

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

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

---

03 Nov 09 - 01:22 PM (#2758781)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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



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

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

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

But then everything changed.

'She Completely Wrote Me Off'

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

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

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

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

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

---

03 Nov 09 - 08:31 PM (#2759060)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

03 Nov 09 - 08:48 PM (#2759071)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

---

04 Nov 09 - 04:33 PM (#2759674)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

---

04 Nov 09 - 04:49 PM (#2759687)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Colorado ski town legalizes pot
AP

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

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

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

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

---

06 Nov 09 - 10:52 AM (#2760870)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

German study finds babies cry in their native tongue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Local ([e-mail])

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06 Nov 09 - 11:02 AM (#2760879)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Experts map the body's bacteria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is healthy?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why do healthy people have such different microbial communities?

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

Transplant test

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

The tongue bacteria lasted longer on the forearms than foreheads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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06 Nov 09 - 07:41 PM (#2761223)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(Phys.org)


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


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

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

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

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

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07 Nov 09 - 11:36 AM (#2761560)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

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

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

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

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

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08 Nov 09 - 02:20 PM (#2762242)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


A

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08 Nov 09 - 03:27 PM (#2762279)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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09 Nov 09 - 03:47 PM (#2762974)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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09 Nov 09 - 03:55 PM (#2762981)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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09 Nov 09 - 06:42 PM (#2763089)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

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

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10 Nov 09 - 10:24 AM (#2763432)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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


A

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10 Nov 09 - 10:41 AM (#2763445)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(New Scientist)

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10 Nov 09 - 11:42 AM (#2763491)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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10 Nov 09 - 01:37 PM (#2763581)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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10 Nov 09 - 01:46 PM (#2763592)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

Comet-chaser clue

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

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

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

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

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

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10 Nov 09 - 05:19 PM (#2763735)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

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

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

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10 Nov 09 - 06:10 PM (#2763774)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


A

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10 Nov 09 - 11:27 PM (#2763897)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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11 Nov 09 - 10:26 AM (#2764127)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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11 Nov 09 - 10:47 AM (#2764145)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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11 Nov 09 - 11:28 AM (#2764171)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

Passenger List in Safe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

11 Nov 09 - 12:42 PM (#2764201)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(Umberto) Eco: Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that. We have always been fascinated by infinite space, by the endless stars and by galaxies upon galaxies. How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see. Lovers are in the same position. They experience a deficiency of language, a lack of words to express their feelings. But do lovers ever stop trying to do so? They create lists: Your eyes are so beautiful, and so is your mouth, and your collarbone … One could go into great detail.

SPIEGEL: Why do we waste so much time trying to complete things that can't be realistically completed?

Eco: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.

---

11 Nov 09 - 02:18 PM (#2764264)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The geek mind at play is a wonderful thing to behold. Two examples: Roomba Pacman, built by three engineers whose day jobs involve unmanned aerial vehicle systems (videos here), and Novel Chess, a system too complicated to explain here that allows works of literature to compete on the 64-square field of battle (e.g. "Nearly as exhausting is the 141-move slugfest between Benjamin Constant's lapidary tale of ennui and seduction, Adolphe (1816), and La Bodega (1905), Vincente Blasco Ibáñez's crusading proto-prohibitionist indictment of wine-drenched backwardness in Andalucía — a game that culminates in yet another triumph for Iberian social realism."

---

12 Nov 09 - 12:01 PM (#2764850)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

November 10, 2009, 9:30 pm
Social Medicine

"Wash your hands regularly." "Cover your mouth when you sneeze." "Throw away your used tissues." These are some of the exhortations currently posted around London in an attempt to reduce the spread of flu. But one day, perhaps we'll have public health campaigns of a different kind. "Be jolly: it's catching." Or, "Eat less: do it for your friends."

Why? Because "traditional" infectious diseases — those, like flu and tuberculosis, that are caused by viruses or bacteria — are not the only aspects of health that can spread from one person to another. Taking up smoking is contagious; so is quitting. Obesity is contagious. So is happiness.

At least, these are the results coming in from long-term studies of social networks — the networks of friends and families, neighbors and colleagues that we all belong to. Such studies have found that one person's change in behavior ripples through his or her friends, family and acquaintances. If one of your friends becomes happy, for example, you're more likely to become happy too. If you're great friends with someone who becomes obese, you're much more likely to become obese as well.

And the effect doesn't stop there. If your friend's friend becomes happy, that increases the chance your friend will become happy — and that you will too. Conversely, if you become obese or depressed, you may inadvertently help your friends, and your friend's friends, to become fat or gloomy. (Intriguingly, happiness and obesity seem to spread in different ways. Obesity spreads most easily between friends of the same sex who are emotionally close. Happiness spreads most readily between friends who live near each other: a happy friend on the same block makes more difference than a happy friend three miles away.)

I should say that doing long-term studies of social networks is difficult — it means interviewing and measuring thousands of people repeatedly over many years. After all, if I want to know whether you and your friends will change weight over the next five years, I have to measure all of you now and again in five years' time. Moreover, I have to keep track of how friendships come and go, of who moves house and so on. In short, it's a massive task just to collect the data.

So, while there have been plenty of studies of how pairs of people, especially spouses, affect each others' health, there have been far fewer studies of how health reverberates through large social networks. The results I'm referring to here all come from the so-called "Framingham Heart Study," which began in Massachusetts in 1948 and has continued to the present day. (Up to now, the study has involved two cohorts of several thousand people each; a third cohort has just been enrolled.)

It's possible, therefore, that the results I'm talking about are specific to this group of people. However, I think that's unlikely. The details of how an attribute spreads may differ from one group to another: perhaps in some places, friends have less influence and siblings have more. But the general result — that healthy (or unhealthy) behaviors, habits and outlooks are infectious — is, I think, likely to prove robust. ... (NYT TImes science columnist Olivia Judson)

---

12 Nov 09 - 12:21 PM (#2764875)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Wednesday by Forbes. (AP)

Not surprisingly, heads of state seem to get ahead.

Barack Obama was No. 1 on Forbes' list of "The World's Most Powerful People" released Wednesday, with the leaders of China and Russia rounding out the top three.

Obama beat out Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao for the No. 1 spot just days before the two are to meet in Beijing to discuss their economic ties and political potential. Leading a nation with a growing fiscal influence and swelling population helped Hu secure the runner-up position.

"China has more people, more potential to be world-dominating than the United States does in the long run, but the United States still has the deadliest, largest military and is the world's reserve currency and has the largest economy," said Forbes managing editor Bruce Upbin. "I think Barack Obama still deserves to be No. 1. ... He was by a long shot."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin earned the No. 3 ranking.

Forbes, which created the list for the first time, scored its powerful candidates on the number of people each influence; their ability to project power; control of and access to finances' and how actively they wield power.

Financial bigwigs, including Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke; Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; and News Corp. chairman and Rupert Murdoch, also made the top 10.

Pope Benedict XVI clocks in at No. 11, Osama bin Laden at No. 37 and Oprah Winfrey at No. 45 on a list that includes a 67-slot roster.



*****

Forbes' "The World's Most Powerful People" list
1. Barack Obama, president, U.S.
2. Hu Jintao, president, China
3. Vladimir Putin, prime minister, Russia
4. Ben Bernanke, chairman, Federal Reserve
5. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, founders, Google
6. Carlos Slim Helu, chief executive, Telmex, Mexico
7. Rupert Murdoch, chairman, News Corp.
8. Michael Drake, chief executive, Wal-Mart Stores
9. Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, king, Saudi Arabia
10. Bill Gates, co-chairman, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

---

12 Nov 09 - 03:42 PM (#2764993)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A telltale signature of consciousness has been detected that takes us a step closer to disentangling the brain activity underlying conscious and unconscious brain processes.

It turns out that there is a similar pattern of neural activity each time we become conscious of the same picture, but not if we process information from the image unconsciously. These contrasting patterns of activity can now be detected via brain scans, and could one day help determine if patients with brain damage are conscious. They might even be used to probe consciousness in animals.

"It's very exciting work," says neuroscientist Raphaël Gaillard of the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the work. "The use of a reproducibility measure to disentangle conscious and non-conscious processes is genuinely new." Gaillard has previously shown that coordinated activity across the entire brain is one of the signatures of consciousness .
Consistent signals

So far, efforts to find a brain signature of consciousness have focused on the intensity of neural activity, how long it lasts, and whether signals tend to be synchronised across different regions of the brain.

"We were looking for something other than the intensity and duration of the neural activity that characterises conscious neural processing," says Aaron Schurger of Princeton University in New Jersey, who led the new work.

He and his colleagues hypothesised that when the brain is presented with the same sensory input – a picture, say – time after time, then conscious awareness of the picture should produce similar neural activity each time.

Conversely, if the sensory input did not enter conscious awareness, it should produce different brain activity each time because there would be other subconscious processes going on at the same time.
Invisible pictures

To test this hypothesis, Schurger and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity in 12 volunteers who were asked to look at a series of images – some designed to elicit a conscious response, others a subconscious one.

The researchers invoked conscious processing simply by showing volunteers pictures of faces or houses. To invoke subconscious processing, the researchers presented volunteers with so-called "invisible stimuli".

These consist of two drawings, of either a house or a face, one shown to each eye. Crucially in each pair, one drawing is in pale orange on a pale green background, the other is the same drawing with the colours reversed. When the brain is confronted with such seemingly contradictory visual inputs it reconciles them by creating a yellow patch. So the volunteer consciously sees nothing but yellow, though the brain has subconsciously processed the face or house.
Probing anaesthesia

A set of fMRI recordings of subjects' temporal lobes backed up the team's hypothesis: each time a house or face was consciously processed by an individual, the resulting patterns in brain activity were similar. When the same image was processed subconsciously, the researchers found that the patterns of brain activity were much more variable. "Neural patterns were more reproducible when the drawings were seen consciously compared to when they were not," says Schurger.

The team thinks that reproducibility – the replication of similar neural patterns in the brain each time it becomes conscious of the same sensory input – gives us clues as to what consciousness is.

It could also be used in the future to tell if someone in a coma is conscious, or probe the consciousness of people under anaesthesia, something that also isn't well understood. (New Scntst)

---

13 Nov 09 - 01:01 PM (#2765389)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Posted in Space, 13th November 2009 17:04 GMT

Free whitepaper – Dell PowerEdge server benchmarks

The International Space Station's buggy urine-recycling unit has packed up again, according to reports. With the shuttle Atlantis due to visit shortly, temporarily boosting the number of people at the orbiting outpost to 12, it's feared that areas of the station may begin to fill up with containers of astronaut piss awaiting treatment.

The crew of the ISS began drinking their own bodily wastes in May, following a troublesome deployment aboard the station for the quarter-billion-dollar water-replenishment system. The barrel-shaped Urine Processor Assembly in particular proved unreliable, at one point triggering a fire alarm and repeatedly breaking down.

The golden barrel is critical for the smooth functioning of the station, however, as the ISS has now moved to operation with larger 6-person crews - and the US shuttle fleet is shortly to cease operation. The shuttles' fuel-cell power supplies produce clean water as an exhaust byproduct, which is then supplied to the orbital facility. Shipping water up from Earth is prohibitively expensive.

Now Space.com reports that the buggy barrel, which has been serving up crystal-pure draughts of "yesterday's coffee" and keeping the station's (golden) showers supplied since May with only intermittent hiccups, has gone down again. The crowded ISS, with double the usual number of people aboard, will become even more confined as "urine bags" awaiting processing pile up.

---

13 Nov 09 - 01:05 PM (#2765394)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

JUST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. The scenario, which comes straight out of Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, was revealed by the most precise record of the climate from palaeohistory ever generated.

Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years.

Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues.

The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached this level of detail.

Carbon isotopes in each slice revealed how productive the lake was and oxygen isotopes gave a picture of temperature and rainfall. They show that at the start of the Big Freeze, temperatures plummeted and lake productivity stopped within months, or a year at most. "It would be like taking Ireland today and moving it up to Svalbard" in the Arctic, says Patterson, who presented the findings at the BOREAS conference in Rovaniemi, Finland, on 31 October.

---

18 Nov 09 - 06:50 PM (#2768814)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The First Religions

Archaeologists excavating at Çatalhöyük, with embedded bull horns at lower left.
"Imagine a great mound 70 feet high and about 750 feet wide, made up of mud-brick houses built on top of each other." That is how the archaeologist Ian Hodder of Stanford University describes the site known as Çatalhöyük (pronounced cha-tal-HU-yuk) in central Turkey. Hodder has been directing work at the Neolithic site since 1993, but over the past several years, with two major grants from the John Templeton Foundation, he has expanded his research. "We are doing something novel, bringing together people from related disciplines—anthropology, religious studies, philosophy, sociology—so that they can engage first-hand with the site, and interpret it based on their wider understanding of religion."

Hodder estimates that there are some eighteen layers of rebuilt houses at Çatalhöyük, which dates back to approximately 7,500 B.C.E. Many of those layers are extraordinarily well preserved, with skeletons buried beneath the floors and parts of bears and bull horns attached to the walls. (For extensive photos of the site, click here.)
Harvey Whitehouse, a social anthropologist at the University of Oxford and a member of the Çatalhöyük research team, calls the site a "time machine." Its inhabitants, he told the Templeton Report, were "all living on top of one another, literally." Every time they abandoned a house, they collapsed the walls onto the ground. "People knew where to go to find the skull of an ancestor under their floor."

All of which is interesting not only from a historical point of view but from a religious one as well. As Hodder says, "When you have people who are removing skulls from their dead and keeping them, re-plastering them, painting them, and handing them down over generations, it's fairly clear that such evidence is about the spiritual."

Hodder emphasizes that there is still a great deal that his team does not know about the people who lived at Çatalhöyük. "We don't have any names. We don't know what language they spoke. They were probably some form of early Indo-European, but they have no direct link with any people living today." The artifacts and pictorial evidence at the site do suggest, however, "a highly arousing major ritual" going on during the first half of Çatalhöyük's history.

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19 Nov 09 - 05:01 PM (#2769417)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SALT LAKE CITY -- A fast-moving meteor lit up the night skies over most of Utah just after midnight Wednesday. Moments later, the phones lit up at KSL as people across the state called to tell us what they saw and ask what it was.

Scientists are calling it a "remarkable midnight fireball." The source of all the excitement was basically a rock, falling from space.

In addition to KSL, witnesses to the meteor quickly began call 911.

"I'm currently driving, but I just saw a giant blue flash in the sky, and it came down into the city," a caller from Ogden said.

A caller in Bountiful told dispatchers, "It flashed from the west, and it lit up the whole freakin' neighborhood."

A Salt Lake City caller said, "Ma'am, I'm not kidding you. I am terrified."

Professor David Kieda is chair of the University of Utah's astronomy department. He said the energy of the meteor coming into Earth's atmosphere was so powerful it has to be measured in Terawatts.

"It's almost like the consumption of the United States all at once. It was a fraction of a second," Kieda said.

When a meteor enters the atmosphere, it gives off a lot of heat and light. Folks at the Clark Planetarium say this rock was big--between the size of a microwave and washer-dryer unit.
"I mean this thing lit up the sky, literally. It was like daylight." - Patrick Wiggins, NASA Solar Ambassador

At exactly 12:07, people from all over the western United States watched as the bolide meteor crashed into Earth's atmosphere. In some areas, the flash of light was so bright it caused light-sensor street lamps to shut off.

Clark Planetarium Director Seth Jarvis said the stony meteorite was probably traveling 80,000 miles an hour when it hit our atmosphere. He said it happened 100 miles up in the air; so despite the brightness, Utah was never in any danger.

"These collisions can do damage, but they are extremely rare; and literally once in a century do you observe something that's actually doing damage," he said.

Witness Andy Bailey said, "Oh, it lit up the whole sky, like almost brighter than the day. It was bright."

---

19 Nov 09 - 05:18 PM (#2769426)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Do not go to Europa, All these other worlds are yours.

---

19 Nov 09 - 07:19 PM (#2769491)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists at Intel are working on developing sensors that would be implanted in a person's head in order to harness brain waves that could then be used to control computers, televisions, cell phones and other electronic equipment. Intel has already used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) machines to determine that blood flow changes in specific areas of the brain based on what word or image someone is thinking of. People tend to show the same brain patterns for similar thoughts. 'Eventually people may be willing to be more committed ... to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts.' said Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau." (Slashdot report)

---

20 Nov 09 - 10:44 AM (#2769821)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Well, this group of MIT grad students hooked up an oscilloscope and measured whether radio signals were blocked or attenuated.

They found that, pretty much across the board, the change in signal amplitude was less than 10 deciBels, either in the positive or negative direction, for a very small overall change.

However, there was an interesting thing that happened at just a few frequencies. In particular, at radio frequencies reserved for government use. Care to hazard a guess? Let's quote from the article:

   

Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

And they have graphs to back up their claims, too. Check out the reading from the oscilloscope:

Oscilloscope Measurement

I think the conclusion is pretty clear here. Listen to the music without your tinfoil hat, otherwise the government could influence what you're hearing!

---

20 Nov 09 - 01:47 PM (#2769938)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Scientisat reports:

"...Next time you catch a stranger's eye and feel a surge of attraction, here's something to ponder: is your ardour based partly on shared genetic ancestry? That's the intriguing question raised by a new study of Latino populations.

A team led by Neil Risch and Esteban González Burchard of the University of California, San Francisco, took DNA samples from married couples in Mexican and Puerto Rican populations, examining around 100 genetic markers from across the genome. From these markers, the researchers were able to discern the proportions of Native American, European and African ancestry for each person.

They found that within Mexican populations, people tended to pick partners with similar proportions of Native American and European ancestry, while in Puerto Rican populations couples had paired up based on their shared balance of European and African ancestry.

The team also noted each person's socioeconomic profile to see if this explained their choice of partner as convincingly as ancestry did. But these factors couldn't explained the pairings.
Sizing up

What's more, the same patterns emerged for Mexicans living in the San Francisco Bay Area as for Mexicans in Mexico, and for Puerto Ricans in both Puerto Rico and New York. So presumably people had cued into subtle variations in appearance, behaviour and even odour.

"I think it's fascinating," says Burchard. "People are sizing up their partners, maybe in subconscious ways."

The tendency to seek genetically similar mates could confuse researchers searching for genes that affect our health in populations with mixed ancestry, warns Risch. This is because genetic markers that seem to be inherited along with a particular disease may simply be more common in a sub-group of the population in which that disease is more prevalent.

It's not clear whether similar trends would be seen in less genetically varied populations, such as northern Europeans. But mate choice on the basis of ancestry may be a powerful factor for African Americans, who have a rich genetic heritage including variable amounts of European ancestry.
Classic method

Companies are already offering DNA tests to help people choose their partners, based on the idea that we prefer people with immune system genes that differ from our own.

So can we expect DNA dating services to start trying to match people based on shared ancestry? Tamara Brown, who runs GenePartner, based in Zurich, Switzerland, says that her company has no immediate plans to introduce ancestry-based matching – although it is a possibility for the future.

The researchers behind the new study are sceptical of DNA-based dating, however. "I prefer the classic method of just running into people while having a drink," says Marc Via, another member of the team...."

---

20 Nov 09 - 03:30 PM (#2770020)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MICHAEL NESMITH
Artist, writer; Former cast member of "The Monkees"; A Trustee and President of the Gihon Foundation and a Trustee and Vice-Chair of the American Film Institute

Existence is Non-Time, Non-Sequential, and Non-Objective

Not a dangerous idea per se but like a razor sharp tool in unskilled hands it can inflect unintended damage.

Non-Time drives forward the notion the past does not create the present. This would of course render evolutionary theory a local-system, near-field process that was non-causative (i.e. effect).

Non-Sequential reverberates through the Turing machine and computation, and points to simultaneity. It redefines language and cognition.

Non-Objective establishes a continuum not to be confused with solipsism. As Schrödinger puts it when discussing the "time-hallowed discrimination between subject and object" — "the world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist". This continuum has large implications for the empirical data set, as it introduces factual infinity into the data plane.

These three notions, Non-Time, Non-sequence, and Non-Object have been peeking like diamonds through the dust of empiricism, philosophy, and the sciences for centuries. Quantum mechanics, including Deutsch's parallel universes and the massive parallelism of quantum computing, is our brightest star — an unimaginably tall peak on our fitness landscape.

They bring us to a threshold over which empiricism has yet to travel, through which philosophy must reconstruct the very idea of ideas, and beyond which stretches the now familiar "uncharted territories" of all great adventures.

---

20 Nov 09 - 04:03 PM (#2770038)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Bronx hospital and the city are really hearing it from a Bronx man whose ear was thrown in the garbage.

Eduardo Garcia, 67, filed a lawsuit after emergency service workers tossed out his ear - which was ripped off by a dog - because they feared it was too risky to reattach it.

"Now, he's got a deformity," said Garcia's lawyer, Andrew Friedman. "They deprived him of an opportunity to have treatment."

A bull terrier belonging to Garcia's son bit off a large chunk of his upper ear on May 10, 2008, his lawyer said.

Emergency workers packed the salvaged ear on ice in the ambulance, but when the ambulance arrived at Montefiore Medical Center, the EMS workers threw the ear in the trash, according to the suit filed in Bronx Supreme Court.

Hospital records say the ear was tossed because of " the potential risk of contamination or infection" if it was reattached.

Read more: here

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22 Nov 09 - 09:52 AM (#2771086)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New revelations of a big hole in the moon don't revive the notion that our cosmic companion is made of Swiss cheese. Instead, scientists say, the unusually proportioned feature is most likely a portal into an underground cavern that once held flowing lava.

Analyses of high-resolution images taken by a moon-orbiting probe suggest that the 65-meter-wide, nearly circular feature is between 80 and 88 meters deep, says Carolyn H. van der Bogert, a planetary geologist at Westphalian Wilhelm's University Münster in Germany. Typical impact craters of this size, she notes, are less than 15 meters deep.

Although the hole is located in a lunar province once home to widespread volcanic activity, a dearth of hardened lava around the hole indicates that it isn't a volcanic crater, she and her colleagues report in the Nov. 16 Geophysical Research Letters. The geology of the region also suggests that the hole isn't associated with a fault zone.

The feature is likely what geologists refer to as a skylight, or collapsed portion of the roof of an underground tube that once held flowing lava, van der Bogert and her colleagues propose. If that's true, the skylight is the first such portal spotted on the moon.

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22 Nov 09 - 01:39 PM (#2771215)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Vital force is seen as powering the whole living world. To acquire it personally is the only sure avenue to success. Placide Tempels, in his seminal work on Bantu philosophy, tells us that for the Bantu

"supreme happiness, the only form of good fortune is to possess the greatest possible amount of vital force, while the worst adversity and indeed the only real misfortune is to see a reduction in one's stock of this power." [5]

Among the Baluba, vital force is referred to as 'muntu'. A powerful man is described as 'rnuntu mukulumpe', a man with a great deal of muntu; whereas a man of no social significance is referred to as a 'muntu mutupu', or one who has but a small amount of muntu.

A complex vocabulary is used to describe all the changes that can affect a man's stock of muntu. All illnesses, depressions, failures in any field of activity are taken to be evidence of a reduction in this vital force and can be avoided only by maintaining one's stock of it. A man with none left at all is known as 'mufu'. He is as good as dead. [6]

Tempels considers the same to be true of the Bantu in general. "The goal of all efforts among the Bantu", Tempels tells us, "can only be to intensify this vital force". And indeed, their customs only make sense if one interprets them "as a means of preserving or increasing one's stock of vital force". [7]

Leopold Senghor, the poet, philosopher and former President of Senegal, considers that the goal of all religious ceremonies, all rituals and indeed of all artistic endeavour in Africa, is but "to increase the stock of vital force". [8] The same is true in Melanesia; so much so that, according to Codrington,

"all Melanesian religion consists in getting this mana for oneself, or getting it used for one's benefit." [9]

Vital force was not just accumulated by individuals; it is usually seen as flowing through the cosmos and concentrating in certain things and beings and in so doing, forming a pattern of power and hence of sanctity - a philosophy known as 'Hylozoism'. Paul Schebesta tells us that for the Pygmies of the Ituri forest in Zaire, vital force or megbe

is spread out everywhere, but its power does not manifest itself everywhere with the same force nor in the same way. Certain animals are richly endowed with it. Humans possess a lot more of some types of megbe but less of other types. Able men are precisely those who have accumulated a lot of megbe: this is true of witch-doctors. [10]"

From http://www.edwardgoldsmith.com/page181.html

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22 Nov 09 - 02:06 PM (#2771242)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

from an L. L. Cavalli-Sforza paper, Genes, peoples, and
languages. The correspondence between gene families and language families is
clear. From the paper:

Most patterns found in the analysis of human living populations are likely to be
consequences of demographic expansions, determined by technological
developments affecting food availability, transportation, or military power. During
such expansions, both genes and languages are spread to potentially vast
areas. In principle, this tends to create a correlation between the respective
evolutionary trees. The correlation is usually positive and often remarkably high. It
can be decreased or hidden by phenomena of language replacement and also of
gene replacement, usually partial, due to gene flow.

Genetic variation and languages are both characteristics of individuals &
populations. One might imagine that gene flow between groups might be
modulated by linguistic affinity between groups, or, linguistic affinity between
groups might be modulated by gene flow between the groups. Cavalli-Sforza's
colleague Marcus Feldman has asserted that the correlation does indeed emerge
out of biases in mating patterns more explicitly of late.


Language and genes are passed from parents to offspring. But, there are clearly
differences in terms of the specific constraints on inheritance. When it comes to
genes we have both the Mendelian abstraction as well as DNA as a concrete
substrate. Parent-offspring transmission is symmetrical (from both parents),
subject to mutation, segregation, recombination, etc. Though there are attempts to
model language, to my knowledge there is not such robust theoretical
understanding of the inheritance of language from parents to offspring, in
particular the biological substrate which acquires language

(I do not class the arguments about deep structure in linguistics in the same class as Mendelian and DNA models of genetics).

Of course there is the reality of great differences in transmission of language and genes.

In the domain of language horizontal transmission is critical to understanding its distribution & evolution (I am aware that horizontal gene transfer is
important in biological evolution, but not so much in the scope and species we're talking about). One's parents may peak a different language because language acquisition and fluency is also dependent on peers in a way that genetic variation is not. Additionally, language transmission from parents need not be symmetrical, one may acquire the language of one parent but not the other. One may speak the same language as one's parents, but with a different accent (that one of one's peer group). Interestingly, the exception to this rule of accents are individuals with some socialization dysfunction, such as autism.

There are also similarities between languages and genes. The molecular clock has its analogy in the lexical clock. There is also lexical admixture between languages, for example the heavy load of French-derived terms in modern English, the
influence of Slavic upon the Baltic languages. A new paper in PLoS Biology leans on these last similarities to utilize the Structure framework to flesh out the relationships of the language of New Guinea & Australia, what was once "Sahul" during the last Ice Age.

The author's summary from Explaining the Linguistic Diversity of Sahul Using Population Models:

"About one-fifth of all the world's languages are spoken in present day Australia, New Guinea, and the surrounding islands. This corresponds to the boundaries of the ancient continent of Sahul, which broke up due to rising sea levels about 9000 years before present. The distribution of languages in this region conveys information about its population history. The recent migration of the Austronesian speakers can be traced with precision, but the histories of the Papuan and Australian language speakers are considerably more difficult to reconstruct. The speakers of these languages are
presumably descendants of the first migrations into Sahul, and their languages have been subject to many millennia of dispersal and contact. Due to the antiquity of these language families, there is insufficient lexical evidence to reconstruct
their histories. Instead we use abstract structural features to infer population history, modeling language change as a result of both inheritance and horizontal diffusion. We use a Bayesian phylogenetic clustering method, originally developed for investigating genetic recombination to infer the contribution of different linguistic lineages to the current diversity of languages. The results show the underlying structure of the diversity of these languages, reflecting ancient dispersals, millennia of contact, and probable phylogenetic groups. The analysis identifies 10 ancestral language
populations, some of which can be identified with previously known phylogenetic groups (language families or subgroups), and some of which have not previously been proposed.

From population genetics to linguistics : Gene Expression

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23 Nov 09 - 12:46 PM (#2771895)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

GREENLAND lost 1500 cubic kilometres of ice between 2000 and 2008, making it responsible for one-sixth of global sea-level rise. Even worse, there are signs that the rate of ice loss is increasing.

Michiel van den Broeke of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues began by modelling the difference in annual snowfall and snowmelt in Greenland between 2003 and 2008 to reveal the net ice loss for each year. They then compared each year's loss with that calculated from readings by the GRACE satellite, which "weighs" the ice sheet by measuring its gravity.

The team found that results from the two methods roughly matched and showed that Greenland is losing enough ice to contribute on average 0.46 millimetres per year to global sea-level rise. The loss may be accelerating: since 2006, warm summers have caused levels to rise by 0.75 millimetres per year, though van den Broeke says we can't be sure whether this trend will continue (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1178176). Sea levels are rising globally by 3 millimetres on average.

Half the ice was lost through melting and half through glaciers sliding faster into the oceans, the team says. "The study gives us a really good handle on how to approximate how much ice Greenland is going to lose in the coming century," says Ted Scambos of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

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23 Nov 09 - 04:01 PM (#2772051)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Rom Houbens was simply paralysed and had no way to let doctors caring for him what he was suffering.

"I dreamt myself away," says Houben, now 46, who was misdiagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state after a car crash.

Doctors and nurses in Zolder deemed him a hopeless case whereby his consciousness was considered "extinct".

The former martial arts enthusiast and engineering student was paralysed after a car crash in 1983. He was finally correctly diagnosed three years ago and his case has just come to light in a scientific paper released by the man who "saved" him.

Doctors treating him regularly examined him using the worldwide Glasgow Coma Scale which judges a patient according to eye, verbal and motor responses.

During every examination he was graded incorrectly. And so he suffered in silence, unable to communicate to his parents, his carers or the friends who came to his bedside that he was awake and aware at all times what was happening in his room.

Only the re-evaluation of his case at the University of Liege brought to light that Houben was only paralysed all these years. Hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally.

Therapy has now enabled him to tap out messages on a computer screen and he has a special device above his bed enabling him to read books while lying down.

When he woke up after the accident he had lost control of his body, "I screamed, but there was nothing to hear," he says.

"I became a witness to my own suffering as doctors and nurses tried to speak with me until they gave up all hope.

"I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me – it was my second birth. All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt."

The neurologist Steven Laureys who led the re-examination of Houben, published a study two months ago claiming vegetative state diagnosed patients are often misdiagnosed.

"Anyone who bears the stamp of 'unconscious' just one time hardly ever gets rid of it again," he said.

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23 Nov 09 - 04:51 PM (#2772080)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Milky Way's neighbourhood may be teeming with invisible galaxies, one of which appears to be crashing into our own.

In 2008, a cloud of hydrogen with a mass then estimated at about 1 million suns was found to be colliding with our galaxy. Now it appears the object is massive enough to be a galaxy itself.

Called Smith's cloud, it has managed to avoid disintegrating during its smash-up with our own, much bigger galaxy. What's more, its trajectory suggests it punched through the disc of our galaxy once before, about 70 million years ago.

To have survived, it must contain much more matter than previously thought, in order to provide enough gravity to hold it together. Calculations by Matthew Nichols and Joss Bland-Hawthorn of the University of Sydney, Australia, indicate that it has about 100 times the previously estimated mass (arxiv.org/abs/0911.0684).

Many more such dark galaxies may be out thereMovie Camera, says Leo Blitz of the University of California, Berkeley. Simulations of galaxy formation suggest a galaxy the size of the Milky Way should feature about 1000 dwarf galaxiesMovie Camera, but only a few dozen have been found so far. Some of the missing dwarfs may be dark galaxies that are all but invisible, he says. (New Scientist)

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23 Nov 09 - 09:41 PM (#2772255)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The cannon being pointed to it's object, or the place which it is intended to strike, the train is fired, and the flame immediately conveyed to the powder in the touch-hole, by which it is further communicated to that in the piece. The powder being kindled immediately expands so as to occupy a much greater space than when in grains, and thus dilated it makes an effort on every side to force itself out. The ball making less resistance than the sides of the piece, upon which the powder presses at the same time, is driven out by it's whole effort, and acquires that violent motion which is well known to the world.

In plate VII. all the instruments necessary for charging cannon are exhibited. Besides these already described, there is the spunge, fig. 10. which is used to clean the piece after firing, and to extinguish any sparks that may remain behind. In the land-service, the handle of the spunge is nothing else than a long wooden staff; but in ships of war this handle, that usually contains the rammer at it's other end, is a piece of rope well stiffened by spun-yarn, which is for this purpose firmly wound about it. By this convenience the rammer becomes flexible, so that the piece is charged within the ship, as the person who loads it may bend and accommodate the length of the rammer to the distance between the muzzle and the ship's side; being at the same time sheltered from the enemy's musquctry, to which he would be exposed when using a wooden rammer without the ship. To spunge a piece therefore is to introduce this instrument into the bore, and thrusting it home to the furthest end thereof, to clean the whole cavity. The figures 8 and 9 represent spunges of a different kind; one of which is formed of sheep-skin, and the other of the strongest bristles of a hog. See the article EXERCISE.


Plate VII
The worm, of which there are also different kinds, fig. 6. and 9. is used to draw the charge when necessary.

The bit, or priming-iron, is a kind of large needle, whose lower end is formed into a gimblet, serving to clear the inside of the touch-hole, and render it fit to receive the prime.

The lint-stock is a kind of staff about three feet long, to the end of which a match is occasionally fastened to fire the piece.

The fluctuating motion of the sea renders it necessary to secure and confine the artillery in vessels of war, by several ropes and pullies, which are called the gun-tackles and breechings, without which they could never be managed in a naval engagement. The breeching has been already explained, as employed to restrain the recoil. The tackles, fig. 18. are hooked to ring-bolts in the sides of the carriage, and to other ring-bolts in the side of the ship, near the edges of the gun-ports, and are used to draw the piece out into it's place after it is loaded. Besides these, there is another tackle hooked to the rear or train of the carriage, to prevent the cannon from rolling into it's place till it is charged: this is called the train-tackle, and is exhibited in fig. 17.

In ships of war, the cannon of the lower-decks are usually drawn into the ship during the course of an expedition at sea, unless when they are used in battle. They are secured by lowering the breech so as that the muzzle shall bear against the upper-edge of the port, after which the two parts of the breeching are firmly braced together by a rope which crosses them between the front of the carriage and the port; which operation is called frapping the breeching. The tackles are then securely fastened about it with several turns of the rope extended from the tackle and breeching, over the chase of the cannon, as represented

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24 Nov 09 - 04:43 PM (#2772913)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

C Street is home for "the Family" which is Christian evangelical assembly of Congressmen to advance their conservative ideas and a relgious state goverment agenda. Since the 1930's they have practiced a National Prayer breakfast which is now a deeply entrenched political religous ceremony designed to impress and entice people of great political influence. There are a few Democratic Congressmen who belong to the family but by in large it is a Republican entity.


They have now achieved arguably their greatest coup of all. They have established a virtual Christian State Religion in Uganda through their efforts of courting an African politician since 1986. Their protoge' is now President. All the Congressmen involved are very proud. Inhoff states that his efforts in Africa are perhaps the greatest of all and that he is the greatesat friend of Africa. They take many trips to Uganda in US military planes to advise and over see the new National Prayer Breakfast of Uganda.

The new legislation that the family have called upon the Ugandan President to support will be the ultimate test for all the Christian values that is currently considered to be most critical. And that would be the eradication of homosexuality in all its forms and abominations. To speak in support of homosexuality or related issues like gay marriage is to be punishable by fines and imprisonment up to and including life imprisonment. To fail to turn in people who are either gay or in support of gay issues are subject to prison sentences even if they fail to turn in thier own children or parents. Any sexual gay acts in combination with drugs or alcohol are forbidden under threat of life imprisonment.

While debate to pass this law has encountered the inherent threat of violence against legislators and dissenters in Uganda there seems to be an air of a forgone conclusion that this will become the law of the land.

US Congressmen who are part of the C Street family could not be more proud. Their developing plans for the criminalization of abortion in Uganda are expected to be even more Draconian.
It will be interesting to see an entire country become a laboratory for every issue on the American Evangelical wish list to finally come true.

(a snippet of what I heard on Fresh Air today, a program on npr that featured the author of the book C Street and the Family)

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24 Nov 09 - 10:05 PM (#2773081)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Now for the first time, the most promising magic bullet yet—gene therapy—has been shown to safely improve vision in children and adults with rare retinal diseases that cause blindness.
Penn husband-and-wife research team Albert M. Maguire and Jean Bennett have been examining inherited retinal degenerations together for nearly 20 years. Their study sought to improve vision in five children and seven adults with Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA), which affects fewer than 2,000 people in the United States. The results even surprised them.
"Children who were treated with gene therapy are now able to walk and play just like any normally sighted child," says Maguire, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Penn and a physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "They can also carry out classroom activities without visual aids."
"It's a dream come true, really. We hope it's a cure. We'll have to wait for time to pass by to see if it is," says Bennett, the F.M. Kirby Professor of Ophthalmology at Penn's School of Medicine.
Maguire and Bennett met when they were first-year medical students at Harvard. "We were dissecting partners in neuroanatomy. It was love over the hypothalamus," Bennett says.
They've been married for 24 years. A shared desire to combine their unique skill sets in search of new cures for eye disease led them to begin collaborating professionally.
"It was really fun. He'd come to my lab a couple of hours once a week and we'd work together, taking advantage of his surgical skills and whatever I'd concocted in the lab," Bennett says. "We tried really hard not to bring it home and make our kids listen to it over dinner. But I must confess—they had an unusual vocabulary when they were little, talking about things like electroretinograms."
The roots of their scientific breakthrough reach back to the early 1990s, when scientists began unraveling the complex human genetic code and the idea of gene therapy moved from the realm of science fiction to the covers of medical journals."Twenty years ago, gene therapy was a pipe dream ... The ability to deliver genes stably and safely to the tissue didn't evolve until the late 1990s," Bennett says.

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25 Nov 09 - 04:13 PM (#2773670)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

So what would it take for humans to reach the stars within a lifetime? For a start, we would need a spacecraft that can rush through the cosmos at close to the speed of light. There has been no shortage of proposals: vehicles propelled by repeated blasts from hydrogen bombs, or from the annihilation of matter and antimatter. Others resemble vast sailing ships with giant reflective sails, pushed along by laser beams.

All these ambitious schemes have their shortcomings and it is doubtful they could really go the distance. Now there are two radical new possibilities on the table that might just enable us - or rather our distant descendants - to reach the stars.

In August, physicist Jia Liu at New York University outlined his design for a spacecraft powered by dark matter (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1429v1). Soon afterwards, mathematicians Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland at Kansas State University in Manhattan proposed plans for a craft powered by an artificial black hole (arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803).

No one disputes that building a ship powered by black holes or dark matter would be a formidable task. Yet remarkably there seems to be nothing in our present understanding of physics to prevent us from making either of them. What's more, Crane believes that feasibility studies like his touch on questions in cosmology that other research hasn't considered.
Fuel as-you-go

Take Liu's dark matter starship. Most astronomers are convinced of the existence of dark matter because of the way its gravity tugs on the stars and galaxies we see with our telescopes. Such observations suggest that dark matter outweighs the universe's visible matter by a factor of about six - so a dark matter starship could have a plentiful supply of fuel.

Liu was inspired by an audacious spacecraft proposed by the American physicist Robert Bussard in 1960. Bussard's "ramjet" design used magnetic fields generated by the craft to scoop up the tenuous gas of interstellar space. Instead of using conventional rockets, the craft would be propelled by forcing the hydrogen gas it collected to undergo nuclear fusion and ejecting the energetic by-products to provide thrust.

Because dark matter is so abundant throughout the universe, Liu envisages a rocket that need not carry its own fuel. This immediately overcomes one of the drawbacks of many other proposed starships, whose huge fuel supply greatly adds to their weight and hampers their ability to accelerate. "A dark matter rocket would pick up its fuel en route," says Liu.
A huge fuel supply hampers a spacecraft's ability to accelerate. Dark matter starships would avoid this

His plan is to drive the rocket using the energy released when dark matter particles annihilate each other. Here's where Liu's idea depends on more speculative physics. No one knows what dark matter is actually made of, though there are numerous theories of the subatomic world that contain potential dark matter candidates. One of the frontrunners posits that dark matter is made of neutralinos, particles which have no electric charge. Neutralinos are curious in that they are their own antiparticles: two neutralinos colliding under the right circumstances will annihilate each other.

If dark matter particles do annihilate in this way, they will convert all their mass into energy. A kilogram of the stuff will give out about 1017 joules, more than 10 billion times as much energy as a kilogram of dynamite, and plenty to propel the rocket forwards.

Even less certain is the detail of how a dark matter rocket might work. Liu imagines the engine as a "box" with a door that is open in the direction of the rocket's motion (see diagram). As dark matter enters, the door is closed and the box is shrunk to compress the dark matter and boost its annihilation rate. Once the annihilation occurs, another door opens and the products rocket out. The whole cycle is repeated, over and over again.

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28 Nov 09 - 12:47 PM (#2775592)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"The Bagobos of Mindanao, one of the Philippine Islands, offer a
human sacrifice before they sow their rice. The victim is a slave,
who is hewn to pieces in the forest. The natives of Bontoc in the
interior of Luzon, one of the Philippine Islands, are passionate
head-hunters. Their principal seasons for head-hunting are the times
of planting and reaping the rice. In order that the crop may turn
out well, every farm must get at least one human head at planting
and one at sowing. The head-hunters go out in twos or threes, lie in
wait for the victim, whether man or woman, cut off his or her head,
hands, and feet, and bring them back in haste to the village, where
they are received with great rejoicings. The skulls are at first
exposed on the branches of two or three dead trees which stand in an
open space of every village surrounded by large stones which serve
as seats. The people then dance round them and feast and get drunk.
When the flesh has decayed from the head, the man who cut it off
takes it home and preserves it as a relic, while his companions do
the same with the hands and the feet. Similar customs are observed
by the Apoyaos, another tribe in the interior of Luzon.

Among the Lhota Naga, one of the many savage tribes who inhabit the
deep rugged labyrinthine glens which wind into the mountains from
the rich valley of Brahmapootra, it used to be a common custom to
chop off the heads, hands, and feet of people they met with, and
then to stick up the severed extremities in their fields to ensure a
good crop of grain. They bore no ill-will whatever to the persons
upon whom they operated in this unceremonious fashion. Once they
flayed a boy alive, carved him in pieces, and distributed the flesh
among all the villagers, who put it into their corn-bins to avert
bad luck and ensure plentiful crops of grain. The Gonds of India, a
Dravidian race, kidnapped Brahman boys, and kept them as victims to
be sacrificed on various occasions. At sowing and reaping, after a
triumphal procession, one of the lads was slain by being punctured
with a poisoned arrow. His blood was then sprinkled over the
ploughed field or the ripe crop, and his flesh was devoured. The
Oraons or Uraons of Chota Nagpur worship a goddess called Anna
Kuari, who can give good crops and make a man rich, but to induce
her to do so it is necessary to offer human sacrifices. In spite of
the vigilance of the British Government these sacrifices are said to
be still secretly perpetrated. The victims are poor waifs and strays
whose disappearance attracts no notice. April and May are the months
when the catchpoles are out on the prowl. At that time strangers
will not go about the country alone, and parents will not let their
children enter the jungle or herd the cattle. When a catchpole has
found a victim, he cuts his throat and carries away the upper part
of the ring finger and the nose. The goddess takes up her abode in
the house of any man who has offered her a sacrifice, and from that
time his fields yield a double harvest. The form she assumes in the
house is that of a small child. When the householder brings in his
unhusked rice, he takes the goddess and rolls her over the heap to
double its size. But she soon grows restless and can only be
pacified with the blood of fresh human victims.

But the best known case of human sacrifices, systematically offered
to ensure good crops, is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs, another
Dravidian race in Bengal. Our knowledge of them is derived from the
accounts written by British officers who, about the middle of the
nineteenth century, were engaged in putting them down. The
sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess. Tari Pennu or Bera
Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops and immunity from all
disease and accidents. In particular, they were considered necessary
in the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the turmeric
could not have a deep red colour without the shedding of blood. The
victim or Meriah, as he was called, was acceptable to the goddess
only if he had been purchased, or had been born a victim--that is,
the son of a victim father, or had been devoted as a child by his
father or guardian. Khonds in distress often sold their children for
victims, "considering the beatification of their souls certain, and
their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable
possible." A man of the Panua tribe was once seen to load a Khond
with curses, and finally to spit in his face, because the Khond had
sold for a victim his own child, whom the Panua had wished to marry.
A party of Khonds, who saw this, immediately pressed forward to
comfort the seller of his child, saying, "Your child has died that
all the world may live, and the Earth Goddess herself will wipe that
spittle from your face." The victims were often kept for years
before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings,
they were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference,
and were welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth, on attaining
maturity, was generally given a wife, who was herself usually a
Meriah or victim; and with her he received a portion of land and
farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human sacrifices were
offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes, or
villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary
occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged by
tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was
enabled, at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his
fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down.

The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows. Ten
or twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by
cutting off his hair, which, until then, had been kept unshorn.
Crowds of men and women assembled to witness the sacrifice; none
might be excluded, since the sacrifice was declared to be for all
mankind. It was preceded by several days of wild revelry and gross
debauchery. On the day before the sacrifice the victim, dressed in a
new garment, was led forth from the village in solemn procession,
with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove, a clump of high forest
trees standing a little way from the village and untouched by the
axe. There they tied him to a post, which was sometimes placed
between two plants of the sankissar shrub. He was then anointed with
oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with flowers; and "a species of
reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration," was
paid to him throughout the day. A great struggle now arose to obtain
the smallest relic from his person; a particle of the turmeric paste
with which he was smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of
sovereign virtue, especially by the women. The crowd danced round
the post to music, and addressing the earth, said, "O God, we offer
this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health";
then speaking to the victim they said, "We bought you with a price,
and did not seize you; now we sacrifice you according to custom, and
no sin rests with us."

On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted
during the night, were resumed, and continued till noon, when they
ceased, and the assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The
victim was again anointed with oil, and each person touched the
anointed part, and wiped the oil on his own head. In some places
they took the victim in procession round the village, from door to
door, where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged for a
drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads. As the
victim might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones
of his arms and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this
precaution was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium.
The mode of putting him to death varied in different places. One of
the commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing
to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the
middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest) was inserted
in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove with
all his force to close. Then he wounded the victim slightly with his
axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch and hewed the flesh
from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he
was cut up alive. In Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along the fields,
surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and intestines,
hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he died.
Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same district was to
fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which
revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut
the flesh from the victim while life remained. In some villages
Major Campbell found as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants,
which had been used at sacrifices. In one district the victim was
put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was formed, sloping on
either side like a roof; upon it they laid the victim, his limbs
wound round with cords to confine his struggles. Fires were then
lighted and hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the
slopes of the stage as long as possible; for the more tears he shed
the more abundant would be the supply of rain. Next day the body was
cut to pieces.

The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the
persons who had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure
its rapid arrival, it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and
conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village
all who stayed at home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The
bearer deposited it in the place of public assembly, where it was
received by the priest and the heads of families. The priest divided
it into two portions, one of which he offered to the Earth Goddess
by burying it in a hole in the ground with his back turned, and
without looking. Then each man added a little earth to bury it, and
the priest poured water on the spot from a hill gourd. The other
portion of flesh he divided into as many shares as there were heads
of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his shred of flesh in
leaves, and buried it in his favourite field, placing it in the
earth behind his back without looking. In some places each man
carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields,
and there hung it on a pole. For three days thereafter no house was
swept; and, in one district, strict silence was observed, no fire
might be given out, no wood cut, and no strangers received. The
remains of the human victim (namely, the head, bowels, and bones)
were watched by strong parties the night after the sacrifice; and
next morning they were burned, along with a whole sheep, on a
funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as
paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to
preserve it from insects. Sometimes, however, the head and bones
were buried, not burnt. After the suppression of the human
sacrifices, inferior victims were substituted in some places; for
instance, in the capital of Chinna Kimedy a goat took the place of
the human victim. Others sacrifice a buffalo. They tie it to a
wooden post in a sacred grove, dance wildly round it with brandished
knives, then, falling on the living animal, hack it to shreds and
tatters in a few minutes, fighting and struggling with each other
for every particle of flesh. As soon as a man has secured a piece he
makes off with it at full speed to bury it in his fields, according
to ancient custom, before the sun has set, and as some of them have
far to go they must run very fast. All the women throw clods of
earth at the rapidly retreating figures of the men, some of them
taking very good aim. Soon the sacred grove, so lately a scene of
tumult, is silent and deserted except for a few people who remain to
guard all that is left of the buffalo, to wit, the head, the bones,
and the stomach, which are burned with ceremony at the foot of the
stake...."

Frazier's Golden Bough 1922

---

28 Nov 09 - 02:49 PM (#2775690)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Edmund Conway has an interesting article in the Telegraph where he analyzes where the money goes when you buy a complex electronic device marked 'Made in China,' and why a developed economy doesn't need a trade surplus in order to survive. For his example, Conway chooses a 30GB video iPod 'manufactured' in China in 2006. Each iPod, sold in the US for $299, provides China with an export value of about $150, but as it turns out, Chinese producers really only 'earned' around $4 on each unit. 'China, you see, is really just the place where most of the other components that go inside the iPod are shipped and assembled.' Conway says that when you work out the overall US balance of payments, it shows that most of the cash for high tech inventions has flowed back to the United States as a direct result of the intellectual property companies own in their products. 'While the iPod is manufactured offshore and has a global roster of suppliers, the greatest benefits from this innovation go to Apple, an American company, with predominantly American employees and stockholders who reap the benefits,' writes Conway. 'As long as the US market remains dynamic, with innovative firms and risk-taking entrepreneurs, global innovation should continue to create value for American investors and well-paid jobs for knowledge workers. But if those companies get complacent or lose focus, there are plenty of foreign competitors ready to take their places.'"

---

30 Nov 09 - 10:50 AM (#2776761)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Muppets and Bohemian Rhapsody is a world class nostalgia piece.


A

---

30 Nov 09 - 11:26 AM (#2776791)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Canaries That Hear Poor Songs As Juveniles Nevertheless Sing Rather Normal Songs As Adults

ScienceDaily (June 3, 2009) — Many songbirds learn their songs early in life from a role model. In the absence of an appropriate tutor, they develop an improvised song that often lacks the species-typical song structure. However, male canaries even learn to sing normal songs when they were exposed as juveniles to tutors that lacked the features of normal canary song, as researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology have now found out.



The learning of birdsong resembles the learning of speech in humans. Crucial for the process are acoustic perception and the ability to produce sound. Social isolation leads to a disturbed vocal development both in humans and in birds. When children grow up without contact to other humans they either develop no or a rudimentary form of human language.

A similar scenario occurs in songbirds when juveniles are removed from their parents and are raised apart from the song of conspecifics. Although these birds develop song, it usually contains abnormalities. Whether the descendants of such birds accept these abnormal songs of their parents as a song model was investigated by researchers around Sandra Belzner and Stefan Leitner from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen on domesticated canaries.

The researchers established a group of "poor"-singing tutors by raising young canaries in isolation from adult males but in contact with peers and females.

When these poor singers later on sired offspring, the adult males were removed only after juveniles had reached the age of 60-70 days and thus had started song development already. Detailed song analysis showed that the juveniles did not simply copy the bad songs of their tutors, but rather developed a version that resembled more the song of normal canaries. "Apparently these birds possess an innate template for species-specific song that needs to be activated by hearing song", says Cornelia Voigt, co-author of the study.

When the researchers introduced the male offspring in their second year of life to normally singing canary males, they found that their songs did not contain any changes. Only the syllable repetition rate had slightly increased, which means, their songs became faster. "This result is particularly interesting, as it shows that the juveniles, by hearing their tutors, had completed their song development after the first year. The song quality of the tutors only played a minor role during this process", concludes Stefan Leitner. In contrast, birds that do not hear songs as juveniles delay the closure of their song development phase and still make corrections when hearing a suitable model later in life".

---

30 Nov 09 - 12:09 PM (#2776826)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

GENEVA – The world's largest atom smasher broke the record for proton acceleration Monday, sending beams of the particles at 1.18 trillion electron volts around the massive machine.

The Large Hadron Collider eclipsed the previous high of 0.98 1 TeV held by Fermilab, outside Chicago, since 2001, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, said.

The latest success, which came early in the morning, is part of the preparation to reach even higher levels of energy for significant experiments next year on the make-up of matter and the universe.

---

30 Nov 09 - 12:22 PM (#2776840)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"How to deal with what is happening? Search for rhythms and patterns. Man is dead. The analysis moves from the study of fixed entities that are capable of ownership to the transaction of the species with environmental forces. Look to the transaction. The world about us is accessible only through a nervous system, and our information concerning it is confined to what limited information the nervous system can transmit.* The brain receives information and acts on it by telling the effectors what to do. The loop is completed as the performance of the effectors provides new information for the brain. It is a new feedback loop, a nonlinear relationship between output and input.

Man always dealt with what had already happened, believing that it occurred in the present instant. What he thought was happening coincides approximately between steps two and three of the loop. Man was aware only of the past, and never aware of the activities of his brain, where there are order and arrangement, but there is no experience of the creation of that order. Experience gives us no clue as to the means by which it is organized. If the organization were produced by a slide rule or a digital computer, consciousness would give no indication of that fact nor any basis for denying it. If the brain is capable of producing such organization, then it may be considered the organizer...."

Excerpt from "By The Late John Brockman"

---

30 Nov 09 - 02:53 PM (#2776952)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"We can say, what should the vacuum energy have been? We can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, just using what we know about quantum field theory, the fact that there are virtual partials popping in and out of existence. We can say, there should be a certain amount of vacuum energy. The answer is, there should be 10112 ergs per cubic centimeter. In other words, 10120 times as much is the theoretical prediction compared to the observational reality. That is an example where we say the universe isn't natural. There is a parameter of the universe, there is a fact about the universe in which we live — how much energy there is in empty space — which doesn't match what you would expect, what you would naively guess.

This is something a lot of attention has been paid to in the last 10 years or even before that, trying to understand the apparently finely tuned nature of the laws of physics. People talk about the anthropic principle and whether or not you could explain this by saying that if the vacuum energy were bigger, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Maybe there is a selection effect that says you can only live in a universe with finely tuned parameters like this. But there is another kind of fine tuning, another kind of unnaturalness, which is the state of the universe, the particular configuration we find the universe in — both now and at earlier times. That is where we get into entropy and the arrow of time.

This is actually the question that I am most interested in right now. It's a fact about the universe in which we observe that there are all sorts of configurations in which the particles in the universe could be. We have a pretty quantitative understanding of ways you could rearrange the ingredients of the universe to make it look different. According to what we were taught in the 19th century about statistical mechanics by Boltzmann and Maxwell and Gibbs and giants like that, what you would expect in a natural configuration is for something to be high entropy, for something to be very, very disordered. Entropy is telling us the number of ways you could rearrange the constituents of something so that it looks the same. In air filling the room, there are a lot of ways you could rearrange the air so that you wouldn't notice. If all the air in the room were squeezed into one tiny corner, there are only a few ways you could rearrange it. If air is squeezed into a corner, it's low entropy. If it fills the room, it's high entropy. It's very natural that physical systems go from low entropy, if they are low entropy, to being high entropy. There are just a lot more ways to be high entropy.

If you didn't know any better, if you asked what the universe should be like, what configuration it should be in, you would say it should be in a high entropy configuration. There are a lot more ways to be high entropy — there are a lot more ways to be disorderly and chaotic than there are to be orderly and uniform and well arranged. However, the real world is quite orderly. The entropy is much, much lower than it could be. The reason for this is that the early universe, near the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, had incredibly low entropy compared to what is could have been. This is an absolute mystery in cosmology. This is something that modern cosmologists do not know the answer to, why our observable universe started out in a state of such pristine regularity and order — such low entropy. We know that if it does, it makes sense. We can tell a story that starts in the low entropy early universe, trace it through the present day and into the future. It's not going to go back to being low entropy. It's going to be compliant entropy. It's going to stay there forever. Our best model of the universe right now is one that began 14 billion years ago in a state of low entropy but will go on forever into the future in a state of high entropy. " From A Conversation with Sean Carroll, physicist.

---

30 Nov 09 - 03:00 PM (#2776957)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

On Egypt's northern coast, where the Nile delta meets the sea, there once stood two cities of such wealth and grandeur that they were famous throughout the ancient world. Today, their remains lie buried beneath a shallow bay.

Around 500 BC, the ports of Herakleion and Eastern Canopus were thriving trade centres, the gateways into Egypt for Greek ships passing down the Nile. These cities were also important religious centres, their temples attracting thousands of pilgrims each year. Yet until recently, almost all that was known about them came from ancient texts. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote in the 5th century BC that they looked like the islands of the Aegean, but set amid a marsh.

Inspired by such accounts, French businessman and archaeologist Franck Goddio began surveying an area a few kilometres west of the Nile delta called Abu Qir Bay. Goddio has been running underwater excavations at nearby Alexandria since the early 1990s. But Abu Qir may yield even more exciting results.

In 2000, Goddio revealed the discovery of two sets of ruins, including walls, temple remains, columns and statues, buried in sand under 7 metres of murky water. The first set of ruins lies 1.6 kilometres from today's coastline. In annual excavations there since 2000, Goddio's team has retrieved coins, amulets and jewellery from as far back as the 6th century BC. A slab of black granite (pictured above), inscribed with a tax edict, names the city as Heracleion and it is signed by Pharaoh Nectanebo I, who ruled from 380 to 362 BC.

The team has also identified two temples, dedicated to the Greek hero Heracles and the god Amon (the Greek version of the Egyptian deity Amun). Just to the north of the Heracles temple, the divers discovered many bronze objects, which were probably dropped into an ancient waterway as offerings. "We have found ritual deposits made by the priests in quite precise places that were known only to them," says Goddio. "We feel as if we are penetrating to the heart of the ancient liturgy."

A few kilometres away, the second set of ruins has been identified as Eastern Canopus. There, divers have discovered ceramics, parts of temple doors, coins with the profile of Cleopatra, who ruled Egypt in the 1st century BC, and a black granite shrine from the 4th century BC, dedicated by Nectanebo I, which boasts a series of astronomical and calendrical inscriptions.

---

30 Nov 09 - 03:02 PM (#2776959)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Port Royal, located at the mouth of Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, was once the biggest English colony in the New World, with a population of around 10,000. Much of its wealth came from pirates and privateers who attacked treasure ships heading back to Europe from the Spanish Main. The city's downfall came not from its loose morals but the fact that it was built on a sand spit (pictured right), less than a metre above the water table. When an earthquake struck the area just before noon on 7 June 1692, the tremors caused the sand to liquefy.

"Buildings that were once on a solid foundation are now sitting on a liquid," says Donny Hamilton, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University in College Station. "A building can drop 15 feet straight down without any of the bricks in the floor being displaced." Two-thirds of the city sank into the harbour, killing 2000 people that day.

Hamilton led a series of excavations at the site between 1981 and 1990. Eel grass now coats the harbour floor, overlaying a thick layer of dead coral deposited by a hurricane in 1744. This covered the buildings, preserving many of them intact - multi-storey brick houses and shops interspersed with shabbier earth constructions, which once lined bustling streets of sand.

Their contents reveal life as it was the moment the disaster hit. In one home, "we found stacks of pewter plates, iron skillets, charcoal in the hearth, knives, spoons and forks", says Hamilton. "And we found three children under the walls." Perhaps the most dramatic find at Port Royal, though, dates from an expedition in the 1960s: a pocket watch, its hands frozen at precisely 11:43 am. (New Scientist)

---

30 Nov 09 - 04:02 PM (#2776999)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human.

The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. Of course every animal must to some extent be selfish to survive. But the biologists also see in humans a natural willingness to help.

When infants 18 months old see an unrelated adult whose hands are full and who needs assistance opening a door or picking up a dropped clothespin, they will immediately help, Michael Tomasello writes in "Why We Cooperate," a book published in October. Dr. Tomasello, a developmental psychologist, is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

The helping behavior seems to be innate because it appears so early and before many parents start teaching children the rules of polite behavior.

"It's probably safe to assume that they haven't been explicitly and directly taught to do this," said Elizabeth Spelke, a developmental psychologist at Harvard. "On the other hand, they've had lots of opportunities to experience acts of helping by others. I think the jury is out on the innateness question."

