Knowledge is Everything

Mysterious mountain dino may be a new species

2008-06-12T09:03:00.001+03:00

A partial dinosaur skeleton unearthed in 1971 from a remote British Columbia site is the first ever found in Canadian mountains and may represent a new species, according to a recent examination by a University of Alberta researcher.

Discovered by a geologist in the Sustut Basin of north-central British Columbia 37 years ago, the bones, which are about 70 million years old, were tucked away until being donated to Dalhousie University in 2004 and assigned to then-undergraduate student Victoria Arbour to research as an honours project. She soon realized that the bones were a rare find: they are very well-preserved and are the most complete dinosaur specimen found in B.C. to date. They are also the first bones found in B.C.'s Skeena mountain range.

"There are similarities with two other kinds of dinosaurs, although there's also an arm bone we've never seen before. The Sustut dinosaur may be a new species, but we won't know for sure until more fossils can be found," said Arbour, who finished researching the bones while studying for her master's degree at the University of Alberta. "It's very distinct from other dinosaurs that were found at the same time in southern Alberta."

The seven shin, arm, toe and possible skull bones were found nestled in a dip between mountains in the Skeena range, and while the fragments resemble those from a small two-legged, plant-eating dinosaur, the rest of the creature's identity is a mystery, Arbour says.

The fossils are currently in the collection of the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria and Arbour hopes to lead a U of A team to the site for future investigation.

Arbour's findings were published recently in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Source: University of Alberta

Aussie scientists discover oldest proof of live birth

2008-05-28T15:13:00.001+03:00

Australian scientists have discovered the oldest evidence of live birth on the planet, thanks to a fossil fish from Western Australia with a well-preserved embryo inside the body cavity.

The fish comes from Gogo, a world-famous fossil deposit in the Kimberley about 375 million years old, making it the oldest example of live birth known amongst the vertebrates (animals with backbones).

Researchers from Museum Victoria, the University of Western Australia and The Australian National University have collaborated in documenting this remarkable fossil – a new genus and species named Materpiscis attenboroughi after Sir David Attenborough – in Nature today.

The Materpiscis (‘mother-fish’ in Latin) was collected during a research trip to Western Australia in 2005 under an Australian Research Council Discovery Project based at ANU. Dr John Long, Head of Science at Museum Victoria (and Adjunct Professor, ANU), discovered the partly developed small skeleton inside the mother’s body cavity when he extracted the specimen from limestone using acetic acid.

The specimen was X-rayed by Dr Tim Senden from the Department of Applied Mathematics at ANU using a special 3D CT scanner built and housed at the University. The fossil has revealed details of the umbilical cord and recrystallised yolk sac, soft tissue structures very rarely preserved as fossils.

“We never know, even in well-studied specimens, what additional information may be revealed by new techniques like XCT scanning - the embryo is a terrific start, but what other secrets these uniquely preserved specimens hold is even more exciting,” Dr Senden said.

Materpiscis belongs to the extinct armoured fish group called the Placodermi. Dr Kate Trinajstic from the University of Western Australia re-examined specimens in the museum collection in Perth and found three small embryos inside an adult female of a closely related form, Austroptyctodus. Previous descriptions of male Austroptyctodus by Dr Gavin Young (Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU) had already indicated an advanced reproductive biology involving copulation and internal fertilisation, as in modern sharks.

The preserved Materpiscis embryos now demonstrate that these placoderms did not lay eggs, but produced live young, a remarkably advanced reproductive strategy to have evolved in such an ancient fish.

“We hold a very significant Gogo fossil collection at ANU - perfect skeletons of ancient skulls and braincases. Recent research has revealed the oldest preserved vertebrate muscle tissue and nerve fibres, and now we have the oldest evidence of the umbilical cord and yolk sac” Dr Young said.

Source: Australian National University

Green tea compounds beat OSA-related brain deficits

2008-05-15T08:44:00.002+03:00

Chemicals found in green tea may be able to stave off the cognitive deficits that occur with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), according to a new study published in the second issue for May of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Researchers examined the effects green tea polyphenols (GTP), administered through drinking water, on rats who were intermittently deprived of oxygen during 12-hour “night” cycles, mimicking the intermittent hypoxia (IH) that humans with OSA experience.

People with OSA have been reported to have increased markers of oxidative stress and exhibit architectural changes in their brain tissue in areas involved in learning and memory. Chronic IH in rats produce similar neurological deficit patterns.

“OSA has been increasingly recognized as a serious and frequent health condition with potential long-term morbidities that include learning and psychological disabilities […],” wrote David Gozal, M.D., professor and director of Kosair Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the University of Louisville, lead author of the article. “A growing body of evidence suggests that the adverse neurobehavioral consequences imposed by IH stem, at least in part, from oxidative stress and inflammatory signaling cascades.”

GTPs are known to possess anti-oxidant properties, acting as a free radical scavengers, and research has shown that the compounds may reduce the risk of a variety of different diseases.

"Recent studies have demonstrated the neuroprotective activity of GTP in animal models of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease,” wrote Dr. Gozal.

In this study, the researchers divided 106 male rats into two groups that underwent intermittent oxygen depletion during the 12-hour “night” cycle for 14 days. One group received drinking water treated with GTP; the other received plain drinking water.

They were then tested for markers of inflammation and oxidative stress, as well as for performance in spatial learning and memory tasks—namely a water “maze” in which the rat had to memorize the location of a hidden platform.

The IH-rats that received the green tea-treated water performed significantly better in a water maze than the rats that drank plain water. “GTP-treated rats exposed to IH displayed significantly greater spatial bias for the previous hidden platform position, indicating that GTPs are capable of attenuating IH-induced spatial learning deficits,” wrote Dr. Gozal, adding that GTPs “may represent a potential interventional strategy for patients” with sleep-disordered breathing.

Source: American Thoracic Society

Reprogrammed cells reduce Parkinson's symptoms in rats

2008-04-17T15:22:00.001+03:00

Neurons derived from reprogrammed adult skin cells successfully integrated into fetal mouse brains and reduced symptoms in a Parkinson’s disease rat model, according to a study published on April 7 in the online Early Edition of PNAS.

“This is the first demonstration that reprogrammed cells can integrate into the neural system or positively affect neurodegenerative disease,” says Marius Wernig, lead author of the article and a postdoctoral researcher in Whitehead Member Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab.

Researchers in the Jaenisch lab showed in December 2007 that mice with a human sickle-cell anemia disease trait could also be treated successfully with adult skin cells that had been reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state.

For the neural experiments Wernig used induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS cells), which were created by reprogramming adult skin cells using retroviruses to express four genes (Oct4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4) into the cells’ DNA. The IPS cells were then differentiated into neural precursor cells and dopamine neurons using techniques originally developed in embryonic stem cells.

In one experiment, Wernig transplanted the neural precursor cells into brain cavities of mouse embryos. The mice were naturally delivered and analyzed nine weeks after the transplantation. Wernig saw that transplanted cells formed clusters where they had been injected and then migrated extensively into the surrounding brain tissues. Using electrophysiological studies conducted by Martha Constantine-Paton from MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and structural analysis, Wernig also saw that the neural precursor cells that migrated had differentiated into several subtypes of neural cells, including neurons and glia, and had functionally integrated into the brain.

To assess the therapeutic potential of the IPS cells, the Jaenisch lab collaborated with Ole Isacson's group at Mclean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and used a rat model for Parkinson's disease, a human condition caused by insufficient levels of the hormone dopamine in a specific part of the midbrain. To mimic this state, the dopamine-producing neurons were killed on one side of the rat brains and the researchers then grafted differentiated dopamine neurons into a part of the rat brains called the striatum.

Four weeks after surgery, the rats were tested for dopamine-related behavior. In response to amphetamine injections, rats typically walk in circles toward the side with less dopamine activity in the brain. Eight of nine rats that received the dopamine neuron transplants showed markedly less or even no circling. Eight weeks after transplantation, the researchers could see that the dopamine neurons had extended into the surrounding brain.

“This experiment shows that in vitro reprogrammed cells can in principle be used to treat Parkinson’s disease,” says Jaenisch. “It’s a proof of principle experiment that argues, yes, these cells may have the therapeutic promise that people ascribe to them.”

Jaenisch and Wernig are optimistic that this work eventually could be applied to human patients, but caution that major hurdles must be addressed first. Those include finding alternatives to the potentially cancer-causing retroviruses used to transform the skin cells into IPS cells and figuring out the best methods and places to transplant the neural precursor cells in humans.

Source: Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research

UFO Turkey / Istanbul / Kumburgaz

2008-01-25T02:11:00.000+02:00

Clearly visible UFO recorded from Turkey Istanbul - Kumburgaz

Video recorded by Yalcin Yalman

Click here to get more information.

UFO Photograph Hailed as One of the Best

2008-01-04T01:14:00.000+02:00

This photo of a UFO over Cornwall is hailed by experts as one of the best ever taken in Britain.

UFO sightings at Cornwall 55-year-old Kelvin Barbery snapped the mystery object on Dec 29 (2007) from a coastal path between Swanpool and Maenporth, near Falmouth.

In a weird twist, Kelvin did not even see the UFO at the time. He thought he was just taking a sea view… but when he loaded the digital camera card on to his computer, the round metallic ‘craft’ was in the centre of the shot, about two miles away.

This news surprisingly didn’t make it big on international papers. Perhaps people are getting bored over pictures, reports, news and videos about UFO sightings, which are often found as fraud in the end.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNET

2008-01-01T08:50:00.000+02:00

On 1 January 1983 the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet) of the US Department of Defence - the forerunner of the internet - was switched to the TCP/IP protocol.

This enabled millions of computers to go online instead of the Network Control Protocol (NCP) which limited it to just 1,000 machines.

The TCP/IP protocol was designed by Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn.

On the mailing list of the Internet Engineering Task Force, internet pioneer Bob Braden wrote: "The most logical date of origin of the internet is 1 January 1983, when the Arpanet officially switched from the NCP protocol to TCP/IP.