But Dr. Tomasello finds the helping is not enhanced by rewards, suggesting that it is not influenced by training. It seems to occur across cultures that have different timetables for teaching social rules. And helping behavior can even be seen in infant chimpanzees under the right experimental conditions. For all these reasons, Dr. Tomasello concludes that helping is a natural inclination, not something imposed by parents or culture.

Infants will help with information, as well as in practical ways. From the age of 12 months they will point at objects that an adult pretends to have lost. Chimpanzees, by contrast, never point at things for each other, and when they point for people, it seems to be as a command to go fetch something rather than to share information.

---

There ya go, Little Hawk. The REAL difference...

---

30 Nov 09 - 09:37 PM (#2777217)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

her people's beliefs, according to new study published in the Nov. 30 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Nicholas Epley, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, led the research, which included a series of survey and neuroimaging studies to examine the extent to which people's own beliefs guide their predictions about God's beliefs. The findings of Epley and his co-authors at Australia's Monash University and UChicago extend existing work in psychology showing that people are often egocentric when they infer other people's beliefs.

The PNAS paper reports the results of seven separate studies. The first four include surveys of Boston rail commuters, UChicago undergraduate students and a nationally representative database of online respondents in the United States. In these surveys, participants reported their own belief about an issue, their estimated God's belief, along with a variety of others, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Major League Baseball's Barry Bonds, President George W. Bush, and an average American.

Two other studies directly manipulated people's own beliefs and found that inferences about God's beliefs tracked their own beliefs. Study participants were asked, for example, to write and deliver a speech that supported or opposed the death penalty in front of a video camera. Their beliefs were surveyed both before and after the speech.
The final study involved functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural activity of test subjects as they reasoned about their own beliefs versus those of God or another person. The data demonstrated that reasoning about God's beliefs activated many of the same regions that become active when people reasoned about their own beliefs.

The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God's standards. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing," they conclude. "This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."

But the research in no way denies the possibility that God's presumed beliefs also may provide guidance in situations where people are uncertain of their own beliefs, the co-authors noted.

More information: Believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people's beliefs," Nov. 30, 2009, early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Nicholas Epley, Benjamin A. Converse, Alexa Delbosc, George A. Monteleone and John T. Cacioppo.

---

01 Dec 09 - 11:23 AM (#2777591)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Last month, a murder trial was halted in Swansea after the Crown Prosecution Service accepted that Brian Thomas, a 59-year-old man from Neath in mid-Glamorgan, had not been aware of his actions when he killed his partner as he dreamed he was battling an intruder.

One of those called as a defence witness for Mr Thomas was Dr Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Clinic and someone who has been involved in sleep research for more than 20 years.

Tests carried out by Dr Idzikowski on the defendant confirmed that he suffered from night terrors and, as a result of this, he was in a state of "automatism" where his mind was not in control of his body when he strangled his partner.

According to Dr Idzikowski, who lives in Dromore, Co Down, where he is also a co-director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service in Lisburn, claiming to have attacked another individual while asleep has been a credible defence since medieval times.

Moreover, he says it has long been common knowledge that some people can act violently towards others while having nightmares, but that this rarely makes it to court due to embarrassment on the part of those involved in such incidents, and because the attacks aren't usually serious enough to warrant medical assistance. (Irish Times)

---

01 Dec 09 - 01:20 PM (#2777701)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

John Cacappio of the University of Chicago and his colleagues reckon that loneliness can spread through society like an infection.

Their study, published in this month's issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, draws on a large group of people living in a town in Massachusetts that had already been assigned as part of a heart health study.

This group of around 5,000 were given questionnaires to assess their loneliness every four years or so, enabling the researcher to track any "spread" in this gloomy emotion.

Cacappio reckons that if you're around lonely people, you're more likely to "catch" their loneliness. For example, for every day your next door neighbour is lonely, you're likely to experience around 5 hours of loneliness.

The authors also come up with some interesting figures on the spread of loneliness.

Perhaps it's obvious that having friends helps you avoid being lonely, but Cacioppo has put a number on the value of friendship: each friend you have apparently saves you from 2 days of loneliness a year.

It's not only your friends and neighbours who can put you at risk, say the authors. In their paper, they say that you can even "catch" loneliness from your friend's friend's friend, through 3 degrees of separation.

And the reason we aren't all lonely and miserable now is that we tend to drive lonely individuals out of society so they don't "infect" the rest of us, says Cacappio. Lonely people tend to cluster at the edges of their social groups as a result, shown graphically here.

Chris Segrin, a behavioural scientist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study, agrees that lonely people were more likely to spend time together, and worsen each others' moods.

"It's called emotional contingent, where I catch your mental state," he told ABC News. "If I'm hanging out with you and you're bringing me down, maybe what I need to do is think about a new circle of friends."

Cacappio reckons that it is important to recognise loneliness before it spreads, because of the effects that the low feeling can have on health.

Being lonely is thought to weaken your immune system, and Cacappio's previous research suggests that it can have the same effect on your blood pressure as smoking.

Not everyone is excited about the implications of the study, though. Jason Fletcher, assistant professor of public health at Yale University, flagged concerns about the limitations of the study in an email to the Washington Post.

Last year, Fletcher and Ethan Cohen-Cole warned fellow researchers that social network effects can be found very easily when environmental factors aren't fully acknowledged.

In a study published in the British Medical Journal, the pair found that acne, headaches and even height seemed to have "network effects", spreading through social networks. These effects were insignificant, however, when environmental factors were accounted for.

Cacappio's team all but dismiss these factors in their study. They think that the nature of a friendship makes a difference to the spread of loneliness, and that this rules out an effect of any shared lonely environment.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/12/the-loneliness-of-three-degree.html

---

01 Dec 09 - 01:34 PM (#2777712)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The PEW Institute has released findings that we have about 1/3 fewer friends than our parents had. Virtual friends via internet connections was not seen as the cause of the decrease in "live" friendships.

The average number of friends in American society stands at 2.1 down from 3.2 40 years ago.

---

01 Dec 09 - 01:48 PM (#2777726)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

I find that hard to believe. I have dozens.


A

---

01 Dec 09 - 03:05 PM (#2777793)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"From Dostoyevsky to right-wing commentator Ann Coulter we are warned of the perils of godlessness. "If there is no God," Dostoyevsky wrote, "everything is permitted." Coulter routinely attributes our nation's most intractable troubles to the moral vacuum of atheism.

But a growing body of research in what one sociologist describes as the "emerging field of secularity" is challenging long-held assumptions about the relationship of religion and effective governance.

In a paper posted recently on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, independent researcher Gregory S. Paul reports a strong correlation within First World democracies between socioeconomic well-being and secularity. In short, prosperity is highest in societies where religion is practiced least.

Using existing data, Paul combined 25 indicators of societal and economic stability — things like crime, suicide, drug use, incarceration, unemployment, income, abortion and public corruption — to score each country using what he calls the "successful societies scale." He also scored countries on their degree of religiosity, as determined by such measures as church attendance, belief in a creator deity and acceptance of Bible literalism.

Comparing the two scores, he found, with little exception, that the least religious countries enjoyed the most prosperity. Of particular note, the U.S. holds the distinction of most religious and least prosperous among the 17 countries included in the study, ranking last in 14 of the 25 socioeconomic measures.

Paul is quick to point out that his study reveals correlation, not causation. Which came first — prosperity or secularity — is unclear, but Paul ventures a guess. While it's possible that good governance and socioeconomic health are byproducts of a secular society, more likely, he speculates, people are inclined to drop their attachment to religion once they feel distanced from the insecurities and burdens of life.

"Popular religion," Paul proposes, "is a coping mechanism for the anxieties of a dysfunctional social and economic environment." Paul, who was criticized, mostly on statistical grounds, for a similar study published in 2005, says his new findings lend support to the belief that mass acceptance of popular religion is determined more by environmental influences and less by selective, evolutionary forces, as scholars and philosophers have long debated.

In other words, we're not hardwired for religion.

Paul also believes his study helps refute the controversial notion that the moral foundation of religious doctrine is a requisite for any high-functioning society - what he dubs the "moral-creator hypothesis."...

David Villano writing in Miller McCune E-journal.

---

01 Dec 09 - 07:08 PM (#2778012)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

A writer who said that we are indeed hard wired for religion, points to the hypothalamus as the seat of god consciousness in humans.
I see little or no empirical evidence for this notion.

As for the secular prosperity idea I do see a secular spreading of wealth as opposed to religion concentrating it, and in fairness, religions often doling out a portion of that wealth in highly publisized charities.

---

02 Dec 09 - 11:09 AM (#2778530)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

December 2, 2009 12:45 PM
Watch it live: dissection of famous brain
Ewen Callaway, reporter

In what must certainly be the world's first live, webcast brain dissection, scientists today will cut exceedingly thin sections of a human brain that fundamentally changed our understanding of memory.

Henry Gustav Molaison - known as H. M. - lost much of a brain structure called the hippocampus during an operation in the 1950s.

The procedure was meant to stop his epileptic seizures. However, the hippocampus is critical to memory formation, so the surgery left Molaison unable to form new long-term memories.
The researchers who studied H. M. while he was still alive revolutionised neuroscience, by showing that the hippocampus was important for making some types of memories, but not others. H. M. could not remember day-to-day events, but he could learn new skills.

Now, following H. M.'s death due to respiratory failure in 2008, scientists aim to get a much closer look at Molaison's brain. That's where the live dissection comes in.

"The extraordinary value of H. M.'s brain is that we have roughly 50 years of behavioral data, including measures of different kinds of memory as well as other cognitive functions and even sensory and motor functions," Suzanne Corkin, a neuroscientist at MIT who is involved in the project, told The San Diego Union Tribune.

"We know what he was able to do and not do. Our goal is to link his deficits to damaged brain areas and his preserved functions to spared areas."

Watch the dissection live.

---

02 Dec 09 - 02:22 PM (#2778759)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

A live dissection of a human brain.
A live dissection of a 'dead' brain' I hope.
If they had kept his brain alive for two years outside his body, now that would be a real horror story.

Its being broadcast sonn due to the high demand to watch.

---

03 Dec 09 - 10:29 AM (#2779558)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.

For 1,500 years, starting earlier than 5000 B.C., they farmed and built sizable towns, a few with as many as 2,000 dwellings. They mastered large-scale copper smelting, the new technology of the age. Their graves held an impressive array of exquisite headdresses and necklaces and, in one cemetery, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be found anywhere in the world.

The striking designs of their pottery speak of the refinement of the culture's visual language. Until recent discoveries, the most intriguing artifacts were the ubiquitous terracotta "goddess" figurines, originally interpreted as evidence of the spiritual and political power of women in society.

New research, archaeologists and historians say, has broadened understanding of this long overlooked culture, which seemed to have approached the threshold of "civilization" status. Writing had yet to be invented, and so no one knows what the people called themselves. To some scholars, the people and the region are simply Old Europe.

The little-known culture is being rescued from obscurity in an exhibition, "The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.," which opened last month at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. More than 250 artifacts from museums in Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania are on display for the first time in the United States. The show will run through April 25.

At its peak, around 4500 B.C., said David W. Anthony, the exhibition's guest curator, "Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world" and was developing "many of the political, technological and ideological signs of civilization." NYT

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03 Dec 09 - 06:47 PM (#2780042)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Birth of a Planet
Courtesy Greaves, Richards, Rice & Muxlow
At this moment, in the constellation Taurus, a planet is forming in the dust and debris surrounding the star HL Tau. The protoplanet, named HL Tau b, may be the youngest yet discovered. A team of British astronomers found HL Tau b when they noticed an extra-bright clump in a radio image of its parent star from the Very Large Array radio telescopes at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico. The young planet is believed to be only a few hundred thousand years old and 930 million miles in diameter. Because its parent star is still developing, the protoplanet won't condense into its final form—a ball of hydrogen and helium gas about the size of Jupiter called a gas giant—for at least another million years, says astronomer Anita Richards, a member of the research team. Further observations will help scientists learn how gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn formed in our own outer solar system.

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04 Dec 09 - 07:42 PM (#2780977)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Internet is massive. That's the 'no-duh' statement of the year, right? But seriously, the sheer volume of transactions (both economic and non-economic) is simply staggering. Consider a few factoids to give you a flavor of just how much is going on out there:

In 2006, Internet users in the United States viewed an average of 120.5 Web pages each day.

There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day.

Social networking giant Facebook reports that each month, its over 300 million users upload more than 2 billion photos, 14 million videos, and create over 3 million events. More than 2 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each week. There are also roughly 45 million active user groups on the site.

YouTube reports that 20 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute.

Amazon reported that on December 15, 2008, 6.3 million items were ordered worldwide, a rate of 72.9 items per second.

Every six weeks, there are 10 million edits made to Wikipedia.


Now, let's think about how some of our lawmakers and media personalities talk about the Internet. If we were to judge the Internet based upon the daily headlines in various media outlets or from the titles of various Congressional or regulatory agency hearings, then we'd be led to believe that the Internet is a scary, dangerous place. That 's especially the case when it comes to concerns about online privacy and child safety. Everywhere you turn there's a bogeyman story about the supposed dangers of cyberspace.
But let's go back to the numbers. While I certainly understand the concerns many folks have about their personal privacy or their child's safety online, the fact is the vast majority of online transactions that take place online each and every second of the day are of an entirely harmless, even socially beneficial nature. I refer to this disconnect as the "problem of proportionality" in debates about online safety and privacy. People are not just making mountains out of molehills, in many cases they are just making the molehills up or blowing them massively out of proportion.

Go back to those Facebook numbers, for example. 300 million users uploading 2 billion pieces of content each week, plus 45 million user groups. Now, how many "incidents" do you hear about in the course of an entire year involving privacy and child safety on Facebook? A couple? A dozen? I doubt it's that many, but for the sake of argument, let's be preposterous and say the number of incidents is 10,000. Doing some quick math: 10,000 "incidents" divided by 2 billion pieces of content shared each week = 0.001% In other words, there would need to be hundreds of thousands of privacy or child safety "incidents" taking place on Facebook each week before one could legitimately claim the trend was statistically significant in proportion to the total volume of transactions.

Of course, there's no way to be scientific about this since I can't crunch the numbers to get an exact calculation for Facebook or the entire Internet since it's hard to even define or collect info about online "incidents." And this is not to say there are never any incidents online where some harm might come to an individual or a child. Defining "harm" can be contentious, however, especially when it comes to what I regard as the conjectural theories about advertising or provocative media content "harming" us or our kids.

Of course, others could claim that the sheer volume of information that we put online about ourselves is problematic for a variety of other reasons. The best argument about potential harm coming of all this information being online is that the sheer volume of data sharing and collection opens up the door to identify theft, or that some government agencies could get their hands on it and use it to do nasty stuff to us. That first problem can be a legitimate one, and deserves more attention and greater consumer education. But that latter problem should be addressed by putting more constraints on our government(s), not by imposing more regulations on the Internet. Government powers should be tightly limited when it comes to monitoring the habits of websurfers or collecting information about them. ...

(Excerpt from an article on The Progress and Freedom Foundation.

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05 Dec 09 - 12:37 AM (#2781075)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The incredible, unsustainable and insufferable Dark Side of Dubai.


A

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05 Dec 09 - 03:15 AM (#2781122)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An international team of scientists that includes an astronomer from Princeton University has made the first direct observation of a planet-like object orbiting a star similar to the sun.


The finding marks the first discovery made with the world's newest planet-hunting instrument on the Hawaii-based Subaru Telescope and is the first fruit of a novel research collaboration announced by the University in January.

The object, known as GJ 758 B, could be either a large planet or a "failed star," also known as a brown dwarf. The faint companion to the sun-like star GJ 758 is estimated to be 10 to 40 times as massive as Jupiter and is a "near neighbor" in our Milky Way galaxy, hovering a mere 300 trillion miles from Earth.

"It's a groundbreaking find because one of the current goals of astronomy is to directly detect planet-like objects around stars like our sun," said Michael McElwain, a postdoctoral research fellow in Princeton's Department of Astrophysical Sciences who was part of the team that made the discovery. "It is also an important verification that the system -- the telescope and its instruments -- is working well."

Images of the object were taken in May and August during early test runs of the new observation equipment. The team has members from Princeton, the University of Hawaii, the University of Toronto, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Tokyo. The results were released online Nov. 18 in an electronic version of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"This challenging but beautiful detection of a very low mass companion to a sun-like star reminds us again how little we truly know about the census of gas giant planets and brown dwarfs around nearby stars," said Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the research. "Observations like this will enable theorists to begin to make sense of how this hitherto unseen population of bodies was able to form and evolve."

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05 Dec 09 - 05:53 PM (#2781618)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Perhaps you might feel an irony or a warm heart or a terrifying realization that roughly HALF (48%) of all the uranium fuel in US nuclear reactors today is from processed down uranium taken directly from Russian nuclear warheads that were originally designed to incinerate the USA.

Misguided in light of other means for energy generation but it is progress in light of the alternative.

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05 Dec 09 - 05:59 PM (#2781622)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Porn study fails to find smut virgins

A study hoping to compare men who watch porn with those who haven't encountered it has been derailed — because researchers couldn't find any men who hadn't indulged in X-rated material.

Scientists at the University of Montreal had to change the focus of their project after failing to find a single male aged in his 20s who hadn't been exposed to adult videos and images.

"We started our research seeking men in their 20s who had never consumed pornography," the Telegraph reported Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse as saying.

"[But] we couldn't find any."

Surprised researchers decided to instead explore the men's porn watching habits, finding the average age of first exposure was about 10 years old.

And while being in a relationship may not to completely remove porn from a man's life, it does appear to cut their habit in half.

Single men watched adult content about three times a week for an average of 40 minutes, while those with partners watched it 1.7 times a week in about 20-minute blocks, the study said.

The abundance of pornography available on the internet has meant online content accounts for about 90 percent of porn viewed by men, while video stores about 10 percent.

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05 Dec 09 - 10:00 PM (#2781780)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Ubiquity of Exaptation is a fascinating exposition on the non-teleological evolution of nerve cells, nerve communication and nervous systems from blob to high-speed typist...

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05 Dec 09 - 10:51 PM (#2781804)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

…And whereas it has also come to the knowledge of the said Congregation that the Pythagorean doctrine — which is false and altogether opposed to the Holy Scripture — of the motion of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, which is also taught by Nicolaus Copernicus in De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, and by Diego de Zuiga on Job, is now being spread abroad and accepted by many… Therefore, in order that this opinion may not insinuate itself any further to the prejudice of Catholic truth, the Holy Congregation has decreed that the said Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus orbium, and Diego de Zuiga, On Job, be suspended until they are corrected.


[Decree of the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Index condemning "De Revolutionibus", March 5, 1616]

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06 Dec 09 - 04:53 PM (#2782354)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

IN the month of September, 1899, the burghers of the Orange Free State were notified, under the Commando Law, to hold themselves in readiness to go on active service at the shortest possible notice.

Before proceeding any further I should like to explain that portion of the Commando Law which dealt with commandeering. It stipulated that every burgher between the ages of sixteen and sixty must be prepared to fight for his country at any moment; and that, if required for active service, he must provide himself with a riding-horse, saddle and bridle, with a rifle and thirty cartridges-or, if he were unable to obtain a rifle, he must bring with him thirty bullets, thirty caps, and half a pound of powder-in addition he must be provisioned for eight days. That there should have been an alternative to the rifle was due to the fact that the law was made at a time when only a few burghers possessed breech-loading rifles—achterlaaiers, as we call them.

With reference to the provisions the law did not specify their quality or quantity, but there was an unwritten but strictly observed rule amongst the burghers that they should consist of meat cut in strips, salted, peppered, and dried, or else of sausages and "Boer biscuits" (Small loaves manufactured of flour, with fermented raisins instead of yeast, and twice baked). With regard to quantity, each burgher had to make his own estimate of the amount he would require for eight days.

It was not long after they were notified to hold themselves ready that the burghers were called up for active service. On the 2nd of October, 1899, the order, came. On that day the Veldcornets, or their lieutenants, visited every farm and commandeered the men.

Amongst the commandeered was I ; and thus, as a private burgher, I entered on the campaign. With me were my three sons-Kootie, Isaac, and Christiaan.

The following day the men of the sub-district of Krom Ellenborg, in the district of Heilbron-to which I belonged mustered at Elandslaagte Farm. The Veldcornet of this sub-district was Mr. Marthinus Els, and the Commandant of the whole contingent Mr. Lucas Steenekamp. It soon became known that the War Commission had decided that our commando was to proceed as rapidly as possible to the Natal frontier, and that with us were to go the troops from Vrede and Harrismith, as well as some from Bethlehem, Winberg, and Kroonstad. Carrying out these orders, we all arrived at Harrismith six days later....

(Excerpted from Christiaan De Wet, Three Years War, 1st American Edition, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1902)

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06 Dec 09 - 06:16 PM (#2782417)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

While from the other side, the AUssies who chimed in on the British view:

"At two o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, the 6th of the month, the reveille sounded, and the Australians commenced their preparations for the march to join Methuen's army. By 4 a.m. the mounted rifles led the way out of camp, and the toilsome march over rough and rocky ground commenced. The country was terribly rough as we drove the transports up and over the Orange River, and rougher still in the low kopjes on the other side. The heat was simply blistering, but the Australians did not seem to mind it to any great extent; they were simply feverish to get on to the front, but they had to hang back and guard the transports.

At last the hilly country faded behind us. We counted upon pushing on rapidly, but the African mules were a sorry lot, and could make but little headway in the sandy tracks. Still, there was no rest for the men, because at intervals one of Remington's scouts would turn up at a flying gallop, springing apparently from nowhere, out of the womb of the wilderness, to inform us that flying squads of Boers were hanging round us. But so carefully watchful were the Remingtons that the Boers had no chance of surprising us. No sooner did the scouts inform us of their approach in any direction than our rifles swung forward ready to give them a hearty Australian reception. This made the march long and toilsome, though we never had a chance to fire a shot. At 5.30 we marched with all our transports into Witteput, the wretched little mules being the only distressed portion of the contingent.

At Witteput the news reached us that a large party of the enemy had managed to pass between General Methuen's men and ourselves, and had invested Belmont, out of which place the British troops had driven them a few weeks previously. We had no authentic news concerning this movement. Our contingent spread out on the hot sand at Witteput, panting for a drop of rain from the lowering clouds that hung heavily overhead. Yet hot, tired, and thirsty as we were, we yet found time to look with wonder at the sky above us. The men from the land of the Southern Cross are used to gorgeous sunsets, but never had we looked upon anything like this. Great masses of coal-black clouds frowned down upon us, flanked by fiery crimson cloud banks, that looked as if they would rain blood, whilst the atmosphere was dense enough to half-stifle one. Now and again the thunder rolled out majestically, and the lightning flashed from the black clouds into the red, like bayonets through smoke banks.

Yet we had not long to wait and watch, for within half an hour after our arrival the Colonel galloped down into our midst just as the evening ration was being given out. He held a telegram aloft, and the stillness that fell over the camp was so deep that each man could hear his neighbour's heart beat. Then the Colonel's voice cut the stillness like a bugle call. "Men, we are needed at Belmont; the Boers are there in force, and we have been sent for to relieve the place. I'll want you in less than two hours." It was then the men showed their mettle. Up to their feet they leapt like one man, and they gave the Colonel a cheer that made the sullen, halting mules kick in their harness. "We are ready now, Colonel, we'll eat as we march," and the "old man" smiled, and gave the order to fall in, and they fell in, and as darkness closed upon the land they marched out of Witteput to the music of the falling rain and the thunder of heaven's artillery.

All night long it was march, halt, and "Bear a hand, men," for those thrice accursed mules failed us at every pinch. In vain the niggers plied the whips of green hide, vain their shouts of encouragement, or painfully shrill anathemas; the mules had the whip hand of us, and they kept it. But, in spite of it all, in the chilly dawn of the African morning, our fellows, with their shoulders well back, and heads held high, marched into Belmont, with every man safe and sound, and every waggon complete.

Then the Gordons turned out and gave us a cheer, for they had passed us in the train as we crossed the line above Witteput, and they knew, those veterans from Indian wars, what our raw Volunteers had done; they had been on their feet from two o'clock on Wednesday morning until five o'clock of the following day, with the heat at 122 in the shade, and bitter was their wrath when they learnt that the Boer spies, who swarm all over the country, had heralded their coming, so that the enemy had only waited to plant a few shells into Belmont before disappearing into the hills beyond. That was the cruel part of it. They did not mind the fatigue, they did not worry about the thirst or the hunger, but to be robbed of a chance to show the world what they could do in the teeth of the enemy was gall and wormwood to them, and the curses they sent after the discreet Boer were weird, quaint, picturesque, and painfully prolific.

We are lying with the Gordons now, waiting for the Boers to come along and try to take Belmont, and our fellows and the "Scotties" are particularly good chums, and it is the cordial wish of both that they may some day give the enemy a taste of the bayonet together."

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06 Dec 09 - 06:24 PM (#2782422)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

And from on eof the Britishers in-country for the occasion:

"Do you know Colonials? In my eight months of mining life at Johannesburg
I got to know them well. England has not got the type. The Western
States of America have it. They are men brought up free of caste and
free of class. When you come among Colonials, forget your birth and
breeding, your ancestral acres and big income, and all those things
which carry such weight in England. No forelocks are pulled for them
here; they count for nothing. Are you wide-awake, sharp, and shrewd,
plucky; can you lead? Then go up higher. Are you less of these things?
Then go down lower. But always among these men it is a position simply
of what you are in yourself. Man to man they judge you there as you
stand in your boots; nor is it very difficult, officer or trooper, or
whatever you are, to read in their blunt manners what their judgment is.
It is lucky for our corps that it has in its leader a man after its own
heart; a man who, though an Imperial officer, cares very little for
discipline or etiquette for their own sakes; who does not automatically
assert the authority of his office, but talks face to face with his men,
and asserts rather the authority of his own will and force of character.
They are much more ready to knock under to the man than they would be to
the mere officer. In his case they feel that the leader by office and
the leader by nature are united, and that is just what they want.

There are Colonials out here, as one has already come to see, of two
tolerably distinct types. These you may roughly distinguish as the
money-making Colonials and the working Colonials. The money-making lot
flourish to some extent in Kimberley, but most of all in Johannesburg.
You are soon able to recognise his points and identify him at a
distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and his watch-chain is a
little too much of a certainty. His manner is excessively glib and
fluent, yet he has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks,
as if fearful of being overheard. For the same reason he speaks in low
tones. He must often be discussing indifferent topics, but he always
looks as if he were hatching a swindle. There is also a curious look of
waxworks about his over-washed hands.

This is the type that you would probably notice most. The Stock Exchange
of Johannesburg is their hatching-place and hot-bed; but from there they
overflow freely among the seaside towns, and are usually to be found in
the big hotels and the places you would be most likely to go to. Cape
Town at the present moment is flooded with them. But these are only the
mere froth of the South African Colonial breed. The real mass and body
of them consists (besides tradesmen, &c., of towns) of the miners of the
Rand, and, more intrinsically still, of the working men and the farmers
of English breed all over the Colony. It is from these that the fighting
men in this quarrel are drawn. It is from these that our corps, for
instance, has been by the Major individually and carefully recruited;
and I don't think you could wish for better material, or that a body of
keener, more loyal, and more efficient men could easily be brought
together.

Many of them are veterans, and have taken part in some of the numerous
African campaigns--Zulu, Basuto, Kaffir, Boer, or Matabele. They are
darkly sunburnt; lean and wiry in figure; tall often, but never fat (you
never see a fat Colonial), and they have the loose, careless seat on
horseback, as if they were perfectly at home there. As scouts they have
this advantage, that they not only know the country and the Dutch and
Kaffir languages, but that they are accustomed, in the rough and varied
colonial life, to looking after themselves and thinking for themselves,
and trusting no one else to do it for them. You can see this
self-reliance of theirs in their manner, in their gait and swagger and
the way they walk, in the easy lift and fall of the carbines on their
hips, the way they hold their heads and speak and look straight at you.

Your first march with such a band is an episode that impresses itself.
We were called up a few days ago at dead of night from De Aar to relieve
an outlying picket reported hard pressed. In great haste we saddled by
moonlight, and in a long line went winding away past the artillery lines
and the white, ghostly tents of the Yorkshires. The hills in the still,
sparkling moonlight looked as if chiselled out of iron, and the veldt
lay spread out all white and misty; but what one thought most of was the
presence of these dark-faced, slouch-hatted irregulars, sitting free and
easy in their saddles, with the light gleaming dully on revolver and
carbine barrel. A fine thing is your first ride with a troop of fighting
men.

Though called guides we are more properly scouts. Our strength is about
a hundred and fifty. A ledger is kept, in which, opposite each man's
name, is posted the part of the country familiar to him and through
which he is competent to act as guide. These men are often detached, and
most regiments seem to have one or two of ours with them. Sometimes a
party is detached altogether and acts with another column, and there
are always two or three with the staff. Besides acting as guides they
are interpreters, and handy men generally. All these little subtractions
reduce our main body to about a hundred, or a little less; and this main
body, under Rimington himself, acts as scouts and ordinary fighting men.
In fact, a true description of us would be "a corps of scouts supplying
guides to the army."

One word about the country and I have done. What strikes one about all
South African scenery, north and south, is the simplicity of it; so very
few forms are employed, and they are employed over and over again. The
constant recurrence of these few grave and simple features gives to the
country a singularly childish look. Egyptian art, with its mechanical
repetitions, unchanged and unvaried, has just the same character. Both
are intensely pre-Raphaelite.


From L. March Phipps With Rimington

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08 Dec 09 - 12:48 AM (#2783516)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

1 in 3 restaurants in Ireland will close within the next 6 months

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08 Dec 09 - 12:53 AM (#2783518)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

260,000 TONS of sludge waste in petroleum drilling pipes and pits in the USA contain Uranium with a half life of 1,200 years until it becomes radium. The amount of radiation from the waste of oil company drilling and pumping is a catastrophe that has been succesfully hidden from average Americans. A time bomb that is a deep dark secret.

reported on Deutche Valley radio today.

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08 Dec 09 - 10:00 AM (#2783716)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Energy beamed down from space is one step closer to reality, now that California has given the green light to a deal involving its sale. But some major challenges will have to be overcome if the technology is to be used widely.

On Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission gave its blessing to an agreement that would see the Pacific Gas and Electric Company buy 200 megawatts of power beamed down from solar-power satellites beginning in 2016.

A start-up company called Solaren is designing the satellites, which it says will use radio waves to beam energy down to a receiving station on Earth.

The attraction of collecting solar power in space is the virtually uninterrupted sunshine available in geosynchronous orbit. Earth-based solar cells, by contrast, can only collect sunlight during daytime and when skies are clear.

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09 Dec 09 - 04:37 PM (#2784879)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A flood of biblical proportions filled the present-day Mediterranean Sea in a matter of months. At its peak the mega-flood caused the sea's level to rise by over 10 metres per day.

Around 5.6 million years ago the Mediterranean Sea almost completely evaporated when it became disconnected from the Atlantic Ocean. This was due to uplift of the Strait of Gibraltar by tectonic activity, combined with a drop in sea level. Further tectonic activity 5.3 million years ago lowered the Strait and reconnected the dry Mediterranean basin with the Atlantic.

Previously it was assumed that it took at least a decade to refill the Mediterranean, via a waterfall over the Strait. Now a new analysis shows that the bulk of the water arrived in less than two years, pouring down a long, shallow ramp.

Daniel Garcia-Castellanos of the Jaume Almera Institute of Earth Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues studied borehole and seismic data from the Strait of Gibraltar to estimate the size and extent of the channel carved out by the flood. This revealed a gorge 200 kilometres long and 250 metres deep, cutting through the Strait. Unlike previous models, they reconstructed the rock layers that the water would have had to cut through, and how the channel would have evolved as a result.

They found the flood most likely started with a trickle of water over a hard rock barrier, taking thousands of years. This gradually deepened the channel until the barrier failed and water surged through, filling the Mediterranean Sea in less than two years (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08555). The team estimates the peak flow to have been around 1000 times higher than the present Amazon river at its highest rate.

Flora and fauna had to adapt to the new environment rapidly and for some species, including the first hominins, the deep channel may have acted as a barrier. "If the land connection had remained it certainly could have facilitated an earlier arrival of early humans in western Europe," says Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Natural History Museum in London. Instead early humans took a circuitous route to western Europe and didn't arrive until 1.5 million years ago.

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09 Dec 09 - 07:15 PM (#2784986)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway
By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE and WILL STEWART
Last updated at 5:00 PM on 09th December 2009
Comments (220)
Add to My Stories
A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled.
Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing sight to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor or a shock wave - although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet.
The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate.

Strange spiral: Residents in northern Norway were left stunned after the lightshow, which almost looked computer-generated, appeared in the skies above them

Curious: A blue-green beam of light was reported to have come shooting out the centre of the spiral
Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely.
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm - which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world.
The mystery deepened tonight as Russia denied it had been conducting missile tests in the area.
Fred Hansen, from Bø in Vesterålen, described the sight as 'like a big fireball that went around, with a great light around it again.'

Confusion: The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with calls after the light storm
'It spun and exploded in the sky,' Totto Eriksen from Tromsø told VG Nett.
He spotted the lights as he walked his daughter Amalie to school.
He said: 'We saw it from the Inner Harbor in Tromsø. It was absolutely fantastic.
'It almost looked like a rocket that spun around and around and then went diagonally down the heavens.
'It looked like the moon was coming over the mountain, but then came something completely different.'


Read more: Pictures and home video shots here

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09 Dec 09 - 07:53 PM (#2785008)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Neuroscientists at the Mayo Clinic campus in Jacksonville, Fla., have demonstrated how brain waves can be used to type alphanumerical characters on a computer screen. By merely focusing on the "q" in a matrix of letters, for example, that "q" appears on the monitor.

Researchers say these findings, presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, represent concrete progress toward a mind-machine interface that may, one day, help people with a variety of disorders control devices, such as prosthetic arms and legs. These disorders include Lou Gehrig's disease and spinal cord injuries, among many others.

"Over 2 million people in the United States may benefit from assistive devices controlled by a brain-computer interface," says the study's lead investigator, neurologist Jerry Shih, M.D. "This study constitutes a baby step on the road toward that future, but it represents tangible progress in using brain waves to do certain tasks."

Dr. Shih and other Mayo Clinic researchers worked with Dean Krusienski, Ph.D., from the University of North Florida on this study, which was conducted in two patients with epilepsy. These patients were already being monitored for seizure activity using electrocorticography (ECoG), in which electrodes are placed directly on the surface of the brain to record electrical activity produced by the firing of nerve cells. This kind of procedure requires a craniotomy, a surgical incision into the skull.

Dr. Shih wanted to study a mind-machine interface in these patients because he hypothesized that feedback from electrodes placed directly on the brain would be much more specific than data collected from electroencephalography (EEG), in which electrodes are placed on the scalp. Most studies of mind-machine interaction have occurred with EEG, Dr. Shih says.

"There is a big difference in the quality of information you get from ECoG compared to EEG. The scalp and bony skull diffuses and distorts the signal, rather like how the Earth's atmosphere blurs the light from stars," he says. "That's why progress to date on developing these kind of mind interfaces has been slow."
Because these patients already had ECoG electrodes implanted in their brains to find the area where seizures originated, the researchers could test their fledgling brain-computer interface.

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10 Dec 09 - 11:04 AM (#2785394)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

remarkable Norway lights.

If it was a missile in self destruct mode, who knew it could be so beautiful?

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10 Dec 09 - 11:28 AM (#2785417)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

he Norway spiral?

Not convinced that President Obama has done enough to win the Nobel Peace Prize? You're not alone. A CNN poll released yesterday shows that less than one in five Americans believe that Obama has done enough to win the honor.

How to explain it? Maybe space aliens have infiltrated the Noble Peace Prize committee and are big fans of the president.

Outlandish? Perhaps, but don't tell that to the Norwegians. News of Obama winning the award isn't the only thing on their minds today. They're talking about UFOs. Or one giant UFO. And the world is paying attention to it too.

It all happened yesterday morning at about 7:50 local time. Reports are that a "giant, luminous spiral appeared in the northern sky."

It wasn't a quick flash either. The light stuck around. And grew. It's gets even better…

"It stopped mid-air, then began to move in circles. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky," reports the UK's Daily Mail. "Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to 12 minutes before disappearing completely."

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10 Dec 09 - 03:09 PM (#2785574)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia's new nuclear-capable missile suffered another failed test launch, the defence ministry said Thursday, solving the mystery of a spectacular plume of white light that appeared over Norway.

The Bulava missile was test-fired from the submarine Dmitry Donskoi in the White Sea early Wednesday but failed at the third stage, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The pre-dawn morning launch coincided with the appearance of an extraordinary light over northern Norway that captivated observers.

Images of the light that appeared in the sky above the Norwegian city of Tromso and elsewhere prompted explanations ranging from a meteor, northern lights, a failed missile or even a UFO.

---

10 Dec 09 - 03:17 PM (#2785584)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A previously incurable blood disorder – sickle-cell disease – has been successfully treated in 9 of 10 adults who received stem cells transplanted from tissue-matched siblings.

The inherited disease causes the bone marrow to churn out blood cells that are shaped like crescents, or sickles, rather than the round shape of healthy cells. This causes painful blockages in blood vessels, depletion of blood and severe anaemia.

Transplants have worked well in around 200 children but don't succeed in adults because the technique requires that cells in the recipient's own bone marrow are destroyed first – children can usually tolerate this, but adults can't.

Even when adults have got past this obstacle, they have gone on to develop the fatal condition graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), in which the donated cells attack and destroy other tissue.

---

10 Dec 09 - 06:40 PM (#2785742)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- In a study that elevates the role of entropy in creating order, research led by the University of Michigan shows that certain pyramid shapes can spontaneously organize into complex quasicrystals.
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A quasicrystal is a solid whose components exhibit long-range order, but without a single pattern or a unit cell that repeats.
A paper on the findings appears in the Dec. 10 issue of Nature. Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and Kent State University collaborated on the study.
Entropy is a measure of the number of ways the components of a system can be arranged. While often linked to disorder, entropy can also cause objects to order. The pyramid shape central to this research is the tetrahedron---a three-dimensional, four-faced, triangular polyhedron that turns up in nanotechnology and biology.
"Tetrahedrons are the simplest regular solids, while quasicrystals are among the most complex and beautiful structures in nature. It's astonishing and totally unexpected that entropy alone can produce this level of complexity," said Sharon Glotzer, a professor in the University of Michigan departments of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and principal investigator on the project.
The finding may lead to the development of a variety of new materials that derive properties from their structure, said Rolfe Petschek, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve who helped with the mathematical characterization of the structure. "A quasicrystal will have different properties than a crystal or ordinary solid," Petschek said.
The scientists used computer simulation to find the arrangement of tetrahedrons that would yield the densest packing---that would fit the most tetrahedrons in a box.
The tetrahedron was for decades conjectured to be the only solid that packs less densely than spheres, until just last year when U-M mathematics graduate student Elizabeth Chen found an arrangement that proved that speculation wrong. This latest study bests Chen's organization and discovered what is believed to be the densest achievable packing of tetrahedrons.
But Glotzer says the more significant finding is that the tetrahedrons can unexpectedly organize into intricate quasicrystals at a point in the computer simulation when they take up roughly half the space in the theoretical box.
In this computer experiment, many thousands of tetrahedrons organized into dodecagonal, or 12-fold, quasicrystals made of parallel stacks of rings around pentagonal dipyramids. A pentagonal dipyramid contains five tetrahedrons arranged into a disk. The researchers discovered that this motif plays a key role in the overall packing.
This is the first result showing such a complicated self-arrangement of hard particles without help from attractive interactions such as chemical bonds, Glotzer said.
"Our results go to the very heart of phase transitions and to the question of how complex order arises in nature and in the materials we make," Glotzer said. "We knew that entropy on its own could produce order, but we didn't expect it to produce such intricate order. What else might be possible just due to entropy?"
...

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13 Dec 09 - 02:34 PM (#2787519)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Science Daily reports:

Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.

Their study, recently published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was accomplished when the scientists applied the mathematical techniques used in physics to describe the complex interplay of genes and proteins that colonies of bacteria rely upon to initiate different survival strategies during times of environmental stress. Using the mathematical tools of theoretical physics and chemistry to describe complex biological systems is becoming more commonplace in the emerging field of theoretical biological physics.

The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, the nation's center for this activity funded by the National Science Foundation, and Tel Aviv University in Israel. They say that how genes are turned on and off in bacteria living under conditions of stress not only shed light on how complex biological systems interact, but provide insights for economists and political scientists applying mathematical models to describe complex human decision making.

"Everyone knows the need to try to postpone important decisions until the last moment but apparently there are simple creatures that do it well and therefore can really teach us -- the bacteria," said Eshel Ben Jacob, a physics professor at Tel Aviv University and a fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. He co-authored the study with three other scientists at the center: José Onuchic, a professor of physics at UCSD and a co-director of the center, Peter Wolynes, a professor of physics and chemistry at UCSD and Daniel Schultz, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSD.

In nature, bacteria live in large colonies whose numbers may reach up to 100 times the number of people on earth. Many bacteria respond to extreme stress -- such as starvation, poisoning and irradiation -- by creating spores, dormant states that are highly resistant to the outside environment and that can germinate into fully functioning bacteria once the environment improves. The response involves more than 500 genes and takes about 10 hours in Bacillus subtilis, the bacterium used by the scientists in their study.

Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to model decision making by humans, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others."...

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14 Dec 09 - 12:39 PM (#2788129)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From Der Spiegel:

Technology from the Soviet space program adapted by Israeli and German scientists may offer a safe way to deliver the volatile gas to power laptops and cars.

Israeli entrepreneur Moshe Stern admits he didn't know much about alternative energy when Russian scientist Evgeny Velikhov first approached him in 2005 about a novel technology for safely storing hydrogen gas. But four years later, the 62-year-old Stern has become an expert-and a believer. He is convinced that the Russian invention could play a major role in helping scientific institutions and industrial giants harness the commercial potential of hydrogen as a green energy source.

Now, Stern's conviction has just gotten a big outside boost. The hydrogen storage technology, being developed by Stern's Swiss-based startup, C.En, has been endorsed for its safety by a top German institute-an important vote of confidence, given that hydrogen is highly explosive and that safety has long been a major stumbling block to its commercialization.

On Nov. 25, Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research & Testing, released results of nearly two years of tests on C.En's technology, which involves the storage of compressed hydrogen inside bundles of thin, strong tubes of glass, known as capillary arrays. "The lightweight storage and safety factors give the technology a huge commercial potential for a whole range of industries," says Kai Holtappels, who heads up the working group at BAM that has been testing the technology since February 2008.

The timing couldn't me more fitting, as hundreds of delegates, scientists, and world leaders gather in Copenhagen for the UN Conference on Climate Change to discuss how to reduce carbon emissions and support eco-friendly technology.

Batteries for Electronics

A team of scientists first invented the capillary array technology at Moscow's Kurchatov Institute for use in the Soviet space program. Stern thinks his system can be adopted by the electronics industry to replace conventional batteries in portable devices such as laptops and mobile phones. He and C.En's chief scientist, Dan Eliezer, already have begun meeting with potential corporate customers. "We're planning to license out the technology on a company-by-company basis, with the first agreement during 2010," says Stern.

The automotive and aerospace industries could offer even bigger opportunities. Hydrogen-powered vehicles have long been explored as a means to reduce pollution and curb Western dependence on imported oil. Germany's BMW and Japan's Honda Motors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years into developing hydrogen-fueled cars.

The challenges of using hydrogen, though, have always been the size of containers needed to store the volatile gas and the risk of explosion. C.En claims to have overcome those problems with its leakproof capillary arrays. "Glass has proven to have three times the storage capacity at only a third of the weight of steel containers that are now commonly used for hydrogen storage, and it's far cheaper," says Eliezer.

Outside experts are impressed at the potential, but are taking a wait-and-see attitude. "If C.En's capillaries can withstand the external pressure, the technology could be practical in vehicles and electrical devices," says Yoel Sasson, a professor of applied chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who notes that another critical factor will be the cost of producing the capillary arrays.

---

14 Dec 09 - 11:24 PM (#2788523)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

When the remains of the last member of an extinct species were hard to find, Willerslev and a team of international research scientists decided to carry out an expedition to Central Alaska to solve the riddle of "The last surviving mammoths" using ancient-DNA tests from permafrost soil.

Surprisingly, the scientists found that the later samples with mammoth DNA could be dated back to between 10,500 and 7,500 years ago, and are therefore between 2,600 and 5,600 years after

the supposed extinction of the mammoths from mainland Alaska. Thus, the scientists found proof that mammoths had walked the earth several thousand years longer than previously believed; presumably by lesser herds of these animals threatened with extinction, surviving in small, isolated enclaves, where living conditions were intact.
The findings breathe new life into the debate about why prehistoric animals, such as sabre-toothed tigers, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and mammoths apparently suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.

"Our findings show that the mammoth and the horse existed side by side with the first human immigrants in America for certainly 3,500 years and were therefore not wiped out by human beings or natural disasters within a few hundred years, as common theories otherwise argue. The technique behind ancient-DNA analysis has the potential to greatly contribute to the debate about the extermination of prehistoric species, but can also be used to gather knowledge of contemporary animal species which are so shy that they are hard to detect. Not to mention the forensic possibilities opened up by the technique," Eske Willerslev points out.

(From Phys.Org)

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14 Dec 09 - 11:29 PM (#2788527)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- Department store competition is fierce in Japan during the winter holidays, with every store trying to come up with the most attention-catching promotional campaign. This year, the department store Sogo & Seibu may top them all with its offer of robots that are custom-made to look just like their owners.

The robotic doppelgangers will be life-size humanoids that can even speak with a real person's (recorded) voice. Made of silicone, the robots will be able to move their upper bodies, although there are not many other details on their design or what they can or cannot do.

With a price of $225,000 per robot, Sogo & Seibu isn't sure how many buyers they'll actually have. Currently, the company plans to offer just two robots, and if there are more than two interested buyers, Sogo & Seibu will have a lottery to choose two winners.
The robots will be manufactured by the Japanese robotic company Kokoro, which is known for its realistic robotic androids. One of Kokoro's "actroid" robots appeared in a Japanese TV commercial last year (pictured above).

PhysOrg also

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15 Dec 09 - 10:55 AM (#2788842)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Nevada: Horse Roundup Approved
(AP)
Published: December 14, 2009

The Bureau of Land Management approved the removal of 2,500 wild horses from the range near Reno as opposition grows to what would be one of the largest mustang roundups in Nevada in recent years. A federal judge in Washington is to hear arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed to block the roundup planned for later this month. The roundup is part of the bureau's overall strategy to remove thousands of mustangs from public lands around the West. Advocates for the horses say the roundup violates the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act, which Congress passed in 1971

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15 Dec 09 - 05:06 PM (#2789127)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A paralysed man has "spoken" three different vowel sounds using a voice synthesiser controlled by an implant deep in his brain.

If more sounds can be added to the repertoire of brain signals the implant can translate, such systems could revolutionise communication for people who are completely paralysed.

"We're very optimistic that the next patient will be able to say words," says Frank Guenther, a neuroscientist at Boston University who led the study along with Philip Kennedy at Neural Signals, a firm based in Duluth, Georgia, that produces neural implants.
Conventional speech

Eric Ramsey is 26 and has locked-in syndrome, in which people are unable to move a muscle but are fully conscious.

A brain implant, which requires invasive surgery, may sound drastic. But lifting signals directly from neurons may be the only way that locked-in people like Ramsey, or those with advanced forms of ALS, a neurodegenerative disease, will ever be able to communicate quickly and naturally, says Guenther.

Devices that rely on interpreting residual muscle activity, such as eye blinks, are no good for people who are completely paralysed, while those that use brain signals captured by scalp electrodes are slow, allowing typing on a keyboard at a rate of one to two words per minute.

"Our approach has the potential for providing something along the lines of conventional speech as opposed to very slow typing," he says.

---

16 Dec 09 - 09:51 AM (#2789625)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Under sea city in the Carribean photographed by satiliite.

http://www.heralddeparis.com/previously-undiscovered-ancient-city-found-on-caribbean-sea-floor/65855

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16 Dec 09 - 12:33 PM (#2789711)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Mark Morford, a hilarious sardonic columnist for the SF CHronicle, offers 101 reasons why men cheat, and also women.


A

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16 Dec 09 - 08:26 PM (#2790000)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In an attempt to better understand spacetime, mathematical physicist Achim Kempf of the University of Waterloo has proposed a new possible structure of spacetime on the Planck scale. He suggests that spacetime could be both discrete and continuous at the same time, conceivably satisfying general relativity and quantum field theories simultaneously. Kempf's proposal is inspired by information theory, since information can also be simultaneously discrete and continuous. His study is published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

"There are fiercely competing schools of thought, each with good arguments, about whether spacetime is fundamentally discrete (as, for example, in spin foam models) or continuous (as, for example, in string theory)," Kempf told PhysOrg.com. "The new information-theoretic approach could enable one to build conceptual as well as mathematical bridges between these two schools of thought."

As Kempf explains, the underlying mathematical structure of information theory in this framework is sampling theory - that is, samples taken at a generic discrete set of points can be used to reconstruct the shape of the information (or spacetime) everywhere down to a specific cutoff point. In the case of spacetime, that cutoff would be the natural ultraviolet lower bound, if it exists. This lower bound can also be thought of as a minimum length uncertainty principle, beyond which structural properties cannot be precisely known.

In his study, Kempf develops a sampling theory that can be generalized to apply to spacetime. He shows that a finite density of sample points obtained throughout spacetime's structure can provide scientists with the shape of spacetime from large length scales all the way down to the natural ultraviolet cutoff. Further, he shows that this expression establishes an equivalence between discrete and continuous representations of spacetimes. As such, the new framework for the sampling and reconstruction of spacetime could be used in various approaches to quantum gravity by giving discrete structures a continuous representation.

---

18 Dec 09 - 07:03 PM (#2791672)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- In 1996, when scientists examined a meteorite from Mars previously uncovered in Antarctica, they were intrigued by what looked like microscopic fossils of ancient Martian life forms. Now, using new technology that wasn't available 13 years ago, NASA scientists have found further evidence that the materials and structures in the meteorite are likely signs of ancient life, rather than the results of inorganic processes.


ALH84001 History

Scientists estimate that the meteorite, called Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001), formed on Mars about 4.5 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest known objects in the solar system. Because the meteorite contains microscopic carbonate disks that are about 4 billion years old, scientists have previously hypothesized that the meteorite interacted with water that may have existed on Mars at this time.

Much later, about 15 million years ago, a larger meteorite likely struck Mars and ejected ALH84001 into space. After spending most of that time traveling throughout the solar system, the meteorite landed on Earth about 13,000 years ago. Then, in 1984, a team of US scientists discovered it in Antarctica. The meteorite finally made news headlines in 1996, when NASA scientist David McKay and others peered at the rock under a scanning electron microscope and saw what appeared to be nanoscale fossils of bacteria-like life forms.

Bacterial or Thermal Origin?

Now, McKay, along with Kathie Thomas-Keprta, Everett Gibson, Simon Clemett, and Susan Wentworth, all of NASA's Johnson Space Center, have revisited the original hypothesis with new observations of the meteorite. The study is published in a recent issue of the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.
In the new study, the scientists used advanced microscopy techniques to investigate the carbonate disks and, more importantly, the magnetite nanocrystals within the disks. These embedded magnetites are the apparent fossils that exhibit features similar to contemporary magnetotactic bacteria.

During the past 13 years, different groups of scientists have proposed competing hypotheses to explain the origins of these magnetites. Some of the leading hypotheses are non-biological, suggesting that the magnetites were formed via thermal decomposition of the carbonates in which ALH84001 was struck by other meteorites. Such impacts may have increased the temperature of ALH84001 and caused the carbonates to decompose into magnetites via bond redistribution. In some models, ALH84001 may have experienced this shock by a random meteorite impact while still on Mars, while in other models, thermal decomposition may have occurred due to the impact event that ejected ALH84001 from its home planet.

But whatever event might have triggered a thermal decomposition process, the scientists argue in the current study that very few - if any - of the magnetites embedded in ALH84001 carbonates are a product of thermal decomposition. By analyzing details such as the percentage of magnetite volume in the carbonate disks, the trace amounts of impurities observed in some of the magnetites, and the lack of siderite which some previous models suggested may have decomposed to form magnetite, the scientists concluded that these new observations were inconsistent with the previous inorganic-based thermal decomposition hypotheses.

By showing that it's very unlikely that the magnetite originated from the decomposition of ALH84001's carbonate, the scientists argue that possible biological origins of the magnetite need to be considered more seriously than before.
"For the past 10 years, the leading (and only) viable non-biologic hypothesis for the origin of the nanophase magnetites concentrated in ALH84001 has been thermal or shock decomposition of iron-bearing carbonates, a process known to produce small magnetite crystals," Thomas-Keprta told PhysOrg.com. "Our paper has falsified this non-biologic hypothesis by showing, based on thermodynamics and minor element chemistry, that this non-biologic hypothesis simply cannot produce the ultrapure magnetites actually present in ALH84001 as a significant population of all magnetites. By falsifying this non-biologic hypothesis, we are left with only the biologic hypothesis to explain the detailed properties of the magnetites in this martian meteorite."
Magnetite Biosignature

Although they have not yet developed a model for the origin of the magnetite in ALH84001, the researchers' new observations are consistent with the possibility that the magnetite has an "allochthonous origin," in which it was exposed to aqueous solutions such as water.

As Thomas-Keprta explained, the magnetite in ALH84001 could have been one of several ferromagnetic minerals produced by magnetotactic bacteria that live in aquatic environments. When these bacteria die and their shells degrade, a chain of magnetite is released into the environment. Without its confining shell, the magnetite chain configuration cannot be maintained, so individual magnetite crystals begin to mix with inorganic particles in the water.

---

18 Dec 09 - 07:28 PM (#2791693)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Alexey Belyanin focuses his research on terahertz, otherwise known as THz or T-rays, which he says is the most under-developed and under-used part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It lies between microwave radiation and infrared (heat) radiation.
Belyanin, associate professor in the Texas A&M Physics Department, has collaborated with colleagues at Rice University and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to publish findings about their T-ray research in the renowned journal Nature Physics.
"THz radiation can penetrate through opaque dry materials. It is harmless and can be used to scan humans," Belyanin says. "Unfortunately, until recently the progress in THz technology has been hampered by a lack of suitable sources and detectors."
Belyanin and his team have offered hope: The researchers are able to control the T-rays by varying external parameters like temperature or magnetic field, making it possible to build THz sensors, cameras and other devices.
Traditionally, powerful photons from visible or near-infrared laser pulses are used to probe semiconductors, knocking electrons out of the atoms. Belyanin and collaborators use the less powerful T-rays instead, which only excite the waves in the electron gas because T-rays do not have enough energy to knock out electrons.
"This is as if instead of throwing a stone into a tank of water, which would create a lot of splashes, we gently vibrate one wall of the tank, sending a sound wave through the body of water and ripples over its surface," he explains.
By varying temperature and the magnetic field, scientists can tune the pulses and observe the behavior of the waves.
"This provides extremely valuable and unique information about the properties of the material, just like seismic waves tell you what is in the Earth's interior," the Texas A&M physicist points out.
"The highlight of our results is observations of interference of magnetoplasmons. By tiny changes in the applied magnetic field or temperature, we can make plasma waves amplify or cancel each other. This makes the whole sample either completely opaque or transparent to the incident THz radiation."
Belyanin believes the technology has important practical implications, such as in security work.
"Using THz cameras, we could detect weapons or drugs concealed on a human body, or look inside envelopes and boxes," he says. There are many other applications for THz radiation, including material studies, chemistry, biology and medicine."
Provided by Texas A&M University

---

21 Dec 09 - 01:14 PM (#2793665)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Tens of thousands of people have already been evacuated from the foothills of Mayon, which on Monday emitted lava fountains, powerful booming noises and other signs of an approaching eruption. But authorities are having trouble keeping villagers away from their homes and farms, said Gov. Joey Salceda.

"There are people who have been evacuated three times, and we sigh: 'You again?' " said Salceda of central Albay province. "We've been playing cat and mouse with them."

After a week of puffing out ash and sending bursts of lava trickling down its steep slopes, the 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) mountain overlooking the Gulf of Albay and Legazpi city shook with nearly 2,000 volcanic earthquakes and tremors between Sunday and Monday, state volcanologists said.

The emission of sulfur dioxide - an indication of magma rising inside the volcano - jumped to 6,000 tons per day from the normal 500, said the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. It also reported "audible booming and rumbling sounds" in the eastern flank of the volcano, accompanied by intensified crater glow at night.

Lava fountains bursting from the cone-shaped volcano overnight rose 650 feet (200 meters) in the air, the institute said.

Scientists raised the alert level Sunday to one step below a hazardous eruption, saying one was possible within days. The only higher level is when a major eruption is already in progress.

Army troops and police added more patrols to enforce a five-mile (eight-kilometer) exclusion zone around the mountain, Salceda said. The area is about 210 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Manila.

More than 44,000 residents were given sleeping mats and food inside school buildings, gyms and other emergency shelters, but some have still been spotted checking on their farms in the prohibited zone.

About 3,000 more villagers have held out, staying behind on the fringes of the danger zone out of concern for their homes and belongings. Many have been evacuated only to come back to tend to farms and property.

Army troops have been deployed to persuade them to move to safety, said Jukes Nunez, a disaster management official.

"We won't bodily carry them away because that will violate their rights," Nunez told The Associated Press. "But we've sent troops to persuade and nag them nonstop to move to safer areas."

Scientists said red hot lava flows had reached three miles (five kilometers) from the crater.

---

21 Dec 09 - 07:02 PM (#2793919)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Bacteria Engineered to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Liquid Fuel
ScienceDaily (Dec. 11, 2009) — Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels.
In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce the liquid fuel isobutanol, which holds great potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight, through photosynthesis.
The research appears in the Dec. 9 print edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology and is available online.
This new method has two advantages for the long-term, global-scale goal of achieving a cleaner and greener energy economy, the researchers say. First, it recycles carbon dioxide, reducing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Second, it uses solar energy to convert the carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel that can be used in the existing energy infrastructure, including in most automobiles.
While other alternatives to gasoline include deriving biofuels from plants or from algae, both of these processes require several intermediate steps before refinement into usable fuels.
"This new approach avoids the need for biomass deconstruction, either in the case of cellulosic biomass or algal biomass, which is a major economic barrier for biofuel production," said team leader James C. Liao, Chancellor's Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at UCLA and associate director of the UCLA-Department of Energy Institute for Genomics and Proteomics. "Therefore, this is potentially much more efficient and less expensive than the current approach."

---

31 Dec 09 - 11:21 PM (#2800575)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Russia in secret plan to save Earth from asteroid: official
December 30, 2009


Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a possible catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia's space agency said Wednesday.


"We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done" to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.

"We are talking about people's lives," Perminov was quoted by news agencies as telling the radio station.

"Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed," he said.

The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France.
Perminov said a serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space experts.
Interfax quoted him as saying that one option would be to build a new "space apparatus" designed solely for the purpose of diverting Apophis from a collision course with Earth safely.

"There won't be any nuclear explosions," Perminov said. "Everything will be done according to the laws of physics. We will examine all of this."

In a statement dated from October and posted on its website, the US space agency NASA said new calculations on the path of Apophis indicated "a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036."

"Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a-million," NASA said.]

RIA Novosti said the asteroid was expected to pass within 30,000 kilometres (18,600 miles) of Earth in 2029 -- closer than some geo-stationary satellites -- and could shift course to hit Earth seven years years after that.

---

04 Jan 10 - 11:05 AM (#2803008)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(AP) -- Remains of the first airplane ever taken to Antarctica, in 1912, have been found by Australian researchers, the team announced Saturday.


The Mawson's Huts Foundation had been searching for the plane for three summers before stumbling upon metal pieces of it on New Year's Day.

"The biggest news of the day is that we've found the air tractor, or at least parts of it!" team member Tony Stewart wrote on the team's blog from Cape Denison in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay.

Australian polar explorer and geologist Douglas Mawson led two expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s, on the first one bringing along a single-propeller Vickers plane. The wings of the plane, built in 1911, had been damaged in a crash before the expedition, but Mawson hoped to use it as a kind of motorized sled.

Stewart said the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition used the plane to tow gear onto the ice in preparation for their sledging journeys.

But the plane's engine could not withstand the extreme temperatures and it was eventually abandoned.