"Six months later, the Arpanet was split into the two subnets - Arpanet and Milnet [Military Network] - which were connected by internet gateways.

"There may still be a few remaining T-shirts about that read: 'I Survived the TCP/IP Transition'."

Braden added that some people would be surprised to discover that there were actually a few souls wanting to work on the TCP/IP changeover on 1 January. But they did

Ike Turner Dead

2007-12-12T11:51:00.000+02:00

TMZ has confirmed that music legend and the former Mr. Anna Mae Bullock has died. He was 76.

Turner apparently died in his home in San Marcos, Calif., just outside of San Diego.

Sources close to the family tell TMZ he may have died in his sleep.

TMZ caught up with the R&B star back in May after the legend spent a night in jail after his bogus arrest over a recalled 1989 warrant.

Ike was married four times, most famously to Tina Turner. The famous singing duo had seven top ten R&B songs and famously divorced in 1978 amidst his constant abuse towards her.

Ike has four known children: sons Ike Jr., Michael, Ronald and daughter Mia.

The Recording Academy issued the following the statement about Turner's passing: "There is no doubt that Ike Turner was one of rock and roll's great architects with his genre-defying sound as an instrumentalist and bandleader ... As a two-time GRAMMY® Award winner and recipient of The Recording Academy's 2004 Heroes Award, Ike's legacy as a groundbreaking pioneer in the music industry will never be forgotten."

tmz.com

Which Country Celebrate New Year First ?

2007-12-10T02:11:00.001+02:00

New Zealand & Russia

The International Date Line runs through the Pacific, so those countries on the east side of Asia are the first to greet the New Year.

When year 2008 starts around the world ?

50th Annual Grammy Awards Nominations

2007-12-08T01:44:00.000+02:00

The 50th Annual Grammy Awards Nominations List :

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance
(For a solo vocal performance. Singles or Tracks only.)

Everything
Michael Bublé
Track from: Call Me Irresponsible
[143 Records/Reprise]

Belief
John Mayer
Track from: The Village Sessions
[Columbia/Aware]

Dance Tonight
Paul McCartney
Track from: Memory Almost Full
[MPL/Hear Music]

Amazing
Seal
[Warner Bros.]

What Goes Around...Comes Around
Justin Timberlake
[Jive]

Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
(For a solo vocal performance. Singles or Tracks only.)

Candyman
Christina Aguilera
[RCA Records]

1234
Feist
Track from: The Reminder
[Cherry Tree / Interscope Records]

Big Girls Don't Cry
Fergie
Track from: The Dutchess
[A&M Records]

Say It Right
Nelly Furtado
Track from: Loose
[Geffen]

Rehab
Amy Winehouse
Track from: Back To Black
[Universal Republic Records]

Click here for a .txt version of the Nominations List

Click Here To Visit Official Grammy Site

Elephants sniff urine to tell who's who

2007-12-06T12:24:00.000+02:00

An African elephant can recognise dozens of kin by the signature smell of urine, and uses its powerful nose to keep track of their whereabouts, according to a new study.

Researchers led by Professor Richard Byrne of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, publish their research in the journal Biology Letters.

A keen trunk coupled with a good memory is essential for the foraging pachyderms, which travel in ever-shifting groups ranging from a handful to several hundred individuals, the study says.

Drawing from developmental research on pre-verbal children, scientists from the UK and Kenya tested the ability of elephants in Kenya's Amboseli National Park to distinguish kin from stranger.

They also devised experiments, called 'expectancy-violation' paradigms, to see whether the animals knew where family members were at any given moment.

They placed individual samples of urine mixed with earth from females along the paths of 36 elephant family groups, and then measured the reactions.

Only female urine samples were used because the social structure of the African elephant Loxodonta africana is matrilineal.

The first female in a group showed very little interest if the urine sample was from an elephant outside its group, but stopped to reach with its trunk if the odour came from a familiar source.

African elephants are able to keep tabs on at least 17 females, and as many as 30 individuals, both male and female, at any given time, the study says.

The lead elephant displayed especially heightened interest if the pungent smell belonged to an elephant that was trailing behind with the family.

This shows the African elephant "can remember where some family members are in relation to itself", the researchers conclude.

"The fact that individuals do not generally walk in the same order when travelling, suggests that keeping track of the location of other elephants could be cognitively demanding," they say.

Byrne and his colleagues conjecture that olfactory kin recognition is made possible by certain proteins found in urine, such as lipocalins and immune system molecules called MHC markers.

Agençe France-Presse

Maritza

2007-11-30T03:25:00.000+02:00

La Maritza / 1968

La Maritza c'est ma rivière
Comme la Seine est la tienne
Mais il n'y a que mon père
Maintenant qui s'en souvienne - quelquefois

De mes dix premières années
Il ne me reste plus rien
Pas la plus pauvre poupée
Plus rien qu'un petit refrain - d'autrefois

La la la...

Tous les oiseaux de ma rivière
Nous chantaient la liberté
Moi je ne comprenais guère
Mais mon père lui savait - écouter

Quand l'horizon s'est fait trop noir
Tous les oiseaux sont partis
Sur le chemin de l'espoir
Et nous, on les a suivis - à Paris

(parlé:)
De mes dix premières années
Il ne me reste plus rien - rien
(chanté:)
Et pourtant les yeux fermés
Moi j'entends mon père chanter - ce refrain:

La la la...

(pierre delanoë - j. renard)

by Sylvia Vartan

Red String Kabbalah Bracelet

2007-11-25T15:34:00.000+02:00

Protection against the Evil Eye

A person possessed of an evil eye carries with him the eye of the destroying negative force; hence it is called "destroyer of the world," and people should be on their guard against them and not come near them so that they should not be injured by them! [Zohar I, p.68b]

The Evil Eye
The Red String protects us from the influences of the Evil Eye. Evil eye is a very powerful negative force. It refers to the unfriendly stare and unkind glances we sometimes get from people around us. Envious eyes and looks of ill will affect us, stopping us from realizing our full potential in every area of our life.

Long ago, the ancient Kabbalah scholars revealed a powerful technology of protection. Its purpose is twofold: to protect us from the envious looks of others, and to help us eliminate feelings of jealousy and resentment in ourselves. The technology is the Red String: a strand of Red wool worn around the left wrist.

The teachings of Kabbalah do not include prohibitions or commandments. Instead, the kabbalah speak of positive and negative energies. The negative energies of jealousy and envy emanate through the eyes—which gave rise to the very vivid and very ancient term, the Evil Eye.

The Evil Eye is part of the wisdom history of all humanity. It was spoken of by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It was written of in the Bible. It has been accorded fear and respect by kings, queens, and conquerors throughout the ages. The ancient Greek seafarers painted eyes on the prows of their ships as protection against this power. The Romans called it "Oculus Malus". To the Scots it was "Droch Shuil". Kabbalah scholars refer to it as "Ayin Harah". According to the Kabbalah, this form of negative energy can affect our lives and well-being. It can hold us back from achieving our destinies and it can also cause us to lose what we have already achieved.

How the Kabbalah Red String Works

Worn around the left wrist, the Kabbalah Red String works in the same way as the vaccines of modern medicine. When we receive a vaccination against a disease, a weakened strain of the illness is integrated into the vaccine. Spiritual immunizations are based on a similar principle. Kabbalah teaches that colors have specific frequencies and energies. Red, for example, is the color of danger. By binding a Red String to ourselves in a very specific manner, we shield ourselves against the dangerous negativity that might be directed our way, a spiritual vaccine against the destructive forces of the Evil Eye.

The color Red is one part of the technology. The rest begins in Israel, where a length of Red String is wound around the tomb of Rachel, the Matriarch of the Bible. Rachel is considered by Kabbalah scholars to be the mother of the world, and her greatest desire is to defend all of her children from evil. Throughout her life, Rachel acted as the protector of all humankind. According to Kabbalah, the burial sites of the righteous are a portal to the energy they created in their lifetimes. The Red String is brought to Rachel’s tomb where it is infused with her force of protection, for no power is stronger than a mother’s natural protective love. Each and every Red String from the Kabbalah Center must undergo this process in order to be considered an authentic form of protection against the Evil Eye.

Wearing the Kabbalah Red String

The Red String is individually sized and worn around the left wrist. The left side of the body has been identified by Kabbalah scholars as the area where energy enters. The left arm and hand pertain to the concept of receiving; the right arm and hand embody the power of imparting. Negative forces, therefore, enter the body through the left side. By wearing the Red String on the left wrist, negative energies are intercepted at the precise point of entry. The string is tied in a carefully prescribed sequence of seven knots, each of which symbolizes a separate spiritual dimension that infuses our reality.

Have someone you love and trust tie the Red String to your left wrist. First, have them tie the string closely around your wrist with a simple knot. Repeat by knotting the string six more times for a total of seven knots. Now make a promise to yourself that you will refrain from negative thoughts or talk about others. This harmful behavior will interfere with your effort to gain personal fulfillment and protection. Then have the person finish by saying the Ben Porat Prayer which prevents others from giving us the evil eye.

Anyone who dons The Red String with the awareness of Rachel the Matriarch and these powerful meditations is surrounded by the full force of protection she manifested in our physical world.

source : www.kabbalah.com

The Right Breath

2007-11-20T15:29:00.000+02:00

BREATHING TECHNIQUES AND BENEFITS:

From the day we are born, the moment our umbilical cord is severed we are left independently to take the first breath of life. It is when our lungs being there normal function. We are not aware of this daily exercise, which keep as alive. Yet, it is a fact that we are not really breathing the way we should to keep us healthy & well. In our normal breathing pattern. We are not using the entire lung. It is therefore necessary to learn the right techniques of breathing which would exercise the entire lung & thus make us feel healthier & full of energy.

Pranayam is that technique in yoga, which teaches us the proper way to breath. It also work as the basis of spiritual awakening, it increase the energy levels, perception, concentration, & the development of various brain faculties.

WHAT IS PRANAYAM?