The plane, the first from France's Vickers factory, had not been seen since the mid-1970s, when researchers photographed the steel fuselage nearly encompassed in ice.

The foundation - which works at Cape Denison to conserve the huts used by Mawson in his expeditions - believed the plane would still be where it was left by Mawson, near the huts and the harbor, which is covered in ice for most of the year.

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04 Jan 10 - 01:20 PM (#2803132)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Spectacular satellite images suggest that Mars was warm enough to sustain lakes three billion years ago, a period that was previously thought to be too cold and arid to sustain water on the surface, according to research published today in the journal Geology.

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The research, by a team from Imperial College London and University College London (UCL), suggests that during the Hesperian Epoch, approximately 3 billion years ago, Mars had lakes made of melted ice, each around 20km wide, along parts of the equator.

Earlier research had suggested that Mars had a warm and wet early history but that between 4 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, before the Hesperian Epoch, the planet lost most of its atmosphere and became cold and dry. In the new study, the researchers analysed detailed images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the red planet, and concluded that there were later episodes where Mars experienced warm and wet periods.

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05 Jan 10 - 03:58 PM (#2804242)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists show 'lifeless' prions capable of evolutionary change and adaptation (PhysOrg, December 31, 2009)


Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have determined for the first time that prions, bits of infectious protein devoid of DNA or RNA that can cause fatal neurodegenerative disease, are capable of Darwinian evolution.


The study from Scripps Florida in Jupiter shows that prions can develop large numbers of mutations at the protein level and, through natural selection, these mutations can eventually bring about such evolutionary adaptations as drug resistance, a phenomenon previously known to occur only in bacteria and viruses. These breakthrough findings also suggest that the normal prion protein - which occurs naturally in human cells - may prove to be a more effective therapeutic target than its abnormal toxic relation.

The study was published in the December 31, 2009 issue of the journal Science Express.

"On the face of it, you have exactly the same process of mutation and adaptive change in prions as you see in viruses," said Charles Weissmann, M.D., Ph.D., the head of Scripps Florida's Department of Infectology, who led the study. "This means that this pattern of Darwinian evolution appears to be universally active. In viruses, mutation is linked to changes in nucleic acid sequence that leads to resistance. Now, this adaptability has moved one level down - to prions and protein folding - and it's clear that you do not need nucleic acid for the process of evolution."

---

05 Jan 10 - 06:09 PM (#2804329)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I have always held prions as the ultimate exraterresrial invasion weapon. Indestructable under 1400 degrees, lifeless but replicating and able to eat the brains of all the highest lifeforms.
Instead of calling them proteins I would call them anti-teins.

---

05 Jan 10 - 06:35 PM (#2804345)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY02Qkuc_f8


orders are orders

---

06 Jan 10 - 10:59 AM (#2804895)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists studying dolphin behavior have suggested they could be the most intelligent creatures on Earth after humans, saying the size of their brains in relation to body size is larger than that of our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, and their behaviors suggest complex intelligence. One scientist said they should therefore be treated as "non-human persons" and granted rights as individuals.

The behavioral studies showed dolphins (especially the bottlenose) have distinct personalities and self-awareness, and they can think about the future. The research also confirmed dolphins have complex social structures, with individuals co-operating to solve difficult problems or to round up shoals of fish to eat, and with new behaviors being passed from one dolphin to another.

Several examples of learning being passed on to other individuals have been observed. In one case a rescued dolphin in South Australia, taught to tail-walk during recuperation, in turn taught the trick to other wild dolphins in the Port Adelaide river estuary when she was released. According to marine biologist Mike Bossley it was "like watching a dance craze take off", with the dolphins apparently learning the trick just for fun, since tail-walking has no natural function.

Work carried out by professor of psychology at the City University of New York, Diana Reiss, showed dolphins could recognize themselves in a mirror, and could use it to inspect other parts of their bodies, an ability previously only demonstrated in humans and a few animals such as apes, elephants and pigs. In another study Reiss was able to teach captive dolphins a rudimentary language based on symbols.

---

06 Jan 10 - 03:24 PM (#2805144)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

My neighbors seem like non human persons.

The Human Condition.
The words human condition floats about cocktail parties, book tours and galleries but it rarely is embraced with extended clarity.
Primary in my understanding of the human condition is the overwhelming factor of contradiction. If you can not forgive the contradictions you can never forgive and go on to discover more about the human condition or a specific person's human condition.

"How can he be soo smart and yet be so stupid about X?" contradiction
"How can that be a religion of peace and commit horrorific murders?" contradiction.

Love the contradiction and correct the singular problem and you may be more understanding, successful and peaceful yourself.

more later gotta go to scoo

---

06 Jan 10 - 03:31 PM (#2805149)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Evidence that four-legged vertebrates walked on Earth some 10 million years earlier than previously believed could force a radical rethink of where they evolved, as well as when.

Tetrapod footprints dating back 397 million years have been discovered in the Świętokrzyskie mountains in southern Poland in what was, at the time they were made, a seashore. All previous fossil evidence for these earliest known four-limbed vertebrates has been found in river deltas and lakes.

"Our discovery suggests that the current scientific consensus is mistaken not only about when the first tetrapods evolved, but also about where they evolved," says Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki of the Department of Palaeobiology and Evolution at the University of Warsaw in Poland, who discovered the footprints in 2002 in an old quarry near the town of Kielce.(New Scientist)

---

07 Jan 10 - 10:56 AM (#2805740)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/07/06/vx200-demonstrates-superconducting-stage-full-power/
AD ASTRA ROCKET COMPANY PRESS RELEASE

Ad Astra Rocket Company has successfully demonstrated operation of its VX-200 plasma engine first stage at full power and under superconducting conditions in tests conducted today at the company's Houston laboratory. This achievement is a key milestone in the engine's development and the first time a superconducting plasma rocket has been operated at that power level.

Today's tests build on the achievements of the VX-200i, the engine's non-superconducting predecessor, which last fall underwent similar tests but under a greatly reduced set of requirements. A major difference between the two is the superconducting magnet, featured in the present system, which provides a ten-fold increase in the magnetic field and enables operation of the engine under conditions consistent with actual space flight.

The VX-200 superconducting magnet, the first of its kind, was delivered to Ad Astra's Houston facility on February 10, 2009 by its manufacturer, Scientific Magnetics of Oxford, U.K. After successful acceptance tests, the superconductor was installed in the engine module, replacing the conventional magnet that had been used in the interim. This interim magnet, although incapable of reaching the strong magnetic fields required for full rocket performance, enabled the integrated testing of the remaining engine sub-systems while the company awaited delivery of the superconductor. First plasma in full superconducting mode was achieved on June 24, 2009.

snip

---

07 Jan 10 - 11:15 AM (#2805752)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Pi calculation smashes records
January 7, 2010 by Lin Edwards


(PhysOrg.com) -- A computer scientist in France has broken all previous records for calculating Pi, using only a personal computer. The previous record was approximately 2.6 trillion digits, but the new record, set by Fabrice Bellard, now stands at almost 2.7 trillion decimal places.

Bellard, of Paris Telecom Tech, made and checked the calculation by running his own software algorithms for 131 days. The previous record calculation, set by Daisuke Takahashi at the University of Tsukuba in Japan in August 2009, took only 29 hours to complete, but used a super-computer costing millions of dollars, and running 2000 times faster than Bellard's PC.

Pi is the value of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and has been of interest to mathematicians for hundreds of years, since Sir Isaac Newton developed formulae to extend the number of decimal places.

Bellard has been following the records for calculating Pi to the maximum number of decimal places since he received his first book about Pi at the age of 14. Computations to find a value to any number of decimal places are part of a branch of mathematics called "arbitrary-precision arithmetic". For Bellard the calculation was more for fun than because of an obsession with the digits, but he said that arbitrary-precision arithmetic has applications because it can be used for testing algorithms and computers. He claims his method is about 20 times more efficient than previous methods.

Bellard said he used the Chudnovsky formula to produce a binary result (a process that took 103 days), which was then checked (which actually took 34 hours on 9 computers, but would have taken 13 days on one PC), and converted to a base-10 result (12 days), which was then verified (3 days).

---

07 Jan 10 - 02:54 PM (#2805922)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB, Germany), in cooperation with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol Universities, as well as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, UK, have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. They have measured the signatures of a symmetry showing the same attributes as the golden ratio famous from art and architecture.

The research team is publishing these findings in Science on the 8 January.

On the atomic scale particles do not behave as we know it in the macro-atomic world. New properties emerge which are the result of an effect known as the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In order to study these nanoscale quantum effects the researchers have focused on the magnetic material cobalt niobate. It consists of linked magnetic atoms, which form chains just like a very thin bar magnet, but only one atom wide and are a useful model for describing ferromagnetism on the nanoscale in solid state matter.

When applying a magnetic field at right angles to an aligned spin the magnetic chain will transform into a new state called quantum critical, which can be thought of as a quantum version of a fractal pattern. Prof. Alan Tennant, the leader of the Berlin group, explains "The system reaches a quantum uncertain - or a Schrödinger cat state. This is what we did in our experiments with cobalt niobate. We have tuned the system exactly in order to turn it quantum critical."

---

08 Jan 10 - 08:23 PM (#2807115)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- The less you use your brain's frontal lobes, the more you see yourself through rose-colored glasses, a University of Texas at Austin researcher says.

Those findings are being published in the February edition of the journal NeuroImage.
"In healthy people, the more you activate a portion of your frontal lobes, the more accurate your view of yourself is," says Jennifer Beer, an assistant professor of psychology, who conducted the research with graduate student Brent L. Hughes. "And the more you view yourself as desirable or better than your peers, the less you use those lobes."
The natural human tendency to see oneself in a positive light can be helpful and motivating in some situations but detrimental in others, Beer says.

Her research, conducted at the university's Imaging Research Center, gives new insight into the relationship among brain functions and human emotion and perceptions.
It may help scientists better understand brain functions in seniors or people who suffer from depression or other mental illnesses. It could also have implications for recovering methamphetamine addicts whose frontal lobes are often damaged by drug use and who can overestimate their ability to stay clean.

---

09 Jan 10 - 02:35 PM (#2807638)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Robot girlfriend unwrapped

LAS VEGAS - ROXXXY the sex robot is having a coming out party Saturday in Sin City. In what is billed as a world first, a life-size robotic girlfriend complete with artificial intelligence and flesh-like synthetic skin will be introduced to adoring fans at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

'She can't vacuum, she can't cook but she can do almost anything else if you know what I mean,' TrueCompanion's Douglas Hines said while giving AFP an early peak at Roxxxy. 'She's a companion. She has a personality. She hears you. She listens to you. She speaks. She feels your touch. She goes to sleep. We are trying to replicate a personality of a person.'

Roxxxy stands five-feet, seven inches tall; weighs 120 pounds, 'has a full C cup and is ready for action,' according to Hines, who was an artificial intelligence engineer at Bell Labs before starting TrueCompanion.

The anatomically-correct robot has an articulated skeleton that can move like a person but can't walk or independently move its limbs. Robotic movement is built into 'the three inputs' and a mechanical heart that powers a liquid cooling system.

Roxxxie comes with five personalities. Wild Wendy is outgoing and adventurous while Frigid Farrah is reserved and shy. There is a young naive personality along with a Mature Martha that Hines described as having a 'matriarchal kind of caring.' S & M Susan is geared for more adventurous types.

People ordering the robots online at truecompanion.com detail their tastes and interests in a way similar to that at online dating sites but the information is used to get the mechanical girlfriend in synch with her mate. 'She knows exactly what you like,' said Hines. 'If you like Porsches, she likes Porsches. If you like soccer, she likes soccer.'

Roxxxy is wirelessly linked to the Internet for software updates as well as technical support and sending her man email messages. People can customise robotic girlfriends' personalities and then share the programs with others online at truecompanion.com, according to Hines. -- AFP

---

09 Jan 10 - 05:23 PM (#2807805)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The Faith Instinct

From a review by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times Book Review of Nicholas Wade's JTF-supported book, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures:

According to Wade, a New York Times science writer, religions are machines for manufacturing social solidarity. They bind us into groups. Long ago, codes requiring altruistic behavior, and the gods who enforced them, helped human society expand from families to bands of people who were not necessarily related.

We didn't become religious creatures because we became social; we became social creatures because we became religious. Or, to put it in Darwinian terms, being willing to live and die for their coreligionists gave our ancestors an advantage in the struggle for resources.

---

10 Jan 10 - 03:14 PM (#2808488)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

CAIRO (Reuters) - New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Sunday.

Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.

"These tombs were built beside the king's pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves," Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.

"If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king's."

He said the collection of workers' tombs, some of which were found in the 1990s, were among the most significant finds in the 20th and 21st centuries. They belonged to workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.

Hawass had earlier found graffiti on the walls from workers calling themselves "friends of Khufu" -- another sign that they were not slaves.


The tombs, on the Giza plateau on the western edge of Cairo, are 4,510 years old and lie at the entrance of a one-km (half mile)-long necropolis.

Hawass said evidence had been found showing that farmers in the Delta and Upper Egypt had sent 21 buffalo and 23 sheep to the plateau every day to feed the builders, believed to number around 10,000 -- or about a tenth of Greek historian Herodotus's estimate of 100,000.

These farmers were exempted from paying taxes to the government of ancient Egypt -- evidence that he said underscored the fact they were participating in a national project.

The first discovery of workers' tombs in 1990 came about accidentally when a horse stumbled on a brick structure 10 meters (yards) away from the burial area.

---

10 Jan 10 - 07:08 PM (#2808649)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ANCIENT HOMINIDS MAY HAVE BEEN SEAFARERS

Hand axes excavated on Crete suggest hominids made sea crossings to go 'out of Africa' By Bruce Bower Web edition : Friday, January 8th, 2010   

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. It was around that time that H. erectus spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe.

Until now, the oldest known human settlements on Crete dated to around 9,000 years ago. Traditional theories hold that early farming groups in southern Europe and the Middle East first navigated vessels to Crete and other Mediterranean islands at that time.

"We're just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place," Strasser says. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago."

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11 Jan 10 - 11:42 PM (#2809687)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Today, back in 1902 Henry Haven Windsor published the first issue of Popular Mechanics, helping to empower geeks of future generations with straightforward explanations of scientific and mechanical advances.

"The magazine has reported both the brilliant and ridiculous ideas of its times, depending on the writer, scientist or editor. It once published an article about a Philadelphia physician who supposedly used X-rays to turn blacks into whites: probably not a great editorial decision. Betting on blimps over planes for so long might not have been advisable, and hyping excessive consumption during the birth of the environmental movement in the 1960s also rates a demerit. But beyond those probable transgressions,

Popular Mechanics paved the way for the people's incursion into science's once-exclusive domain. Its longevity argues that science and its sometimes inscrutable possibility have raw mass appeal — even if the subject is cars with steering wheels in the back seat or self-diagnosing appliances."

---

12 Jan 10 - 04:29 PM (#2810324)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

January 12, 2010
A senior Saudi cleric declared that joining al Qaeda is forbidden by Islam, Middle East Online reported Jan. 12. Speaking to the Okaz newspaper, Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al-Obeikan, a leading religious scholar and adviser in King Abdullah's court, reiterated the official Saudi stance that al Qaeda's philosophy is one of "takfirism," or accusing others of apostasy. "Takfir thinking" is forbidden in Islam, he said.

---

13 Jan 10 - 03:11 PM (#2811145)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"To be perfectly blunt about it, The Beaver was an impediment on the Internet. People were literally writing us and saying, 'We can't get your e-newsletter because it's being spam-filtered out, can you change the title of the heading?' ... There were some really unfortunate but practical reasons why The Beaver couldn't be the universal brand. That's the factor why it was a deterrent — particularly amongst women and people under the age of 45. Unfortunately, sometimes words take on an identity that wasn't intended in 1920, when it was all about the fur trade."

— Deborah Morrison, president of Canada's National History Society, explains why The Beaver, Canada's second-oldest history magazine has decided to change its name to the very straightforward and respectable Canada's History.

---

13 Jan 10 - 08:13 PM (#2811397)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Random traces is becoming nothing but sex sex sex lately.

---

15 Jan 10 - 02:24 PM (#2812887)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

* General Physics
    * Condensed Matter
    * Optics & Photonics
    * Superconductivity
    * Plasma Physics
    * Soft Matter
    * Quantum Physics

Radio pulses from pulsar appear to move faster than light
January 14, 2010 by Lin Edwards


Superluminal, or faster than light, speeds are associated with anomalous dispersion, which is a process in which the refractive index of a medium increases with the wavelength of light passing through it. If a light pulse (consisting of a group of light waves at different wavelengths) passes through such a medium, the group velocity of the pulse can increase to a velocity greater than any of the waves within the pulse, but the energy of the pulse still travels at the speed of light, which means information is transmitted in accordance with Einstein's theory.

Astrophysicists, led by Frederick Jenet of the University of Texas at Brownsville, have been monitoring a pulsar, PSR B1937+21, which is about 10,000 light years from Earth. They used the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to obtain radio data over three days at 1420.4 MHz with a bandwidth of 1.5 MHz. They found that pulses closer to the center arrived earlier than the normal timing, which suggests they had travelled faster than the speed of light.

A pulsar is a neutron star that is spinning rapidly and emitting a rotating beam of radio radiation as it spins, which is observed on Earth at regular intervals rather like light from a lighthouse. The pulses of radiation can be affected by several factors as they travel through the interstellar medium (ISM). Their polarization can be rotated if they pass through a magnetic field, for example, and they can be scattered if they encounter free electrons, and can be absorbed by neutral hydrogen in the ISM. Jenet and his colleagues think anomalous dispersion also affects the pulses.

According to Jenet and colleagues, the pulses from the pulsar traveled through a cloud of neutral hydrogen, which has a resonance of 1420.4 MHz -- the exact center of the bandwidth studied. Passing through the cloud caused anomalous dispersion that resulted in a superluminal group velocity, and pulses with frequencies closest to the resonance frequency arrived earlier than other pulses.

---

15 Jan 10 - 08:20 PM (#2813228)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

For Sale:

2 previously owned vehicles. Both one owners and garaged.

The Endeavor and another Space Shuttle of your choice is for sale to the next owner who can pick up the merchandise themselves.

---

16 Jan 10 - 01:04 AM (#2813382)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"A group of international scientists this morning announced that they are moving the hands of the symbolic "Doomsday Clock" away from midnight -- or the figurative apocalypse -- but only by one minute.

The clock, which is maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, was designed to reflect how close civilization is to "catastrophic destruction." First set at seven minutes to midnight, the clock has been moved only 18 times since its creation in 1947.

The group, which includes more than a dozen Nobel laureates, last moved the hands of the clock in 2007, from seven to five minutes before midnight to reflect the threat of a "second nuclear age" and the challenges presented by global warming.

Today, at a press conference in New York, the Bulletin announced that despite the looming threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, it would move the hands of the clock from five to six minutes before midnight."

Linked from Slashdot

---

17 Jan 10 - 01:30 AM (#2814057)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ZEUS' ALTAR OF ASHES
News from the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif. By Bruce Bower January 30th, 2010; Vol.177 #3 (p. 14)    Text Size
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Excavations at the Sanctuary of Zeus atop Greece's Mount Lykaion have revealed that ritual activities occurred there for roughly 1,500 years, from the height of classic Greek civilization around 3,400 years ago until just before Roman conquest in 146.

"We may have the first documented mountaintop shrine from the ancient Greek world," says project director David Romano of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Ritual ceremonies were conducted in a part of the open-air sanctuary called the ash altar of Zeus. It now consists of a mound of ash, stone and various inscribed dedications to Zeus, the head god of Greek mythology. Romano's team has found no evidence of a temple or structures of any kind on Mount Lykaion.

Work conducted over the past two years at the ash altar of Zeus has unearthed material from many phases of Greek civilization. Finds include pottery of various types, terra cotta figurines of people and animals, and burned bones of sheep and goats.

Chemical analyses have revealed traces of red wine on the inside surfaces of some pottery fragments, Romano says. His team reported initial evidence of ritual activity at the ash altar of Zeus in 2007. The new discoveries indicate that ancient Greeks kept returning to the sacred site for a remarkably long time.

---

18 Jan 10 - 12:35 PM (#2815004)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The manuscript, from 1752, is a biography of Newton entitled Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life written by William Stukeley, an archaeologist and one of Newton's first biographers. Newton told the apple story to Stukeley, who relayed it as such:


"After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank thea, under the shade of some apple trees...he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself..."


The Royal Society has made the manuscript available today for the first time in a fully interactive digital form on their website at royalsociety.org/turning-the-pages.

---

18 Jan 10 - 06:59 PM (#2815374)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Nanoscale: Robot Arm Places Atoms and Molecules With 100% Accuracy

Written By: Michael Anissimov
Date Published: January 12, 2010


Until the mid-1990s, the term "nanotechnology" referred to the goal of creating vast arrays of nanoscale assemblers to fabricate useful human-scale products from scratch in an entirely automated process and with atomic precision. Since then, the word has come to mean anything from stain-resistant pants to branches of conventional chemistry — generally anything involving nanoscale objects. But the dream of a new Industrial Revolution based on nanoscale manufacturing has not died, as demonstrated most vividly by the work of NYU professor of chemistry Dr. Nadrian Seeman.

In a 2009 article in Nature Nanotechnology, Dr. Seeman shared the results of experiments performed by his lab, along with collaborators at Nanjing University in China, in which scientists built a two-armed nanorobotic device with the ability to place specific atoms and molecules where scientists want them. The device was approximately 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size — over a million could fit in a single red blood cell. Using robust error-correction mechanisms, the device can place DNA molecules with 100% accuracy. Earlier trials had yielded only 60-80% accuracy.

The nanorobotic arm is built out of DNA origami: large strands of DNA gently encouraged to fold in precise ways by interaction with a few hundred short DNA strands. The products, around 100 nanometers in diameter, are eight times larger and three times more complex than what could be built with a simple crystalline DNA array, vastly expanding the space of possible structures. Other nanoscale structures or machines built by Dr. Seeman and his collaborators including a nanoscale walking biped, truncated DNA octahedrons, and sequence-dependent molecular switch arrays. Dr. Seeman has exploited structural features of DNA thought to be used in genetic recombination to operate his nanoscale devices, tapping into the very processes underlying all life.

---

19 Jan 10 - 08:54 AM (#2815799)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Washington (CNN) – Digital history was made Monday when President Obama became the first commander-in-chief to "tweet" a message on the social networking site, though he had a little bit of help.

When Obama stopped at the headquarters of the American Red Cross' to promote aid to Haiti, a member of the agency's new media team wrote a message on Twitter.com telling people he had arrived.

"President Obama and the first lady are here visiting our disaster operation center right now," the Red Cross staffer wrote.

The new media staffer then asked the president to hit "Update" on the screen and Obama posted the item himself under the @RedCross handle at Twitter.com.

A moment later the Red Cross staffer posted a follow-up tweet: "President Obama pushed the button on the last tweet. It was his first ever tweet!"

---

19 Jan 10 - 09:31 AM (#2815828)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

As if the Boskop story were not already strange enough, the accumulation of additional remains revealed another bizarre feature: These people had small, childlike faces. Physical anthropologists use the term pedomorphosis to describe the retention of juvenile features into adulthood. This phenomenon is sometimes used to explain rapid evolutionary changes. For example, certain amphibians retain fishlike gills even when fully mature and past their water-inhabiting period. Humans are said by some to be pedomorphic compared with other primates.Our facial structure bears some resemblance to that of an immature ape. Boskop's appearance may be described in terms of this trait. A typical current European adult, for instance, has a face that takes up roughly one-third of his overall cranium size. Boskop has a face that takes up only about one-fifth of his cranium size, closer to the proportions of a child. Examination of individual bones confirmed that the nose, cheeks, and jaw were all childlike.

The combination of a large cranium and immature face would look decidedly unusual to modern eyes, but not entirely unfamiliar. Such faces peer out from the covers of countless science fiction books and are often attached to "alien abductors" in movies. The naturalist Loren Eiseley made exactly this point in a lyrical and chilling passage from his popular book, The Immense Journey, describing a Boskop fossil:

"There's just one thing we haven't quite dared to mention. It's this, and you won't believe it. It's all happened already. Back there in the past, ten thousand years ago. The man of the future, with the big brain, the small teeth. He lived in Africa. His brain was bigger than your brain. His face was straight and small, almost a child's face."

Boskops, then, were much talked and written about, by many of the most prominent figures in the fields of paleontology and anthropology.

Yet today, although Neanderthals and Homo erectus are widely known, Boskops are almost entirely forgotten. Some of our ancestors are clearly inferior to us, with smaller brains and apelike countenances. They're easy to make fun of and easy to accept as our precursors. In contrast, the very fact of an ancient ancestor like Boskop, who appears un-apelike and in fact in most ways seems to have had characteristics superior to ours, was destined never to be popular.

(Discover Mag)

---

19 Jan 10 - 10:06 AM (#2815867)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Barbara Herrnstein Smith's "Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion." gets an analytical review from Stanley Fish, resident philosopher-head of the NYT, entitled "Must There Be a Bottom Line?" WOrth a read as an interesting stepping stone in the evolution of the religion/materialism dichotomy.

---

19 Jan 10 - 10:51 AM (#2815907)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Bohr finally proven more right than Einstein as regards entanglements and uncertainties according to Phys.Org.

---

20 Jan 10 - 05:42 PM (#2817065)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Scientist:

"Although gravity has been successfully described with laws devised by Isaac Newton and later Albert Einstein, we still don't know how the fundamental properties of the universe combine to create the phenomenon.

Now one theoretical physicist is proposing a radical new way to look at gravity. Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, a prominent and internationally respected string theorist, argues that gravitational attraction could be the result of the way information about material objects is organised in space. If true, it could provide the fundamental explanation we have been seeking for decades.

Verlinde posted his paper to the pre-print physics archive earlier this month, and since then many physicists have greeted the proposal as promising (arxiv.org/abs/1001.0785). Nobel laureate and theoretical physicist Gerard 't Hooft of Utrecht University in the Netherlands stresses the ideas need development, but is impressed by Verlinde's approach. "[Unlike] many string theorists Erik is stressing real physical concepts like mass and force, not just fancy abstract mathematics," he says. "That's encouraging from my perspective as a physicist."

Newton first showed how gravity works on large scales by treating it as a force between objects (see "Apple for your eyes"). Einstein refined Newton's ideas with his theory of general relativity. He showed that gravity was better described by the way an object warps the fabric of the universe. We are all pulled towards the Earth because the planet's mass is curving the surrounding space-time.

Yet that is not the end of the story. Though Newton and Einstein provided profound insights, their laws are only mathematical descriptions. "They explain how gravity works, but not where it comes from," says Verlinde. Theoretical physics has had a tough time connecting gravity with the other known fundamental forces in the universe. The standard model, which has long been our best framework for describing the subatomic world, includes electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces - but not gravity.

Many physicists doubt it ever will. Gravity may turn out to be delivered via the action of hypothetical particles called gravitons, but so far there is no proof of their existence. Gravity's awkwardness has been one of the main reasons why theories like string theory and quantum loop gravity have been proposed in recent decades.

Verlinde's work offers an alternative way of looking at the problem. "I am convinced now, gravity is a phenomenon emerging from the fundamental properties of space and time," he says.

To understand what Verlinde is proposing, consider the concept of fluidity in water. Individual molecules have no fluidity, but collectively they do. Similarly, the force of gravity is not something ingrained in matter itself. It is an extra physical effect, emerging from the interplay of mass, time and space, says Verlinde. His idea of gravity as an "entropic force" is based on these first principles of thermodynamics - but works within an exotic description of space-time called holography...."

---

20 Jan 10 - 05:48 PM (#2817075)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

kick

Sci Fi writers rejoice.
Its the Amosmatic screeplayorama

Just take 6 science posts from this thread and combine them in a action drama of your choice.




----------------



Further suppositions of the donuel multi-verse model;
With a basic knowledge of singularities, virtual particles, branes and string theory the romance of the universe can unflod before your eyes.


In the multi verse model, new births of new universes can come from colliding branes as well as "on the other side" of existing super massive black holes or wherever sufficiently/impossibly dense pressure and energy resides.


Taking just the example of branes colliding and giving birth to one or many universes, first we must know where and what they are.
These parents who by bumping together give birth to a universe, are vast regions that fly through the 11th dimension, the highest dimension realized. The 11th dimension has the advantage of being able to contact every point in all the dimensions "beneath" it.

*If 11th dimensional branes are full of elementary hydrogen it might explain the mystery of where virtual particles come from.*

An 11th dimension has the unique ability to be in all places at all times.

I can only imagine an 11th dimension as being the most extreme example of quantum strangeness.


One would think that branes would pass through each other if they crossed vectors in 11 dimensions, but in the event that all 11 dimensions being at all places at all times match up and collide the resulting collision would be A HUGE impact within a small tiny wrapped up space within itself but simultaneously being every where and when at once,,,,,,,,,,, then Kaboom a big bang occurs creating its own space time as it goes which would appear like expansion over time. That expansion would be a growing space time which would continue as it began, in an acceleration of new space time containing matter born of energy amid a sea of energy.

This kind of speculation is based only upon certain elements of M and string theory and has no affirming math behind it, but what struck me regarding this flight of imagination is the possibility that virtual particles come from the 11th dimension.

If this is somehow impossibly true, it would give a coherence and similarity to all the universes born of colliding branes. In other words the atomic forces within new baby universes would be inherited from the parental branes of elemental hydrogen.

This would greatly enhance life giving ablities to all new universes.
In fact this mega process is one of a living system giving birth to living systems.




The fuzzy uncertain quantum properties of cosmological physics is in a way exteremly sexy. Think of the grinding and bumping hot membranes that rub and rub until BANG,,,,, and then sometimes a baby universe spews forth.

Yep pretty darn sexy if not similar to the opening credits to Monty Python's MEaning of Life.

---

20 Jan 10 - 08:21 PM (#2817201)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

U.S. filmmaker Dan Woolley was shooting a documentary about the impact of poverty in Haiti when the earthquake struck. He could have died, but he ultimately survived with the help of an iPhone first-aid app that taught him to treat his wounds.

After being crushed by a pile of rubble, Woolley used his digital SLR to illuminate his surroundings and snap photos of the wreckage in search of a safe place to dwell. He took refuge in an elevator shaft, where he followed instructions from an iPhone first-aid app to fashion a bandage and tourniquet for his leg and to stop the bleeding from his head wound, according to an MSNBC story.


Join Reddit's Haiti relief fundraising drive with Direct Relief International.
The app even warned Woolley not to fall asleep if he felt he was going into shock, so he set his cellphone's alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes. Sixty-five hours later, a French rescue team saved him.

"I just saw the walls rippling and just explosive sounds all around me," said Woolley, recounting the earthquake to MSNBC. "It all happened incredibly fast. David yelled out, 'It's an earthquake,' and we both lunged and everything turned dark."

Woolley's incident highlights a large social implication of the iPhone and other similar smartphones. A constant internet connection, coupled with a device supporting a wealth of apps, can potentially transform a person into an all-knowing, always-on being. In Woolley's case, an iPhone app turned him into an amateur medic to help him survive natural disaster.

Say what you will about the iPhone. This story is incredible.



Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/haiti-survivor-iphone/#ixzz0dCoAl4LE

---

21 Jan 10 - 03:48 PM (#2817898)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in the U.S. have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors were spreading through Africa, Europe and Asia, there were probably only around 18,500 individuals capable of breeding (and no more than 26,000). This made them an endangered species with a smaller population than today's species such as gorillas (approximately 25,000 breeding individuals) and chimpanzees (an estimated 21,000). They remained an endangered species for around one million years.



Modern humans are known to have less genetic variation than other living primates, even though our current population is many orders of magnitude greater. Researchers studying specific genetic lineages have proposed a number of explanations for this, such as recent "bottlenecks", which are events in which a significant proportion of the population is killed or prevented from reproducing. One such event was the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that erupted around 70,000 years ago, triggering a nuclear winter.

Only an estimated 15,000 humans are thought to have survived. Another explanation is that the numbers of humans and our ancestors were chronically low throughout the last two million years, sometimes with only 10,000 breeding individuals surviving....(PhysOrg)

---

25 Jan 10 - 02:01 PM (#2821218)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

January 25, 2010    Maximum height of extreme waves up dramatically in Pacific Northwest

Wave heights are increasing off the Pacific Northwest, according to a new study at Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. (Photo by Erica Harris, Oregon State University)

A major increase in maximum ocean wave heights off the Pacific Northwest in recent decades has forced scientists to re-evaluate how high a "100-year event" might be, and the new findings raise special concerns for flooding, coastal erosion and structural damage.


The new assessment concludes that the highest waves may be as much as 46 feet, up from estimates of only 33 feet that were made as recently as 1996, and a 40 percent increase. December and January are the months such waves are most likely to occur, although summer waves are also significantly higher.

In a study just published online in the journal Coastal Engineering, scientists from Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries report that the cause of these dramatically higher waves is not completely certain, but "likely due to Earth's changing climate."

Using more sophisticated techniques that account for the "non-stationarity" in the wave height record, researchers say the 100-year wave height could actually exceed 55 feet, with impacts that would dwarf those expected from sea level rise in coming decades. Increased coastal erosion, flooding, damage to ocean or coastal structures and changing shorelines are all possible, scientists say.

---

Dear gawd...can you actually imagine a wave fifty-five feet high measured from sea level to crest?   One that just keeps going up and up and up....a solid wall of water?   The very concept makes me nervous.

A

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25 Jan 10 - 04:34 PM (#2821345)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

November 11, 1959, Vol. V, No. 3 of the Village Voice.

Village Dope Raid

Last week-end Greenwich Village was treated to one of the most spectacular off-Broadway theatricals it has seen in years. The producer was the Police Department, which supplied a cast of detectives decked out as beatniks. The final act was played on Saturday night when the sleuths rang down the curtain on 13 of their erstwhile marijuana-smoking buddies.

Between Harlem and the Village, the enterprise had absorbed the energies of the entire narcotics squad for one month.

Inspector Edward F. Carey, narcotics-squad commander, who must be the envy of the whole publicity-hungry off-Broadway movement for having his production front-paged in every metropolitan paper, declared himself delighted with the results. "Carey's crusaders will strike again," he told reporters.

The men booked at Charles Street station apparently took their arrests in the prevailing spirit of good fun, and put on an impromptu bongo party. None of the Village contingent was picked up for heroin; they were all charged with possession of marijuana.

Among those arrested were Stanley Gould, 32, of First Avenue, who was held in $1,000 bail; George McKee, 30, and Michael J. Scott, 35, both musicians; and Joseph Gaffney, 22, who said he had no home and is known as "The Mad Mongolian of Bleecker Street."

The Bleecker Street "leather jackets" were generally unimpressed by the turn-of-events, but one admitted to The Voice on Monday that "the cops put on a real cool show - I didn't know it was in them."

A middle-aged artist who had been making the Bleecker Street scene since the end of the war was a little more sardonic about the whole business: "A few more raids like that and the big operators won't have a thing to worry about. Everybody will figure the dope problem's been cracked."

"There wasn't an honest-to-God racketeer in that whole Village mob of characters they picked up - not even a minor one," he told the Voice.

---

26 Jan 10 - 10:32 AM (#2821693)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Glasgow scientists predict mass of new particle
January 26, 2010

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of physicists from the University of Glasgow has predicted the mass of a new particle which would help explain one of the fundamental forces of the universe.

The scientists say the Bc* meson will have been produced fleetingly in collisions in the Tevatron accelerator in Illinois, USA and at CERN in Switzerland, but has not yet been spotted by experimentalists searching through the debris.

However, a team led by Professor Christine Davies, head of the University's Particle Physics Theory Group in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and an expert in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) theory, used supercomputers to predict the mass of the meson, which might help scientists understand the strong force that dictates the behaviour of particles at the sub-atomic level.

The strong force is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe and is what holds quarks together - the smallest units of matter found to date. It is this force that QCD theory seeks to understand.

The other fundamental forces are:

* Gravitation - the phenomenon where bodies of mass are attracted to each other,
* Electromagnetic - the attraction that exists between electrically charged particles such as electrons and protons,
* Weak - which is involved in some forms of particle decay, most notably nuclear beta decay

Prof Davies said: "Although this meson has not yet been shown to exist, our calculations have allowed us to predict not only its existence but also its mass. Two previous predictions we've made have been shown to be true so we are confident with this one. We predict the mass of the particle to be 6.330 GeV/c2 with an error of 9 MeV/c2. This is 6.75 times the mass of the proton with an error of 1% of the proton's mass. We predict that this particle is heavier than its cousin the Bc (whose mass we predicted five years ago) by 53(7) MeV/c2."

---

26 Jan 10 - 11:59 AM (#2821759)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists have created baby monkeys with a father and two mothers. Their goal was to eliminate birth defects, but increasing the number of biological parents beyond two could add a futuristic twist to an area where the law already is a mess: the question of who, in this age of artificial insemination and surrogacy, should be considered the legal parents of a baby.


Researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center were looking for ways to eliminate diseases that can be inherited through maternal DNA. They developed, as the magazine Nature reported last summer, a kind of swap in which defective DNA from the egg is removed and replaced with genetic material from another female's egg. The researchers say the procedure is also likely to work on humans.

The result would be a baby with three biological parents — or "fractional parents," as Adam Kolber, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, calls them.

He mentioned the idea over lunch at The Times, and it provided plenty of grist for debate among law junkies: Could a baby one day have 100 parents? Could anyone who contributes DNA claim visitation rights? How much DNA is enough? Can a child born outside the United States to foreigners who have DNA from an American citizen claim U.S. citizenship?

Further Discussion at The NY Times

---

26 Jan 10 - 12:20 PM (#2821773)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

US babies mysteriously shrinking

   
Birthweights in the US are falling but no one knows why, according to a study of 36.8 million infants born between 1990 and 2005.

A 52-gram drop in the weight of full-term singletons – from an average of 3.441 to 3.389 kilograms – has left Emily Oken's team at Harvard Medical School scratching their heads. It can't be accounted for by an increase in caesarean sections or induced labours, which shorten gestation. What's more, women in the US now smoke less and gain more weight during pregnancy, which should make babies heavier. Oken suggests that unmeasured factors, such as diet or exercise, could explain why babies are being born lighter.

"For your average baby, 50 grams probably makes no difference at all," she stresses. But those born substantially lighter could be at increased risk of heart disease and diabetes later in life.

(New Scientist)

---

26 Jan 10 - 06:33 PM (#2822125)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Scientist:

"Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution

26 January 2010 by Mark Buchanan
Magazine issue 2744. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
For similar stories, visit the Genetics and Evolution Topic Guides

Another kind of evolution (Image: Richard Borge)
1 more image
JUST suppose that Darwin's ideas were only a part of the story of evolution. Suppose that a process he never wrote about, and never even imagined, has been controlling the evolution of life throughout most of the Earth's history. It may sound preposterous, but this is exactly what microbiologist Carl Woese and physicist Nigel Goldenfeld, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, believe. Darwin's explanation of evolution, they argue, even in its sophisticated modern form, applies only to a recent phase of life on Earth.

At the root of this idea is overwhelming recent evidence for horizontal gene transfer - in which organisms acquire genetic material "horizontally" from other organisms around them, rather than vertically from their parents or ancestors. The donor organisms may not even be the same species. This mechanism is already known to play a huge role in the evolution of microbial genomes, but its consequences have hardly been explored. According to Woese and Goldenfeld, they are profound, and horizontal gene transfer alters the evolutionary process itself. Since micro-organisms represented most of life on Earth for most of the time that life has existed - billions of years, in fact - the most ancient and prevalent form of evolution probably wasn't Darwinian at all, Woese and Goldenfeld say.

Strong claims, but others are taking them seriously. "Their arguments make sense and their conclusion is very important," says biologist Jan Sapp of York University in Toronto, Canada. "The process of evolution just isn't what most evolutionary biologists think it is."..."

Full story here

---

27 Jan 10 - 10:10 AM (#2822560)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"If you really want something done, just do it. Do it hard, do it well. Don't pussyfoot. Don't pander. And don't say bad words in public."

Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
State of the Nation Address
July 27, 2009

---

27 Jan 10 - 10:41 AM (#2822585)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The horizontal theory of evolution has been proposed for decades and is not that controversial.

Just as biological scientists use hosts to introduce new genes or DNA into cells, there may have been RNA super virus or bacteria that did this in the distant past.

Many unrelated species share identical genes. Modern humans were found to have some feline genes that are hard to explain how they got there.

I imagine a bacterial "flu" that picked up some of Dna and went on to infect another type of animal. If the infection spread to the reproductive organs and in turn the gamete cells the next generation might have some "alien" dna from the bacteria's prior host.

In a way this is the idea behind the monster movie "Alien" and"The Thing".



Socialogicly we often classify people as being like other animals.
I'm not saying we detect actual gene similarities but it is something we do.
Actually I prefer cat people to lizard people. Walrus people are nice but not my favorite.

The human genome project may still hold some surprises regarding humans having genes of animals other than just primates and tiny fragments of feline genes.

---

27 Jan 10 - 01:03 PM (#2822703)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaboration of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, can speed up photons (particles of light) to seemingly faster-than-light speeds through a stack of materials by adding a single, strategically placed layer. This experimental demonstration confirms intriguing quantum-physics predictions that light's transit time through complex multilayered materials need not depend on thickness, as it does for simple materials such as glass, but rather on the order in which the layers are stacked. This is the first published study of this dependence with single photons.

http://www.physorg.com/news183752006.html

---

31 Jan 10 - 10:57 AM (#2826391)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123116417
SCIENCE FAIR WINNER invents life saving technolgy

In the book Last train from Hiroshima (now unavailable on Amazon due to dispute between Amazon and Apple pad readers resulting in Amazon not selling random House Books )

The bomb we dropped was a dud. A runaway neutron incident two days earlier on Tianamon Island weaked the bomb so much that only a 1/3 of the golf ball sized mass actually turned directly into energy.

---

01 Feb 10 - 06:46 PM (#2827656)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From Slashdot:

North Carolina State University researcher has discovered what appears to be the strongest metal foam yet, capable of compressing up to 80% of it's original size under load and still retain the original shape. The hope is that this amazing material could be used in cars, body armor, or even buildings to absorb the shock from earthquakes.
"Metal foam is exactly what you might think – a cellular structure made from metal with tiny pockets of space inside. What makes Rabiei's metal foam better than others is that she's been able to make the tiny pockets of space more uniform. And that apparently is what gives it the strength as well as elasticity it needs in order to compress as much as it does without deformation. Many tests are being performed in the laboratory to determine its strength, but so far Rabiei says that the spongy material has 'a much higher strength-to-density ratio than any metal foam that has ever been reported.' Calculations also predict that in car accidents, when two pieces of her composite metal foam are inserted "behind the bumper of a car traveling at 28 mph, the impact would feel the same to passengers as an impact traveling at only 5 mph."

---

02 Feb 10 - 01:30 PM (#2828295)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From Engadget:

"Spare a thought for the noble LORAN network. It helped bombers and ships across the Atlantic in WWII and, since then, has served as a reliable system for helping sailors, domestic and otherwise, to find their position. Of course, now that everybody and their kid cousin has a GPS receiver in their back pocket the need for limited, complex, radio-based geolocation is somewhat reduced. So, the US government is killing it off, shutting down most of the towers on February 8, with those that stay online over the summer going decidedly offline this fall. The savings? $190 million over five years. The cost? No backup for our GPS system, meaning we'll be totally blind when the first wave of EMPs hit -- and don't try to act like they're not comin', man."


THis is indeed the end of an era; I trained on Loran C receivers in my 20's. I doubt EMPs would leave Loran operational any more than it would Sat Nav. But the old fashioned reduction tables and a sextant might be good backups!!


A

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02 Feb 10 - 01:44 PM (#2828306)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Asian in Italy 2,000 years ago, Canadian team discovers
Canwest News ServiceFebruary 2, 2010

A team of Canadian archeologists working in Italy has unearthed a 2,000-year-old set of bones that shouldn't be there. The male skeleton with DNA from East Asia -- buried at a time when the Roman Empire had no direct contact with civilizations in the Far East -- is forcing scholars to re-examine what they thought they knew about the first century following the birth of Jesus Christ. The Asian man's grave was found in a cemetery at Vagnari, which experts have determined was the site of an imperial estate. Seventy-five skeletons from the first, second and third centuries AD have been excavated at the estate in a project led by McMaster University archeologist Tracy Prowse. A tooth recovered from the man's grave was used to trace his roots. "The work being done at the site is showing us that there was considerable economic activity going on in the area, and this activity had connections beyond Italy's borders. It is changing our understanding of the economic and political history of the region," Prowse said.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

---

02 Feb 10 - 02:50 PM (#2828354)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.


"Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view won't work at all," said team leader Dr Nick lane from University College London. "We present the alternative that life arose from gases (H2, CO2, N2, and H2S) and that the energy for first life came from harnessing geochemical gradients created by mother Earth at a special kind of deep-sea hydrothermal vent - one that is riddled with tiny interconnected compartments or pores."

The soup theory was proposed in 1929 when J.B.S Haldane published his influential essay on the origin of life in which he argued that UV radiation provided the energy to convert methane, ammonia and water into the first organic compounds in the oceans of the early earth. However critics of the soup theory point out that there is no sustained driving force to make anything react; and without an energy source, life as we know it can't exist.

"Despite bioenergetic and thermodynamic failings the 80-year-old concept of primordial soup remains central to mainstream thinking on the origin of life," said senior author, William Martin, an evolutionary biologist from the Insitute of Botany III in Düsseldorf. "But soup has no capacity for producing the energy vital for life."

In rejecting the soup theory the team turned to the Earth's chemistry to identify the energy source which could power the first primitive predecessors of living organisms: geochemical gradients across a honeycomb of microscopic natural caverns at hydrothermal vents. These catalytic cells generated lipids, proteins and nucleotides giving rise to the first true cells.

The team focused on ideas pioneered by geochemist Michael J. Russell, on alkaline deep sea vents, which produce chemical gradients very similar to those used by almost all living organisms today - a gradient of protons over a membrane. Early organisms likely exploited these gradients through a process called chemiosmosis, in which the proton gradient is used to drive synthesis of the universal energy currency, ATP, or simpler equivalents. Later on cells evolved to generate their own proton gradient by way of electron transfer from a donor to an acceptor. The team argue that the first donor was hydrogen and the first acceptor was CO2.


"Modern living cells have inherited the same size of proton gradient, and, crucially, the same orientation - positive outside and negative inside - as the inorganic vesicles from which they arose" said co-author John Allen, a biochemist at Queen Mary, University of London.

(Phys.org)

---

04 Feb 10 - 12:34 PM (#2829939)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"More like a slug-trail than footsteps, the tracks smear through the 565-million-year-old rock overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. They were left by what may have been the first mobile organism to live on Earth.

Alex Liu of the University of Oxford, UK and his colleagues discovered them etched in the rock at Mistaken Point in Newfoundland, Canada.

The site is famous among palaeontologists for harbouring the remains of the first large complex life forms to evolve, known as Ediacarans.

"This is the earliest evidence for controlled locomotion by animals in the fossil record," says Liu." New Scientist

---

04 Feb 10 - 12:35 PM (#2829941)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

There's been a lot of excitement and speculation that nature may be using quantum mechanical practices," says chemistry professor Greg Scholes, lead author of a new study published this week in Nature. "Our latest experiments show that normally functioning biological systems have the capacity to use quantum mechanics in order to optimize a process as essential to their survival as photosynthesis."

Special proteins called light-harvesting complexes are used in photosynthesis to capture sunlight and funnel its energy to nature's solar cells - other proteins known as reaction centres. Scholes and his colleagues isolated light-harvesting complexes from two different species of marine algae and studied their function under natural temperature conditions using a sophisticated laser experiment known as two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy.

"We stimulated the proteins with femtosecond laser pulses to mimic the absorption of sunlight," explains Scholes. "This enabled us to monitor the subsequent processes, including the movement of energy between special molecules bound in the protein, against a stop-clock. We were astonished to find clear evidence of long-lived quantum mechanical states involved in moving the energy. Our result suggests that the energy of absorbed light resides in two places at once - a quantum superposition state, or coherence - and such a state lies at the heart of quantum mechanical theory."

"This and other recent discoveries have captured the attention of researchers for several reasons," says Scholes. "First, it means that quantum mechanical probability laws can prevail over the classical laws of kinetics in this complex biological system, even at normal temperatures. The energy can thereby flow efficiently by—counter intuitively—traversing several alternative paths through the antenna proteins simultaneously. It also raises some other potentially fascinating questions, such as, have these organisms developed quantum-mechanical strategies for light-harvesting to gain an evolutionary advantage? It suggests that algae knew about quantum mechanics nearly two billion years before humans," says Scholes.

Phys. Org

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05 Feb 10 - 10:42 AM (#2830650)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Delhi, India (CNN) -- The last member of an ancient tribe that has inhabited an Indian island chain for around 65,000 years has died, a group that campaigns for the protection of indigenous peoples has said.

Boa Sr, who was around 85 years of age, died last week in the Andaman islands, about 750 miles off India's eastern coast, Survival International said in a statement.

The London-based group, which works to protect indigenous peoples, said she was the last member of one of ten distinct Great Andamanese tribes, the Bo.

"The Bo are thought to have lived in the Andaman islands for as long as 65,000 years, making them the descendants of one of the oldest human cultures on earth," it noted.

With her passing at a hospital, India also lost one of its most endangered languages, also called Bo, linguists say.

"She was the last speaker of (the) Bo language. It pains to see how one by one we are losing speakers of Great Andamanese and (their) language is getting extinct. (It is) A very fast erosion of (the) indigenous knowledge base, that we all are helplessly witnessing," read an obituary in Boa Sr's honor posted on the Web site of the Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese (VOGA) project.

"Boa Sr was the only speaker of Bo and had no one to converse with in that language.

Project director Anvita Abbi, a professor at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, met with Boa as recently as last year. "She was the only member who remembered the old songs," Abbi recounted in her obituary.

"Boa Sr was the only speaker of Bo and had no one to converse with in that language," Abbi told CNN. Her husband and children had already died, the linguist said.

Other than Bo, she also knew local Andaman languages, which she would use to converse, according to Abbi.

Boa Sr was believed to be the oldest of the Great Andamanese, members of ten distinct tribes. Survival International estimates there are now just 52 Great Andamanese left.

There were believed to be 5,000 of them when the British colonized the archipelago in 1858. Most of those tribal communities were subsequently killed or died of diseases, says Survival International.

---

05 Feb 10 - 10:44 AM (#2830655)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The water content of leaves, their thickness, their density and other properties can now be determined without even having to touch them. A team of researchers from the CSIC Institute of Acoustics and the Agri-Food Research and Technology Centre (CITA) of Aragón has just presented an innovative technique that enables plant leaves to be studied using ultrasound in a quick, simple and non-invasive fashion.


Tomas E. Gómez, one of the authors of the study and researcher at the CSIC Institute of Acoustics, where a technique has been developed to analyse these parts of plants without touching them, explains to SINC that "The method involves establishing a silent dialogue with plant leaves, questioning them and listening to what they say".

The research, recently published in the journal, Applied Physics Letters, demonstrates that some properties of leaves such as thickness, density or compressibility can be determined with this method.

"The voice of the leaves itself is what gives us information about their status and their properties, all in an innocuous and silent way since communication is established by ultrasound, with above-audible frequencies", the scientist indicates.

The technique involves radiating the leaves with broadband ultrasonic pulses (between 0.2 and 2 megahertz), which are emitted through the air from portable devices. In doing so, the leaves start to vibrate and an ultrasonic sensor very similar to the transmitter detects the waves. The signal is then digitalised and the researchers analyse the resonance range, which enables the characteristics of the leaves to be assessed.

The entire process is done in a way that is non-intrusive to the plant. Until now, coupling fluids have been used between the ultrasound transmitter and the material being studied, as is in the case in medicine, for example, when gels or oils are applied to perform an ultrasound.

---

05 Feb 10 - 02:07 PM (#2830826)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using the same quantum principles that enable the teleportation of information, a new proposal shows how it may be possible to teleport energy. By exploiting the quantum energy fluctuations in entangled particles, physicists may be able to inject energy in one particle, and extract it in another particle located light-years away. The proposal could lead to new developments in energy distribution, as well as a better understanding of the relationship between quantum information and quantum energy.

Japanese physicist Masahiro Hotta of Tohoku University has explained the energy teleportation scheme in a recent study posted at arxiv.org, called "Energy-Entanglement Relation for Quantum Energy Teleportation."

Previously, physicists have demonstrated how to teleport the quantum states of several different entities, including photons, atoms, and ions. Researchers predict that the principles of teleportation could also extend to molecules, viruses, and other more complex objects. Over the past year, physicists have also been exploring quantum energy teleportation, and Hotta's latest paper builds on these studies.

In quantum energy teleportation, a physicist first makes a measurement on each of two entangled particles. The measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the two-particle system, which is possible because there are always quantum fluctuations in the energy of any particle. This energy can then be immediately extracted at the second particle by making a second carefully chosen measurement on that particle. Throughout the process, the energy of the overall system remains the same.

As in previous examples of teleportation, the actual particles aren't teleported since they're basically identical at the quantum level. Rather, the information they carry is the important part. For this reason, physicists can simply send the information within a particle and not the particle itself. A receiving particle accepts the information from a sending particle, taking on the identity of the sending particle.

Hotta's paper marks the first example of the energy-entanglement relation for the smallest kind of quantum energy teleportation model. As he explains, the findings could enable scientists to explore the foundations of physics: specifically, the relationship between quantum information and quantum energy.

---

06 Feb 10 - 12:49 PM (#2831471)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

GOOD news surfers: waves in the north-east Pacific are getting taller, and the height of the most extreme "100-year" waves is increasing fastest.

Previous data had shown wave height to be increasing in the north-east Pacific and north Atlantic since the late 1980s. Now measurements from a deep-water buoy moored off the Oregon coast since the mid-1970s indicate that the "100-year" waves - the monster waves with a 1 per cent chance of occurring in any given year - could be 40 per cent larger than previous estimates, at 14 metres high.

Peter Ruggiero of Oregon State University, who carried out the analysis, found that average wave heights increased at the rate of 1.5 centimetres per year, while each year's biggest wave increased by an average of 10 centimetres per year. He says climate change is a likely culprit, but more measurements are needed to confirm this.

New Scientist

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08 Feb 10 - 01:25 PM (#2833070)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

New Scientist reports:

"DRIVING through the countryside south of Hanover, it would be easy to miss the GEO600 experiment. From the outside, it doesn't look much: in the corner of a field stands an assortment of boxy temporary buildings, from which two long trenches emerge, at a right angle to each other, covered with corrugated iron. Underneath the metal sheets, however, lies a detector that stretches for 600 metres.

For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves - ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

The "holographic principle" challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.

Susskind and 't Hooft's remarkable idea was motivated by ground-breaking work on black holes by Jacob Bekenstein of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge. In the mid-1970s, Hawking showed that black holes are in fact not entirely "black" but instead slowly emit radiation, which causes them to evaporate and eventually disappear. This poses a puzzle, because Hawking radiation does not convey any information about the interior of a black hole. When the black hole has gone, all the information about the star that collapsed to form the black hole has vanished, which contradicts the widely affirmed principle that information cannot be destroyed. This is known as the black hole information paradox."

---

08 Feb 10 - 08:54 PM (#2833551)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The nicest explanation ever as to why you should wear your seat belt.

---

09 Feb 10 - 02:55 AM (#2833669)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

A Holographic universe has been proposed for a long time.
How else could the entanglement paradox occur?
Entangled pairs of particles that can share information instantly (not at the speed of light no matter what the distaance) is trying to tell us something. Like split beam holography, entangled particles is like a cosmic hologram. At least it seems that way to me, and I have a verified IQ of 101.

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09 Feb 10 - 12:39 PM (#2834196)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles "given liquid can be heard when the crates are moved."

New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust team leader Al Fastier said the team thought there were two crates and were amazed to find five.

Current distillery owner, drinks group Whyte & Mackay, launched the bid to recover the Scotch whisky for samples to test and decide whether to relaunch the defunct spirit made by distiller McKinlay and Co.

Fastier said restoration workers found the crates under the hut's floorboards in 2006, but they were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged.

The New Zealanders agreed to drill the ice to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed to by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.

"The unexpected find of the brandy crates, one labeled Chas. Mackinlay & Co and the other labeled The Hunter Valley Distillery Limited Allandale (Australia) are a real bonus," said Fastier.

Ice has cracked some of the crates and formed inside them. Fastier said in a statement that would make extracting the contents delicate, but the trust would decide how to do so in coming weeks.

Richard Paterson, master blender at Whyte and Mackay, whose company supplied the Mackinlay's whisky for Shackleton, described the find as "a gift from the heavens for whisky lovers."

"If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated. Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history," he said in a statement.

Shackleton's expedition ran short of supplies on its long ski trek to the South Pole from the northern Antarctic coast in 1907-1909 and turned back about 100 miles (160 kilometers) short of its goal.

The expedition sailed away in 1909 as winter ice formed, leaving behind supplies, including the whisky and brandy.

---

09 Feb 10 - 04:58 PM (#2834472)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Can the power of thought stop you ageing?

By Abigail Williams

In 1979 psychologist Ellen Langer carried out an experiment to find if changing thought patterns could slow ageing. But the full story of the extraordinary experiment has been hidden until now.

How much control do you have over how you will age?

Many people would laugh at the idea that people could influence the state of their health in old age by positive thinking. A way of mitigating ageing is a holy grail for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, but an experiment by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer three decades ago could hold significant clues.

CONTINUED

---

09 Feb 10 - 08:00 PM (#2834650)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Eventually, the day will come when life on Earth ends. Whether thatÕs tomorrow or five billion years from now, whether by nuclear war, climate change, or the Sun burning up its fuel, the last living cell on Earth will one day wither and die. But that doesnÕt mean that all is lost. What if we had the chance to sow the seeds of terrestrial life throughout the universe, to settle young planets within developing solar systems many light-years away, and thus give our long evolutionary line the chance to continue indefinitely?

According to Michael Mautner, Research Professor of Chemistry at Virginia Commonwealth University, seeding the universe with life is not just an option, itÕs our moral obligation. As members of this planetÕs menagerie, and a consequence of nearly 4 billion years of evolution, humans have a purpose to propagate life. After all, whatever else life is, it necessarily possesses an incessant drive for self-perpetuation. And the idea isnÕt just fantasy: Mautner says that Òdirected panspermiaÓ missions can be accomplished with present technology.

ÒWe have a moral obligation to plan for the propagation of life, and even the transfer of human life to other solar systems which can be transformed via microbial activity, thereby preparing these worlds to develop and sustain complex life,Ó Mautner explained to PhysOrg.com. ÒSecuring that future for life can give our human existence a cosmic purpose.Ó

As Mautner explains in his study published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Cosmology, the strategy is to deposit an array of primitive organisms on potentially fertile planets and protoplanets throughout the universe. Like the earliest life on Earth, organisms such as cyanobacteria could seed other planets, digest toxic gases (such as ammonia and carbon dioxide on early Earth) and release products such as oxygen which promote the evolution of more complex species. To increase their chances of success, the microbial payloads should contain a variety of organisms with various environmental tolerances, and hardy multicellular organisms such as rotifer eggs to jumpstart higher evolution. These organisms may be captured into asteroids and comets in the newly forming solar systems and transported from there by impacts to planets as their host environments develop

Mautner has identified potential breeding grounds, which include extrasolar planets, accretion disks surrounding young stars that hold the gas and dust of future planets, and - at an even earlier stage - interstellar clouds that hold the materials to create stars. He explains that the Kepler mission may identify hundreds of biocompatible extrasolar planets, and astronomers are already aware of several accretion disks and interstellar clouds that could serve as targets. These potential habitats range in distance from a few light-years to 500 or more light-years away.


To transport the microorganisms, Mautner proposes using sail-ships. These ships offer a low-cost transportation method with solar sails, which can achieve high velocities using the radiation pressure from light. The microorganisms could be bundled in tiny capsules, each containing about 100,000 microorganisms and weighing 0.1 micrograms. Mautner predicts that the most challenging part of the process would be the precise aiming required in order for a mission to arrive at its target destination after hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years of travel.

Accounting for the difficulties of each of the steps involved, Mautner has calculated how many microbial capsules would be needed to ensure a reasonable probability of success. He concludes that a few hundred tons of microbial biomass Òcan seed dozens of new solar systems in an interstellar cloud with life for eons.Ó With launch costs of $10,000/kg, this amount of biomass would cost about $1 billion to launch. If we can aim precisely at planets in nearby solar systems, the mission would require significantly fewer capsules, smaller biomass, and lower costs. Mautner predicts that, while the technology is currently available, such an initiative will be easier to implement as space infrastructure develops and launch costs decrease.