It is not just the control & regularization of breath; Pranayam is energy on life force, present as a universal force & also in the human body. It is this ‘pranayam’ or energy, which has to be canalized in the right way to maintain the body & its organs. Pranayam aims to increase the life force. So that it can reach out to the hidden recesses of the brain, which help in expanding the human faculties & awakens the existing dormant energy in the body, in every cell, which in turn improves the function of all the organs of the body.

BENEFITS OF PRANAYAM AND RIGHT BREATHING:
It has been prove that the right technique of breathing through Pranayam has cured asthma , improved blood circulation ,which has increase energy level & reduce stress. It help you make use of your enter lung & keep the chest muscles active. It enable you to get more oxygen with each breath. The right breathing technique helps in chronic obstruction pulmonary disease, it also improves your performance during day to day physical activities. Improved blood circulation helps in some of the skin ailments hair fall & improves the complexion many more illness are benefits by proper breathing.

TECHNIQUE OF RIGHT BREATHING:

Breathing exercises basically focus on the upper chest, the lower ribs & the diaphragm. It is very important to be in a comfortable position, setting cross-legged or may be even lying down while these exercises.

Relax your neck & shoulders muscles.

Breath is slowly & deeply thru your nose for 2 its 4 counts hold your breath for about 3 counts & then slowly exhale then you feel your complete breath out. Continue doing this for at least 5 minutes. The relax for a minute.

Now the 2nd exercise you concentrate on your out breathe or exhalation, which is done with force, you pull the abdomen muscles in its push out the air from the air from the lungs with force do it rhythmically for 50 – 100 times. You should not feel any strain. If you do so just stop & breathe slowly before starting again. You can with practice do this up to 500 times giving a break for 5-10 seconds after every 50-1000 counts. You may feel dizziness. After this once again let the body relax.

ALTERNATE NOSTRIL BREATHING:

Put your thumb on one nostril & forefinger on the other. Gently press the thumb blocking the passage & breathe in thru the other nostril filling in your lungs & expanding your chest fully. Now hold your breath for count of 3-5 & then blocking that nostril with the forefinger, release the thumb & exhale out fully. Do this exercise alternately with each nostril for at least 15-20 times or about 10 minutes. Once again relax.

If just these 3 exercise are done regularly and daily ,it will improve the blood circulation ,increase the oxygen wake and the energy levels . while doing each exercise it is imported to concentrate on each break you take , feeling visualizing and experiencing every breath, which is energizing every cell , fiber muscle and organ of the body.

After completing the breathing exercises ,it is necessary to relax the body completely by lying down is shavasan position letting your arms and legs completely relaxed for about 10 minutes after this it would be very faithful to set for meditation for 10 –15 minutes .Sit cross legged , close your eyes and try to blot out all thoughts from your mind .This may not be possible ,so you may even simply concentrate on one positive through example. “Every day in every way I am feeling better and better”, or any other such thought .Repeat this over and over again like a mantra and visualize your whole body feeling better and energized.

If you can day with the right breathing exercise and meditation, you can definitely improve your mental and physical health , attain a sense of peace , and higher spirituality.

source: drsaratherapy.com

Most Serious Type of Skin Cancer "Melanoma"

2007-11-17T13:45:00.000+02:00

Melanoma is the most serious type of skin cancer. Often the first sign of melanoma is a change in the size, shape, color or feel of a mole. Most melanomas have a black or black-blue area. Melanoma may also appear as a new mole. It may be black, abnormal or "ugly looking."

Thinking of "ABCDE" can help you remember what to watch for:
A for Asymmetry - the shape of one half does not match the other
B for Border - the edges are ragged, blurred or irregular
C for Color - the color in uneven and may include shades of black, brown and tan
D for Diameter - there is a change in size, usually an increase
E for elevation - a mole that is raised above the skin and has a rough surface

Melanoma can be cured if it is diagnosed and treated early. If melanoma is not removed in its early stages, cancer cells may grow downward from the skin surface and invade healthy tissue. If it spreads to other parts of the body it can be difficult to control.

Who gets melanoma?

Anyone can get melanoma, but some people are more likely to get it. If you answer "yes" to any of the questions below, you may be more at risk. Talk with your doctor about your risk factors.

Has anyone in your family had cancerous moles or a melanoma?
Do you have many moles larger than a pencil eraser?
Do you have more than 50 moles of any size?
Did you ever get a bad sunburn that caused blisters when you were a child?
Does your skin usually burn but not tan?

How can I keep from getting melanoma?

The most important way to prevent melanoma is to limit your sun exposure. The following are some ways to do this:
Avoid the strong midday sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
When you are outside, try to spend your time in shaded areas as much as possible.
Wear a wide-brimmed hat (to shade your face and protect your ears).
Wear a long-sleeved shirt and long pants while you are out in the sun.
Use a sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 15. Put the sunscreen on 30 minutes before you go outside. Put it on again every 2 to 3 hours after sweating and swimming.
Do not use sunbeds or tanning salons.
If you are worried about a spot on your skin, tell your doctor about it.
Sunburns in childhood are the most damaging. Children younger than 6 months of age should never be outside in direct sunshine. Children 6 months of age or older should wear sunscreen every day.

click here more information and treatment

source: www.aafp.org

What is FOREX ?

2007-11-15T03:09:00.000+02:00

Everybody talk about this. I really wanted to know what is FOREX ?!

FOREX (FOReign EXchange market) is an international foreign exchange market, where money is sold and bought freely. In its present condition FOREX was launched in the 1970s, when free exchange rates were introduced, and only the participants of the market determine the price of one currency against the other proceeding from supply and demand.
As far as the freedom from any external control and free competition are concerned, FOREX is a perfect market. It is also the biggest liquid financial market. According to various assessments, money masses in the market constitute from 1 to 1.5 trillion US dollars a day. (It is impossible to determine an absolutely exact number because trading is not centralized on an exchange.) Transactions are conducted all over the world via telecommunications 24 hours a day from 00:00 GMT on Monday to 10:00 pm GMT on Friday. Practically in every time zone (that is, in Frankfurt-on-Main, London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc.) there are dealers who will quote currencies.

FOREX is a more objective market, because if some of its participants would like to change prices, for some manipulative purpose, they would have to operate with tens of billions dollars. That is why any influence by a single participants in the market is practically out of the question. The superior liquidity allows the traders to open and/or close positions within a few seconds. The time of keeping a position is arbitrary and has no limits: from several seconds to many years. It depends only on your trading strategies. Although the daily fluctuations of currencies are rather insignificant, you may use the credit lines, that are accessible even to currency speculators with small capitals ($ 1,000 - 5,000), where the profit may be impressive. (You can learn more about it in the section: The main principles of trading.)

The idea of marginal trading stems from the fact that in FOREX speculative interests can be satisfied without a real money supply. This decreases overhead expenses for transferring money and gives an opportunity to open positions with a small account in US dollars, buying and selling a lot of other currencies. That is, on can conduct transactions very quickly, getting a big profit, when the exchange rates go up or down. Many speculative transactions in the international financial markets are made on the principles of marginal trading. Read More...

Chocolate beer 3000 years old

2007-11-13T09:09:00.000+02:00

People in Central America were drinking beverages made from cacao before 1000 BC, hundreds of years earlier than once thought, a new study shows.

These early cacao beverages were probably alcoholic brews, or beers, made from the fermented pulp of the cacao fruit.

These beverages were around 500 years earlier than the frothy chocolate-flavored drink made from the seed of the cacao tree that was such an important feature of later Mesoamerican culture.

But in brewing this primitive beer, or chicha, the ancient Mesoamericans may have stumbled on the secret to making chocolate-flavoured drinks, the paper says.

"In the course of beer brewing, you discover that if you ferment the seeds of the plant you get this chocolate taste," says John Henderson, a professor of anthropology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the paper.

"It may be that the roots of the modern chocolate industry can be traced back to this primitive fermented drink."

The cacao bean played an important role in Mesoamerican civilisation, the native civilisation in parts of Mexico and Central America prior to the Spanish exploration and conquest of the 16th century.

The bean was a form of currency in Aztec society, and the frothed chocolate drink made from fermented beans or seeds was central to social and ritual life throughout Mesoamerica.

In the 16th century, invading Europeans acquired a taste for the beverage and brought it back to Europe, which led to the rise of the modern chocolate industry.

An elite drink

The archaeological evidence recovered by Henderson and colleagues from a site in Puerto Escondido in modern-day Honduras suggests that the beer that probably preceded the chocolate beverage was popular among wealthy people at least as early as 1100 BC.

Chemical analysis of residues found on fragments of pottery vessels recovered from the site tested positive for theobromine, a compound found in cacao trees that were limited to Central America.

The vessels were found in the "fancier, bigger houses" in the village of Puerto Escondido in the Ulua Valley in northern Honduras, says Henderson.

He suggests the elite members of society would have drunk the beverage to mark special occasions such as births and marriages.

AFP

What You Need to Know About Hoodia Diet Pills

2007-11-13T01:43:00.000+02:00

What is Hoodia Gordonii?

Latin Name: Hoodia gordonii
Other Names: hoodia, xhooba, !khoba, Ghaap, hoodia cactus, South African desert cactus.

Hoodia (pronounced HOO-dee-ah) is a cactus-like plant that grows primarily in the semi-deserts of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola.

In the last few years, hoodia has been heavily marketed for weight loss and has become immensely popular.

Although there has always been a demand for diet pills, after the ban on the herb ephedra, the market was particularly ripe for the next new diet pill.

Much of hoodia's popularity stems from claims that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari desert relied on hoodia for thousands of years to ward off hunger and thirst during long hunting trips. They were said to have cut off the stem and eat the bitter-tasting plant.

Hoodia gordonii grows in clumps of green upright stems.

Although it is often called a cactus because it resembles one, hoodia is actually a succulent plant.

It takes about five years before hoodia gordonii's pale purple flowers appear and the plant can be harvested.

There are over 13 types of hoodia. The only active ingredient identified so far is a steroidal glycoside that has been called "p57". Currently, only hoodia gordonii is thought to contain p57.

What is the History of Hoodia Gordonii?
In 1937, a Dutch anthropologist studying the San Bushmen noted that they used hoodia gordonii to suppress appetite. In 1963, scientists at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa's national laboratory, began studying hoodia. They claimed that lab animals lost weight after they were given hoodia gordonii.

The South African scientists, working with a British company named Phytopharm, isolated what they believed to be an active ingredient in hoodia gordonii, a steroidal glycoside, which they named p57. After obtaining a patent in 1995, they licensed p57 to Phytopharm. Phytopharm has spent more than $20 million on hoodia research.

Eventually pharmaceutical giant Pfizer learned about hoodia and expressed interest in developing a hoodia drug. In 1998, Phytopharm sub-licensed the rights to develop p57 to Pfizer for $21 million. Pfizer returned the rights to hoodia to Phytopharm, who is now working with Unilever.

Much of the hype about hoodia started after 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl and crew traveled to Africa to try hoodia. They hired a local Bushman to go with them into the desert and track down some hoodia. Stahl ate it, describing it as "cucumbery in texture, but not bad." She reported that she lost the desire to eat or drink the entire day. She also said she didn't experience any immediate side effects, such as indigestion or heart palpitations.

Where is Hoodia Gordonii Found?
Hoodia gordonii is sold in capsule, powder, liquid, or tea form in health food stores and on the Internet. Hoodia is also found in the popular diet pill Trimspa.

How Does Hoodia Gordonii Work?
Despite its popularity, there are no published randomized controlled trials in humans to show hoodia is safe or effective in pill form.

One study published in the September 2004 issue of Brain Research found that injections of p57 into the appetite center of rat brains resulted in altered levels of ATP, an energy molecule that may affect hunger. The animals receiving the P57 injections also ate less than rats that received placebo injections. However, this was an animal study and injections in the brain are different from oral consumption, so it cannot be used to show that oral hoodia can suppress appetite in humans.

The manufacturer Phytopharm cites a clinical trial involving 18 human volunteers that found hoodia consumption reduced food intake by about 1000 calories per day compared to a placebo group. Although intriguing, the study wasn't published or subjected to a peer-review process, so the quality of the study cannot be evaluated.

What are Hoodia's Side Effects and Safety Concerns?

How Do I Know if it's Pure Hoodia or a Fake?

source: about.com

One Laptop Per Child: the dream starts to deliver

2007-11-11T03:16:00.000+02:00

Low-cost computers meant to usher poor children worldwide into the digital age are being mass produced in China as US nonprofit One Laptop Per Child strives to deliver on its promise.

The first of the XO laptops being built at a Quanta Computer facility in Changshu are destined for Uruguay, marking a milestone for the charity group founded by Nicholas Negroponte in Massachusetts two years ago.

"Against all the naysayers ... we have developed and now manufactured the world's most advanced and greenest laptop and one designed specifically to instill a passion for learning in children," Negroponte said.

A challenge for the organization has been that governments have not backed effusive words of support with willing flows of cash to buy laptops for children inside their borders.

It is hoped that a "Give One Get One" (G1G1) campaign starting Monday will boost orders by providing an incentive to people in more prosperous countries

For every laptop donated for a child, the donor gets a laptop. The original price was to be 100 dollars (US) per laptop but nearly doubled as costs climbed after Negroponte launched the initiative in 2005.

Telecom firm T-Mobile USA is offering people a year of free access to its nearly 8,500 wireless Internet hotspots in the United States if they become G1G1 donors.
The world's largest video game maker, Electronic Arts in Northern California, said this week they are giving the original "SimCity" to OLPC to put on laptops for free.

The "SimCity" franchise debuted in 1989. Players build communities from scratch, laying out roads, housing, factories, shops, tax codes, power plants and more in order to create places where citizens can work and live happily.

Acting as virtual "mayors," players must be ready to deal with disasters such as earthquakes, fires and floods.

"Players learn to use limited resources to build and customize their cities," said EA vice president Steve Seabolt.

"There are choices and consequences, but in the end, it's a creativity tool. The game should prove to be an incredibly effective way of making the laptop relevant, engaging, and fun."

SimCity has been used in US schools.

The list of companies backing OLPC with cash, technology or other resources includes Google, Intel, eBay, Advance Micro Devices, and News Corporation.

XO laptop operating systems are based on free open-source software. The machines are designed to use less than a tenth the power than standard laptops and come with solar or hand-crank charging options.

XO laptops are billed as a "kids machine" designed for rugged environments. The computers have built in video and still cameras as well as wireless Internet connectivity.

OLPC will begin distributing XO laptops in Uruguay, Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia and India by the end of the year, according to EA.

Negroponte is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is the younger brother of the US deputy secretary of state.

OLPC's stated mission is "to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are sufficiently affordable to provide every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression."

The group envisions selling laptops to governments in developing nations, which give them to school-aged children and have stakes in supporting their use.

"Imagine the impact of every child owning a laptop computer that he/she can use in school and take home," OLPC said in a written release.

"By empowering children to educate themselves, a new generation will ultimately be better prepared to tackle the other serious problems (poverty, malnutrition, disease) facing their societies."

© 2007 AFP

if you dream, it will come !

2007-11-11T00:03:00.000+02:00

We’ve all heard about the power of positive thinking, but what does that really mean?There are people who overcome great odds because they literally believed that they could. Athletes who envisioned themselves breaking a world record. Entrepreneurs or visionaries with grand ideas and the ability to see them through. People with terminal illnesses who magically recovered.

What is it that enables these people to do such great things?

1) It starts with a little seed. The seed is the dream. Maybe the seed is a new home, x number of dollars in the bank, a beautiful relationship, a healthy whole body. You choose. Be specific.

2) The seed doesn’t go poof and become reality. You need to water it and give it sunlight. Draw pictures of it. Create a vision board with your future on it. Paste it up where you’ll look at it every day. See it clearly in your mind. Taste it, smell it. Literally feel it…Allow yourself to get excited about this dream. Focus on the positive even if you have to fake it– laugh like crazy until the laughter becomes real. Thank the universe/creator/God (whatever you want to call it) for making it so (even before it actually happens!). Take a good look at your surroundings, your home, your office and make it conducive to helping you achieve this dream. Remove obstacles and any negative thinking that could become obstructions to your goal. Don’t give up. Often we let go of our dream right as it’s about to appear on our doorstep.

3) When your dream comes, Accept it. How many times is an opportunity right in front of us, but we don’t jump on it. Oh, this came too easily, or maybe I don’t deserve that dream home. Shhhhh, zip that doubt and replace it with YES. I’ve got it. Now dive right in. The water’s just right.

The 17th century perfect woman figure - More fat, less bone for women

2007-11-10T13:05:00.000+02:00

Very few women seem to feel completely happy with their silhouettes. “Perfect body types” are nothing else but a perception, it’s nothing but an idea or concept build up by society and by the media.
So basically now shapeless sacks of bones are cool.A couple centuries ago for example, skinny women were not “hot”, actually they were the “ugly ducklings”.

Nowadays the whole media monster has made clear that if you’re not having a Zero-sized waistline, you’re fat and if you’re fat, you’re meant to be ugly, but THIS IS NOT TRUE.

Three hundreds years ago, a person with a medium-size body composition was the point of absolution perfection, neither obese nor skinny.
Don’t always believe what the media advertise, “perfect bodies” are not real, this is just a social perception that varies with time, and is still changing. Maybe in two hundred years, women will be considered again “perfect” by having a little “meat” here and there. Like the “Venus” above, curves were very hot!

If you’re a chik and you’re told you’re fat,

just answer back:

“Ignorant, I’m just a 17th century beauty”

Want Healthy Skin? So Drink Coffee!

2007-11-09T17:58:00.000+02:00

Researchers have revealed that drinking coffee, particularly the caffeinated kind, offers considerable protection against some skin cancers.

Researchers at the Wayne State University in Detroit have found that drinking six cups of caffeinated coffee a day can reduce the chances of developing the most common form of skin cancer by 35 % .

They also discovered that those who drank two or three cups were 12 per cent less likely to have the disease.

According to researchers, caffeine could stop skin cancers spreading by stopping cell division, or by acting as an antioxidant.

Around 75,000 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), the milder form of the disease, are diagnosed each year.

"The decreased prevalence in non-melanoma skin cancer associated with daily consumption of caffeinated coffee was dose-related and consistent with other studies," the Telegraph quoted Dr Ernest Abel, lead author of the study, as saying.

"Among the possible explanations for caffeine's protective effect on NMSC are an antioxidant effect and/or inhibition of DNA synthesis and cell division," he added.

For the study, Dr Abel and colleagues compared rates of NMSC among more than 77,300 white women aged 50 and over. They excluded women of other ethnic origins as they reported much lower rates of the disease.

The researchers said that the findings should apply equally to men and women of all ages.

Drinking decaffeinated coffee had no effect on participants' chances of developing skin cancer, they added.

The study is published in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention.

Long-term pill use risks atherosclerosis

2007-11-08T05:12:00.000+02:00

Women who use the contraceptive pill for years risk a build-up of plaque in their arteries, according to a study released this week.

While the European study suggests long-term pill users may therefore be at increased risk of heart attack or stroke, the researchers say their findings are no need for alarm.

"Bottom line - don't discontinue your pill suddenly. Don't panic. Don't call your gynaecologist tomorrow morning," says lead researcher Dr Ernst Rietzschel of Ghent University in Belgium, whose team presented the results at an American Heart Association meeting this week.

Rietzschel's team studied 1301 women aged 35-55. Of these, 81% had used the pill for an average 13 years.

The researchers measured plaque levels using a technique called vascular echography.

They saw a rise of 20-30% in arterial plaque in two big arteries - the carotid in the neck and the femoral in the leg - for each decade of use.

A slow build-up of plaque, made up of fat, cholesterol, calcium and other material, on the inside of artery walls can lead to atherosclerosis, when the arteries harden and narrow.