As Mautner notes, several scientists have previously proposed ways to seed planets (notably, Venus and Mars) in our own solar system with microorganisms in order to alter the atmosphere and possibly make them habitable for humans. Also, some theories suggest that, on Earth, life-supporting nutrients and materials - or even life itself - may have come from somewhere else in the universe, arriving here on meteors, asteroids, and comets. In a sense, MautnerÕs proposal would simply be helping lifeÕs planet-hopping journey continue.

---

10 Feb 10 - 12:06 PM (#2835064)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Carbon-22 is now the heaviest observed Borromean nucleus. Borromean nuclei are named after the rings from the 15th century crest of the Borromeo family from Northern Italy. The rings are connected in such a way that the cutting of one ring results in the separation of all three.

An exotic form of carbon has been found to have an extra large nucleus, dwarfing even the nuclei of much heavier elements like copper and zinc, in experiments performed in a particle accelerator in Japan. The discovery is reported in the current issue of Physical Review Letters and highlighted with a Viewpoint by Kirby Kemper and Paul Cottle of Florida State University in the February 8 issue of Physics.

Carbon-22, which has a nucleus comprised of 16 neutrons and 6 protons, is the heaviest atom yet discovered to exhibit a "halo nucleus." In such atoms, some of the particles that normally reside inside the nucleus move into orbits outside the nucleus, forming a halo of subatomic particles.

Because atoms like carbon-22 are packed with an excessive number of neutrons, they're unstable and rapidly break apart to form lighter atoms, but they are more stable than scientists had previously expected. The extra stability is a surprise because the three particles-- two neutrons and a nucleus-- that form a halo nucleus interact in a way that is difficult for physicists to model due to the complicated mathematics necessary to describe so-called "three body" problems.

---

11 Feb 10 - 06:14 PM (#2836616)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

What's on your Mind?
Remarkably, scientists can predict with near-perfect accuracy the last thing you saw just by analyzing your brain activity. The technique is called neural decoding. To do it, scientists must first scan your brain while you look at thousands of pictures. A computer then analyzes how your brain responds to each image, matching brain activity to various details like shape and color. Over time, the computer establishes a sort of master decoding key that it can later use to identify and reconstruct almost any object you see without the need to analyze the image beforehand.

http://www.popsci.com/node/42740/?cmpid=enews021110

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12 Feb 10 - 06:58 PM (#2837642)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The U.S. shot down a ballistic missile with a high-powered airborne laser weapon, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency announced late last night. It is "the first successful test of a futuristic directed energy weapon," Reuters reported. The system is being developed by a team composed of Boeing Co., the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin and consists of a high-powered laser mounted to a modified 747 jumbo jet. "The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile," the agency said, according to Reuters. The test took place at Point Mugu's Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range in central California. With the laser-based system, the U.S. will be able to destroy all classes of missiles at the speed of light. "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies," the agency said.

---

15 Feb 10 - 12:18 PM (#2840006)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...He was born the son of a policeman from Kreuznach in Germany, but joined the nobility in 1980, at the age of 37, when Princess Marie-Auguste von Anhalt, the ex-wife of Prince Joachim of Prussia, the Kaiser's son, adopted him, following the death of her own son (a friend of Frederic's) on the polo circuit.

In 1984, on holiday in Los Angeles, he gatecrashed a celebrity party and bumped into Hungarian-born Gabor. Sparks flew. Two years later, he became her ninth husband (he also had a track record: she was his seventh wife). They have lived together, as members of Hollywood's affluent old guard, ever since.

As marriages go, it has had ups and downs. A few years back, Prince Frederic was found by LA police in his Rolls-Royce, completely naked. He claimed to have been robbed at gunpoint by three attractive women, who had stolen his clothes and wallet and left him handcuffed to the steering wheel. Police never established the exact circumstances in which Frederic had picked up the three mysterious strangers. No arrests were ever made. But not long after the incident he was appointed an official celebrity spokesman for Viagra, a supply of which was found in the car.

In 2007, after the death of the wealthy former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith, Frederic claimed he had pursued a decade-long affair with her. He could even be the father of the daughter who was in line to inherit her fortune, he said. But that was disproved by a DNA test.

Asked about these and other scandals, together with his reputation as one of old Hollywood's most legendary lotharios, Frederic tells me that his lifelong marital infidelity has always been condoned by his wife, whom he describes, with an admirable degree of understatement, as "not the jealous type."..."


From an article on Prince Frederick who has recently opened his campaign to be elected Governor of California on a platform, inter alia, to legalize prostitution, Cuban cigars, and marijuana to boost tax revenues.

---

15 Feb 10 - 12:41 PM (#2840022)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Joe the Plumber goes off on McCain, says he 'screwed up my life'
By Eric Zimmermann - 02/14/10 11:12 AM ET

Joe the Plumber is no longer a fan of either Sarah Palin or John McCain, it seems.

Joe, also known as Sam Wurzelbacher, told an audience in Pennsylvania this week that McCain "is no public servant."

"McCain was trying to use me," Wurzelbacher said, according to public radio correspondent Scott Detrow. "I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy."

"I don't owe him s—," Wurzelbacher continued. "He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it."

In fact, Wurzelbacher's dislike for McCain is so strong that he no longer supports Sarah Palin simply because Palin will campaign for McCain's re-election.

As for Obama: "I think his ideology is un-American, but he's one of the more honest politicians. At least he told us what he wanted to do."

The Hill

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15 Feb 10 - 12:55 PM (#2840041)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Child elopers' Africa plan foiled


Two German children - aged five and six - have been stopped by police from eloping to Africa to tie the knot in the sun, reports say.

The budding lovebirds, identified as Mika and Anna-Lena, packed bathing costumes, sunglasses and a lilo and headed for the airport.

They even had the presence of mind to invite along an official witness - Anna-Lena's seven-year-old sister.

The three got as far as Hanover railway station before police intervened.

The young couple were "very much in love" and had decided to get married in Africa "where it is warm", police spokesman Holger Jureczko told the AFP news agency.

The idea for the getaway wedding was born as the children's families celebrated New Year's eve together and Mika regaled the two girls with stories of a recent holiday to Italy.
        
The following morning, as their parents slept, the intrepid trio walked 1km (0.6 miles) to the local tram station at Langenhagen, where they hopped aboard a tram for Hanover central station.

But the group aroused the suspicion of a guard as they waited for a train to the airport, and police were called in.

Officers persuaded the children they would not get far without tickets and money, but consoled them with a free tour of the police station, where they were shortly picked up by relieved parents.

Although any marriage plans have been put on hold for now, police did not altogether rule out the possibility of an African wedding.

"They can still put their plan into action at a later date," AFP quoted the spokesman as saying.

BBC News

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16 Feb 10 - 02:35 PM (#2841128)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Bilingual babies: The roots of bilingualism in newborns
February 16, 2010

It may not be obvious, but hearing two languages regularly during pregnancy puts infants on the road to bilingualism by birth. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, infants born to bilingual mothers (who spoke both languages regularly during pregnancy) exhibit different language preferences than infants born to mothers speaking only one language.

Psychological scientists Krista Byers-Heinlein and Janet F. Werker from the University of British Columbia along with Tracey Burns of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in France wanted to investigate language preference and discrimination in newborns. Two groups of newborns were tested in these experiments: English monolinguals (whose mothers spoke only English during pregnancy) and Tagalog-English bilinguals (whose mothers spoke both Tagalog, a language spoken in the Philippines, and English regularly during pregnancy). The researchers employed a method known as "high-amplitude sucking-preference procedure" to study the infants' language preferences. This method capitalizes on the newborns' sucking reflex — increased sucking indicates interest in a stimulus. In the first experiment, infants heard 10 minutes of speech, with every minute alternating between English and Tagalog.

Results showed that English monolingual infants were more interested in English than Tagalog — they exhibited increased sucking behavior when they heard English than when they heard Tagalog being spoken. However, bilingual infants had an equal preference for both English and Tagalog. These results suggest that prenatal bilingual exposure may affect infants' language preferences, preparing bilingual infants to listen to and learn about both of their native languages.

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17 Feb 10 - 10:37 AM (#2841935)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

February 17, 2010 by Jean-Louis Santini

Scientists from around the world will gather this week in California for an annual conference to discuss everything from the secret pathologies of dolphins to a count of the creatures in the seas and the 50th birthday of the laser.

Up to 8,000 participants from 50 countries are expected to attend 176th annual conference of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which begins Thursday in San Diego and this year centers around the theme "bridging science and society."

The aim is to get "every scientist and engineer to make their work both beneficial and understandable, and on society to discover again the excitement and hope that research and its findings offer," Nobel chemistry laureate Peter Agre, who is president of the AAAS, said in a statement.

At the conference, participants -- be they scientist or engineer, student or mere enthusiast -- will have a wide choice of events to attend, with symposia covering a bevy of scientific branches, from astronomy to zoology.

Doubters and defenders of climate change could lock horns at discussions about global warming, including the release of a study on geo-engineering and whether we can cool down the planet that we have heated up.

The lessons on health and well-being that dolphins can give to humans will be the topic of another symposium, while yet another will offer a sneak peek at the final report of the 10-year census of marine life, which has discovered "unusual creatures" in the ocean, including a tubeworm that drills for oil and a crab with hairy legs.

Some of the symposia will cover eclectic subjects -- such as how dust in the atmosphere could counteract climate change -- while others touch on topics that are hot conversation, such as what role science and technology will play as the United States and Russia downsize their nuclear arsenals.

Medicine will be center-stage at many of the symposia, including the one on chemicals that affect the risk of contracting breast cancer or another on the staggering projected benefits of testing everyone for HIV/AIDS and immediately treating those found to be infected with the virus.

---

17 Feb 10 - 10:56 AM (#2841949)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Tut's ills won't kill fascination, historians say

By LINDSEY TANNER (AP) – 2 hours ago

CHICAGO — It turns out Egypt's beloved boy-king wasn't so golden after all — or much of a wild and crazy guy, for that matter.

But will research showing King Tut was actually a hobbled, weak teen with a cleft palate and club foot kill enthusiasm for a mummy that has fascinated the world for nearly a century?

Not likely, historians say, even though the revelations hardly fit the popular culture depiction of a robust, exotically handsome young pharaoh, or a dancing "how'd-you-get-so-funky" phenom a la Steve Martin. The comedian parodied Tut on "Saturday Night Live" during a blockbuster King Tut traveling exhibit in the late 1970s, which packed U.S. museums and spawned a mini-industry in Tut tchotchkes.

"This is one sick kid," Egyptologist Emily Teeter, assistant curator at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, said after learning of the research. It shows that, based on DNA tests and CT scans, Tut had a genetic bone disease and malaria, which combined with a severe broken leg could have been what killed him about 3,300 years ago at age 19.

The results appear in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. They further dispel the more romantic and popular theories about what did him in, like being murdered by a sneaky palace foe.

The findings stem from the most rigorous research yet on a mummy that has fascinated the world ever since his largely intact, treasure-filled tomb was found nearly 90 years ago.

But historians say the new evidence will likely only intensify public interest in King Tutankhamun because it brings the boy ruler down to Earth.

"It makes him all the more human and all the more fascinating," said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan.

The more realistic picture, fleshed out by testing Tut's mummy and those of his family, has its own mystique. Beneath the golden splendor in which they lived, ancient Egypt's royals were as vulnerable as the lowliest peasant: Three other mummies besides Tut's showed repeated malaria infections.

Moreover, their tradition of incestuous marriages only worsened their maladies.

The new research led by Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, bolstered previous theories that Tut's father was likely the Pharaoh Akhenaten. It also brought a new discovery: Tut's mother was Akhenaten's sister.

That would explain some of Tut's ailments, including the bone disease that runs in families and is more likely to be passed down if two first-degree relatives marry and have children.

In ancient Egypt, it wasn't really considered incest. Pharaohs were thought of as deities, so it makes sense that the only prospective mates who'd pass muster would be other deities, Markel said.

Now experts are trying to identify the mummy that DNA pinpointed as Tut's mother, as well as another confirmed as his wife, Hawass told reporters in Cairo on Wednesday. The DNA project is also seeking a more illustrious figure, Queen Nefertiti, the wife of Akhenaten who was fabled for her beauty but whose mummy has never been identified.

"It will make more mystery about him, it will make more magic about him," Hawass said of the new discoveries.

Tut has long been big business. The 1970s Tut exhibit drew millions of visitors to U.S. museums, and a popular revival including artifacts from his tomb and others' has been traveling around the United States for the past several years and is currently at San Francisco's DeYoung Museum.

Egypt's economy depends a great deal on tourism, which brings in around $10 billion a year in revenues. The King Tut exhibit at Cairo's Egyptian Museum is one of the crown jewels of the country's ancient past and features a stunning array of treasures including Tut's most iconic relic — the golden funeral mask.

Another tourist destination is Tut's tomb tucked in the Valley of the Kings amid Luxor's desert hills. In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered it and the trove of fabulous gold and precious stones inside, propelling the once-forgotten pharaoh into global stardom. Hundreds of tourists come daily to the tomb to see Tut's mummy, which has been on display there since 2007.

Though historically Tut was a minor king, the grander image "is embedded in our psyche" and the new revelations won't change that, said James Phillips, a curator at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

"Reality is reality, but it's not going to change his place in the folk heroism of popular culture," Phillips said. "The way he was found, what was found in his grave — even though he was a minor king, it has excited the imagination of people since 1922."

Even if the research dents the myth, it won't change the most tangible part of Tut's image — all the intact relics that were found in his tomb.

"He's far more famous for what he owned and what he wore than what he actually did," Markel said.

Associated Press Writers Paul Schemm and Jason Keyser in Cairo contributed to this report.

---

17 Feb 10 - 11:50 AM (#2842016)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Star Trek fans, prepare to be disappointed. Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew would die within a second of the USS Enterprise approaching the speed of light.

The problem lies with Einstein's special theory of relativity. It transforms the thin wisp of hydrogen gas that permeates interstellar space into an intense radiation beam that would kill humans within seconds and destroy the spacecraft's electronic instruments.

Interstellar space is an empty place. For every cubic centimetre, there are fewer than two hydrogen atoms, on average, compared with 30 billion billion atoms of air here on Earth. But according to William Edelstein of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, that sparse interstellar gas should worry the crew of a spaceship travelling close to the speed of light even more than the Borg decloaking off the starboard bow.

Special relativity describes how space and time are distorted for observers travelling at different speeds. For the crew of a spacecraft ramping up to light speed, interstellar space would appear highly compressed, thereby increasing the number of hydrogen atoms hitting the craft.
Death ray

Worse is that the atoms' kinetic energy also increases. For a crew to make the 50,000-light-year journey to the centre of the Milky Way within 10 years, they would have to travel at 99.999998 per cent the speed of light. At these speeds, hydrogen atoms would seem to reach a staggering 7 teraelectron volts – the same energy that protons will eventually reach in the Large Hadron Collider when it runs at full throttle. "For the crew, it would be like standing in front of the LHC beam," says Edelstein.

The spacecraft's hull would provide little protection. Edelstein calculates that a 10-centimetre-thick layer of aluminium would absorb less than 1 per cent of the energy. Because hydrogen atoms have a proton for a nucleus, this leaves the crew exposed to dangerous ionising radiation that breaks chemical bonds and damages DNA. "Hydrogen atoms are unavoidable space mines," says Edelstein.

The fatal dose of radiation for a human is 6 sieverts. Edelstein's calculations show that the crew would receive a radiation dose of more than 10,000 sieverts within a second. Intense radiation would also weaken the structure of the spacecraft and damage its electronic instruments.

Edelstein speculates this might be one reason why extraterrestrial civilisations haven't paid us a visit. Even if ET has mastered building a rocket that can travel at the speed of light, he may be lying dead inside a weakened craft whose navigation systems have short-circuited." Phys. ORg.

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17 Feb 10 - 02:43 PM (#2842195)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

SYDNEY: Previously unknown organic molecules have been discovered in a 100 kg meteorite that hit Australia in 1969, suggesting that our early Solar System contained a soup of highly complex organic chemistry long before life appeared.

In a recent study scientists analysed the Murchison meteorite, which landed in Murchison near Melbourne, Australia, in 1969.

The meteor is thought to have originated in the early days of our Solar System, perhaps even before the Sun formed around four and a half billion years ago.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3313/extraterrestrial-organic-molecules-more-complex-earth

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18 Feb 10 - 01:11 PM (#2843275)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Genetically, (Archbishop) Tutu serves as a poster child for southern African genetics, with a lineage primarily from the Sotho-Tswana and Nguni language groups—and a surprise ancestor discovered from the sequencing results. "With a single person, we pretty much covered the largest possible breadth of diversity," Schuster says. "At the same time, there was this amazing outcome in which we could also show Archbishop Tutu coming from the Bushmen, which was something he didn't know and was pleased to learn."

The original sequencing of the human genome a decade ago is now being widely extended. "Overall, I think the paper is a good example of how genome sequencing is rapidly becoming a ubiquitous tool," comments Jonathan Pritchard, a geneticst from the University of Chicago, who cited a study reported last week about sequencing the genome of a human who lived 4,000 years ago on the western coast of Greenland.

Sci. Am.

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18 Feb 10 - 01:21 PM (#2843285)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Five billion year prediction

"Our planet's fate is inexorably tied to that of our Sun, which has been shining for five billion years, with at least five billion to go. The Sun shines by burning hydrogen in its core, fusing it into helium. As the Sun's nuclear fuel supply starts to run out, it will begin some peculiar contortions.

Gravity will at first cause it to shrink in size – but this will make the Sun's core hotter, which will actually cause its outer layers to expand significantly. At this stage, five to seven billion years from now, the Sun will loom in our sky as a blazing 'red giant'.

A few hundred million years later – a short period in terms of the Sun's lifetime – it will undergo yet another phase of heating and expansion, shedding much of the material in its outer layers, and finally collapsing into a so-called 'white dwarf'. By this time, its mass will still be about three-quarters of its current value, but compressed into a sphere the size of the Earth.

Click here to read the end of the universe timeline that goes with this feature.

The Sun's initial swelling during the onset of the red giant phase will destroy our blue planet. The additional sunlight reaching our atmosphere will cause global warming beyond Al Gore's worst nightmares. The oceans will evaporate into space, leaving only deserts; life as we know it will not be able to sustain itself. As astronomer Fred Adams of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, put it: "Within a few billion years, our world – nowgreen and flowering with life – will closely resemble present-day Venus, with a hellish atmosphere fuelled by a runaway greenhouse effect."

According to recent calculations by Klaus-Peter Schröder, at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico, the Sun's diameter will eventually swell from its current 1.4 million km to as much as 358 million km. The inner planets, Mercury and Venus, will be swallowed outright by the raging Sun.

Given that the diameter of the Earth's orbit is only about 300 million km, our own prospects don't seem much better. But it's not quite that simple: because of the Sun's weakening gravitational attraction, the Earth's orbit will have expanded to about 370 million km. So we won't be engulfed by the swelling Sun – not yet.

What is left of our planet, however, will be scorched beyond recognition, baked by a crimson Sun that takes up half the sky. At its brightest, the Sun will shine with an intensity more than 4,000 times greater than today. As Adams put it in a recent paper: "Current estimates indicate that our biosphere will be essentially sterilised in about 3.5 billion years, so this future time marks the end of life on Earth."" (Cosmos)

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18 Feb 10 - 01:30 PM (#2843293)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The common periwinkle, winkle, or Littorina littorea, is a small edible species marine gastropod with gills and an operculum in the family Littorinidae, the winkles.

The shells range from 10 to 12 mm at maturity, with 30 mm being the upper limit.[1]

Common periwinkles are native to the northeastern Atlantic Ocean along the coasts of northern Spain, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia and Russia.

Common periwinkles have been introduced to the Atlantic coast of North America, possibly by rock ballast in the mid-1800s.[2]

The first recorded case was in 1840 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[2] It is now a predominant mollusc from New Jersey northward. It is also found on the western coast from California to Washington. Its presence has caused extensive damage due to interspecific competition with native gastropods.

The common periwinkle is mainly found on rocky shores in the higher and middle intertidal zone. It sometimes lives in small tide pools ranging from 1 to 2 m in characteristic size. It is also found in muddy habitats such as estuaries. They are situated on the splash zone, the extreme high tide mark. It can also reach depths of 60 m.

Females lay 10,000 to 100,000 eggs contained in a corneous capsule from which larvae escape and settle to the bottom. It can breed year round depending on climate. It reaches maturity at 10 mm. It lives 5 to 10 years.

The common periwinkle is primarily an algae grazer, but will feed on small invertebrates such as barnacle larvae. They use their radula to scrape algae from rocks, and, in the salt marsh community, pick up algae from the cord grass, or from the biofilm that covers the surface of mud in estuaries or bays.

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19 Feb 10 - 11:35 AM (#2844214)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PARIS: Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that gravity affects the flow of time, just got 10,000 times more accurate.

How quickly time passes depends on where you are, a lesson learnt the hard way by that first-time reviewer of Wagner who observed: "After two hours, I looked at my watch and found that 20 minutes had gone by."

For physicists rather than opera-lovers, relativity was famously expressed in 1915 by Albert Einstein who suggested, among other things, that the flow of time was affected by the force of gravity.

Flow of time gets tested

Clocks will run faster the farther they are from a large gravitational source and run slower they closer they are to it, goes the theory.

Various experiments have been carried out to explore Einstein's insight.

They include a 1976 exploit in which an atomic clock was taken on a 115-minute rocket ride to a point some 10,000 km above Earth, and was found to measure more time compared to a counterpart on Earth.

Now 10,000 times more accurate

Now physicists in the United States have gone a step further.
They have proved Einstein's theory with an accuracy 10,000 times greater than before, according to a paper published in the British journal Nature.

A team that included Nobel winner Steven Chu - now U.S. energy secretary - used a trap that involved three lasers that zapped waves of caesium atoms, making them move up and down like a fountain.

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22 Feb 10 - 11:29 AM (#2846689)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Two years ago, several research vessels shipped out to the North and the South poles to assemble a census of creatures living under the ice. One of the most surprising results was a discovery that 235 identical species lived on opposite sides of the world but were undocumented anywhere else. It's easy to understand how massive humpbacks can swim from Arctic to Antarctic waters, but most of the miniature worms, snails and crustaceans on the researchers' list are no bigger than grains of rice. How could tiny creatures adapted for the frigid waters travel 9,500 kilometers through warmer climes to reach the opposite pole?

Under the microscope, these invertebrates sometimes look like shredded plastic bags or shrimp with bullhorns. It's unclear how they could cross a swimming pool, let alone the globe. So, their "bipolarity" poses a 160-year mystery of the ocean—one that has only grown with time. "If bipolar species are as common as our initial list suggests, it really means we don't appreciate the mechanisms that are important for connectivity in the ocean as well as we thought," says Russ Hopcroft, project leader of the Arctic portion of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership's Census of Marine Life.

The discovery of bipolar species dates back to the 1840s expeditions of Victorian explorer James Clark Ross and his two heavy-duty battle cruisers, the HMS Erebus and Terror. During missions to map the North and South poles, he collected samples of marine flora and fauna that looked remarkably similar. He theorized that somehow these tiny species had been able to survive not only the icy waters that would eventually sink his ships, but also a journey halfway around the planet.

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22 Feb 10 - 07:23 PM (#2847155)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- The idea of dwarf dinosaurs on Haţeg Island, Romania, was proposed 100 years ago by the colourful Baron Franz Nopcsa, whose family owned estates in the area. He realized that many of the Haţeg dinosaurs had close relatives in older rocks in England, Germany, and North America, but the Romanian specimens were half the size.


In new work by Professor Mike Benton at the University of Bristol, and six other authors from Romania, Germany, and the United States, NopcsaÕs hypothesis is tested for the first time. They found that the Haţeg Island dinosaurs were indeed dwarfs.

One much debated theme among evolutionary ecologists is whether there is an Ôisland ruleÕ, the observation that large animals isolated on islands tend to become smaller. There is no doubt that the Haţeg dinosaurs were small, but were they just juveniles?
Three species of the Haţeg dinosaurs - the plant-eating sauropod Magyarosaurus and the plant-eating ornithopods Telmatosaurus and Zalmoxes - are half the length of their nearest relatives elsewhere.

The team examined these three dinosaurs, each represented by many specimens, but they found no evidence of any large bones such as they would expect to find in their normal-sized relatives. More importantly, a close study of the bones confirmed that the dinosaurs had reached adulthood.

As dinosaurs matured, just like humans, their bones lost their growing centres and fused. In addition, detailed studies by Martin Sander in Bonn and his students, show that the bone histology (the microscopic structure) is adult. Traces of earlier growth can be tracked in the core of the bone, and the outer surfaces are solid and show evidence of ÔremodelingÕ only seen in adults.

Professor Benton said: "The idea of Ôisland dwarfingÕ is well established for more recent cases. For example, there were dwarf elephants on many of the Mediterranean islands during the past tens of thousands of years. These well-studied examples suggest dwarfing can happen quite quickly.

The general idea is that larger animals that find themselves isolated on an island either become extinct because there isnÕt enough space for a reasonably-sized population to survive, or they adapt. One way to adapt is to become smaller, generation by generation."

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22 Feb 10 - 07:39 PM (#2847168)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Whether life exists elsewhere in our universe is a longstanding mystery. But for some scientists, there?s another interesting question: could there be life in a universe significantly different from our own?


A definitive answer is impossible, since we have no way of directly studying other universes. But cosmologists speculate that a multitude of other universes exist, each with its own laws of physics. Recently physicists at MIT have shown that in theory, alternate universes could be quite congenial to life, even if their physical laws are very different from our own.

In work recently featured in a cover story in Scientific American, MIT physics professor Robert Jaffe, former MIT postdoc, Alejandro Jenkins, and recent MIT graduate Itamar Kimchi showed that universes quite different from ours still have elements similar to carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and could therefore evolve life forms quite similar to us. Even when the masses of the elementary particles are dramatically altered, life may find a way.

ÒYou could change them by significant amounts without eliminating the possibility of organic chemistry in the universe,Ó says Jenkins.

Pocket universes

Modern cosmology theory holds that our universe may be just one in a vast collection of universes known as the multiverse. MIT physicist Alan Guth has suggested that new universes (known as Òpocket universesÓ) are constantly being created, but they cannot be seen from our universe.

In this view, Ònature gets a lot of tries Ñ the universe is an experiment thatÕs repeated over and over again, each time with slightly different physical laws, or even vastly different physical laws,Ó says Jaffe.

Some of these universes would collapse instants after forming; in others, the forces between particles would be so weak they could not give rise to atoms or molecules. However, if conditions were suitable, matter would coalesce into galaxies and planets, and if the right elements were present in those worlds, intelligent life could evolve.... (Phys.org)

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22 Feb 10 - 07:54 PM (#2847183)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

CNN Breaking NEWS : Chest Pains are resting comfortably after experiencing former Vice President Cheney.

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23 Feb 10 - 11:58 AM (#2847749)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A remarkably important event has just occurred in the world of psychology: A leading, peer-reviewed journal has published the strongest evidence yet that psychodynamic psychotherapy -- "talk therapy" -- works. In fact, it not only works, it keeps working long after the sessions stop.

Full disclosure: We report this not as disinterested observers, but as psychotherapists and researchers on the process and efficacy of therapy. Our book, "Handbook of Evidence-Based Psychodynamic Psychotherapy," summarized the body of research through last year and another will follow late this year. Still, we can state as fact: The movement to establish an evidence base for psychodynamic therapy has taken a giant new step forward.

This new academic paper reports positive findings about the form of therapy that began with Sigmund Freud and has historically been utilized more than any other psychotherapy treatment. What does modern psychodynamic psychotherapy look like? Its distinctive features include several basic building blocks: A focus on emotion and relationships; identification of recurring themes and patterns; discussion of past experiences; a focus on the therapy relationship; exploration of attempts to avoid distressing thoughts and feelings; and exploration of fantasy life.

Overall, the paper found, psychodynamic psychotherapy demonstrates efficacy at least equivalent to other psychotherapy treatments commonly labeled as "empirically supported" and "evidence based." And in fact, it notes, psychodynamic therapy's "active ingredients" are shared by many other forms of therapy as well.

Full article here in Scientific AMerican

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23 Feb 10 - 04:43 PM (#2848025)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Star Trek's Warp Drive: Not Impossible

By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 06 May 2009
09:50 am ET

The warp drive, one of Star Trek's hallmark inventions, could someday become science instead of science fiction.

Some physicists say the faster-than-light travel technology may one day enable humans to jet between stars for weekend getaways. Clearly it won't be an easy task. The science is complex, but not strictly impossible, according to some researchers studying how to make it happen.

The trick seems to be to find some other means of propulsion besides rockets, which would never be able to accelerate a ship to velocities faster than that of light, the fundamental speed limit set by Einstein's General Relativity.

Luckily for us, this speed limit only applies within space-time (the continuum of three dimensions of space plus one of time that we live in). While any given object can't travel faster than light speed within space-time, theory holds, perhaps space-time itself could travel.

"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving."

Already happened?

One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang.

"If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.

To make the technique feasible, scientists will have to think of some creative new means of propulsion to move space-time rather than a spaceship.

According to General Relativity, any concentration of mass or energy warps space-time around it (by this reasoning, gravity is simply the curvature of space-time that causes smaller masses to fall inward toward larger masses).

So perhaps some unique geometry of mass or exotic form of energy can manipulate a bubble of space-time so that it moves faster than light-speed, and carries any objects within it along for the ride.

"If we find some way to alter the properties of space-time in an imbalanced fashion, so behind the spacecraft it's doing one thing and in front of it it's doing something else, will then space-time push on the craft and move it?" Millis said. This idea was first proposed in 1994 by physicist Miguel Alcubierre.

In the lab

Already some studies have claimed to find possible signatures of moving space-time. For example, scientists rotated super-cold rings in a lab. They found that still gyroscopes placed above the rings seem to think they themselves are rotating simply because of the presence of the spinning rings beneath. The researchers postulated that the ultra-cold rings were somehow dragging space-time, and the gyroscope was detecting the effect.

Other studies found that the region between two parallel uncharged metal plates seems to have less energy than the surrounding space. Scientists have termed this a kind of "negative energy," which might be just the thing needed to move space-time.

The catch is that massive amounts of this negative energy would probably be required to warp space-time enough to transport a bubble faster than light speed. Huge breakthroughs will be needed not just in propulsion but in energy. Some experts think harnessing the mysterious force called dark energy — thought to power the acceleration of the universe's expansion — could provide the key.

Even though it's a far cry between these preliminary lab results and actual warp drives, some physicists are optimistic.

"We still don't even know if those things are possible or impossible, but at least we've progressed far enough to where there are things that we can actually research to chip away at the unknowns," Millis told SPACE.com. "Even if they turn out to be impossible, by asking these questions, we're likely to discover things that otherwise we might overlook."

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23 Feb 10 - 04:55 PM (#2848040)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

During an exclusive cosmic question answer forum I asked how a FSL engine might work and a diagram of a spinning disk was presented along with the notion that "fictionite" would be required to hold the assembly together.
Another "prediction" was pictured as a triangle entering a sphere that some thought was Lithium being combined with hydrogen to produce something wonderful.

The diagramic presentation was well done and would raise the hair on your neck but

while this was a real event I can not attest to any valid proof of its significance.

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24 Feb 10 - 12:14 PM (#2848839)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Brown University physicist Vesna Mitrovic and colleagues have discovered magnetic waves that fluctuate when exposed to certain conditions in a superconducting material. The find may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity. Credit: Lauren Brennan, Brown University

At the quantum level, the forces of magnetism and superconductivity exist in an uneasy relationship. Superconducting materials repel a magnetic field, so to create a superconducting current, the magnetic forces must be strong enough to overcome the natural repulsion and penetrate the body of the superconductor. But there's a limit: Apply too much magnetic force, and the superconductor's capability is destroyed.

This relationship is pretty well known. But why it is so remains mysterious. Now physicists at Brown University have documented for the first time a quantum-level phenomenon that occurs to electrons subjected to magnetism in a superconducting material. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Vesna Mitrovic, joined by other researchers at Brown and in France, report that at under certain conditions, electrons in a superconducting material form odd, fluctuating magnetic waves. Apply a little more magnetic force, and those fluctuations cease: The electronic magnets form repeated wave-like patterns promoted by superconductivity.

The discovery may help scientists understand more fully the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity at the quantum level. The insight also may help advance research into superconducting magnets, which are used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a host of other applications. "If you don't understand [what is happening at] the quantum [level], how can you design a more powerful magnet?" asked Mitrovic, assistant professor of physics.

When a magnetic field is applied to a superconducting material, vortices measured in nanometers pop up. These vortices, like super-miniature tornadoes, are areas where the magnetic field has overpowered the superconducting field state, essentially suppressing it. Crank up the magnetic field and more vortices appear. At some point, the vortices are so widespread the material loses its superconducting ability altogether...." Phys. Org

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25 Feb 10 - 01:21 PM (#2849995)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The previously unknown letter was found by Bos through Google. "I regularly browse online. A month ago, I was on one of my little forays when I stumbled upon something I hadn't seen before." The document Bos found was a summary of autographs (handwritten, signed texts) that mentioned the letter. The collection the summary referred to is the property of a Quaker-run college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. "They didn't know this letter had never been published before," Bos said. The newly discovered letter is only the third by Descartes found in the last 25 years.

An excerpt from Descartes' letter

I have met Mr. Picot here. It is clear that he is a sensible man and I owe him a lot. A nobleman from Touraine is in his company, and he has sent me the warmest regards on behalf of father Bourdin, of whom he is a student. He has spoken about Mr. Petit in such terms that I feel obliged to moderate my criticism of him, as you will see in the reader's introduction. I am sending it to you with the friendly request to have it printed at the beginning of the book, after the dedication to the lords of the Sorbonne.

Nor the fourth part of the discours de la méthode, nor the short introduction following it, nor the introduction preceding the objections raised by the theologians are to be printed, only the synopsis.

Finally, I can assure you that there is nothing about Mr. Gassendi's objections that I have trouble with. The only thing I should pay heed to is style – since he took such great care to express himself so eloquently, I should try to respond in kind.

I am

Your most obliged and caring servant

Des Cartes

In May of 1641, Descartes had been living in the Dutch Republic for 13 years. He resided in Endegeest castle near Leiden, and had just completed one of his greatest works: Meditationes de prima philosophia (Meditations on first philosophy). In this book he demonstrates the existence of God and argues against transubstantiation, the rendering of wine into Christ's blood and bread into his body Catholics commonly believe occurs during Holy Communion.

The monk Mersenne assisted in the printing of Descartes work in Paris and corresponded with the philosopher. Descartes was looking to include commentary by prominent theologians in his Meditations. He hoped exposure to others' ideas would improve his own, and, as a devout Catholic, was also looking to avoid censorship by the Church. This would prove unnecessary until 13 years after Descartes death. It wouldn't be until 1663 that the pope would put Descartes' works on the Index of Prohibited Books.

Mersenne was charged with collecting the arguments countering Descartes, and the newly discovered letter deals with these matters. "Descartes had just received objections raised by another philosopher, a priest called Pierre Gassendi (1582-1655)," Verbeek said. "Descartes was always very negative about Gassendi. He said he was no good and wrote nothing but rubbish. In this letter however, Descartes seems to be quite satisfied with his objections. He finds them provocative and well written."

Descartes mentions two visitors from France at the bottom of the letter. One was Claude Picot, who would later translate Descartes' Principia Philosophiae ('Principles of philosophy', 1644). The other, a man from Touraine, convinced him to moderate his scathing criticism of another Pierre Petit, a doctor and humanist Descartes had issues with.

After Mersenne's death in 1648, the letter became the property of the French mathematician Gilles de Roberval. When he died in 1675, the French Academy of the Sciences watched over the document for more than a century, until it was stolen by count Guglielmo Libri (1803-1869), a notorious kleptomaniac.

"Libri started out as a legitimate collector and published some of Descartes' letters. When was appointed secretary of a committee charged with inventorying historic documents however, he proved to be unable to resist temptation and stole thousands of autographs. He later sold some of these at auctions in France, Italy and England," Verbeek explained.

An American collector, Charles Roberts (1846-1902), purchased the letter at an auction in the UK. After his death, he bequeathed his collection to his fellow Quakers at Haverford College.

When the college learnt the letter had been stolen it decided to return it to it former owners. It has since transferred the letter to the French Institute, of which the Academy of the Sciences is a part.

The Institute has granted Haverford College a Grand Prize for "good custodianship" in reward.

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25 Feb 10 - 03:29 PM (#2850120)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Establishing whether life ever existed, or is still active on Mars today, is one of the outstanding scientific quests of our time. Both missions in the ExoMars programme will address this important goal.

The first spacecraft is the Trace Gas Orbiter, which ESA will build and NASA will launch.

Today, both space agencies issued an Announcement of Opportunity inviting scientists to propose instruments to be carried on the mission. Once all proposals are in, they will be evaluated and the winning teams will be tasked with building the actual hardware.

A Joint Instrument Definition Team has identified a model payload based on current technology, but turning that blueprint into reality is now the job of the scientific community. "We are open to all instrumental proposals so long as they help us achieve our scientific objectives," says Jorge Vago, ESA ExoMars Project Scientist.
The priority for this mission is to map trace gases in the atmosphere of Mars, distinguishing individual chemical species down to concentrations of just a few parts per billion. Of these gases, one in particular attracts special attention: methane. Discovered on Mars in 2003, it happens to be a possible 'biomarker', a gas that is readily produced by biological activity. Understanding whether the methane comes from life or from geological and volcanic processes takes precedence. "The methane is the anchor point around which the science is to be constructed," says Vago.

Adding to the mystery is that methane was found to be concentrated in just three locations on Mars, and then disappeared much faster from the atmosphere than scientists were expecting. This points to an unknown destruction mechanism much more powerful than any known on Earth. It may also indicate a much faster creation process to have produced such large quantities of the gas in the first place. (Sci. Am)

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26 Feb 10 - 12:48 PM (#2850915)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the "chemist's war of Prohibition" remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was "our national experiment in extermination." Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes—but that's due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.

From Slate article here.

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02 Mar 10 - 09:50 AM (#2854069)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

WASHINGTON: A radar aboard an Indian spacecraft has detected craters filled with ice on the Moon's north pole, NASA scientists said.

The U.S. space agency's Mini-SAR radar found more than 40 small craters ranging in size from 1.6 to 15 km, each full of water ice.

"Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 600 million metric tons of water ice," NASA said in a statement.

Mapping permanently shadowed polar craters

The finding came weeks after President Barack Obama put on ice US ambitions to return astronauts to the moon.

The lightweight, synthetic aperture radar's findings "show the Moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought," said Paul Spudis, lead investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.

The Mini-SAR has spent the last year mapping the Moon's permanently shadowed polar craters that are not visible from Earth, using the polarisation properties of reflected radio waves.

Water found in many forms

"After analysing the data, our science team determined a strong indication of water ice, a finding which will give future missions a new target to further explore and exploit," said Jason Crusan of NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

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02 Mar 10 - 11:29 AM (#2854159)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sydney, Australia -- American biker, Seth Enslow, broke the world record for the longest jump on a Harley-Davidson Tuesday morning in Sydney, local media reported.

Enslow jumped 184 feet between ramps breaking a previous record of 157 feet set in Las Vegas in 1999 by Bubba Blackwell.
Enslow then attempted a second jump for viewers and injured himself on the landing.

Local media said the stunt took 12 months to prepare and Enslow was satisfied with the outcome.

"Lot of hard work putting this ramp together the last few days, the weather has been testing us but we made it happen so accomplished the job we set out to do," he said.

Enslow previously tried to break a distance jump record in 1999 in the United States with a custom Honda motorbike but failed his landing and hit his head against the handlebar.

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03 Mar 10 - 11:17 AM (#2855016)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...Past efforts at a BCI to animate an artificial limb involved electrodes inserted directly into the brain. The surgery required to implant the probes and the possibility that implants might not stay in place made this approach risky.

The alternative—recording neural signals from outside the brain—has its own set of challenges. "It has been thought for quite some time that it wasn't possible to extract information about human movement using electroencephalography," or EEG, says neuroscientist and electrical engineer Jose Contreras-Vidal. In trying to record the brain's electrical activity off the scalp, he adds, "people assumed that the signal-to-noise ratio and the information content of these signals were limited."

Evidently, that is not the case. In the March issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, Contreras-Vidal and his team from the bioengineering and kinesiology departments at the University of Maryland, College Park, show that the noisy brain waves recorded using noninvasive EEG can be mathematically decoded into meaningful information about complex human movements. "This means we can use a noninvasive method to develop the next generation of brain–computer interface machines," Contreras-Vidal says. "It can expand considerably the range of clinical and rehabilitative applications."

Instead of undergoing brain surgery, users would wear an electrode-covered head cap that records the electric impulses from neurons—the only mess involved is the clear gel applied to the head to enhance conduction. Some patients have already used the caps to communicate via word processors. (The recognition of a letter flashing on a screen signals the word processor to choose that letter.) The next step is to put the decoded movement information to work. "We hope to show that a person with a stroke or an amputee would be able to control an assistive device," Contreras-Vidal says. He already has healthy volunteers testing two different setups: One has them moving a computer cursor on a screen; the other has them controlling an artificial hand.

Contreras-Vidal also hopes to integrate sensory feedback into the system to optimize the user's control over the device. "In all the studies so far people have used visual feedback to close the loop between the user and the machine," he says. "We think it's important to use other types of feedback, too, because vision is a slow signal" compared with the sensory signal a person would get from an intact limb.

Whether such a system would work for patients with longstanding nerve damage is unknown. Such patients haven't activated their movement-generating neurons or received the related sensory feedback for many years and could generate abnormal brain wave–based movement information. "We're starting to look at patient populations to answer that question," Contreras-Vidal says, naming stroke patients and below-elbow amputees as the first test subjects. "We know the brain is highly redundant, so we think that even if there's a deletion in the brain, we might be able to decode from another place. One advantage to using electroencephalography is access to the whole brain, not just a specific area."..."

Scientific AMerican

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03 Mar 10 - 03:31 PM (#2855237)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Anne Hutchinson's "No in Thunder."

    "Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. … It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. …Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin."—Robert Green Ingersoll

In the perpetually new world that is America, orthodoxy is never more than a temporary consensus. Yesterday's heresy is today's revelation—and today's revelation is tomorrow's worn out creed. Most great religious movements begin as heresies; when they cease to inspire, they are either revivified or supplanted by new heresies.

However reviled and despised their ideas might be, heretics—important historical ones like Pelagius, Martin Luther, and Giordano Bruno, and obscure contemporary sectarians like Marie-Paule Giguère, the self-styled reincarnation of the Virgin Mary and the founder of The Community of the Lady of All Nations, aka the Army of Mary—aren't nihilists or wishy-washy relativists; they are believers par excellence. "In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic," G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Heretics. "It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox."...

"Consider Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643), whose arguments with mainstream Puritanism made her, at one time, the most hated woman in America. "Your opinions fret like a gangrene and spread like a leprosy, and infect far and near, and will eat out the very bowels of religion," her erstwhile teacher Minister John Cotton admonished her, as she was excommunicated from the Church of Boston and consigned to the mercies of the wilderness. The Puritans celebrated when they received word of her death seven years later; its grisly circumstances—she and more than a dozen members of her household, including six of her fifteen children, were scalped by an Indian war party—were regarded as wondrous evidence of divine providence.

American history textbooks usually describe Anne Hutchinson as a martyr to Puritan narrow-mindedness, as an early—perhaps the first—American feminist, and a courageous champion of civil liberty and religious tolerance. There is a germ of truth in this description of her, but it does justice neither to her nor her persecutors.

The controversy that brought about Anne Hutchinson's expulsion from Boston revolved around questions that had been roiling Christianity since its beginnings: Did good works play any role in one's salvation, or was salvation something unmerited and unearned, a gift freely bestowed by God through Christ? If human beings are so steeped in sin that only Christ can redeem them, do they cease to be human when and if they're saved? Since obedience to the law doesn't earn one grace, does breaking the law cause grace to be forfeited?

Those who answer this last question in the negative are called Antinomians. The word (which means "against the law") was coined by Martin Luther to describe the errors of his student Johannes Agricola, who argued that believing Christians might abandon every scruple without any risk to their souls. "Art thou steeped in sin, an adulterer or a thief?" he asked. "If thou believest, thou art in salvation. All who follow Moses must go to the Devil."

Most of the particulars of Hutchinson's alleged doctrinal errors, wrapped as they are in obscurities, are difficult for modern readers to grasp. "Theological controversies are as a rule among the most barren of the many barren fields of historic research," Charles Francis Adams wrote in his classic Three Episodes of Massachusetts History (1892), "and the literature of which they were so fruitful may, so far as the reader of to-day is concerned, best be described by the single word impossible." With offhand condescension, Adams portrayed Hutchinson as an irritatingly superior busybody, a bored housewife who took a dislike to her ministers and got in over her head. "She knew much," he sniffed, "But she talked out of all proportion to her knowledge. She had thought a good deal, and by no means clearly; having not infrequently mistaken words for ideas."...

From Killing the Buddha.

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04 Mar 10 - 09:27 AM (#2855818)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Want to know what a jam session between Jack White and Stevie Ray Vaughan might have sounded like, or how Billie Holliday would interpret the latest dreck from Avril Lavigne? Advances in artificial intelligence are resurrecting musical legends of the past, tapping into old recordings to establish a musician's style and personality, then applying those attributes to newer recordings of old songs, or even to songs the musician never played before.

Every generation has its musical heyday. Then, just as one era is about to give way to the next, the older generation declares that music is dead, claiming the greats of one small epoch in musical history will never be topped. This is why Kurt Cobain was never as good as Jimmy Page who couldn't touch Lennon and McCartney who could never compare to Buddy Holly who owed a creative debt to Elvis who, as we all know, referred to Fats Domino as the real King of Rock and Roll. And so on.

New software, developed by North Carolina-based Zenph Sound Innovations, is something like a Pandora for live musical style; sophisticated software analyzes musicians based on how they sound on old, archaic recordings. The software can then reconstruct songs as they would have sounded if those musicians had recorded in a modern studio and on superior media.

But it doesn't end there. Zenph is working on a means to not only recreate old performances, but to dissect a style to the point that it can manifest an artist's personal touch into pieces he or she never performed in life. Meaning the software could potentially lift Jimmy Page out of Black Dog and replace him with, say, Jimi Hendrix, just so see how it sounds.

Zenph has already created three "ghost" pianos that play the likes of Rachmaninoff to the exact stylistic specifications -- supposedly -- of Sergei himself. The company plans to explore all kinds of markets with the technology, like licensing clearer versions of old recordings to films and creating software that will let you Clapton-ize your own guitar riffs. It's also working up virtual versions of more instruments, meaning it's possible that in the future, the company could put together phantom all-star bands melding musicians across decades, or recreate the Beatles with virtual stand-ins for John and George. (Popular Science)

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04 Mar 10 - 11:12 AM (#2855907)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

COSMOS Mag:

"...PARIS: A census of microbes in the human digestive tract found at least 1,000 microbes, many previously unknown, and could lead to new cure for gut ailments with the help of personal microbial profiles.

"This completely changes our vision," said Stanislav-Dusko Ehrlich, a researcher at France's National Institute for Agricultural Research, after the study was published in the journal Nature.

Knowing which core bacteria populate a healthy intestine should lead to more accurate diagnosis and prognosis for diseases ranging from ulcers to irritable bowel syndrome to Crohn's, which also causes painful inflammation, he said.

Your personal microbial profile

"In the future, we should be able to modify the (microbial) flora to optimise health and well being," he said.

"This also opens up the possibility of prevention through diet, and treatments tailored a person's genetic and microbial profile."

More than 100 researchers working over two years found some 3.3 million distinct genes spread across at least 1,000 species of single-celled organisms, virtually all bacteria...."

A

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04 Mar 10 - 04:10 PM (#2856168)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- A worldwide team of researchers have for the first time created a particle that is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe - the so-called "Big Bang" - and it could lead to new questions and answers about some of the basic laws of physics because in essence, it creates a new form of matter.


An international team of scientists studying high-energy collisions of gold ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, has published evidence of the most massive antinucleus discovered to date. The new antinucleus, discovered at RHIC's STAR detector, is a negatively charged state of antimatter containing an antiproton, an antineutron, and an anti-Lambda particle. It is also the first antinucleus containing an anti-strange quark. The results will be published online by Science Express on March 4, 2010.

"This experimental discovery may have unprecedented consequences for our view of the world," commented theoretical physicist Horst Stoecker, Vice President of the Helmholtz Association of German National Laboratories. "This antimatter pushes open the door to new dimensions in the nuclear chart — an idea that just a few years ago, would have been viewed as impossible."

The discovery may help elucidate models of neutron stars and opens up exploration of fundamental asymmetries in the early universe.

New nuclear terrain

All terrestrial nuclei are made of protons and neutrons (which in turn contain only up and down quarks). The standard Periodic Table of Elements is arranged according to the number of protons, which determine each element's chemical properties. Physicists use a more complex, three-dimensional chart to also convey information on the number of neutrons, which may change in different isotopes of the same element, and a quantum number known as "strangeness," which depends on the presence of strange quarks (see diagram). Nuclei containing one or more strange quarks are called hypernuclei.

For all ordinary matter, with no strange quarks, the strangeness value is zero and the chart is flat. Hypernuclei appear above the plane of the chart. The new discovery of strange antimatter with an antistrange quark (an antihypernucleus) marks the first entry below the plane.

This study of the new antihypernucleus also yields a valuable sample of normal hypernuclei, and has implications for our understanding of the structure of collapsed stars.

"The strangeness value could be non-zero in the core of collapsed stars," said Jinhui Chen, one of the lead authors, a postdoctoral researcher at Kent State University and currently a staff scientist at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, "so the present measurements at RHIC will help us distinguish between models that describe these exotic states of matter."

The findings also pave the way towards exploring violations of fundamental symmetries between matter and antimatter that occurred in the early universe, making possible the very existence of our world...."

---

08 Mar 10 - 10:04 AM (#2859148)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

ut according to a new study in the journal Psychological Science it might be best if you move from small talk quickly into a more substantial conversation.

Researchers analyzed 20,000, 30-second samplings of the daily conversations of study volunteers, and organized them into trivial chatter or more serious discussion. The participants also took personality and well-being assessment tests.

And they found that the happiest participants spent 70 percent more time talking with others than the least happy people. But more than just measuring amount of time spent talking with others, they also found a difference in the type of conversation happier folks engage in.

The happiest participants had twice as many substantive conversations and only a third as much small talk as those who are least content.

Of course this study finding shows correlation not causation. Still, the authors note, "Just as self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners."

(SciAm)

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08 Mar 10 - 07:56 PM (#2859650)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For all those dismayed by scenes of looting in disaster-struck zones, whether Haiti or Chile or elsewhere, take heart: Good acts - acts of kindness, generosity and cooperation - spread just as easily as bad. And it takes only a handful of individuals to really make a difference.

In a study published in the March 8 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of California, San Diego and Harvard provide the first laboratory evidence that cooperative behavior is contagious and that it spreads from person to person to person. When people benefit from kindness they "pay it forward" by helping others who were not originally involved, and this creates a cascade of cooperation that influences dozens more in a social network.

The research was conducted by James Fowler, associate professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Political Science and Calit2's Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, who is professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine and medical sociology at Harvard Medical School. Fowler and Christakis are coauthors of the recently published book "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives."

In the current study, Fowler and Christakis show that when one person gives money to help others in a "public-goods game," where people have the opportunity to cooperate with each other, the recipients are more likely to give their own money away to other people in future games. This creates a domino effect in which one person's generosity spreads first to three people and then to the nine people that those three people interact with in the future, and then to still other individuals in subsequent waves of the experiment.

The effect persists, Fowler said: "You don't go back to being your 'old selfish self.''' As a result, the money a person gives in the first round of the experiment is ultimately tripled by others who are subsequently (directly or indirectly) influenced to give more. "The network functions like a matching grant," Christakis said.

"Though the multiplier in the real world may be higher or lower than what we've found in the lab," Fowler said, "personally it's very exciting to learn that kindness spreads to people I don't know or have never met. We have direct experience of giving and seeing people's immediate reactions, but we don't typically see how our generosity cascades through the social network to affect the lives of dozens or maybe hundreds of other people."
The study participants were strangers to each other and never played twice with the same person, a study design that eliminates direct reciprocity and reputation management as possible causes.

In previous work demonstrating the contagious spread of behaviors, emotions and ideas - including obesity, happiness, smoking cessation and loneliness - Fowler and Christakis examined social networks re-created from the records of the Framingham Heart Study. But like all observational studies, those findings could also have partially reflected the fact that people were choosing to interact with people like themselves or that people were exposed to the same environment. The experimental method used here eliminates such factors.

The study is the first work to document experimentally Fowler and Christakis's earlier findings that social contagion travels in networks up to three degrees of separation, and the first to corroborate evidence from others' observational studies on the spread of cooperation.

---

09 Mar 10 - 07:02 PM (#2860584)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Ten years ago, the collapse of the Internet Dot.Com Bubble.

---

10 Mar 10 - 04:52 PM (#2861348)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Cryogenic electron emission phenomenon has no known physics explanation

March 10, 2010 By Lisa Zyga Cryogenic electron emission phenomenon has no known physics explanation


In cryogenic electron emission, at first as temperature decreases, the dark rate decreases. But at about 220 K, the dark rate levels off, and with further cooling, it begins rising again. Image credit: Meyer.

(PhysOrg.com) -- At very cold temperatures, in the absence of light, a photomultiplier will spontaneously emit single electrons. The phenomenon, which is called "cryogenic electron emission," was first observed nearly 50 years ago. Although scientists know of a few causes for electron emission without light (also called the dark rate) - including heat, an electric field, and ionizing radiation - none of these can account for cryogenic emission. Usually, physicists consider these dark electron events undesirable, since the purpose of a photomultiplier is to detect photons by producing respective electrons as a result of the photoelectric effect.



In a recent study, Hans-Otto Meyer, a physics professor at Indiana University, has further investigated cryogenic electron emission by performing experiments that show how the electron firings are distributed in time. His results reveal that electrons are emitted in bursts that occur randomly, although within a burst the electrons are emitted in a peculiar, correlated way. He suggests that the correlations indicate some kind of trapping mechanism, but the unusual behavior is inconsistent with any spontaneous emission processes currently known. At least at the moment, there seems to be no physics explanation of the observations.

"Cryogenic emission is a physics phenomenon that defies an explanation," Meyer told PhysOrg.com. "The physics responsible for it may or may not be fundamental, only the future will tell. Photomultipliers happen to offer the environment in which the phenomenon may be observed, but I doubt if my work will be of great significance to the users of photomultipliers."

In his experiments, Meyer placed a photomultiplier inside an empty container, which he then submerged in liquid nitrogen or helium. Using radiation cooling, he cooled the photomultiplier to a temperature of 80 K (-193° C) after about one day, and to 4 K (-269° C) in another day. With this setup, he could detect cryogenic dark events, which are shown to be caused by single electrons emitted from the cathode of the photomultiplier.

As previous research has shown, starting from room temperature, the dark rate decreases as temperature decreases, but only up to a point. Below about 220 K (-53° C), the dark rate levels off. With further cooling, it begins to rise, and continues to increase at least down to 4 K (-269° C), the lowest temperature for which Meyer has data. Most of Meyer's experiments were performed at around 80 K (-193° C).

In his experiments, Meyer found that electrons are emitted in "bursts" - numerous electron firings that occur close together in time. Although these bursts occur randomly, they last for different lengths of time, with their duration distribution following a power law. Further, Meyer found that the individual firing events within a burst are highly correlated. Specifically, within a burst, events first occur rapidly, and then less and less frequently as the burst "fades away."

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10 Mar 10 - 08:29 PM (#2861496)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

hysOrg.com) -- The best hybrid cars of today can only deliver about 48 miles per gallon. By using this newly developed fuel injection system a test vehicle was measured at achieving 64 miles per gallon in highway driving. This is approximately a 50% increase in fuel efficiency in a gasoline engine.

The fuel injection system was developed by a startup company Transonic Combustion and their goal is to increase fuel efficiency of existing gasoline engines. The cost for this ultra-efficient system would be as much as high-end fuel injection systems currently on the market today.

By heating and pressurizing gasoline before injecting it into the combustion chamber places it into a supercritical state that allows for very fast and clean combustion. This in turn decreases the amount of fuel needed to run the vehicle. The gasoline is also treated with a catalyst to further enhance combustion.

What makes Transonic's fuel injection system different from a direct injection is that it uses supercritical fluids and requires no spark to ignite the fuel. The supercritical fluid is mixed with air before injected into the cylinder. The heat and pressure, in the cylinder, alone is enough to cause the fuel to combust without a spark.

Ignition timing happens just when the piston reaches the optimal point, so that the maximum amount of energy is converted into mechanical movement of the engine.
Proprietary software has also been developed by Transonic Combustion that allows the system to adjust the fuel injection precisely depending on engine load.

Transonic Combustion is currently testing their new fuel injection system with three automakers. One key concern is the life of the engine when itÕs subject to high pressures and temperatures. The company plans to manufacture the system themselves and not license the technology. Transonic Combustion plans to build its first factory in 2013, and place the technology into production cars by 2014....

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..."n analysis of more than 70,000 galaxies by University of California, Berkeley, University of Zurich and Princeton University physicists demonstrates that the universe - at least up to a distance of 3.5 billion light years from Earth - plays by the rules set out 95 years ago by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity.

By calculating the clustering of these galaxies, which stretch nearly one-third of the way to the edge of the universe, and analyzing their velocities and distortion from intervening material, the researchers have shown that Einstein's theory explains the nearby universe better than alternative theories of gravity.

One major implication of the new study is that the existence of dark matter is the most likely explanation for the observation that galaxies and galaxy clusters move as if under the influence of some unseen mass, in addition to the stars astronomers observe.

"The nice thing about going to the cosmological scale is that we can test any full,
alternative theory of gravity, because it should predict the things we observe," said co-author Uros Seljak, a professor of physics and of astronomy at UC Berkeley, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a professor of physics at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Zurich. "Those alternative theories that do not require dark matter fail these tests."

In particular, the tensor-vector-scalar gravity (TeVeS) theory, which tweaks general relativity to avoid resorting to the existence of dark matter, fails the test.
The result conflicts with a report late last year that the very early universe, between 8 and 11 billion years ago, did deviate from the general relativistic description of gravity...."

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11 Mar 10 - 10:42 PM (#2862311)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

..."EinsteinÕs wife Elsa donated the manuscript to the Hebrew University on the occasion of its opening in 1925 and in a letter he thanked her for doing so. A founder of the university and a member of its board, he donated all his papers to it upon his death.

And there, outside the room where the theory of general relativity is on display, are a few more of his papers, including a postcard he sent to his mother in 1919 after a British astronomer confirmed during an eclipse one of EinsteinÕs key predictions. It too offers a poignant mix of the celestial and personal.

ÒDear Mother!Ó it begins, ÒToday some happy news. Lorentz telegraphed me that the British expeditions have verified the deflection of light by the sun.Ó So sorry, he adds, to hear that you are not feeling well...".NYT

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12 Mar 10 - 05:25 PM (#2862970)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment
A 50-year mystery over the 'cursed bread' of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.


Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 7:00AM GMT 11 Mar 2010
French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment
An American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: "I am a plane", before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: "Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead."

Eventually, it was determined that the best-known local baker had unwittingly contaminated his flour with ergot, a hallucinogenic mould that infects rye grain. Another theory was the bread had been poisoned with organic mercury.

However, H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army's top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The scientists who produced both alternative explanations, he writes, worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD.

Mr Albarelli came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of Frank Olson, a biochemist working for the SOD who fell from a 13th floor window two years after the Cursed Bread incident. One note transcribes a conversation between a CIA agent and a Sandoz official who mentions the "secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit" and explains that it was not "at all" caused by mould but by diethylamide, the D in LSD.

While compiling his book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments, Mr Albarelli spoke to former colleagues of Mr Olson, two of whom told him that the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident was part of a mind control experiment run by the CIA and US army.

After the Korean War the Americans launched a vast research programme into the mental manipulation of prisoners and enemy troops.

Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated "local foot products".