"The main concern is if you have higher plaque levels that you might develop a clot on one of these plaques and have a stroke or a [heart attack] or sudden cardiac death," says Rietzschel.

"That's the main risk with having plaque, with having atherosclerosis."

Women who take the pill long term can take other steps to cut their risk of cardiovascular disease, he says, like eating a healthier diet, getting more exercise, not smoking and controlling cholesterol.

"There are other ways of doing contraception. Oral contraception is not the only possibility," he says.

Dr Gordon Tomaselli, a Johns Hopkins University cardiologist and American Heart Association official, says he is surprised by the findings.

"It's a bit eye-opening, I think," says Tomaselli.

He says the findings need to be factored into the equation for women deciding whether to take the pill.

"What would I tell my daughter to do? I might suggest maybe not oral contraception," Tomaselli says.

A wave of heart disease?

Rietzschel says the findings may indicate that there could be an upswing in heart disease among women who have taken the pill, considering that those who began in the 1960s were now reaching a peak age for such illness.

"We might be at the foot of a wave. But the wave might be a small ripple," he says.

Many studies have looked at the medical consequences of using the pill. For example, experts say cigarette smoking raises the risk of serious side-effects, including heart attacks, blood clots and strokes.

But this is the first study to suggest atherosclerosis as a side-effect.

"We thought that once you stopped using oral contraceptives, the risk of clotting went away. That would seem to be too simplistic a view now," Rietzschel says.

source: reuters

Amsterdam Madame Tussauds Wax Museum

2007-11-06T20:11:00.000+02:00

Madame Tussauds is a world-renowned institution with a lot to celebrate! Home to hundreds of exciting full-size wax figures, Madame Tussauds has a fascinating and colorful history dedicated to providing visitors with a fascinating close-up look at the world celebrities...

Amsterdam is home for the most famous Madame Tussaud exposition of wax statues museum. The network of Madame Tussaud museums includes: London, New York, Las Vegas, Hong Kong and the one in Amsterdam. Open from 10 am to 6:30 pm Admission price: 23 EUR isn't particulary cheap. Beyond that price, the wax museum is wonderful, with the copies of the real life actors, singers, royalties and other celebrities (see full list here) that you can't distinguish from the real life. Great work from the people making the copies.

The name comes from the lady Marie Grosholz, later known as Madame Tussaud, and she born in Strasbourg in 1961. In 1770, Marie's mother's employer, a doctor named Philippe Curtius, opens an exhibition of life-size wax figurines at the Palais Royale, in Paris. This is where Marie learns the art of wax modelling from Philippe Curtius.

Madame Tussuad's Wax Museum (or Scene-o-rama, as it is called there) is located in the center of Amsterdam. Housed in a very large building, the Scene-o-rama occupies 4 floors. An entire section is devoted to Dutch History, as well as to the history of Amsterdam. Many European celebrities, sports figures, artists and Royalty are on display there. There is a section with contemporary American Hollywood stars, as well as a section devoted to famous Historical figures, such as Ganhi and Einstein

Madame Tussauds is located on Dam Square in the heart of Amsterdam, approximately a ten minute walk from Central Station. There are also several nearby parking facilities.

Madame Tussauds is an international icon:

a brand recognised the world over.

Madame Tussauds International

"Mona Lisa" Once Had Eyebrows & Other Intriguing New Discoveries

2007-10-24T11:06:00.000+03:00

For centuries, the "Mona Lisa", the world’s most famous painting, has been shrouded in mystery. There has been much debate as to its origin and meaning. Many have also speculated as to what kind of hidden references Da Vinci may have worked into the portrait. Now a French inventor has found some intriguing new secrets about the beloved painting.

Parisian engineer Pascal Cotte used an ultra-detailed digital scanning device he invented to delve into the layers of paint, allowing him to "look" into the past of Leonardo Da Vinci's 16th-century portrait.

One puzzle for art buffs is why the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows or lashes. But Cotte found that the world's most famous painting actually did originally included both brows and lashes. He used his 240-megapixel scans of the painting to reveal lost features of the painting that were obliterated by long-ago restoration efforts.

"With just one photo you go deeper into the construction of the painting and understand that Leonardo was a genius," Cotte said at the recent U.S. debut of an exhibit detailing his findings at the Metreon in San Francisco.

Growing up in Paris in the 1960s, Cotte said, he would spend hours staring at the "Mona Lisa". He later used his scientific training in light and optics to develop a camera that would let him more fully examine his favorite painting.

Cotte, 49, estimates he has spent 3,000 hours analyzing the data from the scans he made of the painting in the Louvre's laboratory three years ago. Using sensors to detect light from both the visible spectrum and the infrared and ultraviolet ranges invisible to the human eye, Cotte said, his camera allowed him to make these and other findings:

* Da Vinci changed his mind about the position of two fingers on the subject's left hand.

* Her face was originally wider and the smile more expressive than Da Vinci ultimately painted them.

* She holds a blanket that has now almost completely faded from view.

What Do Our Brains Do While Sleeping?

2007-10-13T08:56:00.000+03:00

“To do science you have to have an idea, and for years no one had one; they saw sleep as nothing but an annihilation of consciousness. Now we know different, and we’ve got some very good ideas about what’s going on.”

~ Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard.~

Throughout the ages, scientists and thinkers have been trying to determine why people have to sleep. But so far all they know is what any parent of a newborn quickly discovers: sleep loss makes it harder to cope with stress, our thoughts more mentally foggy and our bodies more prone to get sick.

Neuroscientists have long wondered if sleep is somehow tied to learning and memory, or other cognitive processes. Now new findings suggest that sleep does indeed appear to play a crucial role in sorting and storing our memories. Harvard and McGill Universities have reported that participants who napped after playing a memory game score significantly higher on a retest than those who did not sleep.

“We think what’s happening during sleep is that you open the aperture of memory and are able to see this bigger picture,” said the study’s senior author, Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist who is now at the University of California, Berkeley. He added that many such insights occurred “only when you enter this wonder-world of sleep.”

But the theory that a sleeping brain can do things an awake brain can’t is still controversial. But the new research highlights a transformation in the way scientists are now viewing the sleeping brain. It was once seen as a blank screen, but has now emerged as an active, secretive intelligence that comes out for its “nightshift” to do some serious work.

Researchers say that studies are even showing that taking naps improves memory as well.

“We are finding that if a person takes a nap that contains slow-wave sleep — deep sleep — that performance on declarative memory tasks, which require the memorization of fact-based information like word-pairs, is enhanced compared to a person who doesn’t take a nap,” researcher Matthew Tucker said.

Previous studies of nocturnal sleep have found the same thing. In one 2003 study, Sara Mednick, then at Harvard and now at the University of California, San Diego, led a team that had 73 people come into the lab at 9 a.m. and learn to discriminate between a variety of textured patterns. Some of the participants then took a nap of about an hour at 2 p.m. and the others did not.

When retested at 7 p.m. the rested group did slightly better. When tested again the next morning, after everyone had slept the night, the napping group scored much higher. The naps included both REM and deep sleep.

“We think that a nap that contains both these states does about the same for memory consolidation as a night’s sleep,” when it comes to pattern recognition learning, Dr. Mednick said.

In series of experiments that he began in the early 1990s, Dr. Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Canada has found a strong association between the amount of Stage 2 sleep a person gets and the improvement in learning motor tasks. Mastering a guitar, a hockey stick or a keyboard are all motor tasks.

Musicians, among others, have sensed this instinctually. A piece that is difficult during and evening practice will often flow better in the morning for some reason. But only in recent years has the science caught up and given their hunch some scientific backing.

For instance, Dr. Smith said that people typically got most of their Stage 2 sleep in the second half of the night. “The implication of this is that if you are preparing for a performance, a music recital, say, or skating performance, it’s better to stay up late than get up really early,” he said in an interview. “These coaches that have athletes or other performers up at 5 o’clock in the morning, I think that’s just crazy.”

So here’s the big question: is something going on with memory processing that is unique to sleep?Skip to next paragraph

Subimal Datta, a neuroscientist across the river at Boston University School of Medicine, says yes. In his studies of animals, he has documented that during sleep the brain is awash in a chemical bath unlike any during waking. Levels of inhibitory transmitters increase sharply, and levels of many activating messengers drop, or shut down entirely.

Even before REM is detectable, Dr. Datta said, a small pocket of cells in the brainstem spurs a surge in glutamate — an activating chemical — which leads to protein synthesis and other changes that support long-term memory storage.

“During waking we have a thousand things happening at once, the library is filling up, and we can’t possibly process it all,” Dr. Datta said. While awake the brain is also gathering lots of valuable information subconsciously, he said, without the person’s ever being aware of it.
“It’s during sleep that we have this special condition to clear away this overload, and these REM processes then help store what’s important,” Dr. Datta said.
Dreams still defy scientific understanding but they also appear to play a role in the evolving theory of sleep-dependent learning.
Some scientists argue that during REM sleep, or dream mode, the brain will mix, match and make sense of the memory traces it has preserved, as it looks for connections that help make sense of life.

It was during sleep that the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev was reported to have developed the periodic table of the elements. Friedrich August Kekule, a 19th-century chemist, said he worked out the chemical structure of the benzine ring after dreaming of a snake biting its tail. Athletes like Jack Nicklaus, have also mentioned insights discovered while sleeping.
“It does make sense these insights come during REM,” Dr. Walker said. “I mean, what better time to play out all these different scenarios and solutions and ideas than in dreams, where there are no consequences?”

The problem, he says, is how to study it. Few of us would venture to say we know what goes on in our heads while sleeping, but to quantify and generalize such an elusive state has been quite a journey.

The Tower of Pisa

2007-10-05T15:37:00.000+03:00

The Leaning Tower of Pisa;

(Italian: Torre pendente di Pisa) or simply The Tower of Pisa (La Torre di Pisa) is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower, of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa. It is situated behind the Cathedral and it is the third structure in Pisa's Campo dei Miracoli (field of Miracles).

Although intended to stand vertically, the tower began leaning to the southeast soon after the onset of construction in 1173 due to a poorly laid foundation and loose substrate that has allowed the foundation to shift.

The height of the tower is 55.86 m (183.27 ft) from the ground on the lowest side and 56.70 m (186.02 ft) on the highest side. The width of the walls at the base is 4.09 m (13.42 ft) and at the top 2.48 m (8.14 ft). Its weight is estimated at 14,500 tonnes. The tower has 294 steps.

Construction

The construction of the Tower of Pisa was performed in three stages over a period of about 200 years. Construction of the first floor of the white marble campanile began on August 9, 1173, a period of military success and prosperity. This first floor is surrounded by pillars with classical capitals, leaning against blind arches. Today, it is still unscarred from centuries of weather and age.

There is controversy about the identity of the architect of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. For many years, the design was attributed to Guglielmo and Bonanno Pisano, a well-known 12th-Century resident artist of Pisa, famous for his bronze casting, particularly in the Pisa Duomo. Bonanno Pisano left Pisa in 1185 for Monreale, Sicily, only to come back and die in his home town. His sarcophagus was discovered at the foot of the tower in 1820.

The tower first acquired a lean after the third floor was built in 1178, due to a mere three-meter foundation set in weak, unstable subsoil. This means the design was flawed from the beginning. Construction was subsequently halted for almost a century, because the Pisans were almost continually engaged in battles with Genoa, Lucca and Florence. This allowed time for the underlying soil to settle. Otherwise, the tower would almost certainly have toppled. In 1198, clocks were temporarily installed on the unfinished construction.

In 1272, construction resumed under Giovanni di Simone, architect of the Camposanto. Another four floors were built at an angle to compensate for the tilt. Construction was halted again in 1284, when the Pisans were defeated by the Genoans in the Battle of Meloria.

The bell-chamber was not finally added until 1372. It was built by Tommaso di Andrea Pisano, who succeeded in harmonizing the Gothic elements of the bell-chamber with the Romanesque style of the tower. There are seven bells, one for each note of the musical major scale. The largest one was installed in 1655.

History

Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped two cannon balls of different masses from the tower to demonstrate that their descending speed was independent of their mass. This story, though reported by Galileo's own student, is widely considered to be a legend.

In 1838, an architect named Alessandro Della Gherardesca excavated a walkway around the tower to make the base visible once again. This caused a flooding of the base and an increase in the inclination.

Benito Mussolini ordered that the tower be returned to a vertical position, so concrete was poured into its foundation. However, the result was that the tower actually sank further into the soil.

During World War II, the Allies discovered that the Nazis were using it as an observation post. A humble U.S. Army sergeant was briefly entrusted with the fate of the tower. His decision not to call in an artillery strike saved the edifice.

On February 27, 1964, the government of Italy requested aid in preventing the tower from toppling. It was however considered important to retain the current tilt, due to the vital role that this element played in promoting the tourism industry of Pisa. A multinational task force of engineers, mathematicians and historians was assigned and met on the Azores islands to discuss stabilization methods. After over two decades of work on the subject, the tower was closed to the public in January 1990. While the tower was closed, the bells were removed to relieve some weight and cables were cinched around the third level and anchored several hundred meters away. Apartments and houses in the path of the tower were vacated for safety. After a decade of corrective reconstruction and stabilization efforts, the tower was reopened to the public on December 15, 2001. It was found that lean was increasing due to the stonework expanding and contracting each day due to the heat of sunlight. This was working in combination with the softer foundations on the lower side. Many methods were proposed to stabilize the tower, including the addition of 800 metric tons of lead counterweights to the raised end of the base. The final solution to preventing collapse of the tower was to slightly straighten the tower to a safer angle, by removing 38 m3 of soil from underneath the raised end. The tower has been declared stable for at least another 300 years.

In 1987, the tower was declared as part of the Campo dei Miracoli UNESCO World Heritage Site along with neighboring cathedral, baptistery and cemetery.

source: www.solarnavigator.net

NEWLY DISCOVERED DINOSAUR : Gryposaurus Monumentensis

2007-10-04T10:24:00.000+03:00

NEW DINOSAUR:
An undated artist's rendering of the duck-billed dinosaur Gryposaurus monumentensis, which roamed southern Utah 75 million years ago, shows the robust jaws that allowed this creature to eat just about any vegetation it came across.

"It was one of the most robust duck-billed dinosaurs ever," said museum paleontologist Terry Gates, who is also with the U.'s Department of Geology and Geophysics. "It was a monster."

Researchers from the Utah museum, the national monument and California's Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology unearthed fossils of this ancient plant-eater from the rocks of the Kaiparowits Formation. Researchers announced the name of the creature -- Gryposaurus monumentensis. (Gryposaurus means "hook-beaked lizard" and monumentensis honors the monument where the fossils were found.)

This duck-billed dinosaur dates to the Late Cretaceous Period 75 million years ago. "Gryposaurus monumentensis is probably the largest dinosaur in the 75-million-year-old Kaiparowits fossil ecosystem," said Alan Titus, paleontologist for the national monument.

Gates, lead author on the study, explained that this creature could have eaten just about any vegetation it stumbled across. "With its robust jaws, no plant stood a chance against G. monumentensis," he said.

Scott Sampson, another paleontologist with the Utah museum who was involved with the project, emphasized the massively-built skull and skeleton, referring to the animal as the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of duck-billed dinosaurs."

Finding the skull

In 2002, a team from the Alf Museum, in Claremont, Calif., located at the Webb School, discovered the site that contained the skull used to describe the new creature. Every summer, the California institution, the only nationally-accredited paleontology museum on a high school campus, gives Webb students and volunteers the chance to participate in scientific field work.

The California team was working a stretch of Grand Staircase that Utah researchers had not examined. Duncan Everhart, a Pennsylvania furniture maker, is credited with finding the skull.

Don Lofgren, curator of the Alf Museum, said the team received permission from the monument to dig deeper in 2003.

"We determined it was a skull sitting upside down with the jaw on top," he said.

Once Gates went out to take a look in 2004, he quickly realized the California team had a potentially-important find. The Alf Museum gave the Utah researchers permission to prepare and study the skull.

Titus noted the discovery of this new species was a team effort involving the Alf Museum, the Utah Museum of Natural History and the national monument.

"The cooperative effort put into its collection and research has truly been a model for scientific investigation on public lands," he said.

It wasn't until Utah researchers began working on the skull in 2005 that the full significance of the find began to emerge, Gates said.

The well-preserved skull was initially missing key pieces from the nose region. Fortunately, the California museum had collected a box full of eroded bones, including bits of the nose bone, which was critical for identifying the creature.

"I knew immediately that we had some species of Gryposaurus," Gates said.

A toothy beast

The creature's large number of teeth embedded in the thick skull is among the features that made G. monumentensis, as well as other closely related duck-billed dinosaurs, such a successful herbivore.

At any given time, the dinosaur had over 300 teeth available to slice up plant material. Inside the jaw bone, there were numerous replacement teeth waiting, meaning that at any moment, this Gryposaur may have carried more than 800 teeth.

"IIt was capable of eating most any plant it wanted to," Gates said. "Although much more evidence is needed before we can hypothesize on its dietary preferences."

While the diet is unknown, given the considerable size of the creature, the massive teeth and jaws are thought to have been used to slice up large amounts of tough, fibrous plant material.

The teeth may hold important clues the dinosaur's eating habits. The Utah museum plans to study the composition of the dinosaur teeth, which when compared to other plant-eating dinosaurs from the Kaiparowits Formation, will help researchers decipher differences in diet.

G. monumentensis is one of several new dinosaur species found in Grand Staircase, including: a Velociraptor-like carnivore named Hagryphus, a tyrannosaur, and several kinds of horned dinosaurs. In all, more than a dozen kinds of dinosaurs have been recovered from these badlands, and most represent species that are new to science.

"This is a brand new and extremely important window into the world of dinosaurs," said Sampson.

Under ideal circumstances, paleontologists will find the skull and other key bones at the same site. In this case, the head was the only thing they managed to find from where the Alf team searched.

Researchers believe the head of this particular Gryposaur likely rolled into a bend of a river, where it was partly buried. The right half of the head remained exposed to the river current, dislodging several bones before this side was buried as well.

In other parts of the monument, Utah researchers have excavated bones believed to be from the same species. Gates estimates G. monumentensis may have grown up to 30 feet long as an adult.

"As each new find such as this new Gryposaur is made," Titus said, "it is placed into the greater context of an entire ecosystem that has remained lost for eons, and is only now coming under scientific scrutiny."

Life in 'West America'

Around 75 million years ago, southern Utah differed dramatically from today's arid desert and redrock country. During much of the Late Cretaceous, a shallow sea split North America down the middle, dividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses.

In what Sampson terms "West America," G. monumentensis and its fellow dinosaurs lived in a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the seaway to the east and rising mountains to the west. Due in large part to the presence of the seaway, the climate was moist and humid.

Thanks to more than 100 years of fossil collection, scientists know more about the Cretaceous dinosaurs from North American than they do from any other time or continent on Earth, Sampson noted.

While G. monumentensis gulped down its greens and tried to avoid predatory tyrannosaurs down in Utah, closely related but different species of duck-billed dinosaurs were doing the same thing farther north, in places like Montana and Alberta, Canada.

The new Utah species is proving crucial for determining patterns of duck-billed dinosaur evolution and ecology during the Late Cretaceous of North America, Gates said. He added that "this calls for a re-evaluation of previous ideas about the evolution of duck-billed dinosaurs across the world."

Earlier explanations of dinosaurs undertaking long distance migrations have gone out the window. "Now we have to figure out how so many different kinds of giants managed to coexist in such small areas," said Sampson. "We're just beginning to unravel this story."

Bones from G. monumentensis are on display at Big Water Visitor Center in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and for a short time at the Utah Museum of Natural History before returning to the Alf Museum.