Mr Albarelli said the real "smoking gun" was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the "Pont St. Esprit incident." In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

None of his sources would indicate whether the French secret services were aware of the alleged operation. According to US news reports, French intelligence chiefs have demanded the CIA explain itself following the book's revelations. French intelligence officially denies this.

Locals in Pont-Saint-Esprit still want to know why they were hit by such apocalyptic scenes. "At the time people brought up the theory of an experiment aimed at controlling a popular revolt," said Charles Granjoh, 71.

"I almost kicked the bucket," he told the weekly French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. "I'd like to know why."

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12 Mar 10 - 07:46 PM (#2863041)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The macabre discovery in June of a neatly stacked pile of skulls next to a mass of male bones in a burial pit near Weymouth, on the southern English coast, sparked speculation about who the victims were.

Scientists from NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory analysed food and drink isotopes from the teeth of 10 of the 51 skulls and found it highly likely that the unfortunate men came from Scandinavia.

It is believed that the raiding Vikings were slaughtered in public by local Anglo-Saxons between AD 910 and AD 1030.

"The isotope data we obtained from the burial pit teeth strongly indicate that the men executed on the Ridgeway originated from a variety of places within the Scandinavian countries," said NERC scientist Jane Evans.

"These results are fantastic. This is the best example we have ever seen of a group of individuals that clearly have their origins outside Britain," she added.
Oxford Archaeology members have been painstakingly uncovered the pit, which was found during investigative excavation work for an £87 million relief road.

"The find of the burial pit on Ridgeway was remarkable and got everyone working on site really excited," Oxford Archaeology project manager David Score said.
"To find out that the young men executed were Vikings is a thrilling development," he added.

"Any mass grave is a relatively rare find, but to find one on this scale, from this period of history, is extremely unusual and presents an incredible opportunity."
(c) 2010 AFP

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15 Mar 10 - 05:21 PM (#2864763)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8567414.stm

"In 1985, a total of six dotcom domain names were registered."

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17 Mar 10 - 11:58 AM (#2866090)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Man used penis to assault female police officer

A man who assaulted a female police officer with his penis has been fined.

Marium Varinauskas, 28, tried to strike the officer on the head with his penis when she was called out to his flat, but she got out of the way.

Lithuanian Varinauskas admitted a charge of assault at Aberdeen Sheriff Court and was fined £600.

The court heard he had been drinking heavily and could not remember committing the offence at his home in Aberdeen.

Police were called to his home by his girlfriend, who had complained about him being drunk last November.

They arrived to find the self-employed engineer sitting on the sofa wearing a pair of underpants.
        
Fiscal depute Elaine Lynch said: "The accused got to his feet and was standing over the police officer exposing his penis and thrusting it in her face, forcing her to take evasive action to avoid getting struck."

Defence solicitor John Hardie said: "He was sitting on the couch drunk with his pants on.

"He can't remember anything but accepts that if that's what the police say then that's what happened.

"He has never been so drunk before that day and accepts he has to take full responsibility. He apologises profusely and is extremely embarrassed."

His not guilty plea to committing a breach of the peace by uttering offensive and sexual remarks was accepted by the Crown.

Sheriff Annella Cowan was told that the Lithuanian had now quit binge drinking because of the incident.

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17 Mar 10 - 12:45 PM (#2866131)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

1 gene lost = 1 limb regained? Scientists demonstrate mammalian regeneration through single gene deletion
March 15, 2010

A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander. In a report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Wistar Institute demonstrate that mice that lack the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue.

Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth and de-differentiation as seen in amphibians. According to the Wistar researchers, the loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like embryonic stem cells than adult mammalian cells, and their findings provide solid evidence to link tissue regeneration to the control of cell division.

"Much like a newt that has lost a limb, these mice will replace missing or damaged tissue with healthy tissue that lacks any sign of scarring," said the project's lead scientist Ellen Heber-Katz, Ph.D., a professor in Wistar's Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis program. "While we are just beginning to understand the repercussions of these findings, perhaps, one day we'll be able to accelerate healing in humans by temporarily inactivating the p21 gene."

Heber-Katz and her colleagues used a p21 knockout mouse to help solve a mystery first encountered in 1996 regarding another mouse strain in her laboratory. MRL mice, which were being tested in an autoimmunity experiment, had holes pierced in their ears to create a commonly used life-long identification marker. A few weeks later, investigators discovered that the earholes had closed without a trace. While the experiment was ruined, it left the researchers with a new question: Was the MRL mouse a window into mammalian regeneration?

The discovery set the Heber-Katz laboratory off on two parallel paths. Working with geneticists Elizabeth Blankenhorn, Ph.D., at Drexel University, and James Cheverud, Ph.D., at Washington University, the laboratory focused on mapping the critical genes that turn MRL mice into healers. Meanwhile, cellular studies ongoing at Wistar revealed that MRL cells behaved very differently than cells from "non-healer" mouse strains in culture. Khamilia Bedebaeva, M.D., Ph.D., having studied genetic effects following the Chernobyl reactor radiation accident, noticed immediately that these cells were atypical, showing profound differences in cell cycle characteristics and DNA damage. This led Andrew Snyder, Ph.D., to explore the DNA damage pathway and its effects on cell cycle control.

Snyder found that p21, a cell cycle regulator, was consistently inactive in cells from the MRL mouse ear. P21 expression is tightly controlled by the tumor suppressor p53, another regulator of cell division and a known factor in many forms of cancer. The ultimate experiment was to show that a mouse lacking p21 would demonstrate a regenerative response similar to that seen in the MRL mouse. And this indeed was the case. As it turned out, p21 knockout mice had already been created, were readily available, and widely used in many studies. What had not been noted was that these mice could heal their ears.

"In normal cells, p21 acts like a brake to block cell cycle progression in the event of DNA damage, preventing the cells from dividing and potentially becoming cancerous," Heber-Katz said. "In these mice without p21, we do see the expected increase in DNA damage, but surprisingly no increase in cancer has been reported."

In fact, the researchers saw an increase in apoptosis in MRL mice - also known as programmed cell death - the cell's self-destruct mechanism that is often switched on when DNA has been damaged. According to Heber-Katz, this is exactly the sort of behavior seen in naturally regenerative creatures.

"The combined effects of an increase in highly regenerative cells and apoptosis may allow the cells of these organisms to divide rapidly without going out of control and becoming cancerous," Heber-Katz said. "In fact, it is similar to what is seen in mammalian embryos, where p21 also happens to be inactive after DNA damage. The down regulation of p21 promotes the induced pluripotent state in mammalian cells, highlighting a correlation between stem cells, tissue regeneration, and the cell cycle."

---

18 Mar 10 - 09:55 AM (#2866810)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie

So what is the evolutionary advantage, that caused Mammals without regenerative powers to out-compete mammals that do have it?

---

18 Mar 10 - 10:24 AM (#2866828)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

I think it is oversimplification to narrow your focus to a single trait and try to map or couple it to a single evolutionary advantage. For example, the non-regenerators might ALSO have had larger brains.

In other news:

"March 17, 2010 Physicists Show Theory of Quantum Mechanics Applies to the Motion of Large Objects


(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have provided the first clear demonstration that the theory of quantum mechanics applies to the mechanical motion of an object large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Their work satisfies a longstanding goal among physicists.


In a paper published in the March 17 issue of the advance online journal Nature, Aaron O'Connell, a doctoral student in physics, and John Martinis and Andrew Cleland, professors of physics, describe the first demonstration of a mechanical resonator that has been cooled to the quantum ground state, the lowest level of vibration allowed by quantum mechanics. With the mechanical resonator as close as possible to being perfectly still, they added a single quantum of energy to the resonator using a quantum bit (qubit) to produce the excitation. The resonator responded precisely as predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics.

"This is an important validation of quantum theory, as well as a significant step forward for nanomechanics research," said Cleland.

The researchers reached the ground state by designing and constructing a microwave-frequency mechanical resonator that operates similarly to -- but at a higher frequency than -- the mechanical resonators found in many cellular telephones. They wired the resonator to an electronic device developed for quantum computation, a superconducting qubit, and cooled the integrated device to temperatures near absolute zero. Using the qubit as a quantum thermometer, the researchers demonstrated that the mechanical resonator contained no extra vibrations. In other words, it had been cooled to its quantum ground state.

The researchers demonstrated that, once cooled, the mechanical resonator followed the laws of quantum mechanics. They were able to create a single phonon, the quantum of mechanical vibration, which is the smallest unit of vibrational energy, and watch as this quantum of energy exchanged between the mechanical resonator and the qubit. While exchanging this energy, the qubit and resonator become "quantum entangled," such that measuring the qubit forces the mechanical resonator to "choose" the vibrational state in which it should remain.

In a related experiment, they placed the mechanical resonator in a quantum superposition, a state in which it simultaneously had zero and one quantum of excitation. This is the energetic equivalent of an object being in two places at the same time. The researchers showed that the resonator again behaved as expected by quantum theory."

---

18 Mar 10 - 03:51 PM (#2867065)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

An international team of astronomers are studying 21 ancient quasi-stellar objects (or "quasars") at the very limits of our observable universe. Each quasar has a supermassive black hole throbbing inside, sucking in the surrounding gas and growing to titanic masses exceeding 100 million suns.

Two of these monsters are located further away than the rest and have been studied by the Spitzer Space Telescope after first being spotted by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

"Quasars are a very early stage of galaxies, a sort of baby galaxies," said Marianne Vestergaard, astrophysicist at the Dark Cosmology Center at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of a paper announcing these findings in the March 18 issue of Nature.

"Most galaxies have a massive black hole with a mass of over a million solar masses, but quasars are different. Their black holes are active and growing."

The pair of distant quasars -- named J0005-0006 and J0303-0019 -- are approximately 13 billion light-years away (the light we receive from them is therefore 13 billion years old), meaning they formed less than 800 million years after the Big Bang. This fact makes these specimens pure; they are the "cleanest" quasars ever detected.

"We have found what are likely first-generation quasars, born in a dust-free medium and at the earliest stages of evolution," said Linhua Jiang of the University of Arizona, Tucson and lead author of the study.

During the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang, there was no dust in the universe, just the most basic of gases. Before galaxies formed, it is thought primordial supermassive black holes were ignited as quasars, blasting the universe with intense X-ray radiation, so these earliest quasars wouldn't have contained any dust.

However, this is the first time that observational evidence of dust-free quasars has been confirmed, providing a tantalizing glimpse at how these gargantuan black holes formed.

---

19 Mar 10 - 10:40 AM (#2867636)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.

Parity was long thought to be a fundamental law of nature. It essentially states that the universe is neither right- nor left-handed — that the laws of physics remain unchanged when expressed in inverted coordinates. In the early 1950s it was found that the so-called weak force, which is responsible for nuclear radioactivity, breaks the parity law. However, the strong force, which holds together subatomic particles, was thought to adhere to the law of parity, at least under normal circumstances.

Now this law appears to have been broken by a team of about a dozen particle physicists, including Jack Sandweiss, Yale's Donner Professor of Physics. Since 2000, Sandweiss has been smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together as part of the STAR experiment at RHIC, a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator, to study the law of parity under the resulting extreme conditions.

The team created something called a quark-gluon plasma — a kind of "soup" that results when energies reach high enough levels to break up protons and neutrons into their constituent quarks and gluons, the fundamental building blocks of matter.

Theorists believe this kind of quark-gluon plasma, which has a temperature of four trillion degrees Celsius, existed just after the Big Bang, when the universe was only a microsecond old. The plasma "bubble" created in the collisions at RHIC lasted for a mere millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, yet the team hopes to use it to learn more about how structure in the universe — from black holes to galaxies — may have formed out of the soup.

(Phys.Org)

---

(It would be such a nice change if we could all emulate these physicists and try to learn from events lasting only millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. Think how many more lessons we would absorb!! As it is the average duration from which individuals try to frame and learn a life lesson is on the order of 62.356 decades for Republicans. Something around 2.8 decades for Democrats.)

---

19 Mar 10 - 02:29 PM (#2867775)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A quantum leap and other science news:
(From Silicon Valley .com's mailings)

* For the first time, scientists have put something big enough to be visible into a mixed quantum state, simultaneously moving and not moving. The weird nature of quantum effects has been observed at the atomic level, but researchers have been struggling to find a way to maintain those effects at the mechanical level of the everyday world. Components of this experiment, according to team leader Andrew Cleland of UC Santa Barbara, included a material that vibrates 6 billion times a second, a commercially available refrigerator to cool it down to a manageable 50 millionths of a degree above absolute zero, and a particular flavor of quantum bit. Said physicist Markus Aspelmeyer of the University of Vienna, "This is groundbreaking work. Now the door is open. Now the fun begins."

* A team led by Tolga Ergin, a scientist from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, has taken us one tiny step closer to a 3D cloak of invisibility.

* Spanish researchers have found they can put nanoscale silicon chips inside living cells without harm. "Based on our experiments we can conclude that silicon-based top-down fabricated intracellular chips can be internalized by living eukaryotic cells without interfering with cell viability, and functionalized chips could be used as intracellular sensors since they can interact with the cell cytoplasm," said team leader José Antonio Plaza.

* Science journalist Tom Siegfried on the misuse of statistical methods in science: "It's science's dirtiest secret: The 'scientific method' of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation. Statistical tests are supposed to guide scientists in judging whether an experimental result reflects some real effect or is merely a random fluke, but the standard methods mix mutually inconsistent philosophies and offer no meaningful basis for making such decisions. Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing."

* Ever said you'd give your arm for a better broadband connection? The throughput turns out to be pretty good.

* Our solar system as if it were a music box. Of course, that tune might change when an orange dwarf star called Gliese 710 comes ripping through the neighborhood in about 1.5 million years.

---

19 Mar 10 - 02:41 PM (#2867781)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

By Steve Connor, Science Editor, UK Independent

Thursday, 18 March 2010

   


The first planet with a "temperate" climate to orbit a distant star has been discovered by astronomers, who claim that the techniques used to study it will be critical in the search for Earth-like worlds beyond our own solar system.

Corot-9b, as the planet is called, is one of more than 400 "exoplanets" found to be orbiting other stars, but it is the first one with a near-normal temperature range that can be studied as it moves across (or "transits") the sun it orbits. "This is a normal, temperate exoplanet just like dozens we already know, but this is the first whose properties we can study in depth," said Claire Moutou, one of the team of astronomers at the European Southern Observatory who made the discovery. "It is bound to become a Rosetta stone in exoplanet research."

Corot-9b passes in front of its host star, 1,500 light years away in the constellation Serpens, every 95 days, and the transit lasts about eight hours, which is when astronomers can make measurements of the planet's composition and temperature, estimated to range from minus 20C to 160C.

"Corot-9b is the first exoplanet that really does resemble planets in our solar system," said Hans Deeg, the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. "It has the size of Jupiter and an orbit similar to that of Mercury."

---

19 Mar 10 - 08:54 PM (#2867918)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Perception of effort, not muscle fatigue, limits endurance performance
March 19, 2010

(PhysOrg.com) -- The physiological theory that underpins all endurance training and coaching for the last 100 years has just been disproved.

As recently as 2008, scientific research papers were citing the theory that endurance performance is limited by the capacity of the skeletal muscles, heart and lungs and that exhaustion occurs when the active muscles are unable to produce the force or power required by prolonged exercise.

Dr Sam Marcora, an exercise physiologist at Bangor University, has now disproved this for the first time and proposed an alternative - that it is your perception of effort that limits your endurance performance, not the actual capability of your muscles. He showed that the muscles were still able to achieve the power output required by endurance exercise even when the point of perceived exhaustion had been reached.

This will inevitably lead to new training and coaching techniques, based on this new understanding of the role of perceived effort in endurance performance.

What Marcora has found is that athletes give up endurance exercise, feeling that they are exhausted, before reaching their absolute physiological limit. In fact, immediately after exhaustion, the leg muscles are capable of producing three times the power output required by high-intensity cycling exercise.

Like other bodily sensations, perception of effort is a powerful feeling that is there for a reason. The perception that we have reached exhaustion prevents us from injuring ourselves by exercising too much. Marcora uses the analogy of pain- if you twist your ankle you might still be able to undertake the mechanics of walking, but the pain prevents you- and so prevents you from causing further injury- so it is with perceived exhaustion, he argues.
The question for sports scientists, coaches and athletes has to be how far can athletes go beyond that perceived exhaustion to improve performance still further?
"We are already developing and testing new training techniques based on the neurobiology of perceived effort that will help endurance athletes improve their performance," says Marcora." (Phys.Org)

---

19 Mar 10 - 09:04 PM (#2867920)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

NYT:

"It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, said Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona who published a study on the subject.

ÒWe found this so interesting, because it could have gone the other way Ñ it could have been, ÔDonÕt worry, be happyÕ Ñ as long as you surf on the shallow level of life youÕre happy, and if you go into the existential depths youÕll be unhappy,Ó Dr. Mehl said.

But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people.

ÒBy engaging in meaningful conversations, we manage to impose meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world,Ó Dr. Mehl said. ÒAnd interpersonally, as you find this meaning, you bond with your interactive partner, and we know that interpersonal connection and integration is a core fundamental foundation of happiness.Ó

Dr. MehlÕs study was small and doesnÕt prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the kind of conversations one has and oneÕs happiness. But thatÕs the planned next step, when he will ask people to increase the number of substantive conversations they have each day and cut back on small talk, and vice versa.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, involved 79 college students Ñ 32 men and 47 women Ñ who agreed to wear an electronically activated recorder with a microphone on their lapel that recorded 30-second snippets of conversation every 12.5 minutes for four days, creating what Dr. Mehl called Òan acoustic diary of their day.Ó"...

---

21 Mar 10 - 04:03 PM (#2868774)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Cold fusion undergoes a revival in the corridors of respectable science.

---

21 Mar 10 - 05:50 PM (#2868848)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"If weÕre ever suddenly confronted by evidence of alien intelligence, Paul Davies will be one of the first to know. Davies, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, is chairman of the SETI Post-Detection Taskgroup, a volunteer committee whose mission is to Òprepare, manage, advise and consult in preparation for the discovery of a putative signal of extraterrestrial intelligent (ETI) origin.Ó Never mind that the chance of humankind being contacted by aliens is remote, Òit makes sense to think through some of the implications should it happen,Ó he says. While the group is a think tank (it has no legal status and no authority to impose or enforce its recommendations), it has reflected on all manner of post-detection issues and made preparations to counsel all parties concerned.

Earlier this year I sat down with Davies in his office at the Beyond Center in Tempe, Arizona, to discuss the themes of his mind-bending new book ÒThe Eerie SilenceÓ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), in which he suggests reorienting and expanding the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). ÒTraditional SETI is stuck in a conceptual rut,Ó he maintains, and fails to account for the possibility that an alien species may not look, think, or behave like us. In part one of this Failure InterviewÑwhich coincides with SETIÕs 50th anniversary next monthÑDavies addressed issues like: What has SETI accomplished in its first 50 years? And have scientists been looking for ET Òin the wrong place, at the wrong time, and in the wrong way?Ó..."


Read more: here

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22 Mar 10 - 11:44 AM (#2869284)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have succeeded in creating a synthetic crystal that can very effectively control the transmission of heat -- stopping it in its tracks and reflecting it back. This advance could lead to insulating materials that could block the escape of heat more effectively than any present insulator.

This crystal structure was built using alternating layers of silicon dioxide (the basis of the dielectric layers in most microchips) and a polymer material. The resulting two-component material successfully reflected phonons — vibrational waves that are the carriers of ordinary heat or sound, depending on their frequency. In this case, the phonons were in the gigahertz range — in other words, low-level heat.

Edwin L. Thomas, head of MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, was a co-author of a new paper, published on March 10 in the journal Nano Letters, that describes this creation of phononic crystals in the hypersonic range (that is, above the frequency range of sound, and thus can be considered in the range of heat).

Phonons may sometimes be thought of as particles, and sometimes as vibrational waves, analogous to the dual wave and particle nature of light. Physically, the phonons are manifested as a wave of density variation passing through a material, like the wave of compression that travels along a child's Slinky toy when you stretch it out and give one end a shove.

Phys Org

---

23 Mar 10 - 11:54 AM (#2870066)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The three-year grant from the NSF Division of Science, Technology and Society to Hagar, an assistant professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in the College of Arts and Sciences, will support study of the idea that space, rather than being continuous, is made up of discrete units.

Titled "Length Matters: The History and the Philosophy of the Notion of Fundamental Length in Modern Physics," the project will combine philosophy with written and oral history, including interviews with leading figures in the debate over fundamental length. It will seek to bring light to some of the most pressing methodological issues in modern theoretical physics.

"The study will consider the diverse scientific and philosophical motivations for introducing the notion of fundamental length into modern theories of physics," Hagar said. "The discussion will characterize and then analyze the possible phenomenological consequences of this notion, which are currently at the center of heated debates among high-energy physicists who are struggling to unify the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics."

It may seem self-evident that space is a continuum which can be divided into an infinite number of ever-smaller units, and that there is no "fundamental" unit of length. But Hagar points out that scientific advances have often involved "shifts in perspective" that allow us to see the world in new ways -- much as understanding the Earth's rotation demolished the idea that the Sun was circling the Earth.

In the case of fundamental length, the notion goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno, whose paradoxes exposed tension between views of space as infinite and discrete. In the 1930s, Werner Heisenberg and other physicists were drawn to the concept of fundamental length as they attempted to write down a quantum theory of electromagnetism. But the idea was largely rejected as impossible to reconcile with established findings.

Remarkably, Hagar said, the notion of fundamental length made a comeback in the 1950s and '60s with efforts to develop a theory of quantum gravity, a next step in the attempt to develop a unified theory that has driven theoretical physics for decades. But incorporating the idea will not be easy. It would require a theoretical structure that allows for new predictions while maintaining agreement with well-established principles.

"This challenge, currently faced by theories of quantum gravity, is also what makes the story of the notion of fundamental length so timely," Hagar said, "as it best exemplifies the delicate balance between conservatism and innovation that characterizes the practice of extending 'old' physics into new regimes."

---

This is quite important, and long overdue. I made a prediction back in the 90's that this kind of research would lead into the field of "spationics" and break open all kinds of new insights into the nature of space time once we got over our addiction to Newtonian homogeneous and continuous space.


A

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26 Mar 10 - 04:13 PM (#2872745)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

DNA from a female of previously unknown hominid – dubbed the X-woman – lived in southern Siberia some 40,000 years ago and could be a new branch on the human family tree, a finding that would rewrite Homo's exodus from Africa.

In a technical feat, scientists sequenced DNA from the bone fragment of a pinkie finger, possibly from a small female child, found in a cave in the Altai Mountains.

The bone found in Denisova Cave was extricated in 2008 from a soil layer carbon-dated to between 30,000 to 48,000 years ago.

Teased from a cellular component called mitochondria, the genome was compared to the code of our extinct cousins the Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, the bonobo and chimpanzee.

The Siberian hominid, the investigation found, had some 400 genetic differences, which makes it a candidate for being a distinct species of Homo, as the genus for humans and closely related primates is known.

It, us and the Neanderthals all shared a common ancestor who lived around a million years ago, say the investigators.

"It's absolutely amazing... It's some new creature that's not been on our radar screen so far," co-researcher Svante Pääbo told reporters.

The study, published in the weekly journal Nature, is led by Johannes Krause of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Members of the team previously sequenced most of the genome of the Neanderthal.

(SciAm)

---

29 Mar 10 - 02:58 PM (#2874897)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Habitual Drunkards of Edwardian England -- generally a grotty-looking lot, but better dressed than their modern counterparts, I think.


A

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30 Mar 10 - 02:33 PM (#2875814)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The unusual tale of The Woman Who Shot Mussolini in the Nose.


A

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30 Mar 10 - 03:48 PM (#2875883)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists, including nine from UC Davis, working at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory recently created some strange matter not seen since just after the Big Bang -- an "antihypertriton" composed of antimatter and "strange" quarks. A paper describing the work was published online this month in the journal Science.

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If researchers can create and study enough of these particles, they can start to address deep problems in physics, such as why the universe is made of matter at all, said Manuel Calderon de la Barca Sanchez, associate professor of physics at UC Davis and part of the project team.

A triton is the nucleus of the hydrogen isotope tritium: a proton and two neutrons. A neutron is made up of three quarks, two "down" and one "up." In a hypertriton, one of the neutrons is replaced by a particle called a lambda hyperon, with one "up," one "down" and one "strange" quark. A hypertriton was observed for a fleeting moment in a lab experiment about 50 years ago, Calderon said.

Calderon and his colleagues detected the antihypertriton when they used Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider to slam gold atoms into each other at enormous speed. The energy released in these collisions creates new particles in a "quark-gluon plasma," similar to that which existed microseconds after the beginning of the universe.

The antihypertriton, as its name suggests, is a hypertriton in which the up, down and strange quarks are replaced with antimatter equivalents (anti-up, anti-down and anti-strange quarks).

The particle decayed so quickly that the Brookhaven experiment could only record its distinctive decay products. The researchers collected evidence of about 70 antihypertritons from 100 million collisions.

---

31 Mar 10 - 02:04 PM (#2876645)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Thank God someone has finally come up with a high-speed loader for water balloons. At last someone is taking civilization seriously.


A

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03 Apr 10 - 11:36 PM (#2879178)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

CORN DODGER

A corndodger, or just dodger, is a ball of cornmeal (and flour), water (or milk), oil (or lard) and usually sugar. This is deep fried, or sometimes baked.


This term shows up in some versions of "Arkansas Traveler" and "Diamond Jim" as a perjprative for cheap hospitality. Glad to have the recipe, finally.


A

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08 Apr 10 - 08:22 AM (#2882040)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

New light shed on near death experience - the bright light, mystical being, out of body experience etc. attributed to gas.


"Near-death experiences during cardiac arrest - from flashing lights to life flashing before one's eyes - may be down to carbon dioxide, a study finds.

Examination of 52 patients found levels of the body's waste gas were higher in the 11 who reported such experiences, the journal Critical Care reports.

The Slovenian researchers hope to move on the debate over why so many cardiac arrest patients report the experiences.

Reasons previously suggested for the phenomenon include religion and drugs.

Those who have had near-death experiences report various encounters, including seeing a tunnel or bright light, a mystical entity, or looking down from the ceiling at the scene below in an "out of body" experience.

Others describe a simple but overwhelming feeling of peace and tranquillity.

It is thought between one in ten and nearly a quarter of cardiac arrest patients have experienced one of these sensations.

No religion

In this latest study, published in the journal Critical Care, a team looked at 52 cardiac arrest patients. Eleven of these reported a near-death experience.

        
Near death experiences make us address our understanding of human consciousness so the more we know the better


There appeared to be no pattern in regards to sex, religious belief, fear of death, time to recover or drugs given during resuscitation.

And while anoxia - in which brain cells die through lack of oxygen - is one of the principal theories as to why near-death experiences may occur, this was not found to be statistically significant among this small group of patients.

Instead, the researchers from the University of Maribor found blood carbon dioxide levels were significantly higher in the near-death group than among those who had no experience.

Previous research has shown that inhalation of carbon dioxide can induce hallucinatory experiences similar to those reported in near-death experiences.

Whether the higher levels of carbon dioxide among this group of patients were down to the cardiac arrest itself or pre-existing is unclear.

"It is potentially another piece of the puzzle, although much more work is needed," said the report author, Zalika Klemenc-Ketis. "Near death experiences make us address our understanding of human consciousness so the more we know the better."

Cardiologist Dr Pim van Lommel, who has studied near death experiences extensively, described the findings as "interesting".

"But they have not found a cause - merely an association. I think this is something that will remain one of the great mysteries of mankind. The tools scientists have are simply not sufficient to explain it."

In the UK, a large study is ongoing into whether cardiac arrest patients genuinely do have out-of-body experiences. The research includes placing images on shelves that can only be seen from above. The brain activity of 1,500 patients will be analysed afterwards to see if they can recognise the images.

Dr Sam Parnia, who is leading the project at Southampton University, says he hopes to establish whether consciousness can in fact exist as a separate entity to the body.

---

09 Apr 10 - 10:57 AM (#2882869)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Drug Discovered In The Soil Of Easter Island Could Cure Alzheimer's

A Drug Discovered In The Soil Of Easter Island Could Cure Alzheimer's Rapamycin is a bacterial byproduct discovered in the soil of Easter Island. It extends the lives of animals, and now two independent studies show that it can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's. Is this the drug we've been waiting for?

A study published yesterday in the Journal of Biological Chemistry confirmed that mice with Altzheimers showed marked improvement in memory and cognition after being fed a rapamycin-enhanced diet. This study was released simultaneously with another, in PLoS One, which confirmed the results of the first in a different group of mice.

How does this wonder drug work? Physiologist Veronica Galvan, an author on the PLoS study, explained:

    Rapamycin treatment lowered levels of amyloid-beta-42, a major toxic species of molecules in Alzheimer's disease. These molecules, which stick to each other, are suspected to play a key role in the early memory failure of Alzheimer's . . . The fact that we are seeing identical results in two vastly different mouse models of Alzheimer's disease provides robust evidence that rapamycin treatment is effective and is acting by changing a basic pathogenic process of Alzheimer's that is common to both mouse models. This suggests that it may be an effective treatment for Alzheimer's in humans, who also have very diverse genetic makeup and life histories.

Rapamycin has already been approved by the FDA to treat organ rejection in transplant patients. That means doctors could start prescribing it for the "off label" use of treating Alzheimers tomorrow. The researchers are still not sure if the drug would reverse the effects of Alzheimers, or simply block them. But for millions of people suffering the effects of Alzheimers, that question may be moot.

Expect to be hearing more about this drug, and soon.

---

12 Apr 10 - 09:01 AM (#2884762)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Hewlett Packard outlines computer memory of the future
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News

Memristors

The fundamental building blocks of all computing devices could be about to undergo a dramatic change that would allow faster, more efficient machines.

Researchers at computer firm Hewlett Packard (HP) have shown off working devices built using memristors - often described as electronics' missing link.

These tiny devices were proposed 40 years ago but only fabricated in 2008.

HP says it has now shown that they can be used to crunch data, meaning they could be used to build advanced chips.

That means they could begin to replace transistors - the tiny switches used to build today's chips.

And, crucially, the unique properties of memristors would allow future chips to both store and process data in the same device.

Today, these functions are done on separate devices, meaning data must be transferred between the two, slowing down the computation and wasting energy.

"The processor and memory could be exactly the same thing," Dr Stan Williams of HP told BBC News. "That allows us to think differently about how computation could be done."

Professor Leon Chua - the first person to propose memristors - said the work was "conceptually, just the tip of the iceberg".

He compared the devices to the human brain's synapses and axons.

"In the near future we can use memristors to make real brain-like computers, he told BBC News.

Researchers at the University of Michigan recently showed that the devices can mimic synaptic activity in the brain.

The HP work is published in the journal Nature.

Tower chips

Despite being proposed by Professor Chua in 1971, it took almost forty years for a working memristor to be built, by Dr Williams and his team.

Hewlett-Packard's Stan Williams helped develop 'memristors'

The tiny devices are the "fourth" basic building block of circuits, after capacitors, resistors and inductors.

"I'm delighted because I never thought this would happen in my lifetime," said Professor Chua.

The devices get their name from their ability to "remember" the amount of charge that has flowed through them after the power has been switched off.

This means they are suited for building computer memory and storage; an application that Dr Williams believes could be on the market within three years.

"Our immediate goal is to make a competitor to flash memory for cameras, iPods and devices like that," said Dr Williams.

"Our aspiration is for it to have twice as much available memory as an equivalent sized flash memory device."

The team has also shown that the memristors can be stacked on top of each other to form 3-D arrays.

"In theory we can connect thousands of layers in a very straightforward fashion," said Dr Williams.

"It could provide a way of getting a ridiculous amount of memory on a chip."

Future path

Further into the future, Dr Williams said that he hoped that they could be used to build a single device for storage and computation.

"That would allow a huge speed saving and energy saving," he said.

However, he said, that kind of device was more than a decade away.

Memristors could also help with a problem that continues to challenge the chip industry, continuing to pack more and more computational power into smaller and smaller spaces.

Currently, chip makers follow a path defined by Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors it is possible to squeeze in to a chip for a fixed cost doubles every two years.

This is currently achieved by producing transistors with ever smaller feature sizes. Current cutting edge chips have transistors with feature sizes as small as 22 nanometres (22 billionths of a metre).

But this miniaturisation cannot continue forever, experts say.

Memristors offer an alternative path.

"We can continue to make them smaller even past the point where people think that transistors cannot shrink any further," said Dr Williams.

Crucially, said Dr Williams, they can be built using "materials commonly available in any fab [chip fabrication plant]".

Professor James Tour of Rice University in Houston said the memristor's ability to be compatible with existing transistor based technologies was a "critical parameter to permit rapid implementation into present chip manufacturing processes".

Dr Williams said he had already made "crude" prototypes with features as small as 3nm.

"The functional equivalent of Moore's Law could go on for decades after we hit the wall where we can no longer shrink transistors," he said.

---

13 Apr 10 - 09:07 AM (#2885519)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

NIH rehearch revealed that mega doses of vitamin B 1 has halted and reversed Alhiemers in rats.

In the meantime it is advised you take B 1 for the beneficial good cholestoral that it promotes.

---

16 Apr 10 - 09:10 PM (#2888300)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics, at its laboratories in Gran Sasso, has received 120 lead bricks from an ancient Roman ship that sunk off of the coast of Sardinia 2,000 years ago. The ship's cargo was recovered 20 years ago, thanks to the contribution of the INFN, which at the time received 150 of these bricks. The INFN is now receiving additional bricks to complete the shield for the CUORE experiment, which is being conducted to study extremely rare events involving neutrinos. After 2,000 years under the sea, this lead will now be used to perform a task 1,400 metres under the Apennine mountain.

---

18 Apr 10 - 07:13 PM (#2889408)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Gargantuan whales and hefty cephalopods are typically thought of as the classic marine mammoths, but they might have to make way for the mighty microbes, which constitute 50 to 90 percent of the oceans' total biomass, according to newly released data.

These tiny creatures can join together to create some of the largest masses of life on the planet, and researchers working on the decade-long Census of Marine Life project found one such seafloor mat off the Pacific coast of South America that is roughly the size of Greece.

A single liter of seawater, once thought to contain about 100,000 microbes, can actually hold more than one billion microorganisms, the census scientists reported. But these small creatures don't just live in the water column or on the seafloor. Large communities of microscopic animals have even been discovered more than one thousand meters beneath the seafloor. Some of these deep burrowers, such as loriciferans, are only a quarter of a millimeter long.

"Far from being a lifeless desert, the deep sea rivals such highly diverse ecosystems as tropical rainforests and coral reefs," Pedro Martinez Arbizu, of the German Center for Marine Biodiversity Research and leader of the Census of the Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life, said in a prepared statement.

---

19 Apr 10 - 04:21 AM (#2889599)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: The Fooles Troupe

If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for?

---

19 Apr 10 - 04:36 PM (#2890075)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

As described by radio lab:

The Eureka computer was programed to think for itself and organize its findings and discoveries that it made based on the data available in terms of an equation or proof.

After turning it on in less than 24 hours it came up with Newton's equation F=MA

After 2 months the Eureka computer announced that it had found the ideal equation that descibed all of its data.

The problem is
we do not yet know what the equation means. It has advanced beyond our ability to undertand its discoveries.

---

20 Apr 10 - 08:25 AM (#2890564)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Ed T

A birds song...BS music content:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/science/20obsong.html?ref=science

---

21 Apr 10 - 01:30 PM (#2891465)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

remember my excitement one morning in the winter of 2006 when I peered through a microscope in my laboratory and saw a colony of cells that looked just like embryonic stem cells. They were clustered in a little heap, after dividing in a petri dish for almost three weeks. And they were glowing with the same colorful fluorescent markers scientists take as one sign of an embryonic cell's "pluripotency"—its ability to give rise to any type of tissue in an organism's body. But the cells I was looking at did not come from any embryo: they were regular adult mouse cells that had seemingly been rejuvenated by the addition of a simple cocktail of genes.

Could it really be so easy to roll back the internal clock of any mammalian cell and return it to an embryonic state? I was not the only one wondering at the time. Shinya Yamanaka of the University of Kyoto and his colleagues had just published a groundbreaking study in August 2006 that revealed their formula for creating what they called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from the skin cells of mice. Researchers had been struggling for years to understand and control the enormous potential of embryonic stem cells to produce customized tissues for use in medicine and research—as well as contending with political and ethical controversies over the use of embryos, scientific setbacks and false hopes generated by previous "breakthroughs" that did not pan out. So stem cell scientists were surprised and a little bit skeptical of the Japanese group's results at first. But that morning in the lab, I could see firsthand the results of following Yamanaka's recipe...."

Scientific American

---

26 Apr 10 - 01:34 PM (#2894691)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach. ... If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."

— Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, persuaded by the big numbers that life likely exists elsewhere in the universe, also thinks that rather than reaching out to any intelligent extraterrestrials, we might want to lie low.

---

27 Apr 10 - 01:23 PM (#2895353)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

When astronomers study distant galaxies, they see only a small fraction of the mass needed to hold these clumps of stars together. Without some kind of extra hidden mass, galaxies ought to fly apart.

Astronomers call this hidden mass 'dark matter' and physicists around the world are engaged in an increasingly desperate race to find evidence of it here on Earth. That's why there are more than 30 experiments in various parts of the planet looking for the stuff.

The consensus is that, despite this global effort, dark matter remains well hidden. Nobody has had a whiff of the stuff.

That is nobody except an Italian group which has spent the last ten years or so watching a giant lump of sodium iodide. Their thinking is that any dark matter hitting the sodium iodide should generate a photon. And that as Earth moves around the Sun, they should see more photons when heading into the background sea of dark matter than when moving away from it.

Sure enough, this seasonal signal is exactly what this team says it sees. They claim that it's experiment called DAMA/LIBRA is the first direct evidence of dark matter.

The trouble is that nobody else believes them, mainly because so many other experiments have seen nothing. The critics says something else must be responsible for these seasonal signals, perhaps some kind of environmental change like a variation in temperature.

Then, about a month ago, everything changed when an experiment called CoGent based in the US reported that it too had found a hint of dark matter. CoGent looks for evidence that dark matter particles have bumped into a crystal of germanium and sure enough, the CoGent team say that the experiment is producing abundant evidence of these kinds of collisions.

Curiously, while most experiments are looking for relatively heavy dark matter particles which should produce higher energy collisions, CoGent looks for much lighter particles.

(From Technology Review

---

27 Apr 10 - 03:29 PM (#2895437)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Robot Called WANDA (
April 26, 2010 by Aditi Risbud

(PhysOrg.com) -- Berkeley Lab scientists have established a revolutionary nanocrystal-making robot, capable of producing nanocrystals with staggering precision. This one-of-a-kind robot, named WANDA, provides colloidal nanocrystals with custom-made properties for electronics, biological labeling and luminescent devices. Since this robot is controlled by software protocols, novice users can direct WANDA to perform complex workflows that traditionally require extensive chemistry experience.


No longer attributable to human error—Berkeley Lab scientists have established a revolutionary nanocrystal-making robot, capable of producing nanocrystals with staggering precision. This one-of-a-kind robot provides colloidal nanocrystals with custom-made properties for electronics, biological labeling and luminescent devices.

This robotic engineer is named WANDA (Workstation for Automated Nanomaterial Discovery and Analysis) and was developed in collaboration with Symyx Technologies at the Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy User Facility located at Berkeley Lab. By automating the synthesis of these nanocrystals, WANDA circumvents the issues facing traditional techniques, which can be laborious and are difficult to reproduce from one laboratory to the next. What's more, WANDA's synthetic prowess can help researchers sift through a large, diverse pool of materials for specific applications. Such a combinatorial approach has been used for decades in the pharmaceutical industry and now is being applied to nanomaterials at the Foundry..." (Phys.org)

---

28 Apr 10 - 01:36 PM (#2896080)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Solar Fuel Company Gets $30 Million Investment
Joule Biotechnologies has completed its second round of funding.
By Kevin Bullis

A company that we featured this year as part of our list of top 10 emerging technologies (the TR10), Joule Biotechnologies, today announced that it had pulled in a second round of funding. It will use the money--$30 million--to push forward on a pilot plant it's building in Leander, TX, near Austin. The company says its on track to start "high-capacity" production of diesel in 2012.

The company has developed a system that using genetically engineering photosynthetic organisms to convert carbon dioxide and water--with energy from sunlight--into diesel fuel (another similar system makes ethanol). Read more here.

---

28 Apr 10 - 02:03 PM (#2896095)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Overview of the calculation

The Kalman filter uses a system's dynamics model (i.e., physical laws of motion), known control inputs to that system, and measurements (such as from sensors) to form an estimate of the system's varying quantities (its state) that is better than the estimate obtained by using any one measurement alone. As such, it is a common sensor fusion algorithm.

All measurements and calculations based on models are estimates to some degree. Noisy sensor data, approximations in the equations that describe how a system changes, and external factors that are not accounted for introduce some uncertainty about the inferred values for a system's state. The Kalman filter averages a prediction of a system's state with a new measurement using a weighted average. The purpose of the weights is that values with better estimated uncertainty are "trusted" more. The weights are calculated from the covariance, a measure of the estimated uncertainty of the prediction of the system's state. The result of the weighted average is a new state estimate that lies in between the predicted and measured state, and has a better estimated uncertainty than either alone. This process is repeated every time step, with the new estimate and its covariance informing the prediction used in the following iteration. This means that the Kalman filter works recursively and requires only the last "best guess" - not the entire history - of a system's state to calculate a new state.

When performing the actual calculations for the filter (as discussed below), the state estimate and covariances are coded into matrices to handle the multiple dimensions involved in a single set of calculations. This allows for representation of linear relationships between different state variables (such as position, velocity, and acceleration) in any of the transition models or covariances.
[edit] Example application

As an example application, consider the problem of determining the precise location of a truck. The truck can be equipped with a GPS unit that provides an estimate of the position within a few meters. The GPS estimate is likely to be very noisy and jump around at a high frequency, though always remaining relatively close to the real position. The truck's position can also be estimated by integrating its velocity and direction over time, determined by keeping track of the amount the accelerator is depressed and how much the steering wheel is turned. This is a technique known as dead reckoning. Typically, dead reckoning will provide a very smooth estimate of the truck's position, but it will drift over time as small errors accumulate. Additionally, the truck is expected to follow the laws of physics, so its position should be expected to change proportionally to its velocity.

In this example, the Kalman filter can be thought of as operating in two distinct phases: predict and update. In the prediction phase, the truck's old position will be modified according to the physical laws of motion (the dynamic or "state transition" model) plus any changes produced by the accelerator pedal and steering wheel. Not only will a new position estimate be calculated, but a new covariance will be calculated as well. Perhaps the covariance is proportional to the speed of the truck because we are more uncertain about the accuracy of the dead reckoning estimate at high speeds but very certain about the position when moving slowly. Next, in the update phase, a measurement of the truck's position is taken from the GPS unit. Along with this measurement comes some amount of uncertainty, and its covariance relative to that of the prediction from the previous phase determines how much the new measurement will affect the updated prediction. Ideally, if the dead reckoning estimates tend to drift away from the real position, the GPS measurement should pull the position estimate back towards the real position but not disturb it to the point of becoming rapidly changing and noisy.
[edit] Technical description and context

The Kalman filter is an efficient recursive filter that estimates the internal state of a linear dynamic system from a series of noisy measurements. It is used in a wide range of engineering and econometric applications from radar and computer vision to estimation of structural macroeconomic models,[5][6] and is an important topic in control theory and control systems engineering. Together with the linear-quadratic regulator (LQR), the Kalman filter solves the linear-quadratic-Gaussian control problem (LQG). The Kalman filter, the linear-quadratic regulator and the linear-quadratic-Gaussian controller are solutions to what probably are the most fundamental problems in control theory.

In most applications, the internal state is much larger (more degrees of freedom) than the few "observable" parameters which are measured. However, by combining a series of measurements, the Kalman filter can estimate the entire internal state.

In control theory, the Kalman filter is most commonly referred to as linear quadratic estimation (LQE).

In Dempster-Shafer theory, each state equation or observation is considered a special case of a Linear belief function and the Kalman filter is a special case of combing linear belief functions on a join-tree or Markov tree.

A wide variety of Kalman filters have now been developed, from Kalman's original formulation, now called the simple Kalman filter, the Kalman-Bucy filter, Schmidt's extended filter, the information filter, and a variety of square-root filters that were developed by Bierman, Thornton and many others. Perhaps the most commonly used type of very simple Kalman filter is the phase-locked loop, which is now ubiquitous in radios, especially frequency modulation (FM) radios, television sets, satellite communications receivers, outer space communications systems, and nearly any other electronic communications equipment.

---

29 Apr 10 - 02:04 PM (#2896775)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Darwin's Radio: Prehistoric Gene Reawakens to Battle HIV

Darwinsradio_full 'The next great war will start inside us. 'In the next stage of evolution, mankind is history'.

Greg Bear, Darwin's Radio

About 95% of the human genome has once been designated as "junk" DNA. While much of this sequence may be an evolutionary artifact that serves no present-day purpose, some junk DNA may function in ways that are not currently understood. The conservation of some junk DNA over many millions of years of evolution may imply an essential function that has been "turned off." Now scientists say there's a junk gene that fights HIV. And they've discovered how to turn it back on.


What these scientists have done could give us the first bulletproof HIV vaccine. They have re-awakened the human genome's latent potential to make us all into HIV-resistant creatures, and hey've published their ground-breaking research in PLoS Biology.

A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman and Alexander Colewhether wanted to try a new approach to fighting HIV - one that worked with the body's own immune system. They knew Old World monkeys had a built-in immunity to HIV: a protein called retrocyclin, which can prevent HIV from entering cell walls and starting an infection. So they began poring over the human genome, looking to see if humans had a latent gene that could manufacture retrocyclin too. It turned out that we did, but a "nonsense mutation" in the gene had turned it off at some point in our evolutionary history.

Nonsense mutations are caused when random DNA code shows up in the middle of a gene, preventing it from beginning the process of manufacturing proteins in the cell. Venkataraman and her team decided to investigate this gene further, doing a series of tests to see if the retrocyclin it produced would keep HIV out of human cells. It did.

At last, they knew that if they could just figure out a way to reawaken the "junk" gene that creates retrocyclin in humans, they might be able to stop HIV infections. The researchers just needed to figure out a way to remove that nonsense mutation and get the target gene to start manufacturing retrocyclin again.

Here's where things really get interesting. The team found a way to use a compound called aminoglycosides, which itself can cause errors when RNA transcribes information from DNA to make proteins. But this time, the aminoglycoside error would work in their favor: It would cause that RNA to ignore the nonsense mutation in the junk gene, and therefore start making retrocyclin again. In preliminary tests, their scheme worked. The human cells made retrocyclin, fended off HIV, and effectively became AIDS-resistant. And it was done entirely using the latent potential in the so-called junk DNA of the human genome.

After more research is done, the researchers believe this might become a viable way to make humans immune to HIV infection.

What's especially intriguing, beyond the amazing idea of an AIDS vaccine, is that aminoglycosides have the potential to unlock the uses for other pieces of junk DNA. In Darwin's Radio, certain portions of these "non-sense" sequences, remnants of prehistoric retroviruses, have been activated by aminoglycosides
In the novel, humans start rapidly evolving after their junk DNA re-awakens in response to stress. Could we induce instant mutations, or gain other new immunities by using aminoglycosides on our junk DNA?

via PLoS Biology

---

02 May 10 - 11:02 AM (#2898547)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Reminder:

One joule in everyday life is approximately:
the energy required to lift a small apple one meter straight up.
the energy released when that same apple falls one meter to the ground.
the energy released as heat by a person at rest, every hundredth of a second.
one hundredth of the energy a person can receive by drinking a drop of beer.
the kinetic energy of an adult human moving at a speed of about a handspan every second.
the kinetic energy of a tennis ball moving at 23 km/h (14 mph).[2]

---

03 May 10 - 11:13 PM (#2899544)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

cientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that by applying chemicals to manipulate genes in a developing embryo, they've been able to change the brain of one type of cichlid fish to resemble that of another. The researchers also discovered differences in the general patterning of the brain very early in development before functional neurons form in a process known as neurogenesis. This finding is at odds with a well-held theory known as "late equals large." The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition beginning May 3, 2010.



In the mid 1990s, the hypothesis called "late equals large" was put forth to explain the way brains evolve across species. The brain begins as a blank slate. In early development, the anterior, or front, part of the brain is specified from the posterior, or back, part. After that, neurogenesis occurs as precursor cells mature to become neurons. These precursors can replicate endlessly, but once they become functional neurons, replication ends. The later the switch from precursors to mature neurons, the larger the brain, or brain region, becomes. The "late equals large" model holds that the brains of different species, for example humans vs. mice, are similar early in development and differ because of the later process of neurogenesis.

"We found differences in the general patterning of the brain as early as 48 hours after fertilization, before neurogenesis begins," said J. Todd Streelman, associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Biology.

Streelman, Ph.D. student Jonathan Sylvester, and their colleagues studied brain development in six species of cichlid from Lake Malawi stock, three species from the rock-dwelling lineage and three species of their sand-dwelling cousins.
"We repeated our tests from two to four days after fertilization and found that sand-dwelling cichlids exhibited a larger expression domain of the gene wnt1, known to be an important factor in the development of the posterior brain. This correlates with a larger thalamus, a posterior forebrain structure used in the processing of vision," said Sylvester."

PhysOrg

---

04 May 10 - 08:25 PM (#2900207)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Amos, the original thinking regarding the first completed map of the human genome was that 95% of the genes were junk DNA. Now we feel that most of the junk is for the most complex protein formations.
The other unidentifiable DNA is for traits that are unexpressed in our current enviorment but when stressed, such as by an extremly cold climate, the gene that layed dormant would engage and produce hemoglobin that would transport Oxygen even in near zero temperatures. Of course that is a hypothetical example but the point is that we may have abilities that we may not even be able to imagine until they are needed by our children

---

04 May 10 - 10:48 PM (#2900264)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Indeed. Among them, compassion, telepathy, and the ability to step outside the brain.


A

---

06 May 10 - 10:04 PM (#2901705)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2010


The first modern humans to leave Africa about 80,000 years ago encountered Neanderthal settlements in the Middle East and, on at least some occasions, chose to make love instead of war, according to an international team of scientists who have pieced together the genetic code of humanity's closest relatives.

Traces of that ancient DNA live on in most human beings today, the researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The finding, which was made by analyzing DNA from Neanderthal bones and comparing it with that of five living humans, appears to resolve a long-standing mystery about the relationship between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, who coexisted in Europe and Western Asia for more than 10,000 years until Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago.

"We can now say with absolute certainty that we've got these Neanderthal genes," said John Hawks, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study. "They're not 'them' anymore; they're 'us.'"


Svante Paabo, the geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who spearheaded the study, said he now sees his ancestors in a new light. His initial research on a different type of DNA that contains far less information had concluded Ñ incorrectly, it turns out Ñ that Neanderthals have no genetic connection to people today.

Now, Paabo said, "I would more see them as a form of humans that were a bit more different than people are from each other today."

Most important, scientists said, knowing the precise structure of the Neanderthal genome will help answer the fundamental biological question: What makes us human?

Neanderthal DNA is 99.7% identical to that of people, according to the analysis, which involved dozens of researchers. Something in the remaining 0.3% must make us unique.

"It's not about understanding Neanderthals," said genome biologist Ed Green, who led the study as a research fellow in Paabo's lab and is now at UC Santa Cruz. "It's understanding us."

By lining up the Neanderthal genome with DNA from humans and chimpanzees, Green and colleagues identified small changes that are unique to humans. Some were in genes involved in energy metabolism, skeletal structure and brain development, including four that are thought to contribute to conditions such as autism, Down syndrome and schizophrenia.


(LAT)

---

07 May 10 - 01:53 PM (#2902183)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In 1938, the physicist Frank Benford made an extraordinary discovery about numbers. He found that in many lists of numbers drawn from real data, the leading digit is far more likely to be a 1 than a 9. In fact, the distribution of first digits follows a logarithmic law. So the first digit is likely to be 1 about 30 per cent of time while the number 9 appears only five per cent of the time.


That's an unsettling and counterintuitive discovery. Why aren't numbers evenly distributed in such lists? One answer is that if numbers have this type of distribution then it must be scale invariant. So switching a data set measured in inches to one measured in centimetres should not change the distribution. If that's the case, then the only form such a distribution can take is logarithmic.


But while this is a powerful argument, it does nothing to explan the existence of the distribution in the first place.


Then there is the fact that Benford Law seems to apply only to certain types of data. Physicists have found that it crops up in an amazing variety of data sets. Here are just a few: the areas of lakes, the lengths of rivers, the physical constants, stock market indices, file sizes in a personal computer and so on.

However, there are many data sets that do not follow Benford's law, such as lottery and telephone numbers.

What's the difference between these data sets that makes Benford's law apply or not? It's hard to escape the feeling that something deeper must be going on.


Today, Lijing Shao and Bo-Qiang Ma at Peking University in China provide a new insight into the nature of Benford's law. They examine how Benford's law applies to three kinds of statistical distributions widely used in physics.


These are: the Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution which is a probability measure used to describe the distribution of the states of a system; the Fermi-Dirac distribution which is a measure of the energies of single particles that obey the Pauli exclusion principle (ie fermions); and finally the Bose-Einstein distribution, a measure of the energies of single particles that do not obey the Pauli exclusion principle (ie bosons).


Lijing and Bo-Qiang say that the Boltzmann-Gibbs and Fermi-Dirac distributions distributions both fluctuate in a periodic manner around the Benford distribution with respect to the temperature of the system. The Bose Einstein distribution, on the other hand, conforms to benford's Law exactly whatever the temperature is.

What to make of this discovery? Lijing and Bo-Qiang say that logarithmic distributions are a general feature of statistical physics and so "might be a more fundamental principle behind the complexity of the nature".


That's an intriguing idea. Could it be that Benford's law hints at some kind underlying theory that governs the nature of many physical systems? Perhaps.


But what then of data sets that do not conform to Benford's law? Any decent explanation will need to explain why some data sets follow the law and others don't and it seems that Lijing and Bo-Qiang are as far as ever from this.


(From MIT's Technology Review)

---

07 May 10 - 09:46 PM (#2902473)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Forget the battlefield radios, the combat PDAs or even infantry hand signals. When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, theyÕll read each otherÕs minds.

At least, thatÕs the hope of researchers at the PentagonÕs mad-science division Darpa. The agencyÕs budget for the next fiscal year includes $4 million to start up a program called Silent Talk. The goal is to Òallow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.Ó ThatÕs on top of the $4 million the Army handed out last year to the University of California to investigate the potential for computer-mediated telepathy.

Before being vocalized, speech exists as word-specific neural signals in the mind. Darpa wants to develop technology that would detect these signals of Òpre-speech,Ó analyze them, and then transmit the statement to an intended interlocutor. Darpa plans to use EEG to read the brain waves. ItÕs a technique theyÕre also testing in a project to devise mind-reading binoculars that alert soldiers to threats faster the conscious mind can process them.


The project has three major goals, according to Darpa. First, try to map a personÕs EEG patterns to his or her individual words. Then, see if those patterns are generalizable Ñ if everyone has similar patterns. Last, Òconstruct a fieldable pre-prototype that would decode the signal and transmit over a limited range.Ó

The military has been funding a handful of mind-tapping technology recently, and already have monkeys capable of telepathic limb control. Telepathy may also have advantages beyond covert battlefield chatter. Last year, the National Research Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency released a report suggesting that neuroscience might also be useful to Òmake the enemy obey our commands.Ó The first step, though, may be getting a grunt to obey his officerÕs remotely-transmitted thoughts.
"

(Wired Mag)

---

09 May 10 - 01:11 AM (#2902936)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A demo of a quantum calculation carried out by Japanese researchers has yielded some pretty mind-blowing results: a single molecule can perform a complex calculation thousands of times faster than a conventional computer. A proof-of-principle test run of a discrete Fourier transform Ñ a common calculation using spectral analysis and data compression, among other things Ñ performed with a single iodine molecule transpired very well, putting all the molecules in your PC to shame." (SlashDot)

From PopSci:

A Single Molecule Computes Thousands of Times Faster than Your PC
By Clay DillowPosted 05.05.2010 at 4:50 pm5 Comments

Computing with Iodine

A demo of a quantum calculation carried out by Japanese researchers has yielded some pretty mind-blowing results: a single molecule can perform a complex calculation thousands of times faster than a conventional computer.
A proof-of-principle test run of a discrete Fourier transform -- a common calculation using spectral analysis and data compression, among other things -- performed with a single iodine molecule transpired very well, putting all the molecules in your PC to shame.

Using quantum interference Ð the vibrations of the atoms themselves Ð the team was able to run the complete discrete Fourier transform extremely quickly by encoding the inputs into an optically tailored vibrational wave packet which is then run through an excited iodine molecule whose atomic elements are oscillating at known intervals and picked up by a receiver on the other side. The entire process takes just a few tens of femtoseconds (thatÕs a quadrillionth of a second). So weÕre not just talking faster data flow or processing here; these are speeds that are physically impossible on any kind of conventional electronic device.

But donÕt trade in your conventional computing power just yet. Like other quantum information platforms, molecular computing is in its infancy; we understand some of its mechanisms, but itÕs difficult to execute and there are still a lot of unknowns. Further, researchers arenÕt quite sure how they could integrate such technology into something that works the way weÕre used to our computers working....

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09 May 10 - 05:12 AM (#2902973)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Lebanon fires latest salvo in hummus battle with Israel

Lebanon has claimed the latest victory in the continuing battle with Israel over which country can make the largest serving of hummus.

Some 300 chefs set the new record, creating a huge 10-tonne vat of the chickpea-based dip in Fanar.

That more than doubles the previous record of about four tonnes, set in January by cooks in the Israeli-Arab town of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem.

Both Lebanese and Israelis claim hummus as a national dish.

A Guinness World Records adjudicator confirmed that Lebanon now held the record.

Hummus is a dip made of chickpeas, olive oil, sesame paste, lemon juice and garlic. The chefs mixed the ingredients together in a giant plate which itself claimed a record for the largest earthenware dish.

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09 May 10 - 01:37 PM (#2903147)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Excerpt from Cosmos Magazine:
"
Two tiny meteorites recently recovered from Antarctic snow contain material dating back to the birth of our Solar System, and may provide clues about the delivery of organic matter to Earth. Researchers believe that these micrometeorites likely came from the cold, comet-forming outer regions of the gas and dust cloud that comprised the early Solar System, and sample its composition. Discovered in 2006, the particles measure less than 0.25 mm across and survived their journey through Earth's atmosphere relatively unscathed.

More importantly, scientists found that they contain unusually high amounts of organic matter." (Emphasis added).

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09 May 10 - 02:15 PM (#2903175)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Gravity-Induced Vacuum Dominance
William C. C. Lima and Daniel A. T. Vanzella
Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 161102 (Published April 20, 2010)



Quantum field theory describes all fundamental interactions between matter except for the most familiar interaction, that of gravity, since a full theory of quantum gravity has yet to be formulated. In an approximation to such a theory, the behavior of the quantum fields describing matter and its nongravitational interactions can be investigated by assuming that they propagate in a classical background spacetime. These fields will in turn affect the background metric, but such Òback-reactionÓ effects are thought to be small as long as one is not dealing with an extreme situation, such as near a singularity.
However, in an article appearing in Physical Review Letters, authors William Lima and Daniel Vanzella, both of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, show that even in some ÒnonextremeÓ situations the quantum fluctuations of these fields can have large effects on the background metric.

They consider a free scalar field that is coupled to the scalar curvature R and propagating in a metric that is conformally flat in the asymptotic past and conformally static in the asymptotic future. They find, under some specific but reasonable conditions, that the background metric forces the vacuum fluctuations to increase without bound as the field propagates into the future. As a result, the fieldÕs vacuum energy density will eventually dominate its classical energy density.

The authors speculate that this Òvacuum-dominanceÓ effect might have unexpected implications in astrophysical settings (such as neutron stars) and in cosmology. In a cosmological setting, they estimate that the Òasymptotic futureÓ where this effect cuts in is of the order of ten billion years, but for a neutron star it may be as short as 100 microseconds. Ð Jerome Malenfant

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09 May 10 - 06:10 PM (#2903324)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Yeon-Kyun Shin, professor of biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology at ISU, has shown that the protein called synaptotagmin1 (Syt1) is the sole trigger for the release of neurotransmitters in the brain.