This research was published in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

source: This story has been adapted from material provided by University of Utah.

Saturn's Largest Moon TITAN Is Tropical In Nature

2007-10-03T05:46:00.000+03:00

If space travelers ever visit Saturn's largest moon, they will find a tropical world where temperatures plunge to minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit, methane rains from the sky and dunes of ice or tar cover the planet's most arid regions. These conditions reflect a cold mirror image of Earth's tropical climate, according to scientists at the University of Chicago.

"You have all these things that are analogous to Earth. At the same time, it's foreign and unfamiliar," said Ray Pierrehumbert, the Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at Chicago.

Titan, one of Saturn's 60 moons, is the only moon in the solar system large enough to support an atmosphere. Pierrehumbert and Jonathan Mitchell, who recently completed his Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Chicago, have been comparing observations of Titan collected by the Cassini space probe and the Hubble Space Telescope with their own computer simulations of the moon's atmosphere.

Their study of the dynamics behind Titan's methane clouds have appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their continuing research on Titan's climate focuses on the moon's deserts.

"One of the things that attracts me about Titan is that it has a lot of the same circulation features as Earth, but done with completely different substances that work at different temperatures," Pierrehumbert said. On Earth, for example, water forms liquid and is relatively active as a vapor in the atmosphere. But on Titan, water is a rock.

"It's not more volatile on Titan than sand is on Earth."

Methane-natural gas-assumes an Earthlike role of water on Titan. It exists in enough abundance to condense into rain and form puddles on the surface within the range of temperatures that occur on Titan.

"The ironic thing on Titan is that although it's much colder than Earth, it actually acts like a super-hot Earth rather than a snowball Earth, because at Titan temperatures, methane is more volatile than water vapor is at Earth temperatures," Pierrehumbert said.

Pierrehumbert and Mitchell even go so far as to call Titan's climate tropical, even though it sounds odd for a moon that orbits Saturn more than nine times farther from the sun than Earth. Along with the behavior of methane, Titan's slow rotation rate also contributes to its tropical nature. Earth's tropical weather systems extend only to plus or minus 30 degrees of latitude from the equator. But on Titan, which rotates only once every 16 days, "the tropical weather system extends to the entire planet," Pierrehumbert said.

Titan's tropical nature means that scientists can observe the behavior of its clouds using theories they've relied upon to understand Earth's tropics, Mitchell noted.Titan's atmosphere produces an updraft where surface winds converge. This updraft lifts evaporated methane up to cooler temperatures and lower pressures, where much of it condenses and forms clouds.

"This is a well-known feature on Earth called an ITCZ, the inter-tropical convergence zone," Mitchell said. Earth's oceans help confine the ITCZ to the lowest latitudes. But in some scenarios for oceanless Titan, the ITCZ in Mitchell's computer simulations wanders in latitude almost from one pole to the other. Titan's clouds should also follow the ITCZ.

Titan's orange atmospheric haze complicates efforts to observe the moon's clouds. "This haze shrouds the entire surface," Mitchell said. "It pretty much blocks all visible light from reaching us from the surface or from the lower atmosphere."

Nevertheless, infrared observations via two narrow frequency bands have recently revealed that clouds are currently confined to the moon's southern hemisphere, which is just now emerging from its summer season.

"There should be a very large seasonality in these cloud features," Mitchell said. "Cassini and other instruments might be able to tell us about that in the next seven to 10 years or so, as the seasons progress."

Mitchell and Pierrehumbert's next paper will describe how oscillations in Titan's atmospheric circulation dry out the moon's midsection. Over the course of a year, Mitchell explained, "this oscillation in the atmosphere tends to transport moisture, or evaporated methane, out of the low latitudes and then deposit it at mid and high latitude in the form of rainfall. This is interesting, because recent Cassini observations of the surface suggest that the low latitudes are very dry."

Cassini images show dunes of ice or tar covering these low-latitude regions that correspond to the tropics on Earth. When ultraviolet light from the sun interacts with methane high in Titan's atmosphere, it creates byproducts such as ethane and hydrogen.

These byproducts become linked to chains of hydrocarbon molecules that create Titan's orange haze. When these molecules coalesce into large particles, they settle out as a tar-like rain.

"Titan is like a big petrochemical plant," Pierrehumbert said. "Although this is all happening at a much lower temperature than in a petroleum refinery, the basic processes going on there are very closely allied to what people do when they make fuel."

Source : This story has been adapted from material provided by University of Chicago.

by Einstein

2007-09-28T09:35:00.001+03:00

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.

Albert Einstein

Special Characters

2007-09-27T14:19:00.000+03:00

Example:

Alt-0169 = ©

Alt-0174 = ®

Alt-0153 = ™

Alt-0128 €	Alt-0252 ü	Alt-0129	Alt-0130 ‚	Alt-0131 ƒ
Alt-0132 „	Alt-0253 ý	Alt-0133 …	Alt-0134 †	Alt-0135 ‡
Alt-0136 ˆ	Alt-0254 þ	Alt-0137 ‰	Alt-0138 Š	Alt-0139 ‹
Alt-0140 Œ	Alt-0255 ÿ	Alt-0141	Alt-0142 Ž	Alt-0143
Alt-0144	Alt-0248 ø	Alt-0145 ‘	Alt-0146 ’	Alt-0147 "
Alt-0148 "	Alt-0249 ù	Alt-0149 •	Alt-0150 –	Alt-0151 —
Alt-0152 ˜	Alt-0250 ú	Alt-0153 ™	Alt-0154 š	Alt-0155 ›
Alt-0156 œ	Alt-0251 û	Alt-0157	Alt-0158 ž	Alt-0159 Ÿ
Alt-0160	Alt-0244 ô	Alt-0161 ¡	Alt-0162 ¢	Alt-0163 £
Alt-0164 ¤	Alt-0245 õ	Alt-0165 ¥	Alt-0166 ¦	Alt-0167 §
Alt-0168 ¨	Alt-0246 ö	Alt-0169 ©	Alt-0170 ª	Alt-0171 «
Alt-0172 ¬	Alt-0247 ÷	Alt-0173	Alt-0174 ®	Alt-0175 ¯
Alt-0176 °	Alt-0240 ð	Alt-0177 ±	Alt-0178 ²	Alt-0179 ³
Alt-0180 ´	Alt-0241 ñ	Alt-0181 µ	Alt-0182 ¶	Alt-0183 ·
Alt-0184 ¸	Alt-0242 ò	Alt-0185 ¹	Alt-0186 º	Alt-0187 »
Alt-0188 ¼	Alt-0243 ó	Alt-0189 ½	Alt-0190 ¾	Alt-0191 ¿
Alt-0192 À	Alt-0236 ì	Alt-0193 Á	Alt-0194 Â	Alt-0195 Ã
Alt-0196 Ä	Alt-0237 í	Alt-0197 Å	Alt-0198 Æ	Alt-0199 Ç
Alt-0200 È	Alt-0238 î	Alt-0201 É	Alt-0202 Ê	Alt-0203 Ë
Alt-0204 Ì	Alt-0239 ï	Alt-0205 Í	Alt-0206 Î	Alt-0207 Ï
Alt-0208 Ð	Alt-0232 è	Alt-0209 Ñ	Alt-0210 Ò	Alt-0211 Ó
Alt-0212 Ô	Alt-0233 é	Alt-0213 Õ	Alt-0214 Ö	Alt-0215 ×
Alt-0216 Ø	Alt-0234 ê	Alt-0217 Ù	Alt-0218 Ú	Alt-0219 Û
Alt-0220 Ü	Alt-0235 ë	Alt-0221 Ý	Alt-0222 Þ	Alt-0223 ß
Alt-0224 à	Alt-0231 ç	Alt-0225 á	Alt-0226 â	Alt-0227 ã
Alt-0228 ä	Alt-0230 æ	Alt-0229 å

Sick? Lonely?

2007-09-14T06:00:00.000+03:00

Genes tell the tale

Lonely people are more likely to get sick and die young, and researchers said on Thursday they may have found out why -- their immune systems are haywire.

They used a "gene chip" to look at the DNA of isolated people and found that people who described themselves as chronically lonely have distinct patterns of genetic activity, almost all of it involving the immune system.

The study does not show which came first -- the loneliness or the physical traits. But it does suggest there may be a way to help prevent the deadly effects of loneliness, said Steve Cole, a molecular biologist at the University of California Los Angeles who worked on the study.

"What this study shows is that the biological impact of social isolation reaches down into some of our most basic internal processes -- the activity of our genes," Cole said.

"We have known for years that there is this epidemiological relationship between social support -- how many friends and family members you have around you -- and a whole bunch of physical outcomes," he said in a telephone interview.

Many studies of large populations have shown that people who describe themselves as lonely or as having little social support are more likely to die prematurely and to have infections, high blood pressure, insomnia and cancer.

"There are two theories -- the social provision theory, which basically is about what other people do for you in a tangible, material sense. Like, if I am sick and I have got people around me, they will take me to the doctors, they will see I take my pills," Cole said.

"The other is that there is something about being isolated and lonely that changes your body."

His team set out to investigate the second theory.

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE

John Cacioppo, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, has been studying the health effects of loneliness for years in a group of people who have allowed him to delve in-depth into their social lives and health.

Cole and Cacioppo's team studied 14 of these volunteers -- six who scored in the top 15 percent of an accepted scale of loneliness.

"These are people who said for four years straight 'there's really nobody that I feel that close to'," Cole said.

The other eight were the least lonely of the group.

Cole's team took blood and studied the gene activity of their immune system cells -- the white blood cells that protect from invaders such as viruses and bacteria.

All 22,000 human genes were studied and compared, and 209 stood out in the loneliest people.

"These 200 genes weren't sort of a random mishmash of genes. They were part of a highly suspicious conspiracy of genes. A big fraction of them seemed to be involved in the basic immune response to tissue damage," Cole said.

Others were involved in the production of antibodies -- the tag the body uses to mark microbes or damaged cells for removal, Cole said.