Prior to this research, Syt1 was thought to be a part of the protein structure (not the sole protein) that triggered the release of neurotransmitters at 10 parts per million of calcium.
Shin's research is published in the current issue of the journal Science.
"Syt1 was a suspect previously, but people were not able to pinpoint that it's the real one, even though there were lots and lots of different trials," said Shin.
"In this case, we are trying to show in the laboratory that it's the real one. So we excluded everything else, and included SNARE proteins -- that's the machinery of the release, and the Syt1 is a calcium-sensing timer."

Syt1 senses, at 10 ppm of calcium, and tells the SNARE complex to open the pore to allow the movement of the neurotransmitters.

Brain activity occurs when neurotransmitters move into a fusion pore.
"We are showing that this Syt1 senses the calcium at 10 ppm, and sends the signal to the SNARE complex to open the fusion pore. That is the process that we are showing right now," Shin said....(PhysOrg)

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11 May 10 - 10:35 AM (#2904459)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?"
"Sing out for him!" was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices.
"Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically thrown them.
"And what do ye next, men?"
"Lower away, and after him!"
"And what tune is it ye pull to, men?"
"A dead whale or a stove boat!"



The call-and-response of Ahab's maniacal pep rally—a string of, as Ishmael puts it, "seemingly purposeless questions" with which the Pequod's captain stirs his crew into a bloodthirsty furor for whale-killing—culminates in what one scholar of American folklore has called the "universal motto" of nineteenth-century whalemen: "A dead whale or a stove boat!" Like a seagoing version of the Depression-era bumper slogan "California or bust," the phrase pithily evokes both the mariners' desperate dedication to the pursuit and destruction of their prey and the extreme risks they incurred in the process. "A dead whale" was, of course, the desired outcome of the chase, but "a stove boat"—a wrecked mess of splintered timber, fouled tackle, and flailing bodies—was just as likely. For the fictional crew of the Pequod, as for the real whalemen of the day, whaling was more mortal combat than straightforward hunt: Six sailors in a flimsy, open whaleboat, armed with only handheld harpoons and lances, pitting themselves at every opportunity against the singular terror of a true sea monster, the sperm whale, an animal that, when fully grown, could measure sixty-two feet in length, weigh eighty tons, and wield, to deadly purpose, an eighteen-foot jaw studded with seven-inch teeth.



Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, a new American Experience documentary by Ric Burns, is alive with the all-or-nothing ethos of the nineteenth-century whaleman. Drawing its central narrative arc from two of the most famous man-versus-whale tales of the era—the true, though at the time unthinkable, story of the Essex, a whaleship sunk in the middle of the Pacific by an enraged sperm whale, and the dark masterpiece it partially inspired, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick—the film follows the history of the American trade as it evolved from the colonial practice of "drift whaling" through the so-called Golden Age, which lasted from shortly after the War of 1812 until the commercialization of petroleum after it was successfully drilled in 1859. During that time, Nantucket, New Bedford, and other port towns sent hundreds of ships all over the globe in search of leviathans. This was before modern whaling technologies reduced the drama and heroics of the chase to mere assembly-line slaughter, when whaling still represented, in the words of several scholars interviewed in the film, a "primordial . . . epic hunt, . . . tap[ping] into something very basic about human existence and experience," "a spiritual endeavor," and a "peculiar combination of romance, . . . danger, and exoticism." Those brave enough to ship out on a Yankee whaler could expect to hunt the biggest game, explore new corners of the ocean and faraway lands, dally with foreign women, and hack to pieces and boil down behemoth carcasses.

Wait. Hack and boil carcasses?

For all the antiquarian nostalgia that risks tinting our view of the fishery's past, Into the Deep never loses sight of the simple fact that whaling was an industry—one of the largest, most profitable, and important businesses of its day, involving tens of thousands of workers at sea and on shore, and millions of dollars in annual investments and returns. It is a refreshingly clear perspective for those of us who may have thumbed quickly past the more technical chapters of Moby-Dick, or who imagine whaling through the narrow lens of those impressive painted and scrimshawed scenes of vicious whales smashing boats and tossing sailors in the air. Men went to sea for any number of reasons—to make a living, to escape the law, to find themselves—but once aboard a whaleship, their job was to supply the rapidly industrializing Western world with oil for its lamps, candles, and machinery, and baleen for its parasol ribs, horsewhips, and corsets. And as author Nathaniel Philbrick, one of the experts appearing in the film, said in a phone interview: "It's not as though the harpoon hit the whale and—poof—magically it was turned into a profitable commodity." To effect that transformation required some of the most difficult and disgusting labor of any industry of the time.

"We have to work like horses and live like pigs," wrote Robert Weir, a greenhand (or first-time sailor), in his diary. His experiences aboard the whaleship Clara Bell from 1855 to 1858 correspond to many scenes from Into the Deep. After only forty-eight hours at sea, his "eyes," he said, were already "beginning to open" to the harsh realities of his "rather dearly bought independence." He had shipped out to cut ties with those on land—his family and creditors—but to what end? The life of a whaleman was not, it turned out, all battling leviathans, exploring exotic isles, and cavorting with natives. In fact, for the most part, it was downright miserable. The quarters were cramped, the food was awful, and the work, when there was any to be done, positively backbreaking. After one especially long day, Weir jotted in his diary, it "rained pretty hard in the evening—and I got wet and tired tending the rigging and sails. Tumbled into my bunk with exhausted body and blistered hands." To this account he appended a one-word commentary, as bitterly sarcastic as it was short: "Romantic."

Although wooden whalers required, as Weir put it, "innumerable jobs" just to keep afloat and moving forward, the really hard work of whaling didn't begin until after the brief thrills of the chase were brought to a successful conclusion. If a whaleboat crew were skilled and lucky enough to kill a whale—to make it spout blood and roll "fin out," in the colorful language of the fishery—the men would then have to tow the carcass to the waiting mother ship, which could be anywhere from a few yards to several miles distant. As Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, a professor of maritime literature at Williams College–Mystic Seaport Program, points out in the film, dragging tens of tons of deadweight through the water under oar was anything but easy: Six men working themselves raw could only achieve a top speed of one mile per hour. Even a mariner seasoned by years in the merchant service described towing a dead whale as "one of the most tedious and straining undertakings I have ever assisted at."


And, as some of the archival photographs and footage Burns dredged up for Into the Deep graphically attest, things didn't get any easier after the whaleboat met the ship. Brought alongside, the corpse was secured to the starboard side of the vessel, whale's head to ship's stern, by a large chain about its flukes and sometimes a wooden beam run through a hole cut into its head. Soon, all hands—except, in American whalers, the captain—were given over to the bloody task of "cutting-in," by which the whale was literally peeled of its blubber—"as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it" is the simile Melville and other salts and scholars have used to illuminate the process. With a few deft slashes of a fifteen-foot cutting spade, an experienced mate would loosen a portion of flesh and blubber between the animal's eye and fin, while another man, braving the sharks that were by now swarming the grisly mass, boarded the body, and fixed a huge hook to the cut swath of whale. Drawn up into the rigging, this hook began ripping a long strip of blubber, called a "blanket-piece," from the carcass. Measuring some five feet wide, fifteen feet long, and ten to twenty inches thick, blanket-pieces were borne aloft and aboard, where they could be cut down to sizes suitable for "trying-out," the next step.
...From http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2010-03/Whaling.html

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11 May 10 - 01:15 PM (#2904575)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

When Noubar Afeyan, the CEO of Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, MA, set out to invent the ideal renewable fuel, he decided to eliminate the middleman. Biofuels ultimately come from carbon dioxide and water, so why persist in making them from biomass--corn or switchgrass or algae? "What we wanted to know," Afeyan says, "is could we engineer a system that could convert carbon dioxide directly into any fuel that we wanted?"

The answer seems to be yes, according to Joule Biotechnologies, the company that Afeyan founded (also in Cambridge) to design this new fuel. By manipulating and designing genes, Joule has created photosynthetic microörganisms that use sunlight to efficiently convert carbon dioxide into ethanol or diesel--the first time this has ever been done, the company says. Joule grows the microbes in photobioreactors that need no fresh water and occupy only a fraction of the land needed for biomass-based approaches. The creatures secrete fuel continuously, so it's easy to collect. Lab tests and small trials lead Afeyan to estimate that the process will yield 100 times as much fuel per hectare as fermenting corn to produce ethanol, and 10 times as much as making it from sources such as agricultural waste. He says costs could be competitive with those of fossil fuels.

If Afeyan is right, biofuels could become an alternative to petroleum on a much broader scale than has ever seemed possible. The supply of conventional biofuels, such as those made from corn, is constrained by the vast amount of water and agricultural land needed to grow the plants they're made from. And while advanced biofuels require less water and don't need high-quality land, their potential is limited by the expensive, multistep processes needed to make them. As a result, the International Energy Agency estimates that in 2050, biodiesel and ethanol will meet only 26 percent of world demand for transportation fuel. ...

From the MIT Technology Review

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12 May 10 - 01:52 PM (#2905404)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

By Chr. Science Monitor Space.com staff / May 11, 2010

A vast hole in space has been unexpectedly discovered in a part of the universe thought to be packed with a cloud of dense gas and dust – the latest in a string of cosmic finds by the European Herschel infrared space telescope.

The surprising hole in space has provided astronomers with a new glimpse at the end of the star-forming process.

"No one has ever seen a hole like this," said study team member Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo in Ohio. "It's as surprising as knowing you have worms tunneling under your lawn, but finding one morning that they have created a huge, yawning pit."


Stars are born in dense clouds of dust and gas, and while jets of gas have been spotted coming from young stars, the process of how a star uses this gas to disperse surrounding debris and emerge from its birth cloud has not been understood.

This latest discovery byHerschel, an infrared space telescope built by the European Space Agency, may be an unexpected step in the star-forming process.

A cloud of bright, reflective gas, known to astronomers as NGC 1999, is located next to a black patch of sky. For most of the 20th century, these black patches were understood to be dense clouds of dust and gas that block light that would normally pass through.

As Herschel's infrared eye looked in the direction of NGC 1999 to study nearby young stars, the cloud continued to look black, even though the telescope's infrared technology is designed to penetrate through such dense cloud material. This meant that either the cloud was immensely dense, or Herschel had happened upon a previously unexplained phenomenon.

Astronomers continued their investigation using ground-based telescopes and found the same results when looking at the patch of gas. This led to the conclusion that the patch looks black not because it is an extremely dense pocket of gas, but because it is truly empty – something had blown a hole through the cloud.

The astronomers think the hole must have been opened when the narrow jets of gas from some of the young stars in the region punctured the sheet of dust and gas that forms NGC 1999. The powerful radiation from a nearby mature star may have also helped to create the hole, researchers said.

Whatever the exact cause of the hole may be, the discovery may be an important glimpse into the way newborn stars shake off their birth clouds that helps astronomers develop a better understanding of the entire star-forming process, researchers said. ...

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12 May 10 - 08:15 PM (#2905671)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Silicon chips are on the way out, at least if Duke University engineer Chris Dwyer has his way. The professor of electrical and computer engineering says a single grad student using the unique properties of DNA to coax circuits into assembling themselves could produce more logic circuits in a single day than the entire global silicon chip industry could produce in a month.

Indeed, DNA is perfectly suited to such pre-programming and self-assembly. Dwyer's recent research has shown that by creating and mixing customized snippets of DNA and other molecules, he can create billions of identical, waffle-like structures that can be turned into logic circuits using light rather than electricity as a signaling medium.

The process works by adding light-sensitive molecules called chromophores to the structures. These chromophores absorb light, exciting the electrons within. That energy is passed to a different nearby chromophore, which uses the energy to emit light of a different wavelength. The difference in wavelength is easily differentiated from the original light; in computing terms, it's the difference between a one or a zero. Presto: a logic gate.
Rather than running computers and electrical circuits on electricity, light-sensitive DNA switches could be used to move signals through a device at much higher speeds. Furthermore, the waffle structures are cheap and can be made quickly in virtually limitless quantities, driving down the cost of computing power. Once you figure out how you wish to code the DNA snippets, you can synthesize them easily and repeatedly; from there you can create everything from a single logic gate to larger, more complex circuits....(PopSci)

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13 May 10 - 12:17 PM (#2906125)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The classic study of witchcraft in Africa occurred among the Azande, who inhabit the eastern edge of the Central African Republic. The anthropologist Edward E. Evans-Pritchard found that the Azande attributed a staggering range of misfortunes—infected toes, collapsed granary roofs, even bad weather—to meddling by witches. Nothing happened by chance, only as an effect of spell-casting by a wicked interloper. That sentiment remains widespread among Central Africans, who demand that the law reflect the influence of witchcraft as they understand it. The standard legal concept of force majeure, under which a defendant cannot be held liable for an "act of God," is thus rendered meaningless.


Foreign human-rights groups have noticed that many of the targets of prosecution are vulnerable types (like Pygmies, or even children), and nongovernmental organizations that exist to encourage the rule of law are embarrassed that the "law" in this case resembles the penal code of 17th-century Salem.

In response, the Central African parliament is considering striking the clause outlawing witchcraft from its books. The parliament is in Bangui, the capital, which sees far fewer witchcraft cases per capita. Even so, most lawyers I consulted there favored keeping the law intact, although they admitted that it fits uneasily in a modern legal system. "The problem is that in a witchcraft case, there is usually no evidence," said Bartolomé Goroth, a lawyer in Bangui, who recently defended (unsuccessfully) a coven of Pygmies who had been accused of murder-by-witchcraft in Mbaiki. Goroth said the trials generally ended with an admission of guilt by an accused witch in exchange for a modest sentence. I asked how one determined guilt in cases where the alleged witches denied the charges. "The judge will look at them and see if they act like witches," Goroth said, specifying that "acting like a witch" entailed behaving "strangely" or "nervously" in court. His principal advice to clients, he said, was to act normally and refrain from casting any spells in the courtroom.


(From an article in Atlantic

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14 May 10 - 12:39 PM (#2906907)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

cracker :

mid-15c., "hard wafer," but the specific application to a thin, crisp biscuit is 1739. Cracker-barrel (adj.) "emblematic of down-home ways and views" is from 1877. Cracker, Southern U.S. derogatory term for "poor, white trash" (1766), is from mid-15c. crack "to boast" (e.g. not what it's cracked up to be), originally a Scottish word. Especially of Georgians by 1808, though often extended to residents of northern Florida.

I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode. [1766, G. Cochrane]

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15 May 10 - 02:00 PM (#2907603)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Clarkson University scientists led by Prof. Igor Sokolov are using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to record sounds emanating from inside living insects like flies, mosquitoes and ladybugs.

AFM is one of major scientific tools responsible for the emergence of modern nanotechnology.

The unprecedented sensitivity of AFM allowed the Clarkson team to record sub-nano oscillations of very faint amplitude (less than the size of one atom) at high frequencies (up to 1,000 hertz or cycles per second). Previous work in the study of insects was only done at up to 5 hertz. The sounds are recorded by touching the surface of the bugs with an AFM probe.

The study of these sounds may allow researchers to discover unknown features and physiology of insects. Sokolov hopes these discoveries may help in finding solutions to the problems caused by insect pests.

"Insects are of general interest not only as the most numerous and diverse group of animals on the planet, but also as highly efficient bio-machines varying greatly in size," says Sokolov. "Some are major agricultural pests and competitors of humans for crops. Mosquitoes and other insects are important vectors of plant, animal, and human diseases. Also, vast lands of the earth are still underdeveloped because they are occupied by blood-sucking insects."...

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18 May 10 - 07:50 AM (#2909116)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Orderliness, openness defining political traits: Study

Being a "bleeding-heart liberal" is an insult in some circles, but new Canadian research suggests it's an accurate label, while "compassionate conservative" might be a mythical creature.

A study examining the link between politics and personality traits finds that liberals are more compassionate, preoccupied with fairness and equality, while conservatives are more polite, modest and respectful of social norms.

"What we found is that conservatives tend to be higher in a trait called orderliness and lower in openness. What that means is they're more concerned about a sense of order and tradition, so they have this motive to preserve the current social order. On the other hand, liberalism tended to be more associated with compassion and empathy," says Jacob Hirsh, a post-doctoral psychology researcher at the University of Toronto and lead author on the paper.

"It fits in with stereotypes of these different groups as well. The term 'bleeding-heart liberal' is often thrown around, but there's some truth to that."

Conversely, the study shows that right-leaning individuals tend to score high in order and low in compassion, leading Hirsh to conclude in the paper that "compassionate conservative" is "something of an oxymoron." The results don't suggest the "moral superiority" of either viewpoint, the authors write, but Hirsh says they do help explain why liberals and conservatives clash.

The study included more than 600 subjects from Canada and the U.S., who categorized their politics as small-L liberal or small-C conservative rather than adherence to any particular political party.

Psychologists profile personalities according to the so-called "Big Five" personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness. (Compassion and politeness, the characteristics Hirsh studied, are specific aspects of agreeableness.)

Some of these traits sound more flattering than others, but Hirsh says too much of any of them is not a good thing.

Openness, for instance, means interest in aesthetic experiences, cultural sophistication and abstract ideas; it's a trait that's more common in liberals than conservatives, he says, but it's a double-edged sword.

"A very low-open person is very down to earth, someone who thinks in concrete terms and is very grounded — and when you phrase it that way, it sounds much more positive," he says of the conservative personality profile. "At the extreme high-open end, that's where you get people (whose) thinking is sort of scattered, they jump from idea to idea and they're less focused."

The study reflects a shift in psychology and political science toward recognizing that many "non-rational" factors shape people's politics and there's a "massive genetic component" to both political orientation and personality, Hirsh says.

Researchers have been drawing links between politics and personality since the Second World War, he says, but his work is part of a recent resurgence that views people's political orientation as driven by underlying psychological needs.

"It means you have to take a deeper view of political values and morality in terms of where these things are coming from, rather than just a straight rational consideration of the issues," he says. "People's values are deeply embedded in their biology and their genetic heritage."

And while their political opponents might think otherwise, the fact that a conservative concern with order and a liberal urge toward empathy have persisted as human personality traits for millennia means both are useful, he says.

"The fact that the variation still exists, from an evolutionary perspective, it means that neither one is right on its own, you really need both to balance out an effective society," Hirsh says.

"Most political ideologues think that if you can just get rid of the other side, everything would be perfect, but from an evolutionary perspective, that doesn't quite make sense. If there really was one optimal solution that was better than the other, then that would have survived and everything else would have perished."
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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18 May 10 - 08:06 AM (#2909123)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Japanese couple was married by a robot serving as minister last week. What does this say about the chest-beating "sanctity of marriage" yodelers? :D

The robot minister was a 1.5m tall I-Fairy manufactured by Kokoro Co. The robot features plastic pigtails, flashing eyes which are used to depict expression and, for the occasion, it donned a wreath of flowers. Its arms are capable of movements like waving a hand or reaching behind it and, while it is capable of speech, it requires a programmer to input the desired words.That programmer can also program in a variety of movements, like dance moves, which the robot can perform.


A

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19 May 10 - 11:03 AM (#2909929)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"There are two travellers, an English woman and a French man, both in their late twenties. They are eloquently self-aware and profoundly unhappy. They are hoping to find a new purpose to their lives. They arrive in Egypt in November 1849, within days of each other. They stay in adjacent hotels. They travel along the same river, and they visit the same places at the same season of the year. They confide their secrets to their journals. They write vivid letters home. For two days they are to be found on the upper and the lower decks of the same steamship, plodding along the lower Nile from Alexandria to Cairo.

These two young travellers, so nicely oblivious of each other, are Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert. Within seven years of their journey along the Nile both will be famous, she as the saviour of the wounded soldiers of the Crimean War, he as the author of Madame Bovary. His novel will be the classic description of the subjection of women. Her mission to the Crimea will foreshadow their emancipation. At this point in their lives, though, their primary creative energies are paralysed. Egypt may transform them.

..."

(From the UK Literary Review coverage of BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS -- A Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt By Anthony Sattin)

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19 May 10 - 02:40 PM (#2910053)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From this NYT Book review discussing "The Rational Optimist," by Matt Ridley:

"As they specialized and exchanged, humans learned how to domesticate crops and animals and sell food to passing merchants. Traders congregated in the first cities and built ships that spread goods and ideas around the world.

The Phoenician merchants who sailed the Mediterranean were denounced by Hebrew prophets like Isaiah and Greek intellectuals like Homer. But trading networks enabled the ancient Greeks to develop their alphabet, mathematics and science, and later fostered innovation in the trading hubs of the Roman Empire, India, China, Arabia, Renaissance Italy and other European capitals.

Rulers like to take credit for the advances during their reigns, and scientists like to see their theories as the source of technological progress. But Dr. Ridley argues that they've both got it backward: traders' wealth builds empires, and entrepreneurial tinkerers are more likely to inspire scientists than vice versa. From Stone Age seashells to the steam engine to the personal computer, innovation has mostly been a bottom-up process.

"Forget wars, religions, famines and poems for the moment," Dr. Ridley writes. "This is history's greatest theme: the metastasis of exchange, specialization and the invention it has called forth, the 'creation' of time."

You can appreciate the timesaving benefits through a measure devised by the economist William D. Nordhaus: how long it takes the average worker to pay for an hour of reading light. In ancient Babylon, it took more than 50 hours to pay for that light from a sesame-oil lamp. In 1800, it took more than six hours of work to pay for it from a tallow candle. Today, thanks to the countless specialists producing electricity and compact fluorescent bulbs, it takes less than a second. That technological progress, though, was sporadic. Innovation would flourish in one trading hub for a while but then stagnate, sometimes because of external predators — roving pirates, invading barbarians — but more often because of internal parasites, as Dr. Ridley writes:

"Empires bought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the expense of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers."
..."

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21 May 10 - 10:18 AM (#2911254)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"We proceed gingerly when interpreting the results of high-energy physics experiments. The way it has been explained is that it all comes down to a very slight bias, an asymmetry, in the behavior of a subatomic particle, the neutral B-meson. As it oscillates between its matter and antimatter states, it shows a slight predilection for matter, a result predicted by Andrei Sakharov.

That preference for one state over another — becoming matter more readily than it becomes antimatter — is small, about 1 percent. But that may be enough to explain the preponderance of matter. We expect more news on this front from the Tevatron and its larger European cousin, the Large Hadron Collider.

What these physicists are searching for is a model of the universe and its origins. We are, as we know, made of stardust, of elements formed in the Big Bang and in the subsequent creation and destruction of stars. The very existence of this universal stuff called matter may depend on a slight bias in the frenetic variation of a particle we can only momentarily detect, in the hottest kilns humanity has so far created. "

NYT

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21 May 10 - 12:53 PM (#2911354)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"With the first baby boomers turning 65 next year, the Census Bureau projects a sharp increase in the share of people in the age group compared with those between 20 and 64. Depending on the influx of younger immigrants, the number of people 65 and older per 100 in the younger group would rise to 35 (in 20 years) from 22 now, the bureau said Thursday, raising potential political conflicts over everything from Social Security to school board budgets. By 2030, a quarter of non-Hispanic whites would be 65 and over. By 2050, the black, Hispanic and Asian elderly, now 20 percent of the older population, would make up 42 percent. "

Ibid

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27 May 10 - 06:13 PM (#2915579)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

nternet, networks of connections between Hollywood actors, etc, are examples of complex networks, whose properties have been intensively studied in recent times. The small-world property (that everyone has a few-step connection to celebrities), for instance, is a prominent result derived in this field. A group of scientists around Professor Cirac, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Germany), has now introduced complex networks in the microscopic, so called, quantum regime (Nature Physics, Advanced Online Publication).


The scientists have proven that these quantum complex networks have surprising properties: even in a very weakly connected quantum network, performing some measurements and other simple quantum operations allows to generate arbitrary graphs of connections that are otherwise impossible in their classical counterparts.

The behaviour of networks has been widely explored in the context of classical statistical mechanics. Periodic networks, by definition, have a regular structure, in which each node is connected to a constant number of ÔgeometricalÕ neighbours. If one tries to enlarge these systems, their topology is not altered since the unit cell is just repeated ad aeternum. The construction of a random network is completely different: each node has a small probability of being connected to any other node. Depending on the connection probability and in the limit of infinite size, such networks exhibit some typical effects. For instance, if this probability is high enough, nearly all nodes will be part of one giant cluster; if it is too small only sparse groups of connected nodes will be present.
In a quantum network one link between neighbouring nodes is given by one pair of entangled qubits, for example atoms; in other words, one link in a quantum network represents the entanglement between two qubits.

Therefore, a node possesses exactly one qubit for each neighbour, and since it can act on these qubits it is called a ÔstationÕ. This holds for any kind of quantum networks. However, there are different ways of defining the entanglement between neighbouring qubits. Until now, quantum networks have been mostly modelled as periodically structured graphs, that is, lattices. In the work described here the scientists set the amount of entanglement between two nodes to be equal to the connection probability of the classical random graphs.

In the classical case, some specific subgraphs appear suddenly if one lets the connection probability scale with the size of the network: for very low probabilities only trivial connections (simple links) are present in the network, whereas for higher probabilities the subgraphs become more and more complex (e.g., triangles, squares, or stars). In quantum networks, on the other hand, a qualitatively different behaviour emerges: even for the lowest non-trivial connection probability, i.e., if the entanglement between the nodes is, at first sight, just sufficient to get simple connections, it is in fact possible to generate communication subgraphs of any complexity. This result mainly relies on the superposition principle and on the ability to coherently manipulate the qubits at the stations.   (PhysOrg)

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29 May 10 - 09:39 AM (#2916546)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. "You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!" one of the Christs yelled. "I will not worship you! You're a creature! You better live your own life and wake up to the facts!" another snapped back. "No two men are Jesus Christs. É I am the Good Lord!" the third interjected, barely concealing his anger.



Frustrated by psychology's focus on what he considered to be peripheral beliefs, like political opinions and social attitudes, Rokeach wanted to probe the limits of identity. He had been intrigued by stories of Secret Service agents who felt they had lost contact with their original identities, and wondered if a man's sense of self might be challenged in a controlled setting. Unusually for a psychologist, he found his answer in the Bible. There is only one Son of God, says the good book, so anyone who believed himself to be Jesus would suffer a psychological affront by the very existence of another like him. This was the revelation that led Rokeach to orchestrate his meeting of the Messiahs and document their encounter in the extraordinary (and out-of-print) book from 1964, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

Although by no means common, Christ conventions have an unexpectedly long history. In his commentary to Cesare Beccaria's essay "Crimes and Punishments," Voltaire recounted the tale of the "unfortunate madman" Simon Morin who was burnt at the stake in 1663 for claiming to be Jesus. Unfortunate it seems, because Morin was originally committed to a madhouse where he met another who claimed to be God the Father, and "was so struck with the folly of his companion that he acknowledged his own, and appeared, for a time, to have recovered his senses." The lucid period did not last, however, and it seems the authorities lost patience with his blasphemy. Another account of a meeting of the Messiahs comes from Sidney Rosen's book My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson. The renowned psychiatrist apparently set two delusional Christs in his ward arguing only for one to gain insight into his madness, miraculously, after seeing something of himself in his companion. ("I'm saying the same things as that crazy fool is saying," said one of the patients. "That must mean I'm crazy too.")

(Full article here

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31 May 10 - 10:36 PM (#2918117)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists from CERN and INFN of the OPERA Collaboration have announced the first direct observation of a muon neutrino turning into a tau neutrino. 'The OPERA result follows seven years of preparation and over three years of beam provided by CERN. During that time, billions of billions of muon-neutrinos have been sent from CERN to Gran Sasso, taking just 2.4 milliseconds to make the trip. T

he rarity of neutrino oscillation, coupled with the fact that neutrinos interact very weakly with matter, makes this kind of experiment extremely subtle to conduct. ... While closing a chapter on understanding the nature of neutrinos, the observation of neutrino oscillations is strong evidence for new physics. The Standard Model of fundamental particles posits no mass for the neutrino. For them to be able to oscillate, however, they must have mass.'"

(From Slashdot)

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01 Jun 10 - 12:09 PM (#2918301)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Cloning Entangled Qubits to Scales One Can See
Authors: Pavel Sekatski, Bruno Sanguinetti, Enrico Pomarico, Nicolas Gisin, Christoph Simon
(Submitted on 27 May 2010)
Abstract: By amplifying photonic qubits it is possible to produce states that contain enough photons to be seen with a human eye, potentially bringing quantum effects to macroscopic scales [1]. In this paper we theoretically study quantum states obtained by amplifying one side of an entangled photon pair with different types of optical cloning machines for photonic qubits. We propose a detection scheme that involves lossy threshold detectors (such as human eye) on the amplified side and conventional photon detectors on the other side. We show that correlations obtained with such coarse-grained measurements prove the entanglement of the initial photon pair and do not prove the entanglement of the amplified state. We emphasize the importance of the detection loophole in Bell violation experiments by giving a simple preparation technique for separable states that violate a Bell inequality without closing this loophole. Finally we analyze the genuine entanglement of the amplified states and its robustness to losses before, during and after amplification.

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07 Jun 10 - 11:15 PM (#2922830)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Petrichor

A pleasant, distinctive smell frequently accompanying the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather in certain regions.

Used in a sentence by the Listener in 1971:

No matter what kind of rock or earth was used, the oily essence always possessed the aroma of petrichorÑthe smell of rain falling on dry ground. (NYT)

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08 Jun 10 - 06:20 PM (#2923418)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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18 Jun 10 - 11:08 AM (#2930552)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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.

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19 Jun 10 - 03:41 PM (#2931182)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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21 Jun 10 - 12:22 PM (#2932028)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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."

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23 Jun 10 - 11:31 AM (#2933279)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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23 Jun 10 - 09:43 PM (#2933670)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Joe_F

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.

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24 Jun 10 - 09:58 PM (#2934339)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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25 Jun 10 - 11:18 AM (#2934633)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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."

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26 Jun 10 - 10:06 AM (#2935106)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

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26 Jun 10 - 12:27 PM (#2935154)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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27 Jun 10 - 01:39 PM (#2935615)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...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

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28 Jun 10 - 11:52 AM (#2936038)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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

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28 Jun 10 - 02:53 PM (#2936146)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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

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02 Jul 10 - 04:09 PM (#2938722)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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03 Jul 10 - 12:57 PM (#2939192)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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04 Jul 10 - 10:48 AM (#2939585)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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

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04 Jul 10 - 05:09 PM (#2939775)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

13 Jul 10 - 09:38 AM (#2944318)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

14 Jul 10 - 07:50 PM (#2945217)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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."

---

14 Jul 10 - 07:58 PM (#2945224)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

"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.

---

15 Jul 10 - 10:27 AM (#2945545)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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...."

---

16 Jul 10 - 11:43 PM (#2946534)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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."

---

18 Jul 10 - 04:52 PM (#2947257)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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."

---

21 Jul 10 - 12:44 PM (#2949137)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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

---

21 Jul 10 - 07:34 PM (#2949430)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

(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.

---

23 Jul 10 - 11:43 AM (#2950691)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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...

---

23 Jul 10 - 05:25 PM (#2950952)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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."

---

23 Jul 10 - 05:34 PM (#2950962)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A three-dimensional printer for printing FOOD!.

A

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24 Jul 10 - 09:11 AM (#2951314)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

---

24 Jul 10 - 03:00 PM (#2951477)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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!

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24 Jul 10 - 03:11 PM (#2951483)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

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24 Jul 10 - 03:35 PM (#2951498)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


A

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26 Jul 10 - 10:53 AM (#2952464)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

26 Jul 10 - 10:23 PM (#2952908)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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)

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27 Jul 10 - 12:14 PM (#2953229)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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28 Jul 10 - 02:49 PM (#2953944)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"....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".

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30 Jul 10 - 01:12 PM (#2955239)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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)

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02 Aug 10 - 10:10 AM (#2956671)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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02 Aug 10 - 07:47 PM (#2957034)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

---

02 Aug 10 - 07:50 PM (#2957037)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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03 Aug 10 - 10:16 AM (#2957305)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

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03 Aug 10 - 02:33 PM (#2957454)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.
"

---

05 Aug 10 - 08:00 PM (#2959117)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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08 Aug 10 - 05:58 PM (#2960777)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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.

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08 Aug 10 - 07:22 PM (#2960819)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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09 Aug 10 - 11:02 AM (#2961142)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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09 Aug 10 - 11:37 AM (#2961159)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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09 Aug 10 - 01:52 PM (#2961266)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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)

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09 Aug 10 - 03:12 PM (#2961332)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"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

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09 Aug 10 - 04:24 PM (#2961391)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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.

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09 Aug 10 - 05:07 PM (#2961439)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I the journal 'Pediatrics' a study regarding the early onset of breats in girls of 7 and 8 years of age. The subjects numbered over a thousand and were selected from the3 areas; East Harlem, San Francisco and a mid west city in Ohio.

The study shows an accelertion of early puberty compared to 40 years ago.

The study found that white girls were most prone to early breast development , hispanics to a lesser degree and blacks the least.

There is concern that early puberty in girls may be linked to breast cancer later in their lives.

While no one knows if this is due to obesity, toxins or drugs, my bet is that white girls may be more exposed to mom's birth control pills or simply a diet which has more nutrients along with antibiotic traces in all US meat production.

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09 Aug 10 - 09:46 PM (#2961605)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

I just saw a satillite view of Greenland. Its dick has broken off and is floating out to sea. It is 4 times the area of Manhatten.

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09 Aug 10 - 10:21 PM (#2961643)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Pretty cold dick!! Obviously, it wasn't being used properly...

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10 Aug 10 - 08:23 AM (#2961930)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction
Stephen Hawking

"It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet," says Stephen Hawking. It's time to abandon Earth.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/21691

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10 Aug 10 - 11:40 AM (#2962064)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

So true.

Hey, I think its time to update global swarming disasters.
With all the methane from the Gulf oil blowout now floating in the air and all the smoke from the Russian fires I think we have been dealt a crushing climate blow.

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13 Aug 10 - 11:40 AM (#2964363)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett noted that with the idea of a massively parallel architecture, which would be capable of exploring a different part of the space of possible computations, Hillis opened up a vast area:

What the British mathematician Alan Turing did, with the concept of the Turing machine, was to provide a succinct definition of the entire space of all possible computations. The machine developed by John von Neumann was a mechanical realization of Turing's idea. A von Neumann machine is the computer on your desk — the standard serial computer. In principle, the von Neumann machine — which is, for all practical purposes, a universal Turing machine — can compute any computable function; but if you don't have a billion years to wait around, you can't actually explore interesting parts of that space. The actual space explorable by any one architecture is quite limited. It sends this vanishingly thin thread out into this huge multidimensional space. To explore other parts of that space, you have got to invent other kinds of architecture. Massive parallel architectures are everybody's first, second, and third choices.

What Danny did was to create if not the first then one of the first really practical, really massive, parallel computers. It precipitated a gold rush. We had a new exploration vehicle, which was looking at portions of design space that had never been looked at before. Danny was very good at selling that idea to people in different scientific fields and demonstrating, with some of the early applications, just how powerful and exciting this vehicle was.

Two years ago this month, Hillis instigated an interesting Edge Reality Club conversation cross-referenced with a discussion on the Encyclopedia Britannica website on Nicholas Carr's Atlantic Essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid" (now expanded into Carr's book The Shallows). Hillis wrote:

We evolved in a world where our survival depended on an intimate knowledge of our surroundings. This is still true, but our surroundings have grown. We are now trying to comprehend the global village with minds that were designed to handle a patch of savanna and a close circle of friends. Our problem is not so much that we are stupider, but rather that the world is demanding that we become smarter. Forced to be broad, we sacrifice depth. We skim, we summarize, we skip the fine print and, all too often, we miss the fine point. We know we are drowning, but we do what we can to stay afloat.

As an optimist, I assume that we will eventually invent our way out of our peril, perhaps by building new technologies that make us smarter, or by building new societies that better fit our limitations. In the meantime, we will have to struggle. Herman Melville, as might be expected, put it better: "well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril; nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown."

We create tools and then we mold ourselves in their image. With The Hillis Knowledge Web he has proposed something new, something different. I can make a case that his "Aristotle" (The Knowledge Web) essay is the kind of seminal document, such as Turing's Computing Machinery and Intelligence, and MuCulloch et al's What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain that appears a few times in a century. But now, with the Google announcement, we will all find in Internet time, how his ideas play out in the real world.

..."


From The Edge.Org archive

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13 Aug 10 - 12:40 PM (#2964395)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Forget Old Spice deodorant--the best way to get laid is to tote around an iPhone, especially if you happen to be female. And while iPhone users are screwing like rabbits, Blackberry and Android users appear to be relatively chaste."

Full report here

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15 Aug 10 - 06:44 PM (#2965962)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Ninety years ago in the battle for equal voting rights for women:

"...It's the middle of August, and women finally got the right to vote 90 years ago this month--which makes this story about the passage of suffrage through the Tennessee Legislature quite a propos:

Ninety years ago this month, all eyes turned to Tennessee, the only state yet to ratify with its Legislature still in session. The resolution sailed through the Tennessee Senate. As it moved on to the House, the most vigorous opposition came from the liquor industry, which was pretty sure that if women got the vote, they'd use it to pass Prohibition. Distillery lobbyists came to fight, bearing samples.

"Both suffrage and anti-suffrage men were reeling through the hall in an advanced state of intoxication," Carrie Catt reported.

The women and their allies knew they had a one-vote margin of support in the House. Then the speaker, whom they had counted on as a "yes," changed his mind.

(I love this moment. Women's suffrage is tied to the railroad track and the train is bearing down fast when suddenly. ...)

Suddenly, Harry Burn, the youngest member of the House, a 24-year-old "no" vote from East Tennessee, got up and announced that he had received a letter from his mother telling him to "be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt."

"I know that a mother's advice is always the safest for a boy to follow," Burn said, switching sides..."

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16 Aug 10 - 01:00 PM (#2966442)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From a NYT Book Review:

"...(Winston) Churchill was born in 1874 into a Britain that was coloring the map imperial pink, at the cost of washing distant nations blood-red. He was told a simple story: the superior white man was conquering the primitive dark-skinned natives, and bringing them the benefits of civilization.

As soon as he could, Churchill charged off to take his part in "a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples." In the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan, he experienced, fleetingly, an instant of doubt. He realized that the local population was fighting back because of "the presence of British troops in lands the local people considered their own," just as Britain would if she were invaded. But Churchill soon suppressed this thought, deciding instead that they were merely deranged jihadists whose violence was explained by a "strong aboriginal propensity to kill."

..."


Ahhh-hmmmmm!


A

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17 Aug 10 - 09:56 AM (#2967087)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A computer chip that performs calculations using probabilities, instead of binary logic, could accelerate everything from online banking systems to the flash memory in smart phones and other gadgets.


Probability chip: This computer chip uses signals representing probabilities, not digital bits.
Credit: Lyric Semiconductor

Rewriting some fundamental features of computer chips, Lyric Semiconductor has unveiled its first "probability processor," a silicon chip that computes with electrical signals that represent chances, not digital 1s and 0s.

"We've essentially started from scratch," says Ben Vigoda, CEO and founder of the Boston-based startup. Vigoda's PhD thesis underpins the company's technology. Starting from scratch makes it possible to implement statistical calculations in a simpler, more power efficient way, he says.

And because that kind of math is at the core of many products, there are many potential applications. "To take one example, Amazon's recommendations to you are based on probability," says Vigoda. "Any time you buy [from] them, the fraud check on your credit card is also probability [based], and when they e-mail your confirmation, it passes through a spam filter that also uses probability."

All those examples involve comparing different data to find the most likely fit. Implementing the math needed to do this is simpler with a chip that works with probabilities, says Vigoda, allowing smaller chips to do the same job at a faster rate. A processor that dramatically speeds up such probability-based calculations could find all kinds of uses. But Lyric will face challenges in proving the reliability and scalability of its product, and in showing that it can be easily programmed.
(MIT Tech Report)

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17 Aug 10 - 01:08 PM (#2967211)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Reexamining nothing: is the vacuum of space really empty?
By Matt Ford | (From Ars Technica)

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory that describes the strong nuclear force, is odd even by quantum mechanical standards. QCD dictates that, unlike pretty much any other particle, when you pull apart two quarks—the constituent particles of hadrons and one of the base particles of QCD—the energy between them does not decrease. Instead, it increases, a property known as confinement. This means that if you pulled hard enough on two bound quarks, the energy between them could become so great that it would cause a quark-antiquark pair to pop into existence and alleviate the strain.

Quark-antiquark pairs are also thought to be a major component of the vacuum that pervades our Universe. Instead of being empty, the vacuum is thought to be teeming with a complex mix of these fundamental particles. However, a new paper suggests that this view of the Universe may have things wrong.

QCD is also an oddity in that, at higher and higher energies, the interactions between its constituent particles becomes weaker and weaker, a phenomenon known as asymptotic freedom. Given the (proven) existence of asymptotic freedom, physicists can directly model QCD at high energies.

The weakened interactions at high energies allows physicists to solve the complex mathematical equations through perturbative expansions. This is a technique where you can assume the answer has a simple algebraic form, plug it back into the original equation, drop all terms that are "complex," and solve the resulting, simplified equation. However, this only works when interactions are weak.
...

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17 Aug 10 - 06:13 PM (#2967450)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Children are natural psychologists. By the time they're in preschool, they understand that other people have desires, preferences, beliefs, and emotions. But how they learn this isn't clear. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that children figure out another person's preferences by using a topic you'd think they don't encounter until college: statistics.

In one experiment, children aged 3 and 4 saw a puppet named "Squirrel" remove five toys of the same type from a container full of toys and happily play with them. Across children, the toys that Squirrel removed were the same (for example, all five were blue flowers). What varied, however, were the contents of the container. For one-third of the children, 100 percent of the toys were the same type (so, in this example, all were blue flowers). For another third of the children, only 50 percent were that type (that is, half were blue flowers and half were red circles). Finally, for the last third of the children only 18 percent were of that type (that is, 82 percent were red circles). Later on, children were asked to give Squirrel a toy that he likes. The children were more likely to give Squirrel the blue flowers if he had selected them out of the container that had other toys in it.

More amazingly, the proportion of other toys mattered as well; they gave Squirrel the blue flowers more when the container included only 18 percent blue flowers, and slightly less often when the container had 50 percent blue flowers. When the container had 100 percent blue flowers, they gave him toys at random. That means the child inferred that the puppet liked blue flowers best if the sample of five toys didn't match the proportion of toys in the population (the container). This is a statistical phenomenon known as non-random sampling.

In another experiment, 18- to 24-month-olds also learned about the preferences of an adult experimenter from non-random sampling. They watched the adult choose five toys that were either 18 percent or 82 percent of the toys in a box. The adult played happily with the toy either way, but the toddler only concluded that the adult had a preference if they'd picked the toys from a box in which that toy was scarce.

Of course, statistical information isn't the only way children learn about the preferences of other people. Emotion and verbalization are also importantÑbut this is a new cue that no one had identified before, says Tamar Kushnir of Cornell University. She carried out the study with Fei Xu of the University of California, Berkeley and Henry M. Wellman of the University of Michigan.

"Babies are amazing," says Kushnir. "Babies and children are like little scientists. Mostly they learn by observing and experiencing the world. Just let them do it. Later on, there will be time for formal instruction, but when they're really young, this sort of informal learning is critical."

---

Seems to me this kind of backwards reasoning, resulting in the assertion that babies use statistics, is really lame and ignores the gaping absence of understanding of the human mind. Perfidious unreason, if you ask me.


A

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18 Aug 10 - 07:15 PM (#2968228)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Sejnowski says he agrees with Kurzweil's assessment that about a million lines of code may be enough to simulate the human brain.
Here's how that math works, Kurzweil explains: The design of the brain is in the genome. The human genome has three billion base pairs or six billion bits, which is about 800 million bytes before compression, he says. Eliminating redundancies and applying loss-less compression, that information can be compressed into about 50 million bytes, according to Kurzweil.
About half of that is the brain, which comes down to 25 million bytes, or a million lines of code.
I'm very disappointed in Terence Sejnowski for going along with that nonsense.

See that sentence I bolded up there? That's his fundamental premise, and it is utterly false. Kurzweil knows nothing about how the brain works. It's design is not encoded in the genome: what's in the genome is a collection of molecular tools wrapped up in bits of conditional logic, the regulatory part of the genome, that makes cells responsive to interactions with a complex environment. The brain unfolds during development, by means of essential cell:cell interactions, of which we understand only a tiny fraction. The end result is a brain that is much, much more than simply the sum of the nucleotides that encode a few thousand proteins. He has to simulate all of development from his codebase in order to generate a brain simulator, and he isn't even aware of the magnitude of that problem.

We cannot derive the brain from the protein sequences underlying it; the sequences are insufficient, as well, because the nature of their expression is dependent on the environment and the history of a few hundred billion cells, each plugging along interdependently. We haven't even solved the sequence-to-protein-folding problem, which is an essential first step to executing Kurzweil's clueless algorithm. And we have absolutely no way to calculate in principle all the possible interactions and functions of a single protein with the tens of thousands of other proteins in the cell!

Let me give you a few specific examples of just how wrong Kurzweil's calculations are. Here are a few proteins that I plucked at random from the NIH database; all play a role in the human brain. ...

(Excerpted from this article at Gizmodo which slices through Kurzweil's optimistic baffle gab...


A

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18 Aug 10 - 07:52 PM (#2968248)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A list of free college courses on-line and other things.


A

---

20 Aug 10 - 11:10 AM (#2969405)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

P.J. O'Rourke talks about the attitude of freedom and the important things that get confused as "promoting democracy". Excerpt:

"People must, of course, feel free of physical and economic oppression. But first they must feel free of ignorance.

People need to be able to look around, people need to see. Even people who are locked in a room are more free in a room with the lights on than they are in a dark room — where they're bumping into each other and the furniture.

There's power in the Attitude of Liberty — a sense that one has some knowledge, some understanding, and therefore some control, if only control over one's own ideas.

The strength of America is not economic, military, or diplomatic. The strength of America is an idea — an idea of a place where people have information, understanding, and control over their lives. Once, during the civil war in Lebanon, I was stopped at a Hezbollah checkpoint by a teenager with an AK-47. When the young man saw my American passport I was subjected, with a gun muzzle in my face, to a twenty minute tirade about "great American satan devil." I was told that America had caused war, famine, injustice, Zionism, and poverty all over the world. Then, when the boy had finished his rant, he lowered his gun and said, "As soon as I get my Green Card I am going to Dearborn, Michigan, to study dentist school."

Information is the source of citizenship. Without information no one can even attempt to build a civil society. ..."

Full article can be found here at the World Affairts Journal and is an interesting read.

---

28 Aug 10 - 09:18 PM (#2974904)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Bits Pics: Kodak's 1975 Model Digital Camera
By NICK BILTON


It might not be pretty on the eyes, or easy to carry around on a vacation, but what do you expect? It was the first digital camera Kodak ever made.

Yes, that's right, the contraption pictured above was put together in Kodak's Elmgrove Plant labs near Rochester, N.Y., during the winter of 1975.

A post on Kodak's Web site from 2007, written by Steve Sasson, the inventor of the digital camera, explains exactly how this camera was created, from a mishmash of lenses and computer parts and an old Super 8 movie camera.

Mr. Sasson called it "film-less photography" and took a "year of piecing together a bunch of new technology" to create a digital camera that ran off "16 nickel-cadmium batteries, a highly temperamental new type of CCD imaging area array, an a/d converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter."

One of my favorite factoids about this snazzy digital camera is the fact that it took 23 seconds to record a single digital image to its cassette deck. To view the filmless photo, Mr. Sasson had to remove the cassette from the camera and place it in a customized reader that could display the image on an old black and white television.

When the team of technicians presented the camera to Kodak audiences they of course heard a barrage of curious questions:

    Why would anyone ever want to view his or her pictures on a TV? How would you store these images? What does an electronic photo album look like? When would this type of approach be available to the consumer?

And although Mr. Sasson and his team tried to answer some of these questions, he concludes with the statement that the digital camera they created could "substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future."

Pic HERE

---

02 Sep 10 - 01:22 PM (#2978587)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The first printed books came with a question: What do you do with these things?
(courtesy of Alan Richardson)
By Tom Scocca
August 29, 2010
In the beginning, before there was such a thing as a Gutenberg Bible, Johannes Gutenberg laid out his rows of metal type and brushed them with ink and, using the mechanism that would change the world, produced an ordinary little schoolbook. It was probably an edition of a fourth-century grammar text by Aelius Donatus, some 28 pages long. Only a few fragments of the printed sheets survive, because no one thought the book was worth keeping.

Tweet 44 people Tweeted this people Dugg thisdiggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis "Now had he kept to that, doing grammars...it probably would all have been well," said Andrew Pettegree, a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews and author of "The Book in the Renaissance," the story of the birth of print. Instead, Gutenberg was bent on making a grand statement, an edition of Scripture that would cost half as much as a house and would live through the ages. "And it was a towering success, as a cultural artifact, but it was horribly expensive," Pettegree said. In the end, struggling for capital to support the Bible project, Gutenberg was forced out of his own print shop by his business partner, Johann Fust.

Inventing the printing press was not the same thing as inventing the publishing business. Technologically, craftsmen were ready to follow Gutenberg's example, opening presses across Europe. But they could only guess at what to print, and the public saw no particular need to buy books. The books they knew, manuscript texts, were valuable items and were copied to order. The habit of spending money to read something a printer had decided to publish was an alien one.

Nor was print clearly destined to replace manuscript, from the point of view of the book owners of the day. A few fussy color-printing experiments aside, the new books were monochrome, dull in comparison to illuminated manuscripts. Many books left blank spaces for adding hand decoration, and collectors frequently bound printed pages together with manuscript ones.

"It's a great mistake to think of an absolute disjunction between a manuscript world of the Middle Ages and a print world of the 16th century," Pettegree said.

As in our own Internet era, culture and commerce went through upheaval as Europe tried to figure out what to make of the new medium and its possibilities. Should it serve to spread familiar Latin texts, or to promote new ideas, written in the vernacular? Was print a vessel for great and serious works, or for quick and sloppy ones? As with the iPad (or the Newton before it), who would want to buy a printed book, and why?

Pettegree explores this time of cultural change by looking at the actual published matter it produced. Drawing on the power of 21st century information technology, he and a team of researchers pulled together the catalogs of thousands of small, scattered libraries, assembling the broadest picture to date of the earliest publications.

What made print viable, Pettegree found, was not the earth-shaking impact of mighty tomes, but the rustle of countless little pages: almanacs, calendars, municipal announcements. Indulgence certificates, the documents showing that sinners had paid the Catholic church for reduced time in purgatory, were especially popular. These ephemeral jobs were what made printing a viable business through the long decades while book publishers — and the public — struggled to find what else this new technology might be good for.
...

---

From this article in the Boston Globe.

I find it charming to think of people wondering what they might use this new thing, the booque, for. "What earthly good is it?" "Why should I look at letters on a page when I can ask my neighbor?"

I am reminded of the prediction of Watson of IBM, I think, that the world might have a market for perhaps ten or twenty computers...

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...

A

---

02 Sep 10 - 04:02 PM (#2978731)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

String theory has finally made a prediction that can be tested with experiments — but in a completely unexpected realm of physics.

The theory has long been touted as the best hope for a unified "theory of everything," bringing together the physics of the vanishingly small and the mindbendingly large. But it has also been criticized and even ridiculed for failing to make any predictions that could be checked experimentally. It's not just that we don't have big enough particle accelerators or powerful enough computers; string theory's most vocal critics charge that no experiment could even be imagined that would prove it right or wrong, making the whole theory effectively useless.

Now, physicists at Imperial College London and Stanford University have found a way to make string theory useful, not for a theory of everything, but for quantum entanglement.

"We can use string theory to solve problems in a different area of physics," said theoretical physicist Michael Duff of Imperial College London. "In that context it's actually useful: We can make statements which you could in principle check by experiment." Duff and his colleagues describe their findings in a paper in Physical Review Letters September 2.

String theory suggests that matter can be broken down beyond electrons and quarks into tiny loops of vibrating strings. Those strings move and vibrate at different frequencies, giving particles distinctive properties like mass and charge. This strange idea could unite all the fundamental forces, explain the origins of fundamental particles and connect Einstein's general relativity to quantum mechanics. But to do so, the theory requires six extra dimensions of space and time curled up inside the four that we're used to.


To understand how these extra dimensions could hide from view, imagine a tightrope walker on a wire between two high buildings. To the tightrope walker, the wire is a one-dimensional line. But to a colony of ants crawling around the wire, the rope has a second dimension: its thickness. In the same way that the tightrope walker sees one dimension where the ants see two, we could see just three dimensions of space while strings see nine or ten.

Unfortunately, there's no way to know if this picture is real. But although string theorists can't test the big idea, they can use this vision of the world to describe natural phenomena like black holes.

Four years ago, while listening to a talk at a conference in Tasmania, Duff realized the mathematical description string theorists use for black holes was identical to the mathematical description of certain quantum systems, called quantum bits or qubits.

Qubits form the backbone of quantum information theory, which could lead to things like ultrafast computers and absolutely secure communication. Two or more qubits can sometimes be intimately connected in a quantum state called entanglement. When two qubits are entangled, changing one's state influences the state of the other, even when they're physically far apart.

"As I listened to his talk, I realized the kind of math he was using to describe qubit entanglement was very similar to mathematics I had been using some years before to describe black holes in string theory," Duff said. When he looked into it, the mathematical formulation of three entangled qubits turned out to be exactly the same as the description of a certain class of black holes.

In the new study, Duff and his colleagues push the similarity one step further. They used the mathematics of stringy black holes to compute a new way to describe four entangled qubits, an open question in quantum information theory.

"We made statements that weren't previously known using string theory techniques," Duff said. "Whether the result is some fundamental principle or some quirk of mathematics, we don't know, but it is useful for making statements about quantum entanglement."

What's more, these statements are precise and experimentally provable, unlike previous suggestions for ways to test string theory, Duff says.

"So in a way, there's bad news and good news in our paper," he said. "The bad news is, we're not describing the theory of everything. The good news is, we're making a very exact statement which is either right or wrong. There's no in between."

Duff emphasized that this is only a test of string theory as it relates to quantum entanglement, not as a description of the fundamental physics of the universe. The battle over string theory as a theory of everything rages on.

"Already I can imagine enemies sharpening their knives," Duff said.

And they are. A chorus of supporters and critics, including Nobel laureate and string theory skeptic Sheldon Glashow and string theorists John Schwarz of Caltech, James Gates of the University of Maryland, and Juan Maldacena and Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton agree that Duff's argument is "not a way to test string theory" and has nothing to do with a theory of everything.

Mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University, author of the blog Not Even Wrong, thinks even claiming that the new paper is a test of quantum entanglement is going too far.

"Honestly, I think this is completely outrageous," he said. Even if the math is the same, he says, testing the quantum entangled system would only tell you how well you understand the math.

"The fact that the same mathematical structure appears in a quantum mechanical problem and some model of black holes isn't even slightly surprising," he said. "It doesn't mean that one is a test of the other."

Witten takes a more optimistic view of the theory's chances, pointing out that the mathematics of string theory have turned out to be coincidentally useful in other areas of physics before.

"In general, this kind of work shows that string theory is useful, and in fact by now it has been useful in many different ways," Witten said in an email to Wired.com.

"One might surmise that a physics theory that has proved to be useful in so many different areas of physics and math is probably on the right track," he added. "But that is another question."




Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/stringy-quantum/#ixzz0yP82CIbg

---

03 Sep 10 - 03:35 PM (#2979452)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...Our current best description of the physics of this event, they explain, is the so-called "M-theories," which predict that there is not a single universe (the one we live in) but a huge number of universes. In other words, not only is the Earth just one of several planets in our solar system and the Milky Way one of billions of galaxies, but our known universe itself is just one among uncounted billions of universes. It's a startling replay of the Copernican Revolution.

The conclusions that follow are groundbreaking. Of all the possible universes, some must have laws that allow the appearance of life. The fact that we are here already tells us that we are in that corner of the multiverse. In this way, all origin questions are answered by pointing to the huge number of possible universes and saying that some of them have the properties that allow the existence of life, just by chance.

I've waited a long time for this book. It gets into the deepest questions of modern cosmology without a single equation. The reader will be able to get through it without bogging down in a lot of technical detail and will, I hope, have his or her appetite whetted for books with a deeper technical content. And who knows? Maybe in the end the whole multiverse idea will actually turn out to be right!

James Trefil is a professor of physics at George Mason University. His next book will be an illustrated tour of the multiverse. "

From this book review on a new book by Hawkings.

---

I can't wait for that guided tour, but I wonder where he's going to get his data from!!!!

---

07 Sep 10 - 02:22 PM (#2981704)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"...The explorations of the Theban Desert Road Survey, a Yale University project co-directed by the Darnells, called attention to the previously underappreciated significance of caravan routes and oasis settlements in Egyptian antiquity. And two weeks ago, the Egyptian government announced what may be the survey's most spectacular find.

Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the archaeologists had uncovered extensive remains of a settlement — apparently an administrative, economic and military center — that flourished more than 3,500 years ago in the western desert 110 miles west of Luxor and 300 miles south of Cairo. No such urban center so early in history had ever been found in the forbidding desert.

Dr. John Darnell, a professor of Egyptology at Yale, said in an interview last week that the discovery could rewrite the history of a little-known period in Egypt's past and the role played by desert oases, those islands of springs and palms and fertility, in the civilization's revival from a dark crisis. Other archaeologists not involved in the research said the findings were impressive and, once a more detailed formal report is published, will be sure to stir scholars' stew pots.

The 218-acre site is at Kharga Oasis, a string of well-watered areas in a 60-mile-long north-south depression in the limestone plateau that spreads across the desert. The oasis is at the terminus of the ancient Girga Road from Thebes and its intersection with other roads from the north and the south.

A decade ago, the Darnells spotted hints of an outpost from the time of Persian rule in the sixth century B.C. at the oasis in the vicinity of a temple. "A temple wouldn't be where it was if this area hadn't been of some strategic importance," Ms. Darnell, also trained in Egyptology, said in an interview.

Then she began picking up pieces of pottery predating the temple. Some ceramics were imports from the Nile Valley or as far away as Nubia, south of Egypt, but many were local products. Evidence of "really large-scale ceramic production," Ms. Darnell noted, "is something you wouldn't find unless there was a settlement here with a permanent population, not just seasonal and temporary."

It was in 2005 that the Darnells and their team began collecting the evidence that they were on to an important discovery: remains of mud-brick walls, grindstones, baking ovens and heaps of fire ash and broken bread molds.

Describing the half-ton of bakery artifacts that has been collected, as well as signs of a military garrison, Dr. Darnell said the settlement was "baking enough bread to feed an army, literally." This inspired the name for the site, Umm Mawagir. The Arabic phrase means "mother of bread molds."

In addition, Dr. Darnell said, the team found traces of what is probably an administrative building, grain silos, storerooms and artisan workshops and the foundations of many unidentified structures. The inhabitants, probably a few thousand people, presumably grew their own grain, and the variety of pottery attested to trade relations over a wide region. Umm Mawagir's heyday apparently extended from 1650 B.C. to 1550 B.C., nearly a thousand years after the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza and another thousand before any previously known major occupation at Kharga Oasis.

"Now we know there's something big at Kharga, and it's really exciting," Dr. Darnell said. "The desert was not a no man's land, not the wild west. It was wild, but it wasn't disorganized. If you wanted to engage in trade in the western desert, you had to deal with the people at Kharga Oasis."

Finding an apparently robust community as a hub of major caravan routes, Dr. Darnell said, should "help us reconstruct a more elaborate and detailed picture of Egypt during an intermediate period" after the so-called Middle Kingdom and just before the rise of the New Kingdom.

At this time, Egypt was in turmoil. The Hyksos invaders from southwest Asia held the Nile Delta and much of the north, and a wealthy Nubian kingdom at Kerma, on the Upper Nile, encroached from the south. Caught in the middle, the rulers at Thebes struggled to hold on and eventually prevail. They were succeeded by some of Egypt's most celebrated pharaohs, such notables as Hatshepsut, Amenhotep III and Ramses II.

The new research, Dr. Darnell said, "completely explains the rise and importance of Thebes." From there rulers commanded the shortest route from the Nile west to desert oases and also the shortest eastern road to the Red Sea. Inscriptions from about 2000 B.C. show that a Theban ruler, most likely Mentuhotep II, annexed both the western oasis region and northern Nubia.

..."(NY Times Science section)

---

09 Sep 10 - 02:40 PM (#2983325)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

At least eight new kinds of Earth's earliest animals from the mysterious and controversial Cambrian Explosion have been discovered in a unexpected section of ancient rock 30 miles from the famous Burgess Shale of Canada. The discovery suggests such old, rare fossils are more common than previously thought.

Like the fossils of the original Burgess Shale, the new discoveries are remarkable because they preserve features of animals which had no hard parts — like gills and eyes — and remained intact for more than half a billion years.

That's a time when animals evolved from being very small, simple organisms into a wildly creative, explosive variety of sometimes bizarre creatures.

These were culled by natural selection over time, leaving the more familiar main animal groups we see today.

Among the more dramatic discoveries is a new kind of "anomalocaridid" — the monster shrimp-like top predator a half-billion years ago. Some of these sorts of beasts have been found up to two meters long in shale from Chengjiang, China.
...

MSNBC

---

10 Sep 10 - 11:13 AM (#2983945)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In August, people spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, accounting for 9.9 percent of the total number of minutes they spent online for the month. That inched past the 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent of total time, that Net users spent on all of Google's sites combined, including its search engine, YouTube, Gmail, and Google News, ComScore said Thursday.

For the month, Yahoo proved the third most popular online hangout, with people spending 37.7 million minutes, or 9.1 percent of total time, on Yahoo sites. In July, Facebook slipped past Yahoo in the number of minutes spent online for the first time, noted ComScore.

The latest stats contrast with August 2009 in which Internet users spent less than 5 percent of their time on Facebook, about the same amount on Google sites, and almost 12 percent of their monthly minutes on Yahoo.



Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20016046-93.html#ixzz0z8i9oQnZ

---

My gawd. 28,541.6 human-days spent on effing Facebook in AUgust alone.

27,638 human days spent on Google. In one month!

Wahake Upp, AMurica!!!

A

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11 Sep 10 - 05:48 PM (#2984744)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In an article called "Dear Fellow Improbable", Dick Cavett writes:

"Back to Monterey. A genial, humorous and brilliant geologist, and the kind of professor too few ever experience, is onstage. His name: Walter Alvarez, of the University of California, Berkeley. He and his Nobel-prized father, the late physicist Luis Alvarez, gave the world the Òimpact theoryÓ that explained the demise of the dinosaurs.

Near the end of his talk, he refers to you and me as belonging to a species called Òastronomically improbables.Ó

HasnÕt almost everyone, sooner or later, hit upon the realization that because you have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and so on into near-infinity, you are related to practically everyone on earth?

Here, for now, are just a few of AlvarezÕs astonishers regarding this, which made everyone gasp.

(Fundamentalists may wish, at this point, to switch to some other reading material to avoid distress.)

He pointed out that we each have millions of ancestors and that, at conception, your sex is determined randomly. If any single one of that galaxy of ancestors had chanced to have a different sex, you would not be here to read this. (Presumably, someone else would. Unless of course one of my millions of ancestors met with a mishap.)

Keep that word ÒgalaxyÓ in mind.


NASA
Do we have more ÒancestorsÓ than there are atoms in several galaxies?
Just how many of your forebears were there, that the wrong gender accident could have happened to, thereby snuffing any chance of your existence? Brace yourself.

Alvarez led us gently to the wowing fact: An imaginary space ship travels through our galaxy. Each of the millions of heavenly bodies in our galaxy represents one ancestor. But it gets better. (Or worse.)

The ship leaves our galaxy and journeys through the next. And the next.

And É

Even typing this next bit makes me glad IÕm sitting down. Not only does each planet, star, Milky Way and what-have-you in every galaxy represent numerically a member of your family tree, so does each atom in all those galaxies. Every one representing a chance for each of us not to exist.

Had any one of those parents died before maturing, or been sterile, or not met the wife by chance in handing her a dropped glove, or shared a woolly mammoth bone with her on a date leading to bed, or been carried off in the plague or killed by some forerunner of a New York bicycle rider on the sidewalk . . . the mind boggles. (Not to mention the near-infinite number of people who might have been born down through the end of time but werenÕt Ñ because your particular chain went on unbroken.)

Can any mind this side of EinsteinÕs accommodate this thought?

How many ancestors, going back millions and millions of years Ñ each of whose specific wiggly was in each case the only one among millions that got through to make you . . . how many of those ancestors are there?

Help me, math guys and gals. WhatÕs the answer? What to the 10th power?

ThereÕs more good stuff on this.

But for now, I have to lie down."


(NYT)

---

13 Sep 10 - 08:05 PM (#2986168)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have uncovered how a structural component inside neurons performs two coordinated dance moves when the connections between neurons are strengthened.

The results are published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience, and will appear in a future print issue.

In experiments with neurons in culture, the researchers can distinguish two separate steps during long-term potentiation, an enhancement of communication between neurons thought to lie behind learning and memory. Both steps involve the remodeling of the internal "skeletons" of dendritic spines, small protrusions on the surface of a neuron that receive electrical signals from neighboring cells.

The results hint at why people with Williams syndrome, a developmental disorder caused by a deletion of several genes, including one that alters dendritic spine remodeling, have such an unusual blend of cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

The senior author of the paper is James Zheng, PhD, professor of cell biology and neurology at Emory University School of Medicine. The paper's co-first authors are graduate student Jiaping Gu, now a postdoctoral researcher at New York University, postdoc Chi Wai Lee and graduate student Yanjie Fan.

"We've been looking at the remodeling of dendritic spines, which is a fundamental process for reshaping circuits in the brain," Zheng says. "The anatomy of dendritic spines is altered in many diseases, such as fragile X syndrome and schizophrenia, as well as neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's."

During the process of long-term potentiation, dendritic spines both enlarge and display a greater density of neurotransmitter receptors, the receiver dishes that allow neurons to detect the waves of chemicals other neurons are sending them.

---

13 Sep 10 - 08:08 PM (#2986171)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Scientists find link between arthritis pain reliever and cardiovascular events
September 13, 2010
(Phys.org)

A research team from the University of California, Davis and Peking University, China, has discovered a novel mechanism as to why the long-term, high-dosage use of the well-known arthritis pain medication, Vioxx, led to heart attacks and strokes. Their groundbreaking research may pave the way for a safer drug for millions of arthritis patients who suffer acute and chronic pain.


Using metabolomic profiling to analyze murine (rodent) plasma, the scientists discovered that Vioxx causes a dramatic increase in a regulatory lipid that could be a major contributor to the heart attacks and strokes associated with high levels of the drug and other selective COX-2 inhibitors, known as "coxibs."
"This is a major breakthrough that can lead to a better medication for people suffering from acute pain," said entomologist-chemist Bruce Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology with a joint appointment at the UC Davis Cancer Center. The research took place in the laboratories of Hammock, cell biologist Nipavan Chiamvimonvat, UC Davis Division of Cardiovascular Medicine; and physiologist Yi Zhu, Peking University.
The research is to be published the week of Sept. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our metabolomics study discovered that 20-hydroxyeicosatetrasanoic acid, also known as 20-HETE, contributes to the Vioxx-mediated cardiovascular events," said UC Davis bioanalytical chemist Jun-Yan Liu, the senior author of the paper and a five-year member of the Bruce Hammock laboratory.

Millions of arthritis patients took Vioxx before its withdrawal from the global market in 2004. Vioxx, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) and coxib for acute and chronic pain, particularly for arthritis and osteoarthritis, was on the market for five years. Merck & Co. voluntarily withdrew it in September 2004 due to concerns about the increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The chronic administration of high levels of selective COX-2 inhibitors, particularly rofecoxib, and valdecoxib, increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, Liu said.

---

14 Sep 10 - 07:56 AM (#2986481)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

3-D Printing Spurs a Manufacturing Revolution

A 3-D printer, which has nothing to do with paper printers, creates an object by stacking one layer of material — typically plastic or metal — on top of another, much the same way a pastry chef makes baklava with sheets of phyllo dough.

These days it is giving rise to a string of never-before-possible businesses that are selling iPhone cases, lamps, doorknobs, jewelry, handbags, perfume bottles, clothing and architectural models. And while some wonder how successfully the technology will make the transition from manufacturing applications to producing consumer goods, its use is exploding.

A California start-up is even working on building houses. Its printer, which would fit on a tractor-trailer, would use patterns delivered by computer, squirt out layers of special concrete and build entire walls that could be connected to form the basis of a house.

It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/technology/14print.html?_r=2&src=twr

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14 Sep 10 - 10:57 AM (#2986602)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Before the year is out, SpaceX will likely have conducted the first orbital demonstration of the Dragon capsule, which is intended to transport cargo, and ultimately humans, to the International Space Station (ISS). Next year, Orbital Sciences is expected to launch its cargo vessel, Cygnus. By 2014, two more spacecraft, the Dream Chaser and CST-100 are on track to have maiden voyages, launched by the Sierra Nevada Corporation and Boeing, respectively. And even more spacecraft are being developed by companies such as Blue Origin and PlanetSpace, as well as suborbital vehicles being built by Virgin Galactic, XCOR, and others.


Space oasis: An artist's impression of the spaceport terminal that Virgin Galactic is planning to build in the Mojave Desert.
Credit: Virgin Galactic

On the ground, there are seven federal and eight nonfederal launch sites licensed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration; most of the latter are new and owned by a combination of private enterprise and state and local governments. Additional applications for even more spaceports are likely.

When these developments were reviewed at last week's American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2010 conference, some attendees began asking: is the space industry building too much capacity?

---

14 Sep 10 - 10:57 PM (#2986961)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Not just Vioxx, Celebrex etc... but a similar brand name COX 2 inhibitor called Bextra caused heart attacks.
I know from personal experience.

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15 Sep 10 - 11:33 AM (#2987258)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

The flood waters that have devestated Pakistan have continued to the south and have reached the base of the Taj Mahal which is now in danger of flood damage. The reflecting pools appeared to be under water.

---

16 Sep 10 - 02:48 PM (#2988152)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The history of the top hat revealed.

A

---

17 Sep 10 - 06:37 PM (#2988968)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

During an expedition into the Canadian Rocky Mountains in 2008, a Canadian-led team including Swedish researchers from Uppsala University found a new site with exceptionally preserved fossils. The site and its fossils have now been made public in this month's issue of Geology.

The discovered fossils, including a new form of giant predator, are equivalent in age to the world-famous Burgess Shale. However, the sediments of the new site have been deposited in an entirely different environment than the Burgess Shale, where nobody would have expected such exceptional preservation.

Following reports by hikers of unusual fossils in the Stanley Glacier area of Kootenay National Park (British Columbia, Canada), a 2-week expedition was initiated by the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada) in 2008 to investigate the area. On board the team of five scientists led by Jean-Bernard Caron (ROM) were Uppsala researchers Allison Daley and Michael Streng. The discoveries made, after just a few days, were far beyond the expectations of any team member.

Hundreds of fossils were found at Stanley Glacier, including eight completely new animals and dozens of beautifully preserved specimens of arthropods, brachiopods, trilobites, molluscs, and sponges. A photograph of a particularly well-preserved sponge called Diagoniella was chosen to adorn the front cover of SeptemberÕs issue of Geology. One of the new animals, Stanleycaris, belongs to a group of monster predators called the anomalocaridids. These creatures were up to one meter in length and had a segmented crayfish-like body with spiny head appendages and a circular mouth with sharp teeth; they were undoubtedly the most formidable predators of the Cambrian seas. Also found at Stanley Glacier is a wide multi-segmented arthropod similar to an animal from the Chengjiang biota of China but found for the first time in North America, and the first example of the elusive appendages of Tuzoia, a Cambrian arthropod previously only known from its spiky body shield and large eyes.

Although the new site is part of the same rock unit the Burgess Shale belongs to, the discovery of such spectacular fossils at Stanley Glacier was a complete surprise. The ancient ocean, in which the rock unit was deposited ca. 505 Ma ago, was characterized by a submarine cliff called an escarpment that divided the area in a deep basin and a shallow shelf. This escarpment was thought to play a decisive role in the remarkable preservation of the Burgess Shale biota, as all previous localities yielding Burgess Shale fossils were found in the deep basin crowded close against the base of the escarpment. The site at Stanley Glacier, however, was deposited in the shallower shelf area above the escarpment. This throws the importance of the escarpment for exceptional preservation into question and opens up many opportunities to find more new fossil sites.

---

17 Sep 10 - 06:41 PM (#2988971)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

AP) -- Better catch Jupiter next week in the night sky. It won't be that big or bright again until 2022. Jupiter will pass 368 million miles from Earth late Monday, its closest approach since 1963. You can see it low in the east around dusk. Around midnight, it will be directly overhead. That's because Earth will be passing between Jupiter and the sun, into the wee hours of Tuesday.


The solar system's largest planet already appears as an incredibly bright star - three times brighter than the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. The only thing brighter in the night sky right now is our moon. Binoculars and telescopes will dramatically improve the view as Jupiter, along with its many moons, rises in the east as the sun sets.
"Jupiter is so bright right now, you don't need a sky map to find it," said Tony Phillips, a California astronomer under contract with NASA. "You just walk outside and see it. It's so eye-catching, there it is."

Phillips has never seen Jupiter so bright. "To an experienced observer, the difference is notable," he said Friday.

Coincidentally, Uranus also will make a close approach the same night. It will appear close to Jupiter but harder to see with the naked eye. Through a telescope, it will shine like an emerald-colored disk less than one degree from Jupiter.

Jupiter comes relatively close to Earth about every 12 years. In 1999, it passed slightly farther away. What's rare this time is Uranus making a close appearance at the same time, Phillips said. He called it "a once-in-a-lifetime event." While seen right next to Jupiter through a telescope, Uranus actually will be 1.7 billion miles from Earth on Monday night.
Phillips urges stargazers not to give up if it's cloudy Monday night. Jupiter will remain relatively close for many weeks, he noted, providing good viewing opportunities for some time. And for those who are early risers instead of night owls, Jupiter will be visible setting in the west just before sunrise.

---

20 Sep 10 - 02:45 PM (#2990410)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Popular Science:

" In a monumental step for chocolate lovers — ah, let's be honest, the whole of humankind — scientists announced today they have completed a preliminary genome sequence for the cacao tree.

OK, maybe it's not that monumental; new genomes are sequenced all the time. But this one is special — cacao is no ordinary plant. Who cares about the corn genome when you can study chocolate instead?

The genome sequence, which enters the public domain today, is the result of a partnership among a few unlikely bedfellows: Mars Inc., maker of M&Ms, Milky Way bars and other treats; the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service; and IBM. The trio hopes international agricultural researchers will immediately start refining the sequence. As with any gene mapping project, decoding the complete genome will take some time.

In a twist, the New York Times reports that a competing team, led by Mars rival Hershey, is also working on its own genome sequence. That team won't discuss its findings until they are published in a scientific journal, however.

The Mars team's preliminary results will be available via the Cacao Genome Database, to ensure that the data remains perpetually patent-free. The Times quotes Hershey's team saying they will also make their sequence available, but won't restrict patents.

Mars hopes its $10 million investment will pay off eventually, said Howard-Yana Shapiro, the firm's global staff officer of plant science and research.


Although it may not benefit the bottom line in the short term, in the long run, it will ensure mutually beneficial results for the company, cocoa farmers and tree crop production in key regions of the world," he said."

---

21 Sep 10 - 11:35 AM (#2990867)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

High fashion meets high tech with this new spray-on clothing designed by a Spanish fashionisto. The design team also hopes to use the technology for spray-on bandages and hygienic upholstery.

Manel Torres worked with scientists at Imperial College London to invent the silly-string-like spray, announced just in time for Fashion Week.

The sprayable shirt consists of short fibers mixed with polymers, dissolved into a solvent that allows it to be sprayed from an aerosol can or high-pressure gun, according to the Guardian. Torres can use wool, linen or acrylic fibers to change the texture of the fabric, the Guardian reports. The resulting fabric can be removed and washed with the rest of your laundry.

Don't like the color or feel? Simply dissolve it, using the same solvent, and start over.

Demonstrating the technology for British media, Torres sprayed it on two models to create form-fitting shirts. The spray is very cold when it hits the skin, but it dries instantly upon impact.

He takes care to spray extra fibers on the sleeves, ensuring it will be strong enough to withstand normal movement. Initially, it resembles body paint in the way it fits against the skin, but as soon as you start moving, it wrinkles just like a normal shirt.

Torres will display the fabric as part of his spring/summer collection at the Science in Style fashion show in London next week.

The Guardian says he worked with chemical engineers to design the system, and the ultimate goal is a sanitary spray-on bandage system to instantly deliver medication, dress wounds or soothe burnt skin.

---

23 Sep 10 - 08:04 PM (#2992597)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Student Makes History with First Ever Human-Powered Ornithopter Flight

A Canadian university student has done what Leonardo da Vinci had only dreamt of: piloted a human-powered "wing-flapping" plane! Called an ornithopter, and the inspiration for modern day helicopters, the machine was first sketched by Da Vinci way back in 1485 and never actually built.

Todd Reichert, an engineering student at the University of Toronto, made history by sustaining flight in his ornithopter--named Snowbird--for 19.3 seconds and covering 475.72 feet. Snowbird is made from carbon fiber, balsa wood and foam. The 92.59 pound vehicle maintained an average speed of 15.91 miles per hour.

Todd and his plane made the accomplishment on August 2nd at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, Ontario. The crew kept the achievement quiet for nearly two months to get the data finalized. Todd and some 30 other students had been working on the plane for 4 years.

Pics and video

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26 Sep 10 - 05:02 PM (#2994122)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In a major physics breakthrough with international significance, University of Otago scientists have developed a technique to consistently isolate and capture a fast-moving neutral atom - and have also seen and photographed this atom for the first time.

The entrapment of the Rubidium 85 atom is the result of a three-year research project funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, and has already prompted world-wide interest in the new science which will flow from the breakthrough.

A team of four researchers from Otago's Physics Department, led by Dr Mikkel F. Andersen, used laser cooling technology to dramatically slow a group of rubidium 85 atoms. A laser-beam, or "optical tweezers", was then deployed to isolate and hold one atom - at which point it could be photographed through a microscope.

The researchers then proved they could reliably and consistently produce individual trapped atoms - a major step towards using the atoms to build next-generation, ultra-fast quantum-logic computers, which harness the potency of atoms to perform complex information-processing tasks.

Dr Andersen says that unlike conventional silicon-based computers which generally perform one task at a time, quantum computers have the potential to perform numerous long and difficult calculations simultaneously; they also have the potential to break secret codes that would usually prove too complex.

"Our method provides a way to deliver those atoms needed to build this type of computer, and it is now possible to get a set of ten atoms held or trapped at the one time.

"You need a set of 30 atoms if you want to build a quantum computer that is capable of performing certain tasks better than existing computers, so this is a big step towards successfully doing that," he says.

"It has been the dream of scientists for the past century to see into the quantum world and develop technology on the smallest scale - the atomic scale.

"What we have done moves the frontier of what scientists can do and gives us deterministic control of the smallest building blocks in our world," Dr Andersen says.

The results of the landmark study have today been announced in the leading scientific journal Nature Physics.


(Vox News)

---

27 Sep 10 - 01:27 PM (#2994603)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The decline in the amount of ice floating on the Arctic Ocean is clearing the way for new shipping routes to Asia. Traffic was already brisk this summer. New ships are being designed to cope with icebergs during the voyage.

They were expecting pack ice, icebergs and storms. As a precautionary measure, a Russian icebreaker had been dispatched to protect the freighter MV Nordic Barents from the ravages of the Arctic Ocean.


In the end, though, only a few broken up ice floes drifted by on two occasions. "The nuclear icebreaker was more for decoration than anything else," says Felix Tschudi from the shipping company that chartered the freighter loaded with iron ore concentrate. This week, after traveling 5,700 km (3,500 miles) through the Polar Sea, the ship will arrive in the Chinese port of Lianyungang -- "and we didn't have to stop once," says Tschudi with satisfaction.

With a mixture of hope and suspicion, shipping companies, politicians and environmentalists have observed how far the sea ice has withdrawn towards the North Pole this year. Will the shrinking polar ice cap soon turn global shipping routes on their head?

Just a few weeks ago, the Russian tanker Baltika, laden with 70,000 tons of gas condensate, sailed without problems from the Russian port of Murmansk, through the Arctic and on to the Chinese city of Ningbo. Shipping via the polar route is gradually becoming routine. This brings Asia closer to Europe. The route of the MV Nordic Barents, for instance, from the Norwegian port of Kirkenes to China, was shortened by roughly 50 percent. "That saved us 15 days at sea," says Tschudi.

Is the world's eighth ocean actually becoming a "trans-Arctic Panama Canal," as the delighted Icelandic President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson recently said? Indeed, in addition to opening up the Northern Sea Route along the Russian Arctic Coast and Siberia to the Far East, climate change is unblocking the Northwest Passage -- and blazing a trail through the heart of the Canadian Arctic. In the 100 years between 1906 and 2006, only 69 ships, primarily sailed by explorers and scientists, ventured the harrowing voyage through these ice-filled waters. Last year alone, however, Canadian maritime law expert Michael Byers counted a total of 24 vessels.

---

And for just one time...

Well, historic moments are upon us. This one is a tarnished silvery lining. Gawd knows how large and ugly the actual dark cloud will turn out to be.


A

---

27 Sep 10 - 04:46 PM (#2994735)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

...When SWAT officers checked the apartment they found a 9mm handgun inside, according to the lieutenant, who said shell casings also were located outside the home but they did not find a gunshot victim.

"I seen lights and I walked outside and people have guns in my face, talking about, 'get on the floor; put your hands behind your head,'" said Jaycup Lopez, one of the many detained and let go.

Lopez, who lives at the home, said there was no violence at the house and does not know the victim. He said they were celebrating his brother's 21st birthday and claimed they had no idea they were wanted for questioning.

"If they were trying to get us out of the house, we got a doorbell," Lopez said. "They could of rang it."

---

The world goes up and down and sideways, simultaneously.


A

---

28 Sep 10 - 01:19 PM (#2995339)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Galaxy clusters are monstrous things, but they can be difficult to detect as they get further and further away. However, the interesting physics that occurs in these clusters has made a new galaxy cluster visible to two orbiting space telescopes, Planck and XMM-Newton.

Galaxy clusters appear to be exactly what they sound like: groupings of galaxies physically bound together by gravity. There is, however, so much more that they eye cannot see. Galaxy clusters appear to be dominated by dark matter, which was famously detected in the merging galaxy clusters known collectively as the Bullet Cluster. But neither Planck nor XMM-Newton are set up to detect that.

If you just look at the "normal" matter in a cluster, the galaxies themselves only make up a small percentage. The cluster is instead dominated by hot gas between the galaxies. In fact, the mass of this gas is typically around five times the mass of all the galaxies in the cluster put together! This gas is so hot that it glows in X-rays, which is why many distant clusters have been detected by x-ray telescopes.

Planck, however, works in the radio and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its mission is to study the cosmic microwave background (CMB), or the signal from when the universe was just 300,000 years old. In order to do that, astronomers need to weed out any sources that may lie in front of the CMB, such as emission from our own Milky Way Galaxy. Galaxy clusters also show up in the microwave in their own way.

Photons (or, roughly speaking, particles of light) from the CMB travel across vast distances and may slam into a galaxy cluster. They specifically can hit particles of the hot gas in the cluster. Hot gas moves quickly, and some of that energy is imparted to the photon in a process called "scattering." The photon then flies off to continue its journey, now with higher energy and higher frequency. In this way, when you look at the CMB in lower frequencies, galaxy clusters show up as dark spots or "holes," whereas at higher microwave frequencies, they are bright spots. This process is called the Sunyaev-Zel'dovic Effect, or SZE.

Planck is in the process of detecting galaxy clusters with the SZE as it has frequency coverage both there they show up as holes and bright spots. The scientists then go and match these spots to known clusters. One such cluster seen with the SZE had no known counterpart, so astronomers pointed the x-ray telescope XMM-Newton and did detect the cluster (see top image). In fact, it's a real whopper, being called a supercluster as it appears to be comprised of three smaller galaxy clusters.

---

28 Sep 10 - 01:21 PM (#2995343)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For the past 40 years, CPR has been composed of two things—rescue breaths and chest compressions—and this formula for cardiac survival can revive around 25 percent of patients without a pulse. However, emerging evidence suggests there may be a more effective protocol for resuscitation that can save even more lives, and it's simpler than traditional CPR.

Cardiocerebral resuscitation, or CCR, differs from CPR in that for the first 5 to 10 minutes after cardiac arrest, a rescuer does not breathe for the patient at all. Instead, the focus shifts to performing unrelenting chest compressions at a rate of 100 per minute. One clinical trial in Wisconsin showed this technique saved 30 percent more lives when compared with traditional CPR. Better yet, patients who receive CCR instead of CPR were found to be 24 percent more likely to be neurologically intact upon release from the hospital.

"It's one of the first times in medicine something has gotten simpler," says Dr. Amal Mattu, professor of emergency medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

There are two main reasons why it works: One, constant pressure on the chest maintains a constant blood pressure, which insures blood flow to vital organs. In CPR, when a rescuer turns from his chest compressions to give the breaths, the blood pressure quickly drops to near zero and the blood stops flowing to the brain and other vital organs. Blood pressure is built up slowly over the course of the compressions, so when the rescuer returns to them, he or she has to make up for lost time.

Second, ventilations actually counteract the effectiveness of chest compressions. When a rescuer breathes for a patient, he or she forces air into the lungs, which increase the pressure inside the chest. Then, this force squeezes on the veins that return blood to the heart. "That results in less filling of the heart," Mattu says. "If there is less blood coming back to the heart, there is going to be a lower output from the heart, lower blood pressure, lower perfusion of the coronary arteries and the brain." Constant blood flow to the brain increases the chances for survival, and that is one reason why the studies are finding CCR patients to be more neurologically intact. The more time the brain spends without oxygen, the greater the chance for brain damage.

"Chest compressions, early on, are much more important than airway issues. When people are focused on airway issues, they tend to not do as good chest compressions, or their chest compressions are too slow," Mattu says. What rescuers need to realize, he says, is when the heart stops beating due to cardiac arrest, the blood has enough oxygen to support the organs for around 5 or 10 minutes.

Quality chest compressions are just as important as having a defibrillator early on. Dr. Comilla Sasson, professor of emergency medicine at University of Colorado Denver, and her colleagues found when EMS arrives on the scene, doing immediate chest compressions is as beneficial as shocking a patient with a defibrillator right away. Furthermore, they found if the EMS personnel arrived more than 5 minutes after the onset of the cardiac arrest, chest compressions first had a slight advantage.


(Popular Mechanics)

---

28 Sep 10 - 01:24 PM (#2995346)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

More than 30 years after Stephen Hawking predicted the existence of radiation emitted by black holes, physicists say they've finally observed the phenomenon for themselves, not in the heavens, but down here on Earth.

The universe is filled with particle/antiparticle pairs that form and almost immediately mutually annihilate, releasing their energy. Hawking radiation, as it's known, occurs when these pairs form near the edge of a black hole. As the pair of particles crosses the black hole's event horizon, one member is sucked in, while the other is set free -- before they are able to annihilate each other. The observed effect is that the black hole is radiating particles, and actually losing mass.

Researchers at the University of Milan claim to have observed Hawking radiation in their lab by creating the inverse of a black hole – the aptly named white hole. Rather than all light being sucked inside, as happens with a black hole, in a white hole, light waves come to a complete halt, creating a different sort of event horizon.

Having formed this event horizon by sending an infrared laser pulse through fused silica, the researchers say they were able to rule out other phenomena and conclude that what they had observed was, in fact, Hawking radiation.

If this is true, the discovery could have huge implications for cosmology and many other fields. The only known way for black holes to evaporate is through Hawking radiation, so its effects on the eventual end of the universe could be huge.

(Pop Sci)

---

28 Sep 10 - 04:44 PM (#2995503)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Historical changes show up in unexpected places:

"The Federal Communications Commission's new approach to dealing with white spaces spectrum has gone from "proceed with utmost caution" to "if a channel looks open, use it."

In its second memorandum opinion on white spaces issued Thursday, the FCC removed the requirement that devices operating on TV bands have built-in sensors that would automatically shut down the devices if they came into contact with an adjacent television signal. That requirement had originally been put in place to satisfy concerns of television broadcasters that were worried that unlicensed use of white spaces could interfere with their broadcast quality.


Instead of requiring white-space devices to have sensing technology, the FCC now says that giving devices geolocation capability and access to a spectrum database will be sufficient to protect broadcasters' spectrum from interference. Geo-location databases are designed to track mobile devices by locating them through their specific IP address, media-access-control address, radio-frequency identification or other location-based information. Once the database has a fix on the device's location, it then selects the optimal white-space spectrum for the device and can even switch the device to a different spectrum once it moves to a different location.

The FCC said its reason for eliminating the sensor technology requirement was that the technology had not yet evolved to the point where it would be especially useful in helping to preserve television broadcast quality. Additionally, the FCC said that requiring sensing technology would place an unnecessary burden on manufacturers when simply providing access to the spectrum database would be sufficient.

"The geo-location and database method is already the primary means for preventing interference to TV stations," wrote the FCC in its order. "We continue to believe that spectrum sensing will continue to develop and improve… however, at this juncture, we do not believe that a mandatory spectrum sensing requirement best serves the interest of the public."

Television "white spaces" are pieces of unlicensed spectrum that are currently unused by television stations on the VHF and UHF frequency bands and that have long been seen as prime spectrum for unlicensed wireless Internet services. In 2008, the FCC, then headed by former chairman Kevin Martin, voted to let carriers and other vendors deploy devices in white space spectrum that operates unlicensed at powers of 100 milliwatts, as well as on white space channels adjacent to existing television stations at powers of up to 40 milliwatts."
(PC Mag)

---

29 Sep 10 - 01:45 PM (#2996227)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A desktop black hole created in a lab in Italy has been shown to emit light, a discovery that could seal one of the biggest holes in theoretical physics and pave the way for physicist Stephen Hawking to win a Nobel prize.

The eerie glow is called Hawking radiation, and physicists have been hunting it for decades. In 1974, Stephen Hawking calculated that, rather than gobbling up everything in their path and giving nothing back, black holes can radiate like the heating element in a toaster.

But astrophysical black holes, the ultradense gobs of mass that lurk at the centers of galaxies and are left behind when stars collapse, radiate too dimly to be seen. So instead of looking at real black holes, a group of physicists led by Francesco Belgiorno of the University of Milan, Italy, created a miniature analog by shooting short pulses of intense laser light into a chip of glass. The results will appear in Physical Review Letters.

"This is an extremely important paper," said physicist Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who built an artificial black hole in a phone line in 2008. "The experiment confirms that Hawking radiation can exist in principle."



Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/hawking-radiation-in-the-lab/#ixzz10wReuwso

---

29 Sep 10 - 02:16 PM (#2996252)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan, Say Physicists

There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new model of the universe

Look out into space and the signs are plain to see. The universe began in a Big Bang event some 13 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. And the best evidence from the distance reaches of the cosmos is that this expansion is accelerating.

That has an important but unavoidable consequence: it means the universe will expand forever. And a universe that expands forever is infinite and eternal.

Today, a group of physicists rebel against this idea. They say an infinitely expanding universe cannot be so because the laws of physics do not work in an infinite cosmos. For these laws to make any sense, the universe must end, say Raphael Bousso at the University of California, Berkeley and few pals. And they have calculated when that is most likely to happen.

Their argument is deceptively simple and surprisingly powerful. Here's how it goes. If the universe lasts forever, then any event that can happen, will happen, no matter how unlikely. In fact, this event will happen an infinite number of times.

This leads to a problem. When there are an infinite number of instances of every possible observation, it becomes impossible to determine the probabilities of any of these events occurring. And when that happens, the laws of physics simply don't apply. They just break down. "This is known as the "measure problem" of eternal inflation," say Bousso and buddies.

In effect, these guys are saying that the laws of physics abhor an eternal universe.

The only way out of this conundrum is to hypothesise some kind of catastrophe that brings an end to the universe. Then all the probabilities make sense again and the laws of physics regain their power.

When might his be? Bousso and co have crunched the numbers. "Time is unlikely to end in our lifetime, but there is a 50% chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years," they say.

That's not so long! It means that the end of the time is likely to happen within the lifetime of the Earth and the Sun.

But Buosso and co have some comforting news too. They don't know what kind of catastrophe will cause the end of time but they do say that we won't see it coming. They point out that if we were to observe the end of time in any other part of the universe we would have to be causally ahead of it, which is unlikely.
..."


(MIT Technology Review)

---

29 Sep 10 - 07:03 PM (#2996459)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The story of the double helix's discovery has a few new twists. A new primary source -- a never-before-read stack of letters to and from Francis Crick, and other historical materials dating from the years 1950-76 -- has been uncovered by two professors at the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).


The letters both confirm and extend current knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the epoch-making discovery of DNA's elegant double-helical structure, for which Crick, James D. Watson (now CSHL's chancellor emeritus) and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. Unlike the structure itself, which amazed even its discoverers in its simplicity, the story of the discovery has revealed a complex tangle of people, ambitions and institutional politics behind the process of scientific investigation.

"It's primarily the insights these new letters provide about the personalities of the discoverers that people will find most fascinating," says Alex Gann, Ph.D., who along with Jan Witkowski, Ph.D., uncovered the new Crick materials and co-authored a paper on them that appears in the journal Nature Sept. 30.

Following the publication of landmark works including Watson's confessional The Double Helix in 1968 and Horace Freeland Judson's The Eighth Day of Creation 11 years later, most historians have been content to believe that the archives had been fully explored and would not reveal much more about the double helix story. But 34 of the newfound letters are between Crick and Wilkins and draw attention to what Gann and Witkowski have described as Wilkins' "tortured soul" during the critical period 1951-53, when Watson and Crick were alternately put on, taken off and then restored to an effort to discover DNA's structure.

"We are really between forces which may grind all of us into little pieces," Wilkins wrote to Crick in one letter. As Witkowski explains, "Maurice Wilkins on the one hand wanted to be open - he believed science should be open and was all in favor of cooperation, the exchange of ideas and data; but on the other hand, he was also mindful of his own career: he knew he had to get results and publish papers." As the upstarts Watson and Crick, then unknowns, jockeyed for permission at Cambridge to explore the DNA structure problem, Wilkins, at King's College, was already well engaged in experimentation that would prove vital in determination of the solution. Wilkins' boss at King's, John Randall, hired Rosalind Franklin and had, unknown to Wilkins, assured her that she was in "sole charge" of the DNA work at King's. This led to conflicts between Franklin and Wilkins, who assumed he and Franklin would be partners.



This was but the beginning of a series of now historic misunderstandings. Between the lines of the newly discovered Crick letters with Wilkins, one grasps, on Wilkins' end, the anguish, and on Crick's, what at times comes across as the self-assurance and jocularity of the player possessing superior position.

This is but a fraction of the newly found letters, which were uncovered unexpectedly in the midst of an archival collection of materials donated to Cold Spring Harbor by Sydney Brenner, the distinguished molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, who worked alongside Crick following discovery of the double helix. The two shared an office at Cambridge from 1956 to 1977. Coincidentally, the CSHL Press has just released a new biography of Brenner by Errol Friedberg.

Among the new letters there are some 30 between Crick and George Gamow, dating to 1953-64. Other of his correspondents included Leo Szilard, C.P. Snow, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, among many others. The most important of the new letters, cited in the Gann-Witkowski paper, are now in the process of being digitized at the CSHL Archives (http://library.cshl.edu) to facilitate public access. Mila Pollock, Executive Director of the CSHL Library and Archives, says it is her hope that digitization will proceed so that the Crick correspondence in its entirety will be accessible to all via the Internet. The greater part of the collection resides at the Wellcome Library (http://library.wellcome.ac.uk)
More information: "The Lost Correspondence of Francis Crick" appears in Nature September 30, 2010. The authors are Alexander Gann and Jan A. Witkowski.

The paper can be accessed online at http://www.nature.com

---

29 Sep 10 - 10:27 PM (#2996554)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Earth-Like Planet Can Sustain Life

A new member in a family of planets circling a red dwarf star 20 light-years away has just been found. It's called Gliese 581g, and the 'g' may very well stand for Goldilocks.

Gliese 581g is the first world discovered beyond Earth that's the right size and location for life.

"Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say that the chances for life on this planet are 100 percent. I have almost no doubt about it," Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California Santa Cruz, told Discovery News.

The discovery caps an 11-year effort to tease out information from instruments on ground-based telescopes that measure minute variations in starlight caused by the gravitational tugs of orbiting planets.

Planet G -- the sixth member in Gliese 581's family -- orbits right in the middle of that system's habitable region, where temperatures would be suitable for liquid water to pool on the planet's surface.

"This is really the first 'Goldilocks' planet, the first planet that is roughly the right size and just at the right distance to have liquid water on the surface," astronomer Paul Butler, with the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., told reporters during a conference call Wednesday.

"Everything we know about life is that it absolutely requires liquid water," he added. "The planet has to be the right distance from the star so it's not too hot, not too cold... and then it has to have surface gravity so that it can hold on to a substantial atmosphere and allow the water to pool."

With a mass three times larger than Earth's, the newly discovered world has the muscle to hold atmosphere. Plus, it has the gift of time. Not only is its parent star especially long-lived, the planet is tidally locked to its sun -- similar to how the moon keeps the same side pointed at Earth -- so that half the world is in perpetual light and the other half in permanent darkness. As a result, temperatures are extremely stable and diverse.

"This planet doesn't have days and nights. Wherever you are on this planet, the sun is in the same position all the time. You have very stable zones where the ecosystem stays the same temperature... basically forever," Vogt said. "If life can evolve, it's going to have billions and billions of years to adapt to the surface."

"Given the ubiquity of water, it seems probable that this thing actually has liquid water. On the surface of the Earth, everywhere you have liquid water you have life," Vogt added.

The question wouldn't be to defend that there is life at Gliese 581g, says Butler. "The question," he said, "would be to demonstrate that there isn't."

Current technologies won't allow scientists to study the planet's atmosphere for chemical signs of life, but astronomers expect many more similar life-friendly planets to be discovered soon. If one or more of those cross the face of their parent star, relative to our line of sight, then it's possible to gather atmospheric data.

"This system is not in an orientation such that this planet would ever transit, so unfortunately this is not a case where nature has thrown us a bone," Vogt noted. "That being said, it is so close and we have found this thing so soon that it suggests we will start finding a lot of these things in the future and eventually we will find systems that do transit. This is a harbinger of things to come."

The research appears in this week's issue of Astrophysical Journal.

---

07 Oct 10 - 01:10 PM (#3001825)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The title of World's Smallest Man is now about to be transferred to a seventeen-year old from the back country outside Kathmandu, who is two feet tall and proud of his dance moves and karate skills.


A

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07 Oct 10 - 08:50 PM (#3002155)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Does thinking about time or money make you happier? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that people who are made to think about time plan to spend more of their time with the people in their lives while people who think about money fill their schedules with work, work, and -- you guessed it -- more work.



To find out how thinking about time or money makes people feel, Cassie Mogilner of the University of Pennsylvania designed an experiment, carried out online with adults from all over the United States, in which they concentrated on money or time. In this experiment, volunteers were asked to unscramble a series of sentences. Some participants were presented with sentences containing words related to time (e.g., "clock" and "day"), whereas others' sentences contained words related to money (e.g., "wealth" and "dollar"). Next all participants were asked how they planned to spend their next 24 hours. The ones who had been primed to think about time planned to spend more time socializing. People who'd been primed to think about money planned to spend more time working.
She also carried out the experiment on low-income people and found that having them think about time had the same effect, but having them think about money did not. This may mean that low-income people already live concerned about and, therefore, highly focused on money, Mogilner speculates.

But Mogilner wanted to test the effect in the real world, seeing how people actually spent their time. So her research team approached people going into a cafŽ on campus to ask them to take part in a questionnaire, which included the word-scrambling task that primed them with thoughts of time or money. These individuals were then watched to see how they spent their time in the cafŽÑwhether they chatted with people there or on a cell phone, or whether they worked. When they left the cafŽ, they filled out a second questionnaire about how happy and satisfied they felt. The results were similar: People who were primed to think about time spent more time socializing and were happier, while people who were primed with money spent more time with their noses buried in books and were less happy when they emerged.

Although focusing on money motivates people to work more, passing the hours working does not generally make one happy. Spending time with loved ones does, and thinking about time might motivate people to pursue these social connections. "There is so much discussion and focus on money, optimal ways to spend and save it, and the relationship between money and happiness," says Mogilner. "We're often ignoring the ultimately more important resource, which is time." She does not suggest that people stop working altogether, but she does say that people need to be reminded to make time for friends and family. ...


(Phys Org)

---

08 Oct 10 - 02:40 PM (#3002711)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

THere are occasions when it seems the depth of human psychic connections is too complex and rich with Jungian harmonics to settle for the normal materialist explanations. Here's one from a Wikipedia article on the death of the beloved John Lennon:

"Two films depicting the murder of Lennon were released in close proximity of each other more than 25 years after the event. The first of the two, The Killing of John Lennon, was released on 7 December 2007 (one day before the 27th anniversary of the murder). Directed by Andrew Piddington, the movie starred Jonas Ball as Mark David Chapman. The second film was Chapter 27, released on 28 March 2008. Directed by J. P. Schaefer, the film starred Jared Leto as Mark David Chapman. Lennon was portrayed by an actor named Mark Lindsay Chapman.

Of the two films, the low budget The Killing of John Lennon was considerably better received,[57] while Chapter 27, with its higher budget, was roundly hammered by critics.[58]"

---

11 Oct 10 - 11:16 PM (#3004928)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A small asteroid will fly past Earth early Tuesday within the Earth-moon system. The asteroid, 2010 TD54, will have its closest approach to EarthÕs surface at an altitude of about 45,000 kilometers (27,960 miles) at 6:50 EDT a.m. (3:50 a.m. PDT). At that time, the asteroid will be over southeastern Asia in the vicinity of Singapore.

During its flyby, Asteroid 2010 TD54 has zero probability of impacting Earth. A telescope of the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey north of Tucson, Arizona discovered 2010 TD54 on Oct. 9 at (12:55 a.m. PDT) during routine monitoring of the skies.

2010 TD54 is estimated to be about 5 to 10 meters (16 to 33 feet) wide. Due to its small size, the asteroid would require a telescope of moderate size to be viewed. A five-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 30 million would be expected to pass daily within a lunar distance, and one might strike EarthÕs atmosphere about every 2 years on average. If an asteroid of the size of 2010 TD54 were to enter EarthÕs atmosphere, it would be expected to burn up high in the atmosphere and cause no damage to EarthÕs surface.

---

12 Oct 10 - 08:44 PM (#3005610)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A team of linguists announced Tuesday that they have discovered a new and unique language, called Koro, in northeastern India, but immediately warned that it was highly endangered.

Only around 800 people are believed to speak the Tibeto-Burman language, and few of them are under the age of 20, according to the researchers who discovered Koro during an expedition as part of National Geographic's "Enduring Voices" project.

The language, they said, has never been written down.

"We found something that was making its exit, was on the way out," said National Geographic fellow Gregory Anderson, one of the leaders of the expedition that discovered Koro.

"If we had waited 10 years to make the trip, we might not have come across close to the number of speakers we found," he said.

Koro is so distinct from other Tibeto-Burman languages -- around 150 of which are spoken in India alone -- that the expedition team was unable to find any other language from the same family that was closely related to it.

It was discovered in the Arunachal Pradesh region of India, a rugged and hilly part of the subcontinent which visitors require a special permit to enter. Few linguists have worked in Arunachal Pradesh and no one has ever drawn up a reliable list of languages spoken there.

The National Geographic expedition, which also included Indian linguist Ganesh Murmu of Ranchi University, was, in fact, in search of two other languages, Aka and Miji, known to be spoken in a small district of Arunachal Pradesh.

Going door to door among the bamboo houses that sit on stilts in the hillside villages of the region, the team spoke to villagers and recorded their vocabularies.

And while they were doing so, they began to detect a third language, which was not listed in standard international registries or even in Indian language surveys. That third language was Koro.

The linguists made the first-ever recordings of Koro, capturing thousands of words during their expedition, which began in 2008.

The new language has a completely different inventory of sounds than other languages in the region, and its own way of putting together words and sentences.

For example, in Aka, the word for "pig" is "vo." In Koro, a pig is a "lele."

Despite their geographic proximity, the two languages "sound as different as, say, English and Japanese," National Geographic fellow David Harrison, one of the leaders of the expedition, said in the recently published book "The Last Speakers."

With Koro, linguists now count 6,909 languages worldwide.

But around half those languages are endangered, the victims of cultural change, ethnic shame, government repression and other factors, according to linguists.

One of the aims of National Geographic's Enduring Voices project is to document vanishing languages. The team that discovered Koro plans to return to India in November to continue studying the new language.

A scientific paper on Koro will be published in the journal Indian Linguistics.


http://news.discovery.com/human/new-language-india.html

---

13 Oct 10 - 07:46 PM (#3006446)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

n 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart.

Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.

To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser.

To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film.

When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose.

Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.

A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

(Full article can be found here at Red Ice on Myspace).

---

13 Oct 10 - 11:40 PM (#3006574)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Natalie Angier writes in The Hindu that it is now becoming clear that Newton spent thirty years of his life slaving over a furnace in search of the power to transmute one chemical element into another. Angier writes, 'How could the ultimate scientist have been seemingly hornswoggled by a totemic pseudoscience like alchemy, which in its commonest rendering is described as the desire to transform lead into gold?' Now new historical research describes how alchemy yielded a bounty of valuable spinoffs, including new drugs, brighter paints, stronger soaps and better booze. 'Alchemy was synonymous with chemistry,' says Dr. William Newman, 'and chemistry was much bigger than transmutation.' Newman adds that Newton's alchemical investigations helped yield one of his fundamental breakthroughs in physics: his discovery that white light is a mixture of colored rays that can be recombined with a lens. 'I would go so far as to say that alchemy was crucial to Newton's breakthroughs in optics,' says Newman. 'He's not just passing light through a prism Ñ he's resynthesizing it.'"

Slashdot

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16 Oct 10 - 10:40 AM (#3008430)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A new study suggests the universe and everything in it could end within the Earth's lifespan -- less than 3.7 billion years from now -- and we won't know it when it happens.

But one expert says the result isn't valid because the researchers chose an arbitrary end point.

The universe began in a Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago and has been expanding at an ever accelerating rate ever since.

According to standard cosmology models the most likely outcome for the universe is that it will expand forever.

But a team of physicists led by Raphael Bousso from the University of California, Berkeley, claim their calculations show the universe will end.

Writing in the prepublication blog arXiv.org Bousso and colleagues say there's a "measure problem" in the cosmological theory of eternal inflation.

Eternal inflation is a quantum cosmological model where inflationary bubbles can appear out of nothing. Some expand and go on forever, others collapse and disappear again.

These bubbles, each being a universe, pop in and out of existence like bubbles in boiling water.

They argue, in an eternally inflating universe, every event that is possible will eventually occur -- not just once, but an infinite number of times. This makes predicting when each event will occur impossible, such as the probability that a universe like ours exists.

"If infinitely many observers throughout the universe win the lottery, on what grounds can one still claim that winning the lottery is unlikely?" they write.

Bousso's team have being trying to determine the number of bubbles that exist at any given time and the number of 'observers' in each bubble to come up with the relative frequency of observers that can live in one universe compared to the relative frequency of observers who can live in another universe.

But the "measure problem" makes calculating this value impossible.

According to Bousso and colleagues, the only way to avoid this conundrum is to introduce a cut-off point, which then helps make sense again.

By introducing this cut-off, they say there is "a 50-50 chance of the universe ending in the next 3.7 billion years."

Charles Lineweaver from the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory says Bousso's team are simply imposing a catastrophe for statistical reasons.

He says the need for a better statistical solution has led the researchers to a false conclusion about the end of the universe.

---

20 Oct 10 - 01:45 PM (#3011628)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A Norwegian camping ground is the site of what may become one of Europe's most significant archeological discoveries. Archeologists have found an almost perfectly preserved Stone Age settlement which may have been buried by a sandstorm over 5,000 years ago.

In Norway archeologists have found what is being described as a kind of "mini-Pompeii." The well-preserved site is by the sea shore at Hamresanden in southern Norway and was discovered when excavators began digging there, prior to the construction of retirement homes.


The "sealed" Stone Age settlement, near the city of Kristiansand's airport, is thought to have been covered by a sandstorm, possibly in the course of a few hours. Under about a meter (three feet) of sand, excavations uncovered an almost perfectly preserved example of a settlement from what is known as the Funnel Beaker Culture, so called because of the distinctive clay beakers used by the first Stone Age farmers, with a funnel shaped rim. This was the major culture in north-central Europe between around 4000 BC to 2700 BC. Archeologists estimate that the Hamresanden settlement was buried by sand around 3500 BC -- that is, around 5,500 years ago. At the time, Norway's climate was much more arid and geological formations have shown that sand storms were not uncommon.

Archeological Sensation

The sudden prehistoric sand storm conserved walls, arrowheads, complete wooden artifacts and vessels from the era, in much the same way that the volcanic ash preserved the doomed town of Pompeii in Italy around 2,000 years ago. Up until now, archeologists in Norway had only found pieces of broken clay pots from the Stone Age. But at the Hamresanden site, which lies at the edge of a camping site, one complete vessel has already been pulled from the ground. Other large shards of pottery already found will enable archeologists to recreate several more of the large vessels.

"This is the first time we've made a find like this in Norway," Håkon Glørstad of the University of Oslo told Norwegian daily Aftenposten. He said that the site would be "carefully and finally stripped of the last of the earth, in about the same way that one uncovers a dinosaur skeleton. This is an archeological sensation."
(der Spiegel)

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25 Oct 10 - 10:29 PM (#3015436)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Why complex life probably evolved only once

    * 12:52 21 October 2010 by Michael Le Page
   
The universe may be teeming with simple cells like bacteria, but more complex life – including intelligent life – is probably very rare. That is the conclusion of a radical rethink of what it took for complex life to evolve here on Earth.

It suggests that complex alien life-forms could only evolve if an event that happened just once in Earth's history was repeated somewhere else.

All animals, plants and fungi evolved from one ancestor, the first ever complex, or "eukaryotic", cell. This common ancestor had itself evolved from simple bacteria, but it has long been a mystery why this seems to have happened only once: bacteria, after all, have been around for billions of years.

The answer, say Nick Lane of University College London and Bill Martin of the University of Dusseldorf in Germany, is that whenever simple cells start to become more complex, they run into problems generating enough energy.
The basic principles are universal. Even aliens need mitochondria

"It required a kind of industrial revolution in terms of energy production," says Lane. "[Our hypothesis] overturns the traditional view that the jump to complex eukaryotic cells simply required the right kinds of mutations."

"It is very, very convincing, in my opinion," says biologist John Allen of Queen Mary, University of London, on whose work Lane and Martin have drawn.
Growing costs

To become more complex, cells need more genes and more proteins – and so they need to get bigger. As the volume of any object increases, however, its relative surface area falls: an elephant has less surface area per unit of volume than a mouse, for instance. This is a major problem because simple cells generate the energy they need using the membrane that encloses them.

Lane and Martin calculate that if a bacterium grew to the size of a complex cell, it would run out of juice. It might have space for lots of genes, but it would have barely enough energy to make proteins from them.
Folds don't help

In theory, there is an easy answer to the energy problem: create lots of folds in the cell membrane to increase its surface area, which in turn will increase the amount of energy the membrane can produce. Indeed, many bacteria have such folds. But this leads to another problem as they get larger.

Producing energy by "burning" food is playing with fire. If the energy-producing machinery straddling the membrane is not constantly fine-tuned, it produces highly reactive molecules that can destroy cells. Yet fine-tuning a larger membrane is problematic because detecting and fixing problems takes longer.

These obstacles were overcome when a cell engulfed some bacteria and started using them as power generators – the first mitochondria.

By increasing the number of mitochondria, cells could increase their membrane area without creating maintenance problems: each mitochondrion is a self-contained system with built-in control and repair mechanisms.
Birth of complexity

Once freed from energy restraints, genomes could expand dramatically and cells capable of complex functions – such as communicating with each other and having specialised jobs – could evolve. Complex life was born.

So if Lane and Martin are right, the textbook idea that complex cells evolved first and only later gained mitochondria is completely wrong: cells could not become complex until they acquired mitochondria.

Simple cells hardly ever engulf other cells, however – and therein lies the catch. Acquiring mitochondria, it seems, was a one-off event. This leads Lane and Martin to their most striking conclusion: simple cells on other planets might thrive for aeons without complex life ever arising. Or, as Lane puts it: "The underlying principles are universal. Even aliens need mitochondria."

Journal reference: Nature, vol 467, p 929

---

26 Oct 10 - 03:48 PM (#3016130)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

During the hunt for the predicted ripples in space-time — known as gravitational waves — physicists stumbled across a rather puzzling phenomenon. Last year, I reported about the findings of scientists using the GEO600 experiment in Germany. Although the hi-tech piece of kit hadn't turned up evidence for the gravitational waves it was seeking, it did turn up a lot of noise.

Before we can understand what this "noise" is, we need to understand how equipment designed to look for the space-time ripples caused by collisions between black holes and supernova explosions.

Gravitational wave detectors are incredibly sensitive to the tiniest change in distance. For example, the GEO600 experiment can detect a fluctuation of an atomic radius over a distance from the Earth to the Sun. This is achieved by firing a laser down a 600 meter long tube where it is split, reflected and directed into an interferometer. The interferometer can detect the tiny phase shifts in the two beams of light predicted to occur should a gravitational wave pass through our local volume of space. This wave is theorized to slightly change the distance between physical objects. Should GEO600 detect a phase change, it could be indicative of a slight change in distance, thus the passage of a gravitational wave.

While looking out for a gravitational wave signal, scientists at GEO600 noticed something bizarre. There was inexplicable static in the results they were gathering. After canceling out all artificial sources of the noise, they called in the help of Fermilab's Craig Hogan to see if his expertise of the quantum world help shed light on this anomalous noise. His response was as baffling as it was mind-blowing. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," Hogan said.

Come again?

The signal being detected by GEO600 isn't a noise source that's been overlooked, Hogan believes GEO600 is seeing quantum fluctuations in the fabric of space-time itself. This is where things start to get a little freaky.

According to Einstein's view on the universe, space-time should be smooth and continuous. However, this view may need to be modified as space-time may be composed of quantum "points" if Hogan's theory is correct. At its finest scale, we should be able to probe down the "Planck length" which measures 10-35 meters. But the GEO600 experiment detected noise at scales of less than 10-15 meters.

As it turns out, Hogan thinks that noise at these scales are caused by a holographic projection from the horizon of our universe. A good analogy is to think about how an image becomes more and more blurry or pixelated the more you zoom in on it. The projection starts off at Planck scale lengths at the Universe's event horizon, but its projection becomes blurry in our local space-time. This hypothesis comes out of black hole research where the information that falls into a black hole is "encoded" in the black hole's event horizon. For the holographic universe to hold true, information must be encoded in the outermost reaches of the Universe and it is projected into our 3 dimensional world.

But how can this hypothesis be tested? We need to boost the resolution of a gravitational wave detector-type of kit. Enter the "Holometer."

Currently under construction in Fermilab, the Holometer (meaning holographic interferometer) will delve deep into this quantum realm at smaller scales than the GEO600 experiment. If Hogan's idea is correct, the Holometer should detect this quantum noise in the fabric of space-time, throwing our whole perception of the Universe into a spin.

Read complete article here.


A

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26 Oct 10 - 04:06 PM (#3016149)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Yep the holographic universe theory is scarily close to the Matrix.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

IT was recently discovered that gravity has a higher fundamental value in or near areas of great mass. Gravity is fundamentally weaker in areas of vast emptiness of matter.

This means that gravity is not a descrete force but is an accumulated energy that resides in or near mass, dark matter or dimensions that populate areas of matter more than empty space.

---

26 Oct 10 - 04:37 PM (#3016177)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

That is to say a kilogram of mass in empty space has less gravity than a kilo of mass in a galaxy. This as Richard Feynman would say, defies the greatest premise of scientific principles which is that fundmental relationships here should be the same as fundamental relationships elsewhere and anywhere in the universe.

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27 Oct 10 - 01:56 PM (#3016975)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Russian Bears Find Graveyards Snacks


In the absence of mushrooms and berries, Russian bears will turn to cadavers, reports The Guardian. Local officials have warned that a dearth of food caused by a parched summer has forced bears to scavenge in unusual places, including cemeteries. On Saturday in the village of Vezhnya Tchova, two women stumbled across a bear eating a corpse next to a grave, according to Russian newspaper reports. People living near the Arctic Circle have recently reported increases in the number of bears scavenging for scraps in Dumpsters and garden patches. The cemetery incident might come down to ursine resourcefulness as much as hunger, however. "You have to remember that bears are natural scavengers," said Masha Vorontsova of WWF Russia, who cited another example of bear grave robbers in the northern Karelia republic two years ago. "In Karelia one bear learned how to do it [open a coffin]. He then taught the others. They are pretty quick learners." The biggest threat to Russian bears is not a lack of fish and ants, say experts, but the presence of trophy hunters who can wipe out entire populations of large male bears.


The Guardian | Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010

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01 Nov 10 - 11:23 AM (#3020762)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From an article on Civil War (US) History:

"... Today's lusterless brass would never declare, as Sherman did, "I can make this march, and make Georgia howl!" or say of a superior, as Sherman did of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, "He stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk."

You can hear the same, bold voice in the writing of common soldiers, their letters unmuzzled by military censors and their dialect not yet homogenized by television and Interstates. "Got to see the elephant at last," an Indianan wrote of his first, inglorious combat. "I don't care about seeing him very often any more, for if there was any fun in such work I couldn't see it ... It is not the thing it is bragged up to be." Another soldier called the Gettysburg campaign "nothing but fighting, starving, marching and cussing." Cowards were known as "skedaddlers," "tree dodgers," "skulkers" and "croakers."

There's character even in muster rolls and other records, which constantly confound the stereotype of a war between brotherly white farm boys North and South. You find Rebel Choctaws and Union Kickapoos; Confederate rabbis and Arab camel-drivers; Californians in gray and Alabamans in blue; and in wondrous Louisiana, units called the Corps d'Afrique, the Creole Rebels, the Slavonian Rifles and the European Brigade. By war's end, black troops constituted over 10 percent of the Union Army and Navy. The roster of black sailors included men born in Zanzibar and Borneo.

Then there are the individuals who defy classification, like this one from a Pennsylvania muster roll: "Sgt. Frank Mayne; deserted Aug. 24, 1862; subsequently killed in battle in another regiment, and discovered to be a woman; real name, Frances Day."
..."

---

01 Nov 10 - 11:58 AM (#3020792)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Prop 19: Bad News for British Colombia, Good News for American Big Business Marijuana

British Columbia's billion-dollar illegal marijuana economy is already seeing the effects of potential marijuana legalization in California. The cash industry makes up a large part of the region's economy and is likely to see serious consequences in their retail and service sectors should that change, Research performed by one American non-profit group suggested that the cost of pot could plummet by as much as 80 percent in the face of the Nov. 2 vote that could legalize the drug.

What is bad news for British Columbia; however, is good news for the state of California, which would likely assume Canada's position on top of the industry and begin reviving the state's sunken economy. Marijuana is already California's biggest cash crop, bringing in $14 billion a year, but the additional production and resulting revenue for the state would hold benefits both for California and the small and large business owners who call it home.

Many California marijuana distributors that were shut down in raids earlier this year have been eagerly awaiting the Nov. 2 vote in the hopes of rebuilding their businesses and rehiring the thousands of employees that were left jobless when they closed. Others, like U.S. Cannabis (OTCPK:LLUX) have been thinking bigger.

Unlike in British Columbia where operations had to stay relatively small to avoid visibility and higher risk, US Cannabis is looking toward a new frontier in the marijuana business, and it's broader and more expansive than anything we've seen before.

US Cannabis establishes eight objectives which include medical, management, internet and media, financial services, product development, industrial agriculture, dispensary management, political relations and philanthropy. Essentially they are looking to manage and leverage the marijuana product, given its pending legality becomes a reality, from all possible angles.

A marijuana company that operates like a recognized legal operation; that seeks to increase efficiency and visibility and has the capacity to closely manage product quality is the first its kind. Only unlike many new companies, the demand for this product is well recognized, evidenced foremost by the 40,000 patients the company's medical care database.

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01 Nov 10 - 04:25 PM (#3021053)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In a reversal of long-standing policy, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Friday that naturally occurring genes—human or otherwise—could not be patented. This ruling does not include manipulated or altered genes. So, for instance, you can still patent the specific, fiddled-with genes behind a GM crop. But, this is still a very big deal. Right now the genes associated with increased risk of breast cancer are patented and, thus, there is only one, very expensive, test available to look for them. In March, a judge ruled those patents invalid. And now it looks like the federal government is backing up that ruling.

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01 Nov 10 - 04:26 PM (#3021056)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

February 22, 2007—In Antarctica's Ross Sea, a fishing boat has caught what is likely the world's biggest known colossal squid (yes, that's the species' name), New Zealand officials announced today.

Heavier than even giant squid, colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) have eyes as wide as dinner plates and sharp hooks on some of their suckers. The new specimen weighs in at an estimated 990 pounds (450 kilograms).

The sea monster had become entangled while feeding on Patagonian toothfish (toothfish photos) caught on long lines of hooks. The crew then maneuvered the squid into a net and painstakingly hauled it aboard—a two-hour process.

The animal was frozen and placed in a massive freezer below decks. Now in New Zealand, the carcass awaits scientific analysis.

"Even basic questions such as how large does this species grow to and how long does it live for are not yet known," said New Zealand Fisheries Minister Jim Anderton in a statement.

---

01 Nov 10 - 11:42 PM (#3021322)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls. This law was meant to protect the poor fish from a distorted nature of reality, since bent light might show them an odd portrayal of their surroundings.

Hawking and Mlodinow bring up the incident to make the point that it is impossible to know the true nature of reality. We think we have an accurate picture of what's going on, but how would we know if we were metaphorically living in a giant fishbowl of our own, since we would never be able to see outside our own point of view to compare?

---

02 Nov 10 - 12:05 AM (#3021330)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

One of the subtlest sentences in the English language:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Explanation here

---

03 Nov 10 - 05:52 PM (#3022892)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

From the Templeton Foundation:

"For centuries, Western science and philosophy has been built on the bedrock understanding that there is a clear difference between the material and the immaterialÑor, in theological terms, between the natural and the supernatural. What if new scientific findings hinted that the distinction might present an inaccurate view of reality? Observations like that, if proven, would cause a revolution in thought.

That tantalizing philosophical possibility was one of the reasons behind Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality, a scientific conference sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, and held at St. AnneÕs College, Oxford University, from September 26-29. The goal: to identify and explore a cutting-edge series of quantum-based questions about the nature of reality.

The conference attracted 83 of the worldÕs most celebrated philosophers, theoreticians, and experimental scientists, including quantum physicists Tony Leggett and Anton Zeilinger, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, and Royal Society president and astronomer Martin Rees. The star-studded event, described by one observer as Òthe best minds asking the biggest questions,Ó was held in honor of the 80th birthday of John Polkinghorne, the eminent Cambridge physicist and 2002 Templeton Prize winner. In an opening address to the scholarly gathering, Polkinghorne claimed that quantum physics, which challenges our commonsense notions of reality, has the potential to lead a scientific revolution more radical and consequential than that brought about by Einstein and relativity.

ÒThe discussions were notable for the respect shown for the way that the different disciplines could contribute to each other,Ó said Andrew Briggs, an Oxford physicist and conference co-chairman. ÒDr. Polkinghorne more than once remarked on the impressive involvement of experimentalists. It does indeed seem that conditions are excellent for further experimental progress in elucidating the nature of quantum reality.Ó

What does it mean to speak of Òquantum reality,Ó as distinct from ordinary reality? Classical physics operates according to laws, which dependably explain how reality, as we experience it, works. But at the quantum (atomic and subatomic) level, these laws break down, resulting in bizarre phenomena that scientists are only beginning to understand. Quantum entanglement, for example, occurs when two distinct particles are observed ÒaffectingÓ each other from far away, apparently instantaneously. A befuddled Einstein called this Òspooky action at a distance.Ó


Results from nearly a century of quantum experiments profoundly challenge our commonsensical notions of reality, and in turn, pose dramatic philosophical questions about the fabric of space and time, even the nature of truth. Quantum theory is currently enjoying a season of fertile growth, particularly in the new field of quantum information, which explores the concept that information, not spacetime, may be the basis for reality.

If proven true, quantum information theory would dramatically blur, if not collapse, the distinction between immaterial ÒideasÓ and material reality. As physicist Hyung Choi, who directs the FoundationÕs programs in mathematical and physical sciences, explains, ÒQuantum mechanics seems to be telling us that information may not be just a representation of reality, but may be, in some sense, reality itself. If this turns out to be the case, this could have a very significant impact on our philosophical framework. It would somehow bring together a sense of unity in our understanding of reality.Ó

Choi points out that Sir John Templeton was so passionate about the connection between visible and invisible reality that he devoted an entire chapter in his book Possibilities for One Hundredfold More Spiritual Information to the topic.

ÒQuantum physics deals with the boundary between the seen and the unseen,Ó says Choi. ÒBernard dÕEspagnat won the Templeton Prize for making a conceptual advance, through quantum physics, [indicating] that the material world is a Ôveiled reality,Õ a window into the unseen. ThatÕs what Sir John cared about. He said that the seen is the ladder to the unseen, and that in his view, there is a continuum in reality, physical and spiritual. I donÕt think he ever divided them.Ó"

---

07 Nov 10 - 05:42 PM (#3026164)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Stem cell scientists turn skin into blood

By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, November 7th, 2010 -- 5:43 pm

WASHINGTON — Stem cell researchers have found a way to turn a person's skin into blood, a process that could be used to treat cancer and other ailments, according to a Canadian study published Sunday.

The method uses cells from a patch of a person's skin and transforms it into blood that is a genetic match, without using human embryonic stem cells, said the study in the journal Nature.

By avoiding the controversial and more complicated processes involved with using human embryonic stem cells to create blood, this approach simplifies the process, researchers said.

"What we believe we can do in the future is generate blood in a much more efficient manner," said study author Mick Bhatia of the McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine.

With the ability to create blood for transfusion from a person's own skin, the advance means someday patients needing blood for surgery or to treat anemia could bypass the blood bank and derive the necessary supply from themselves.

The breakthrough could also see future uses such as allowing patients undergoing chemotherapy to endure a longer regime of treatment without the breaks currently needed to rejuvenate the body.

Researchers have been able to perform the skin-to-blood transformation in the past, but while using human pluripotent stem cells, widely known as embryonic stem cells.

Stem cells that are derived from human embryos hold significant promise for medical breakthroughs but also carry risks, such as the potential to create tumors.

But researchers say their new method can create enough blood for a transfusion from a four by three centimeter (1.6 by 1.2 inch) patch of adult human skin, and can avoid those potential hurdles.

"So we don't need to take skin cells and put it into a pluripotent stem cell. That is inefficient in terms of time," Bhatia told AFP.

"There are also concerns that they might form a tumor, and the fact that we bypass that makes it more feasible for transplants."

Those needing bone marrow transplants could be particularly aided by the breakthrough, according to John Kelton, dean of health sciences for McMaster University.

"For all physicians, but especially for the patients and their families, the illness became more frustrating when we were prevented from giving a bone marrow transplant because we could not find a perfect donor match in the family or the community," Kelton said.

"Dr. Bhatia's discovery could permit us to help this important group of patients."

Clinical trials could start as soon as 2012, the study said.

Cynthia Dunbar, head of the molecular hematopoiesis section of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, said she was eager to try out the Canadian team's approach.

"I think there are exciting aspects in terms of this potentially being a much safer approach than going back through embryonic stem cells," said Dunbar, who estimated it would be five to 10 years before the technique reaches the general public.

"I work for the US federal government, and whether or not we can work with embryonic stem cells is up in the air," she added. "I'm very excited to try this."

Bhatia said researchers would next begin experiments to see what other kinds of human cells can be derived from adult skin.

The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, the Stem Cell Network and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation.

---

07 Nov 10 - 07:32 PM (#3026245)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Archaeologists revealed they have found a piece of a stone axe dated as 35,500 years old on sacred Aboriginal land in Australia, the oldest object of its type ever found.

The shard of stone, found in Australia's lush and remote far northern reaches in May, has marks that prove it comes from a ground-edge stone axe, Monash University's Bruno David said on Friday.

"We could see with the angled light that the rock itself has all these marks on it from people having rubbed it in order to create the ground-edge axe," he told the ABC.

"The person who was using the axe was grinding it against a sandstone surface in order to make it a smoother surface."

David said the previous oldest ground-edge axes were 20,000 to 30,000 years old, and the conventional belief was that the tool first emerged in Europe when populations grew and forests flourished at the end of the last Ice Age.

"What we've got in Australia, however, is evidence of ground-edge axes going back 35,000 years ago," he said.

"What this all means is that we know that the conventional story that comes from Europe does not explain the origin of axes globally. So we've got to think of it in a very different way."

---

08 Nov 10 - 11:34 PM (#3027306)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Central dogma of genetics maybe not so central
In thousands of genes, RNA is not a faithful copy of DNA
By Tina Hesman Saey
Web edition : Thursday, November 4th, 2010

WASHINGTON Ñ
RNA molecules arenÕt always faithful reproductions of the genetic instructions contained within DNA, a new study shows. The finding seems to violate a tenet of genetics so fundamental that scientists call it the central dogma: DNA letters encode information and RNA is made in DNAÕs likeness. The RNA then serves as a template to build proteins.

But a study of RNA in white blood cells from 27 different people shows that, on average, each person has nearly 4,000 genes in which the RNA copies contain misspellings not found in DNA.

ÒItÕs unbelievable,Ó says Mingyao Li, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia. Li presented the finding November 3 in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

Scientists already knew that every now and then RNA letters can be chemically modified or edited Ñ sort of the molecular equivalent of adding an umlaut to some letters. But those RNA editing events are not common.

What Li and her colleagues discovered is quite common. RNA molecules contained misspellings at 20,000 different places in the genome, with about 10,000 different misspellings occurring in two or more of the people studied. The most common of the 12 different types of misspellings was when an A in the DNA was changed to G in the RNA. That change accounted for about a third of the misspellings.

(Science News)

---

09 Nov 10 - 09:41 PM (#3028061)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Something big is going on at the center of the galaxy, and astronomers are happy to say they donÕt know what it is.

A group of scientists working with data from NASAÕs Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope said Tuesday that they had discovered two bubbles of energy erupting from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles, they said at a news conference and in a paper to be published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal, extend 25,000 light years up and down from each side of the galaxy and contain the energy equivalent to 100,000 supernova explosions.

ÒTheyÕre big,Ó said Doug Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, leader of the team that discovered them.

The source of the bubbles is a mystery. One possibility is that they are fueled by a wave of star births and deaths at the center of the galaxy. Another option is a gigantic belch from the black hole known to reside, like Jabba the Hutt, at the center of the Milky Way. What it is apparently not is dark matter, the mysterious something that astronomers say makes up a quarter of the universe and holds galaxies together.

ÒWow,Ó said David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the work.

ÒAnd we think we know a lot about our own galaxy,Ó Dr. Spergel added, noting that the bubbles were almost as big as the galaxy and yet unsuspected until now.

---

13 Nov 10 - 10:47 AM (#3031062)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Twenty years ago today, when Vanilla IceÕs ÒIce Ice BabyÓ was at the top of the charts, two engineers at CERNÕs data handling division requested funding for the research project that would give birth to the web.

The proposal, submitted by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau on November 12, 1990, laid out what they wanted to build and the resources theyÕd require. The team wanted to start by building a browser and a server. They estimated development would take six months, and that it would require Òfour software engineers and a programmer.Ó There are also some serious hardware requirements totaling tens of thousands of dollars (or is it Swiss francs?), but about a third of the requested funding was dedicated to software user licenses.

HereÕs the overview:

    The attached document describes in more detail a Hypertext project. HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will. It provides a single user-interface to large classes of information (reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line help). We propose a simple scheme incorporating servers already available at CERN.

---

14 Nov 10 - 07:52 AM (#3031719)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Nazis Were Given 'Safe Haven' in U.S., Report Says
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: November 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government's Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a "safe haven" in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.
Dave Dieter/The Huntsville Times, via Associated Press

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

It describes the government's posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official's drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government's mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.

The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.

Perhaps the report's most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.'s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

MORE

---

15 Nov 10 - 09:49 PM (#3033131)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Oil to run out 100 years before replacements become viable, study claims

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, November 15th, 2010 -- 4:41 pm

The world will run out of oil around 100 years before replacement energy sources are available if oil use and development of new fuels continue at the current pace, a US study warns.

In the study, researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC-Davis) used the current share prices of oil companies and alternative energy companies to predict when replacement fuels will be ready to fill the gap left when oil runs dry.

And the findings weren't very good for the oil-hungry world.

If the world's oil reserves were the 1.332 trillion barrels they were estimated to be in 2008 and oil consumption was some 85.22 million barrels a day and growing at 1.3 percent a year, oil would be depleted by 2041, says the study published online last week in Environmental Science and Technology.

But by plugging current stock market prices into a complex equation, UC-Davis engineering professor Debbie Niemeier and postdoctoral researcher Nataliya Malyshkina calculated that a viable alternative fuel to oil won't be available before the middle of next century.

The researchers analyzed the share prices of 25 oil companies quoted on US, European and Australian stock exchanges, and of 44 alternative energy companies.

They found that the market capitalization, or total value of all stock shares, of traditional oil companies far outstripped that of the alternative energy companies.

That indicated that investors believe oil is going to do well in the near future and occupy a larger share of the energy market than alternative energy, said Malyshkina.

"To assess the time until a considerable fraction of oil is likely to be replaced by alternatives, we used advanced pricing equations to make sense of the large discrepancy between the market capitalization of traditional oil companies and the market capitalization of alternative-energy companies," Malyshkina told AFP.

The answer they came up with was that there would not be a widely available replacement for oil-based fuels before 2140, which, even if the more optimistic date of 2054 for oil depletion is retained, would mean there could be a nearly 90-year gap when it might be difficult to run a motor vehicle.

Nearly two-thirds of crude oil is used to produce gasoline and diesel to run vehicles, says Malyshkina.

The calculations used by the researchers are based on the theory that long-term investors are good predictors of when new technologies will become commonplace.

Similar calculations have been used to accurately predict the outcome of elections and the results of sports events, Malyshkina said.

---

16 Nov 10 - 08:05 AM (#3033396)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

The perfect crime tool: Researchers work on 'event cloak'

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, November 15th, 2010 -- 10:54 pm

PARIS — Jewelry robbers, magicians, exam cheats and practical jokers everywhere will have an interest in an offbeat idea launched by physicists on Tuesday: to make the passage of time invisible.

The scientists have conceived of a "spacetime cloak" which manipulates light and, in essence, conceals whole events from a viewer.

The theory is based on censoring the flow of events, which we perceive as a stream of light particles, also called photons, that strike the retina.

By exploiting a characteristic of fiber optics, the flow of photons can be slowed, events edited out and stitched back together, say the team from Imperial College London and Salford University, northwestern England.

"A safecracker would be able, for a brief time, to enter a scene, open the safe, remove its contents, close the door and exit the scene, whilst the record of a surveillance camera apparently showed that the safe door was closed all the time," according to their paper.

The theory is expounded in a daunting series of equations and diagrams in the Journal of Optics, published by the Institute of Physics.

It would work thanks to different light intensities that affect the refractory index in optical fiber, the cable widely used in telecoms today.

The refractory index is a determinant of the speed with which the light is transported in the cable.

In the example of the safe cracker, the "leading" segment (the image of the unmolested safe) would be slowed down.

The middle segment, of the robber opening the safe and making off with the contents would be edited out, disappearing into a "spatio-temporal void".

The final segment -- of the safe room apparently untouched -- would be accelerated so that it catches up with the leading segment and dovetails seamlessly with it.

"By manipulating the way the light illuminating an event reaches the viewer, it is possible to hide the passage of time," said Martin McCall, an Imperial College professor who headed the work.

"Not only can specific events be obscured, but it is possible for me to be watching you, and for you to suddenly disappear and reappear in a different location."

The paper appears in the Journal of Optics, published by Britain's Institute of Physics.

The theory has yet to be tested or confirmed in a lab, but the authors are confident that this will not be too far ahead.

The physicists are keen to point out that their notion of "invisible events" differs from the fast advancing realm of "invisible materials".

These are so-called metamaterials, whose nano-metric surface interferes with light at specific wavelengths. As a result, light deviates around an object, making it invisible -- or, more accurately, invisible in specific colors of the light spectrum.

"It is unlike ordinary cloaking devices because it does not attempt to divert light around an object," said co-author Alberto Favaro.

"Instead, it pulls apart the light rays in time, as if opening a theater curtain -- creating a temporary corridor through which energy, information and matter can be manipulated or transported undetected."

Beyond its sci-fi potential, the "spacetime cloak" could have benefits for quantum computing, which depends on the manipulation of light to transport huge amounts of data.

---

16 Nov 10 - 04:03 PM (#3033800)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Indeed, according to biocentrism, it's us, the observer, who create space and time (which is the reason you're here now). Consider everything you see around you right now. Language and custom say it all lies outside us in the external world. Yet you can't see anything through the vault of bone that surrounds your brain. Your eyes aren't just portals to the world. In fact, everything you experience, including your body, is part of an active process occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the mind's tools for putting it all together.

Theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow recently stated:

There is no way to remove the observer -- us -- from our perceptions of the world ... In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."

If we, the observer, collapse these possibilities (that is, the past and future) then where does that leave evolutionary theory, as described in our schoolbooks? Until the present is determined, how can there be a past? The past begins with the observer, us, not the other way around as we've been taught.

The observer is the first cause, the vital force that collapses not only the present but the cascade of past spatio-temporal events we call evolution. "If, instead of identifying ourselves with the work," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life, pre-existing within us in their highest form."

"Biocentrism" (co-authored with astronomer Bob Berman) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/why-are-you-here-new-theo_b_781055.html

---

17 Nov 10 - 11:57 AM (#3034416)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Randomness is indistinguishable from complicated, undetected and undetectable order; but order itself is indistinguishable from artful randomness."

Taleb

---

17 Nov 10 - 03:55 PM (#3034589)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

For physicists, a bit of antimatter is a precious gift indeed. By comparing matter to its counterpart, they can test fundamental symmetries that lie at the heart of the standard model of particle physics, and look for hints of new physics beyond. Yet few gifts are as tricky to wrap. Bring a particle of antimatter into contact with its matter counterpart and the two annihilate in a flash of energy.

Now a research collaboration at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland, has managed, 38 times, to confine single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap for more than 170 milliseconds. The group reported the result in Nature online on 17 November1. "We're ecstatic. This is five years of hard work," says Jeffrey Hangst, spokesman for the ALPHA collaboration at CERN.

An antihydrogen atom is made from a negatively charged antiproton and a positively charged positron, the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The objective — both for ALPHA and for a competing CERN experiment called ATRAP — is to compare the energy levels in antihydrogen with those of hydrogen, to confirm that antimatter particles experience the same electromagnetic forces as matter particles, a key premise of the standard model. "The goal is to study antihydrogen and you can't do it without trapping it," says Cliff Surko, an antimatter researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "This is really a big deal."

---

18 Nov 10 - 08:53 PM (#3035583)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists at CERN, the research facility that's home to the Large Hadron Collider, claim to have successfully created and stored antimatter in greater quantities and for longer times than ever before.

Researchers created 38 atoms of antihydrogen Ð more than ever has been produced at one time before and were able to keep the atoms stable enough to last one tenth of a second before they annihilated themselves (antimatter and matter destroy each other the moment they come into contact with each other). Since those first experiments, the team claims to have held antiatoms for even longer, though they weren't specific of the duration.

While scientists have been able to create particles of antimatter for decades, they had previously only been able to produce a few particles that would almost instantly destroy themselves.

"This is the first major step in a long journey," Michio Kaku, physicist and author of Physics of the Impossible, told PCMag. "Eventually, we may go to the stars."

---

20 Nov 10 - 01:52 AM (#3036485)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The first Native American to arrive in Europe may have been a woman brought to Iceland by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago, a study by Spanish and Icelandic researchers suggests.

The findings boost widely-accepted theories, based on Icelandic medieval texts and a reputed Viking settlement in Newfoundland in Canada, that the Vikings reached the American continent several centuries before Christopher Columbus traveled to the "New World."

Spain's CSIC scientific research institute said genetic analysis of around 80 people from a total of four families in Iceland showed they possess a type of DNA normally only found in Native Americans or East Asians.

"It was thought at first that (the DNA) came from recently established Asian families in Iceland," CSIC researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox was quoted as saying in a statement by the institute. "But when family genealogy was studied, it was discovered that the four families were descended from ancestors who lived between 1710 and 1740 from the same region of southern Iceland."

The lineage found, named C1e, is also mitochondrial, which means that the genes were introduced into Iceland by a woman. ...

Discovery News

---

21 Nov 10 - 05:16 PM (#3037595)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Pure Energy Systems News
Copyright © 2010


In a little more than a week from now, on November 29, Green Power Inc. (GPI) of Pasco, Washington, who has a technology to turn municipal solid waste (MSW) into synthetic liquid fuel and electricity, plans to begin the manufacturing of plants in fulfillment of orders from around the world. The photo on the right shows their 100 ton/day pilot plant.

This fuel would be of higher quality and cheaper than fuel derived from crude oil -- and it comes from local feedstock, while turning waste into energy. Green Power claims it manufactures equipment that can convert 100 tons of garbage into 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel at 78 cents a gallon. So not only would the fuel be cheaper, but it doesn't come from countries who aren't always so friendly, mitigating these unsavory international dependencies. It addresses the pollution problem, and the energy problem, and the political tension problem. "We would not need to import any foreign oil if we could turn our municipal waste stream into fuel," GPI's CEO, Michael Spitzauer has told me.

I classify waste-to-energy as a form of "free energy" because as long as there are humans on this planet there will be waste, and often in the case of waste there is actually a tipping fee for the feedstock, providing revenue on that end as well. And if we ever get to the point of using all our waste as feedstock for such processes, we will still have plenty of landfills to clean up, not to mention the huge gyres of plastic waste the size of Texas in the oceans.

Spitzauer, says that GPI has over $2 billion dollars in signed contracts for GPI plants, including in Vietnam, Spain, France, Yugoslavia, and a very large installation in South America to be launched in April. He said GPI has money in the bank from the S. American contract, for example, ready to finance immediate construction. The civil work has been done locally. Ground has been graded, concrete poured, foundations laid.

On September 17, a Bosnian newspaper reported (original url) that the director of the Slovenian company 'Green power', Zoran Petrovic, told reporters that the company will employ 50 workers (in its construction), and that the plant should become operational in the second half of next year.

In August of 2009, GPI was shut down by Washington state's Ecology Department who said GPI had "not provided adequate compliance with the environmental air quality regulations." This was cleared on September 8, 2010 by an EPA ruling that support's GPI's claim and reverses Washington state's Ecology Department's claim that placed the GPI process in the class of incinerators, which it is not. According to the EPA ruling:

    "Green Power describes its process as a proprietary catalytic pressure-less depolymerization process (CDP) where municipal solid waste or a wide variety of organic wastes are 'cracked' at the molecular level and the long-chain polymers (plastic, organic material such as wood, etc.) are chemically altered to become short-chain hydrocarbons with no combustion. Combustion requires oxygen or a similar compound, but according to Green Power the CDP occurs in an anaerobic environment, exposed only to inert gases like nitrogen...".

---

22 Nov 10 - 12:53 PM (#3038073)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers at the University of Newcastle in the UK have created a new kind of concrete glue that can patch up the cracks in concrete structures, restoring buildings that have been damaged by seismic events or deteriorated over time. But the glue isn't an adhesive or some kind of synthetic material; the researchers have custom-designed a bacteria to burrow deep into the cracks in concrete where they produce a mix of calcium carbonate and a special bacteria glue that hardens to the same strength of the surrounding concreate.

"BacillaFilla," as the researchers call it, is a genetically modified version of Bacillus subtilis, a bacteria commonly found in common soil. The researchers have tweaked it's genetic properties such that it only begins to germinate when it comes in contact with the highly-specific pH of concrete. Once the cells germinate, they are programmed to crawl as deep as they can into cracks in the concrete, where quorum sensing lets them know when enough bacteria have accumulated.


That accumulation lets the bacteria know they've reached the deepest part of the crack, at which point the cells begin to develop into bacterial filaments, cells that produce calcium carbonate, and cells that secrete a kind of bacterial glue that binds everything together. Once hardened, the bacteria is essentially as strong as the concrete itself, restoring structural strength and adding life to the surrounding concrete.

The bacteria also contains a self-destruct gene that keeps it from wildly proliferating away from its concrete target, because a runaway patch of bacterial concrete that continued to grow despite all efforts to stop it would be somewhat annoying. The researchers hope their BacillaFilla will improve the longevity of concrete structures, which can be environmentally costly to erect. It could also be deployed in earthquake stricken zones to quickly reinforce damaged buildings and reduce the number of structures that have to be razed after a disaster.

[MSNBC]

---

23 Nov 10 - 05:53 AM (#3038531)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: The Fooles Troupe

F*ng Nothing!

---

23 Nov 10 - 11:44 AM (#3038718)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

...(T)here's a shocking report recently published by astrophysicists at the University of Arizona in Tucson: The Milky Way's baby black holes are missing.

It might sound like a bizarre singularity kindergarten kidnapping case (I'm looking at you Andromeda), but Feryal Özel's Arizona team are in doubt as to whether the baby black holes existed in the first place.


WATCH VIDEO: Did you know there's a black hole in the center of our galaxy? A stellar-mass black hole is theorized to be created after a supernova. Supernovae are triggered when stars over eight-times the mass of our sun reach the end of their lives after catastrophically running out of fuel feeding stellar core fusion.

Immediately after supernova, if the remnant core has a mass of less than three suns, one would expect a blob of degenerate neutron matter to be spinning in the explosion's wake. This is a neutron star.

However, if the supernova remnant exceeds three solar masses, conventional physics suggests a black hole should be left behind.

But there's a problem. No stellar-mass black holes weighing between 2-5 solar masses have ever been observed, putting a serious question mark over the lower-mass black hole theory.

What's going on? Are low-mass black holes vanishing? Or is there some black hole formation process we're not familiar with?


Özel's team studied 16 binary systems in our galaxy known to contain a black hole and a stellar partner. None of them had a black hole of 2-5 solar masses living there, even after observational uncertainties were considered. Their findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

---

All right you clowns--Casseiopea? Betelgeuse? Horsehead? Where'd you stash the black holes, huh? You relaize you are putting the entire balance of forces in our galaxy at risk here? Quit dicking around (or asimoving around, or heinleining around, whatever...).

---

23 Nov 10 - 11:59 AM (#3038739)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

You can justify partying all year 'round once you subscribe to the calendar of the global economy. Happy Diwali, you-all.

---

24 Nov 10 - 02:00 PM (#3039683)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Physicists have created a new kind of light by chilling photons into a blob state.

Just like solids, liquids and gases, this recently discovered condition represents a state of matter. Called a Bose-Einstein condensate, it was created in 1995 with super-cold atoms of a gas, but scientists had thought it could not be done with photons, which are basic units of light. However, physicists Jan Klärs, Julian Schmitt, Frank Vewinger and Martin Weitz of the University of Bonn in Germany reported accomplishing it. They have dubbed the new particles "super photons."

Particles in a traditional Bose-Einstein condensate are cooled down close to absolute zero, until they glom onto each other and become indistinguishable, acting as one giant particle. Experts thought photons (packets of light) would be unable to achieve this state because it seemed impossible to cool light while concentrating it at the same time. Because photons are massless particles, they can simply be absorbed into their surroundings and disappear, which usually happens when they are cooled down.

The scientists needed to find a way to cool the photons without decreasing their numbers.

"Many scientists believed that it would not be possible, but I was pretty sure that it would work," Weitz told LiveScience.

To trap the photons, the researchers devised a container made of mirrors placed very, very close together – about a millionth of a meter (1 micron) apart. Between the mirrors, the researchers placed dye molecules – basically, little bits of color pigment. When the photons hit these molecules, they were absorbed and then re-emitted.

The mirrors trapped the photons by keeping them bouncing back and forth in a confined state. In the process, the light packets exchanged thermal energy every time they hit a dye molecule, and they eventually cooled down to about room temperature

While room temperature is nowhere near absolute zero, it was cold enough for photons to coalesce into a Bose-Einstein condensate.

"Whether a temperature is cold enough to start the condensation depends on the density of the particles," Klärs wrote in an e-mail. "Ultra-cold atomic gases are very dilute and they therefore have very low condensation temperatures. Our photon gas has a billion times higher density and we can achieve the condensation already at room temperature."

The researchers detail their findings in the Nov. 25 issue of the journal Nature.

Physicist James Anglin of Germany's Technical University Kaiserslautern, who was not involved in the project, called the experiment "a landmark achievement" in an accompanying essay in the same issue of Nature.

In effect, getting the photons to condense into this state caused them to behave more like regular matter particles. It also showcased the ability of photons, and indeed all particles, to behave as both a point-like particle and a wave – one of the most perplexing revelations of modern quantum physics.

---

24 Nov 10 - 07:56 PM (#3039958)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

THat sounds like the holy trinity of the three states of matter;
father ice, liquid son and gassy ghost. Ha

A bottle of frozen light please.

that'll be 3 million dollars.

---

28 Nov 10 - 10:56 AM (#3041996)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The cortex of the human brain holds more than 100 trillion neural connections, or synapses, packed into a layer of tissue just 2 to 4 millimeters thick.

---

29 Nov 10 - 02:23 PM (#3042942)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

This week, doctors drilled a hole into a Scottish truck driver's head and injected his brain with 2 million stem cells, in the first-ever regulated human trial for stem cell stroke treatment.

Doctors at Glasgow's Southern General Hospital will conduct periodic MRI scans to look for repairs or changes in areas of the patient's brain damaged by stroke. The trial, called Pilot Investigation of Stem Cells in Stroke (PISCES), is designed to check the procedure's safety, but any signs of physical improvement would be a major leap in neural medicine.

Before the surgery, researchers at UK company ReNeuron grew the stem cells into neural stem cells. British media said the company obtained the cells from a donated 12-week-old human fetus from the U.S. (An embryo becomes a fetus about eight weeks after fertilization.)

The procedure was initially approved last year.

Keith Muir of the University of Glasgow, the lead researcher on the trial, said some of the injected neural stem cells would grow into neurons. But they could prove even more versatile — earlier studies in rats showed that the stem cells triggered a wide variety of cell development, including new brain blood vessels.

During the next year, as many as 12 other patients will get progressively higher doses of stem cell injections, reaching as many as 20 million cells, according to Muir.

---

29 Nov 10 - 02:34 PM (#3042963)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

In recent years, computer scientists have begun to exploit evolution's amazing power. One thing they have experienced time and time again is evolution's blind progress. Put a genetic algorithm to work and it will explore the evolutionary landscape, looking for local minima. When it finds one, there is no knowing whether it is the best possible solution or whether it sits within touching distance of an evolutionary abyss that represents a solution of an entirely different order of magnitude.

That hints at the possibility that life as it has evolved on Earth is but a local minima in a vast landscape of evolutionary possibilities. If that's the case, biologists are studying a pitifully small fraction of something bigger. Much bigger.

Today, we get an important insight into this state of affairs thanks to a fascinating paper by Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese at the University of Illinois. Goldenfeld is a physicist by training while Woese, also a physicist, is one of the great revolutionary figures in biology. In the 1970s, he defined a new kingdom of life, the Archae, and developed a theory of the origin of life called the RNA world hypothesis, which has gained much fame or notoriety depending on your viewpoint.

Together they suggest that biologists need to think about their field in a radical new way: as a branch of condensed matter physics. Their basic conjecture is that life is an emergent phenomena that occurs in systems that are far out of equilibrium. If you accept this premise, then two questions immediately arise: what laws describe such systems and how are we to get at them.

Goldenfeld and Woese say that biologists' closed way of thinking on this topic is embodied by the phrase: all life is chemistry. Nothing could be further from the truth, they say.

They have an interesting analogy to help press their case: the example of superconductivity. It would be easy to look at superconductivity and imagine that it can be fully explained by the properties of electrons as they transfer in and out of the outer atomic orbitals. You might go further and say that superconductivity is all atoms and chemistry.

And yet the real explanation is much more interesting and profound. It turns out that many of the problems of superconductivity are explained by a theory which describes the relationship between electromagnetic fields and long range order. When the symmetry in this relationship breaks down, the result is superconductivity.

And it doesn't just happen in materials on Earth. This kind of symmetry breaking emerges in other exotic places such as the cores of quark stars. Superconductivity is an emergent phenomenon and has little to do with the behaviour of atoms. A chemist would be flabbergasted.

According to Goldenfeld and Woese, life is like superconductivity. It is an emergent phenomenon and we need to understand the fundamental laws of physics that govern its behaviour. Consequently, only a discipline akin to physics can reveal such laws and biology as it is practised today does not fall into this category.

MIT Tech Review

---

29 Nov 10 - 07:48 PM (#3043188)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Researchers at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine wanted to determine whether oxytocin, a hormone and neurotransmitter that is known to regulate attachment and social memory in animals, is also involved in human attachment memories. They conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial, giving 31 healthy adult men oxytocin or a placebo delivered nasally on two occasions. Prior to administering the drug/placebo, the researchers measured the men's attachment style. About 90 minutes after administering the oxytocin or the placebo the researchers assessed participants' recollection of their mother's care and closeness in childhood.

They found that men who were less anxious and more securely attached remembered their mothers as more caring and remembered being closer to their mothers in childhood when they received oxytocin, compared to when they received placebo. However, men who were more anxiously attached remembered their mothers as less caring and remembered being less close to their mothers in childhood when they received oxytocin, compared to when they received placebo. These results were not due to more general effects of oxytocin on mood or well-being.

Physorg.com

---

30 Nov 10 - 10:44 AM (#3043568)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." That's what Richard Feynman said in 1965, and it is not getting any easier. Scientists are reporting in the journal Science that they have linked the uncertainty principle and "spooky" nonlocal interactions.

Quantum measurements are governed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It states that measurements of pairs of physical quantities, such as time and energy or position and momentum, are linked such that the more you know about one, the less you do about the other. If you know exactly where a particle is, you know nothing about its momentum, and vice versa.

When the states of two quantum systems are coupled, they are said to be entangled. For example, if a particle decays into two with opposite spins, quantum mechanics states that each particle has a 50 percent chance of being spin up or spin down. If you measure one particle to be spin up, then you have collapsed the wave function and changed the probability of the second particle to be 100 percent spin down.

So what happens when the two particles have moved apart? Entangled interactions are referred to as nonlocal interactions when the measurement of one of the particles would have to travel faster than the speed of light to collapse the wave function of the second particle. Einstein really did not like this, and referred to these interactions as "spooky," because one particle seems to instantaneously know what was measured on the other.

Linking these two apparently separate phenomena is the concept of steerability. Steerability refers to the ability to influence the states of one particle with measurements made on another. If two people each have access to an entangled system, then they each have some idea of what measurements each other have made, and they can make educated guesses as to the states of each other's systems.

What the researchers have shown is that the strength of nonlocal interactions is a tradeoff between steerability and uncertainty. The more influence one has on the system, the more uncertainty there is. And the more you decrease the uncertainty, the less you can steer the measurements. In a nutshell, the uncertainty principle puts a limit on the amount of information that an entangled system can hold.

(ArsTechnica)

---

30 Nov 10 - 01:35 PM (#3043672)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

July 31, 1858
The Atlantic Telegraph

And so the great cable, on which the hopes of two worlds rested, has broken for the second time! We trust the next attempt will achieve the grand object, or at all events approximate nearer to success, for it must be confessed the last has been a more total failure than the first. The idea that two such nations as England and America will abandon the undertaking shows a great ignorance of our national character - since it is not likely a people who for three centuries continued its researches to discover a North-west Passage, for a mere theoretical object, will relinquish, after only two failures, one so practical and important as the instantaneous communication between Europe and America. We are disposed to think that the people on both sides the Atlantic will be more inclined to take counsel of the great Bruce, who, having been seven times defeated in his attempts to regain his crown, was lying one morning on his couch in despair, when he observed a spider endeavoring to reach a certain spot in the corner of his room - it failed - again it essayed, and failed again - thus on till the eighth time - when it at last succeeded! Bruce rose comported from his bed, and shaking the despair from his soul, made another attempt for his crown. We all know that he triumphed! We think with Bruce, that what a spider did man can do, and that despite the recent mishap, the cable will be eventually laid.

The details of the disaster are very contradictory, although we have only the statement of the officers and engineers of the Niagara, who have somewhat prematurely, and disingenuously, we think, thrown all the blame on those on board the Agamemnon. We forbear to point out the manifest discrepancies, as a few days will put all right; but we do most thoroughly hope the blame really rests where our officers of the Niagara says it does, otherwise the national character will be compromised by their statements, should they prove unfounded. In so great an undertaking, and especially when so much more has been done by the British Government than by our own, it will, indeed, be a deplorable and humiliating thing, after the haste made by the staff of the Niagara to accuse their British associates, should the blame really rest with us instead of with our partners in the enterprise, since it will naturally indispose the English Government to admit us to any participation in their future, and we deliberately add, successful efforts.
(News report of the period, reprinted in :The Atlantic" magazine)

---

30 Nov 10 - 10:00 PM (#3043984)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Physicists performed a Bell experiment between the islands of La Palma and Tenerife at an altitude of 2,400 m. Starting with an entangled pair of photons, one photon was sent 6 km away to Alice, and the other photon was sent 144 km away to Bob. The physicists took several steps to simultaneously close the locality loophole and freedom-of-choice loophole.
The latest test in quantum mechanics provides even stronger support than before for the view that nature violates local realism and is thus in contradiction with a classical worldview. By performing an experiment in which photons were sent from one Canary Island to another, physicists have shown that two of three loopholes can be closed simultaneously in a test that violates Bell's inequality (and therefore local realism) by more than 16 standard deviations. Performing a Bell test that closes all three loopholes still remains a challenge, but the physicists predict that such an experiment might be "on the verge of being possible" with state-of-the-art technology.


(PhysOrg.com) --

---

01 Dec 10 - 09:27 AM (#3044124)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

The current widely-held theory of life, the universe, and everything holds that at some point roughly 13.7 billion years ago everything that now is was packed into a tight little package from which sprung the Big Bang, which violently hurled everything into existence. But 13.7 billion years to get to where we are isn't enough for renowned physicist Sir Roger Penrose, and now he thinks he can prove that things aren't/weren't quite so simple. Drawing on evidence he found in the cosmic microwave background, Penrose says the Big Bang wasn't the beginning, but one in a series of cyclical Big Bangs, each of which spawned its own universe.

By Penrose's estimation, our universe is not the first – nor will it be the last – to spawn from a dense mass of highly-ordered everything into the complex universe we see around us. In fact, it's that high degree of order that was apparently present at the universe's birth that set him on this line of thought. The current Big Bang model doesn't supply a reason as to why a low entropy, highly ordered state existed at the birth of our universe unless things were set in order before the Big Bang occurred.


According to Penrose, each universe returns to a state of low entropy as it approaches its final days of expanding into eventual nothingness. Black holes, by virtue of the fact that they suck in everything they encounter, spend their cosmic lifetimes working to scrub entropy from the universe. And as the universe nears the end of its expansion the black holes themselves evaporate, setting things back into a state of order. Unable to expand any further the universe then collapses back in on itself as a highly ordered system, ready to trigger the next Big Bang.

---

01 Dec 10 - 03:41 PM (#3044400)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

During the period of the Witches Act there were two or three intense periods of fervent witch-hunting. One episode was triggered by the famous case of the North Berwick Witches.

It is said that on Halloween 1590, a group of witches in North Berwick met to summon up a wind to shipwreck James VI of Scotland, who was returning home from Denmark with his new bride, Anne.

A grand Sabbat was held, where the Devil appeared and gave his instructions. A cat was baptised and thrown into the sea causing the water to churn. Graves were robbed for the purpose of acquiring ingredients. Church doors were opened by means of a 'Band of Glory' - the hand of a murderer was cut from a corpse as it swung on the gibbet, Incantations were chanted and cauldrons bubbled.

When all of this was done, the witches danced and frolicked in the kirk yard at North Berwick. Coincidentally the ship that the King was travelling on was disturbed by a storm.

On his safe return to Scotland and much preoccupied with the notion of witchcraft, King James set about tracking down the culprits. Agnes Simpson, the principal witch, was tortured first and she gave a number of names. Among them, the King's cousin, the Earl of Bothwell.

This was all that the King needed. Fearing for his life, a huge witch-hunt was launched and swept the country.

The last main witch-hunt in Europe took place in Renfrewshire in 1697. Christian Shaw, the eleven-year old daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, accused a number of tenants and servants of bewitching her.

She was an ill child who spent a lot of her time with the local minister - who no doubt encouraged her in her claims. Twenty people were accused on her evidence, and seven executed.

With the coming of the age of enlightenment, however, the idea of flying, shape-changing witches lost favour, and the Act was quietly dropped. But it came too late for Janet Horne, who was accused of turning her daughter into a donkey and riding her to the witches' sabbats. For this she was burnt alive, the last person in Scotland to be executed for the crime of witchcraft.

---

01 Dec 10 - 03:57 PM (#3044415)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: gnu

A... do you ever sleep or are you zombie that stares at the screen 24/7?

---

01 Dec 10 - 10:02 PM (#3044591)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

"Apple has been awarded a U.S. patent for a display system that would allow multiple viewers to see a high-quality 3D image projected on a screen without the need for special glasses, regardless of where they are sitting. Entertainment is far from the only field in which 3D can enhance the viewing experience: others include medical diagnostics, flight simulation, air traffic control, battlefield simulation, weather diagnostics, advertising and education, according to Apple's U.S. patent 7,843,449 for a 3D display system."



Gnu:

I have hired small children to do this for me...

---

02 Dec 10 - 09:41 AM (#3044887)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

MEDIA ADVISORY : M10-167 NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2   WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website at http://www.nasa.gov.

Participants are:
-    Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-    Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
-    Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
-    Steven Benner, distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Fla.
-    James Elser, professor, Arizona State University, Tempe

Media representatives may attend the conference or ask questions by phone or from participating NASA locations. To obtain dial-in information, journalists must send their name, affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole at [e-mail] or call 202-358-0918 by noon Dec. 2.

---

02 Dec 10 - 02:03 PM (#3045088)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran's Nuclear Weapons Ambitions

By Ed Barnes
Published November 26, 2010 FoxNews.com

In the 20th century, this would have been a job for James Bond.

The mission: Infiltrate the highly advanced, securely guarded enemy headquarters where scientists in the clutches of an evil master are secretly building a weapon that can destroy the world. Then render that weapon harmless and escape undetected.

But in the 21st century, Bond doesn't get the call. Instead, the job is handled by a suave and very sophisticated secret computer worm, a jumble of code called Stuxnet, which in the last year has not only crippled Iran's nuclear program but has caused a major rethinking of computer security around the globe.

Intelligence agencies, computer security companies and the nuclear industry have been trying to analyze the worm since it was discovered in June by a Belarus-based company that was doing business in Iran. And what they've all found, says Sean McGurk, the Homeland Security Department's acting director of national cyber security and communications integration, is a "game changer."

The construction of the worm was so advanced, it was "like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield," says Ralph Langner, the computer expert who was the first to sound the alarm about Stuxnet. Others have called it the first "weaponized" computer virus.

Simply put, Stuxnet is an incredibly advanced, undetectable computer worm that took years to construct and was designed to jump from computer to computer until it found the specific, protected control system that it aimed to destroy: Iran's nuclear enrichment program.

The target was seemingly impenetrable; for security reasons, it lay several stories underground and was not connected to the World Wide Web. And that meant Stuxnet had to act as sort of a computer cruise missile: As it made its passage through a set of unconnected computers, it had to grow and adapt to security measures and other changes until it reached one that could bring it into the nuclear facility.

When it ultimately found its target, it would have to secretly manipulate it until it was so compromised it ceased normal functions.

And finally, after the job was done, the worm would have to destroy itself without leaving a trace.

That is what we are learning happened at Iran's nuclear facilities -- both at Natanz, which houses the centrifuge arrays used for processing uranium into nuclear fuel, and, to a lesser extent, at Bushehr, Iran's nuclear power plant.

At Natanz, for almost 17 months, Stuxnet quietly worked its way into the system and targeted a specific component -- the frequency converters made by the German equipment manufacturer Siemens that regulated the speed of the spinning centrifuges used to create nuclear fuel. The worm then took control of the speed at which the centrifuges spun, making them turn so fast in a quick burst that they would be damaged but not destroyed. And at the same time, the worm masked that change in speed from being discovered at the centrifuges' control panel.

At Bushehr, meanwhile, a second secret set of codes, which Langner called "digital warheads," targeted the Russian-built power plant's massive steam turbine.

Here's how it worked, according to experts who have examined the worm:

--The nuclear facility in Iran runs an "air gap" security system, meaning it has no connections to the Web, making it secure from outside penetration. Stuxnet was designed and sent into the area around Iran's Natanz nuclear power plant -- just how may never be known -- to infect a number of computers on the assumption that someone working in the plant would take work home on a flash drive, acquire the worm and then bring it back to the plant.

--Once the worm was inside the plant, the next step was to get the computer system there to trust it and allow it into the system. That was accomplished because the worm contained a "digital certificate" stolen from JMicron, a large company in an industrial park in Taiwan. (When the worm was later discovered it quickly replaced the original digital certificate with another certificate, also stolen from another company, Realtek, a few doors down in the same industrial park in Taiwan.)

--Once allowed entry, the worm contained four "Zero Day" elements in its first target, the Windows 7 operating system that controlled the overall operation of the plant. Zero Day elements are rare and extremely valuable vulnerabilities in a computer system that can be exploited only once. Two of the vulnerabilities were known, but the other two had never been discovered. Experts say no hacker would waste Zero Days in that manner.

--After penetrating the Windows 7 operating system, the code then targeted the "frequency converters" that ran the centrifuges. To do that it used specifications from the manufacturers of the converters. One was Vacon, a Finnish Company, and the other Fararo Paya, an Iranian company. What surprises experts at this step is that the Iranian company was so secret that not even the IAEA knew about it.

--The worm also knew that the complex control system that ran the centrifuges was built by Siemens, the German manufacturer, and -- remarkably -- how that system worked as well and how to mask its activities from it.

--Masking itself from the plant's security and other systems, the worm then ordered the centrifuges to rotate extremely fast, and then to slow down precipitously. This damaged the converter, the centrifuges and the bearings, and it corrupted the uranium in the tubes. It also left Iranian nuclear engineers wondering what was wrong, as computer checks showed no malfunctions in the operating system.

Estimates are that this went on for more than a year, leaving the Iranian program in chaos. And as it did, the worm grew and adapted throughout the system. As new worms entered the system, they would meet and adapt and become increasingly sophisticated.

During this time the worms reported back to two servers that had to be run by intelligence agencies, one in Denmark and one in Malaysia. The servers monitored the worms and were shut down once the worm had infiltrated Natanz. Efforts to find those servers since then have yielded no results.

This went on until June of last year, when a Belarusan company working on the Iranian power plant in Beshehr discovered it in one of its machines. It quickly put out a notice on a Web network monitored by computer security experts around the world. Ordinarily these experts would immediately begin tracing the worm and dissecting it, looking for clues about its origin and other details.

But that didn't happen, because within minutes all the alert sites came under attack and were inoperative for 24 hours.

"I had to use e-mail to send notices but I couldn't reach everyone. Whoever made the worm had a full day to eliminate all traces of the worm that might lead us them," Eric Byres, a computer security expert who has examined the Stuxnet. "No hacker could have done that."

Experts, including inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, say that, despite Iran's claims to the contrary, the worm was successful in its goal: causing confusion among Iran's nuclear engineers and disabling their nuclear program.

Because of the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program, no one can be certain of the full extent of the damage. But sources inside Iran and elsewhere say that the Iranian centrifuge program has been operating far below its capacity and that the uranium enrichment program had "stagnated" during the time the worm penetrated the underground facility. Only 4,000 of the 9,000 centrifuges Iran was known to have were put into use. Some suspect that is because of the critical need to replace ones that were damaged.

And the limited number of those in use dwindled to an estimated 3,700 as problems engulfed their operation. IAEA inspectors say the sabotage better explains the slowness of the program, which they had earlier attributed to poor equipment manufacturing and management problems. As Iranians struggled with the setbacks, they began searching for signs of sabotage. From inside Iran there have been unconfirmed reports that the head of the plant was fired shortly after the worm wended its way into the system and began creating technical problems, and that some scientists who were suspected of espionage disappeared or were executed. And counter intelligence agents began monitoring all communications between scientists at the site, creating a climate of fear and paranoia.

Iran has adamantly stated that its nuclear program has not been hit by the bug. But in doing so it has backhandedly confirmed that its nuclear facilities were compromised. When Hamid Alipour, head of the nation's Information Technology Company, announced in September that 30,000 Iranian computers had been hit by the worm but the nuclear facilities were safe, he added that among those hit were the personal computers of the scientists at the nuclear facilities. Experts say that Natanz and Bushehr could not have escaped the worm if it was in their engineers' computers.

"We brought it into our lab to study it and even with precautions it spread everywhere at incredible speed," Byres said.

"The worm was designed not to destroy the plants but to make them ineffective. By changing the rotation speeds, the bearings quickly wear out and the equipment has to be replaced and repaired. The speed changes also impact the quality of the uranium processed in the centrifuges creating technical problems that make the plant ineffective," he explained.

In other words the worm was designed to allow the Iranian program to continue but never succeed, and never to know why.

One additional impact that can be attributed to the worm, according to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Studies, is that "the lives of the scientists working in the facility have become a living hell because of counter-intelligence agents brought into the plant" to battle the breach. Ironically, even after its discovery, the worm has succeeded in slowing down Iran's reputed effort to build an atomic weapon. And Langer says that the efforts by the Iranians to cleanse Stuxnet from their system "will probably take another year to complete," and during that time the plant will not be able to function anywhere normally.

But as the extent of the worm's capabilities is being understood, its genius and complexity has created another perplexing question: Who did it?

Speculation on the worm's origin initially focused on hackers or even companies trying to disrupt competitors. But as engineers tore apart the virus they learned not only the depth of the code, its complex targeting mechanism, (despite infecting more than 100,000 computers it has only done damage at Natanz,) the enormous amount of work that went into it—Microsoft estimated that it consumed 10,000 man days of labor-- and about what the worm knew, the clues narrowed the number of players that have the capabilities to create it to a handful.

"This is what nation-states build, if their only other option would be to go to war," Joseph Wouk, an Israeli security expert wrote.

Byers is more certain. "It is a military weapon," he said.

And much of what the worm "knew" could only have come from a consortium of Western intelligence agencies, experts who have examined the code now believe.

Originally, all eyes turned toward Israel's intelligence agencies. Engineers examining the worm found "clues" that hinted at Israel's involvement. In one case they found the word "Myrtus" embedded in the code and argued that it was a reference to Esther, the biblical figure who saved the ancient Jewish state from the Persians. But computer experts say "Myrtus" is more likely a common reference to "My RTUS," or remote terminal units.

Langer argues that no single Western intelligence agency had the skills to pull this off alone. The most likely answer, he says, is that a consortium of intelligence agencies worked together to build the cyber bomb. And he says the most likely confederates are the United States, because it has the technical skills to make the virus, Germany, because reverse-engineering Siemen's product would have taken years without it, and Russia, because of its familiarity with both the Iranian nuclear plant and Siemen's systems.

There is one clue that was left in the code that may tell us all we need to know.

Embedded in different section of the code is another common computer language reference, but this one is misspelled. Instead of saying "DEADFOOT," a term stolen from pilots meaning a failed engine, this one reads "DEADFOO7."

Yes, OO7 has returned -- as a computer worm.

Stuxnet. Shaken, not stirred.

---

02 Dec 10 - 02:57 PM (#3045131)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus — one of six elements considered essential for life — opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about.

The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.

Scientists said the results, if confirmed, would expand the notion of what life could be and where it could be. "There is basic mystery, when you look at life," said Dimitar Sasselov, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and director of an institute on the origins of life there, who was not involved in the work. "Nature only uses a restrictive set of molecules and chemical reactions out of many thousands available. This is our first glimmer that maybe there are other options."

Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology fellow at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., who led the experiment, said, "This is a microbe that has solved the problem of how to live in a different way."

This story is not about Mono Lake or arsenic, she said, but about "cracking open the door and finding that what we think are fixed constants of life are not."


The New York Times

---

03 Dec 10 - 10:34 AM (#3045593)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Babylonian poetry resurrected. The extinct Babylonian language was reconstructed in its spoken form by a group of scholars from Cambridge University headed by Dr. Martin Worthington. In order to uncover the secrets of the language's sounds, the group studied letter combinations and patterns internal to the written language and compared it to transcriptions into other, better known ancient languages.

Listen to Babylonian poetry.

Peruvian culture used architecture to create altered states. Miriam Kolar, of the Center for Computer Research and Acoustics at Stanford, spoke to Discovery News about her work on the underground tunnels created by the 3,000 year-old Chavín culture. Her work has shown the tunnels create a discomfiting rumble that resonates in the skull of living beings.

(Quote from Koral updated.)

"The structures could be physically disorienting and the acoustic environment is very different than the natural world. The iconography shows people mixed with animal features in altered states of being. Many of these figures have mucus trailing out of the nose indicative of people using psychoactive plant substances, so it's a likely they were having a hallucinogenic experience."

No samples of the tunnel acoustics are currently available online, but listen to a 3,000 year-old Chavín pututu conch shell flute being played; and now, a chorus of them.

The Mayan pyramid chirped like the sacred Quetzal. David Lubman compared the call of the sacred Quetzal bird, called the "spirit of the Maya," to the sound of clapping at the main staircase of Chichen Itza's Kukulkan pyramid. They were sonically equivalent. Kukulkan was associated symbolically with the bird. If they did built the pyramid to create the sound on purpose, why?

"In the cloud forest, sound can be more important than vision, because one can hear father than one can see. The acoustic channel in cloud forests is rich with the sounds of birds, insects and animals."

Listen to two Quetzal calls, followed by two claps in front of the main stair.

Stonehenge speaks. Was Stonehenge designed for sound as well as sight? It may well have been if the work of Trevor Cox and his peers are any indication. After "finger printing" the individual stones to measure the location's "impulse response," the acousticians plotted echo patterns and ran "anechoic" recordings of drumming through them on a computer.

Listen to the impulse response drumming from the incomplete original of Stonehenge and another from the impulse response of the replica of the complete Stonehenge at Maryhill, Washington in the U.S.

What does it all mean? That as a race we may have encoded the sounds that were important to us into the artifacts that we left behind as we moved through time. What sounds will our descendants find us to have valued?

---

03 Dec 10 - 03:55 PM (#3045771)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Well, SpaceX just scored a huge milestone in space travel for the proletariat: we get to come back now. The FAA just gave SpaceX's Dragon capsule a reentry license, paving the way for it to make round trips to the International Space Station and eventually even take people up there. NASA, who already has some hefty contracts with SpaceX for launches, has congratulated SpaceX over Twitter on the good news, though we're sure the few billion dollars in future business speaks volumes already. Engadget's own Chad Mumm, resident Space Destiny Enthusiast, had this to say about the momentous occasion:

"We're standing on the shoulders of our ancestors, reaching out a small, child-like hand at the stars. And then returning safely to earth thanks to FAA certification. We're on the verge of the impossible."

Sorry, there's something in our eye...

---

05 Dec 10 - 10:34 AM (#3046845)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

South Carolina ~Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union
(Click for entire document)

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act...

---

05 Dec 10 - 02:18 PM (#3046973)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

05 Dec 10 - 03:50 PM (#3047044)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

06 Dec 10 - 07:24 PM (#3047794)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

08 Dec 10 - 07:29 PM (#3049220)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

*
    * PhysOrg.com

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

08 Dec 10 - 10:02 PM (#3049305)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Japan team says stem cells made paralysed monkey jump again


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

Lotsa hope for issues like MS, etc.


A

---

13 Dec 10 - 04:33 PM (#3052719)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"


From MIT

---

13 Dec 10 - 08:37 PM (#3052893)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Bioengineers discover how particles self-assemble in flowing fluids

December 13, 2010 By Matthew Chin and Wileen Wong Kromhout


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

14 Dec 10 - 11:51 AM (#3053366)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

15 Dec 10 - 05:16 PM (#3054243)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

---

16 Dec 10 - 09:24 PM (#3055240)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

18 Dec 10 - 11:14 AM (#3056424)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

A childhood mystery made plain:

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

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

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

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

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

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

SLate

---

20 Dec 10 - 10:24 PM (#3058224)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

28 Dec 10 - 10:00 PM (#3063017)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Study: Conservatives have larger 'fear center' in brain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

06 Jan 11 - 02:43 PM (#3068680)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

---

06 Jan 11 - 11:06 PM (#3069006)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

+6
3

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

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


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

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



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

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

---

10 Jan 11 - 01:28 PM (#3071467)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

---

14 Jan 11 - 07:23 PM (#3074790)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

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

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

---

15 Jan 11 - 11:06 PM (#3075473)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Bring back the Woolly Mammoth!!

---

16 Jan 11 - 05:56 PM (#3075939)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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

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

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

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

The findings have been published online by the journal Science.

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

Ring record

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

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

End Quote Ulf Buntgen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

19 Jan 11 - 01:13 PM (#3077998)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Swearing off the Net for One Season.

---

19 Jan 11 - 08:48 PM (#3078330)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

University researchers create networked flying robots that build complex structures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIDEO

---

20 Jan 11 - 02:26 PM (#3078779)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

Prepare for the Landings!!!!!!

(Click to learn more...)

---

21 Jan 11 - 07:21 PM (#3079720)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


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

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

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

(PhysOrg)

---

04 Mar 11 - 07:56 AM (#3106780)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Surgeon creates new kidney on TED stage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

06 Mar 11 - 10:00 AM (#3108069)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life

Aliens exist, and we have proof.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

09 Mar 11 - 07:22 PM (#3110755)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

everything is this big

The information reveals everything

Everything is information

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

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

---

28 Mar 11 - 09:34 PM (#3123787)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

New discovery of lightning and anti matter.

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

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

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

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

---

31 Mar 11 - 08:17 AM (#3125449)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

31 Mar 11 - 12:18 PM (#3125582)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

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

---

31 Mar 11 - 04:20 PM (#3125748)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

06 Apr 11 - 07:50 PM (#3130183)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Fermi lab may have found new force of nature

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

07 Apr 11 - 11:50 AM (#3130570)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Good catch Bobert

well what is it?

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

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

Seeing beyond our 4D existence is tricky business.

---

07 Apr 11 - 05:07 PM (#3130823)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

07 Apr 11 - 05:11 PM (#3130824)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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

---

12 May 11 - 04:36 PM (#3152939)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

Thousands of mini earthquakes have hit Maine USA this Spring.

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

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

---

13 May 11 - 10:48 PM (#3153756)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

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

Hong Kong economy expands by 7.2% and risks overheating.

source: Bloomberg




Random musings of today.

The recent US presicents in a nutshell:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

16 May 11 - 10:42 AM (#3155115)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

23 May 11 - 11:58 AM (#3159206)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

New Internet tech transmits data at 26 terabytes per second

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

23 May 11 - 12:00 PM (#3159209)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos

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


A

---

05 Jun 11 - 06:11 PM (#3165640)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Scientists 'trap' anti-matter for record 16 minutes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

19 Jun 11 - 11:48 AM (#3172879)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

How long can a person live without a pulse?

30 years or longer.

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

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

---

30 Jul 11 - 07:54 AM (#3198411)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Scientists create DNA 'brain' in a test tube

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

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

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

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

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

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

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03 Aug 11 - 10:15 AM (#3200907)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deadly secret

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toxic tactics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The team said this could have interesting medical implications.

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

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25 Aug 11 - 07:49 PM (#3212774)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Astronomers discover planet made of diamond

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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09 Sep 11 - 08:07 AM (#3220554)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

San Francisco ordinance would cover naked bottoms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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22 Dec 11 - 01:44 PM (#3278489)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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06 Jan 12 - 01:58 PM (#3286062)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel

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

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

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





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

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

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

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

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14 Jan 12 - 07:42 AM (#3290490)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad

Newly discovered molecules in atmosphere may offset global warming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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23 Apr 12 - 01:06 PM (#3342168)
Subject: A Cosmic Heads-up
From: Amos

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


A

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04 Jan 17 - 07:22 PM (#3830495)
Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: keberoxu

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

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

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

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

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