The findings suggest that the loneliest people had unhealthy levels of chronic inflammation, which has been associated with heart and artery disease, arthritis, Alzheimer's and other ills.

The next step is to see if this might be treated, Cole said. "This is a biological target for intervention," he said. "Maybe we can give these people aspirin." Aspirin, an anti-inflammatory drug, is also a blood thinner taken regularly by many people to prevent heart attacks and stroke.

source : Reuters

Scientists say that despite the claims on the CDs, simply listening to classical music does not make children smarter

2007-09-13T23:57:00.000+03:00

The phrase "Mozart Effect" conjures an image of a pregnant woman who, sporting headphones over her belly, is convinced that playing classical music to her unborn child will improve the tyke's intelligence. But is there science to back up this idea, which has spawned a cottage industry of books, CDs and videos?

A short paper published in Nature in 1993 unwittingly introduced the supposed Mozart effect to the masses. Psychologist Frances Rauscher's study involved 36 college kids who listened to either 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata in D-major, a relaxation track or silence before performing several spatial reasoning tasks. In one test—determining what a paper folded several times over and then cut might look like when unfolded—students who had listened to Mozart seemed to show significant improvement in their performance (by about eight to nine spatial IQ points).

Rauscher—whose work, unlike most scientists, is sometimes cited on the liner notes of CDs—remains puzzled as to how this narrow effect of classical music extended from a paper-folding task to general intelligence and from college students to children (and fetuses). "I think parents are very desperate to give their own children every single enhancement that they can," she surmises.

In addition to a flood of commercial products in the wake of the finding, in 1998 then-Georgia governor Zell Miller mandated that mothers of newborns in the state be given classical music CDs. And in Florida, day care centers were required to pipe symphonies through their sound systems.

A 2004 Stanford study tracked the media's coverage of Rauscher's study relative to other studies published in Nature around the same period. In the U.S.'s top 50 newspapers, her paper, titled "Musical and Spatial Task Performance," was cited 8.3 times more often than the second-most popular paper (co-authored by famed astronomer Carl Sagan).

"It seems to be a circumscribed manifestation of a widespread, older belief that has been labeled 'infant determinism,' the idea that a critical period early in development has irreversible consequences for the rest of a child's life," the researchers wrote in their analysis. "It is also anchored in older beliefs in the beneficial powers of music."

Some still argue for such musical powers. "Music has a tremendous organizing quality to the brain," notes Don Campbell, a classical musician who has written more than 20 books on music, health and education, including The Mozart Effect® and The Mozart Effect® for Children. Referencing French physician Alfred Tomatis's work in music therapy on children with dyslexia, attention-deficit disorders and autism in the mid-20th century, he believes music that's not highly emotional or overly rhythmic has a multilayered influence on the individual, from modulating mood to alleviating stress. "I know it improves our ability to be intelligent," he adds.

But in 1999 psychologist Christopher Chabris, now at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., performed a meta-analysis on 16 studies related to the Mozart effect to survey its overall effectiveness. "The effect is only one and a half IQ points, and it's only confined to this paper-folding task," Chabris says. He notes that the improvement could simply be a result of the natural variability a person experiences between two test sittings.

Earlier this year, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany published a second review study from a cross-disciplinary team of musically inclined scientists who declared the phenomenon nonexistent. "I would simply say that there is no compelling evidence that children who listen to classical music are going to have any improvement in cognitive abilities," adds Rauscher, now an associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh. "It's really a myth, in my humble opinion."

Rather than passively listening to music, Rauscher advocates putting an instrument into the hands of a youngster to raise intelligence. She cites a 1997 University of California, Los Angeles, study that found, among 25,000 students, those who had spent time involved in a musical pursuit tested higher on SATs and reading proficiency exams than those with no instruction in music.

Despite its rejection by the scientific community, companies like Baby Genius continue to peddle classical music to parents of children who can purportedly listen their way to greater smarts.

Chabris says the real danger isn't in this questionable marketing, but in parents shirking roles they are evolutionarily meant to serve. "It takes away from other kinds of interaction that might be beneficial for children," such as playing with them and keeping them engaged via social activity. That is the key to a truly intelligent child, not the symphonies of a long-dead Austrian composer.

Eruption of the Etna September 2007

2007-09-06T18:47:00.000+03:00

Mount Etna eruption updates for 4-5 September: For all the night, in the depression on the east flank of the crater of S-E, is in course an intense and spectacular strombolian activity with lava fountains that catch up a height of several hundreds of meters. A small tap of lava heads towards the Bove Valley. Moreover present is an ash column of approximately two kilometers that go towards east on Fornazzo and Milo.

It's for the ash that it has been decided, beginning from 1:00 Am of this night, the closing of the airport of Catania.
The 29 August on the east flank of the south-east crater has been recorded an elevated frequency of strombolian outbreaks. Such outbreaks are not compatible with an increasing of magma flow but with collapses produced by an emptying of a superficial magmatic tank.
The investigators of the national institute of Geophysicist and volcanology (http://www.ct.ingv.it) have directly observed the collapse that in its inside shows a slag cone. The explosive activity is accompanied by ash emission.

Neolithic Chewing Gum ?

2007-09-06T13:10:00.000+03:00

Discarded chewing gum is the bane of town centre pavements across the UK – but imagine finding a piece that’s a jaw-dropping 5,000 years old?

That’s just what University of Derby BA (Hons) Heritage and Conservation student Sarah Pickin found during an archaeological dig in Finland recently.

The 23-year-old, from Uttoxeter Old Road in Derby, was one of just five UK students on a unique volunteer programme at the Kierikki Centre on the west coast of Finland when she made the find – a piece of Neolithic chewing gum – a chewed cob made from birch bark tar.

Sarah also found part of an amber ring and a slate arrow head, all of which will be on display at the centre after they have been analysed in laboratories.

The Centre manages public excavations between May and October to unearth items of historical importance in an area of woodland called ‘Kierikkikangas’ which dates to the Neolithic period, c. 4,000-5,000 BC.

One of the Kierikki Centre’s supervisors, Sami Viljanmaa, said: “This gum substance of that period was often used as chewing gum and could also have been used to repair damaged arrowheads

“This and the other two items that Sarah discovered were very exciting finds.”

Sarah’s tutor at Derby, Professor Trevor Brown, an expert in Heritage and Conservation, said: “Birch bark tar contains phenols, which are antiseptic compounds.

"It is generally believed that Neolithic People found that by chewing this stuff if they had gum infections it helped to treat the condition. “It’s particularly significant because well defined tooth imprints were found on the gum which Sarah discovered.”

Colleague Sini Annala said: “The actual material is some kind of tar, that was made by heating birch bark. After the tar was made, it was boiled, and when it cooled, it became solid.

“When it was heated again, it became softer, and it was used at least sometimes as some kind of chewing gum. Birch bark tar was also used as glue for repairing broken ceramic pots and to unite quartz or slate arrowheads to their shafts.”

Sarah said: “I was delighted to find the gum and was very excited to learn more about the history of the items. I am keen to work in this area in the future so the experience has stood me in good stead.”

The finds were made with help from two diggers from Oulu, Rumana Hossein and Maisoun Alsanat during Sarah’s trip, made possible through the Leonardo Di Vinci European Programme, and Grampus Heritage and Training Limited, based in Cumbria and help from the University’s Career Development Centre.

Sarah’s participation in the course, and her subsequent academic write-up will contribute 15 credits towards her degree, as she prepares to begin her final year of study.

In relation to the ring, its original diameter was four centimetres and the Centre says it was probably already broken in the Stone Age. After that someone made a hole in the ring so that it could still be used as jewellery.

This is the third piece of amber found at the Kierikkikangas site. Two pearls were found last year also with the help of British students.

The four centimetre long worked slate arrow is from the so-called “Typical Comb Ceramic period” 3,500-4,000 BC.

The first known mention of findings from ancient structures in the Kierikki area is from the 1800s*.

Finally, during excavations in the early 1990s, significant findings were made of foundations for dwellings and various objects.

*It became understood that the Kierikki area has been an important settlement for nearly 2,000 years, roughly between 5,000 and 3,000 BC, over 7,000 years ago.

Source: University of Derby

500 days at Venus, and the surprises keep coming

2007-09-06T07:40:00.000+03:00

These images were taken in eight orbits within 10 consecutive Earth days (between orbits 299 and 309) with VIRTIS, in February 2007. The chosen wavelength was approximately 2.3 micrometres. The images were all taken on the night side, in the evening sector. The quarter that is observed is that which is experiencing late evening, or pre-midnight hours. It should be taken into account that Venus rotates very slowly as compared to Earth (one venusian day is 243 Earth days). The distances from the spacecraft to the region observed span 50 000 to 65 000 km. The contrast seen results from deeper cloud layers, at an altitude of about 50 km. The south pole is just outside the image, in the upper right hand side. It seems that the mid latitudes form a sort of transition region with mostly laminar flow. Moving equatorward, there is more convective flow in the atmosphere, whereas the polar region or the ‘black hole’ in the upper right hand side is where the vortex dominates. The meteorology of the planet, also its deep atmosphere, is highly variable. The images in the bottom row as well as the leftmost image in the middle row show laminar flow. The rest of the images show turbulent flow. Intense, bright colours show less cloudy areas, while darker, black areas, show more cloudy regions. This is because radiation coming from hotter regions below the clouds is blocked by thicker clouds. Credits: ESA/ VIRTIS/ INAF-IASF/ Obs. de Paris-LESIA
Venus Express has now orbited Earth’s twin for 500 Earth days, completing as many orbits. While the satellite maintains steady and excellent performance, the planet continues to surprise and amaze us.

In spite of experiencing a challenging environment, Venus Express is in an excellent condition. It receives four times the amount of solar radiation as compared to its sister spacecraft, Mars Express, but modifications to the spacecraft design have worked just as intended and operation has been very stable.
Many different activities transpire on board with each orbit: instruments are switched on and off, they change modes and targets and the spacecraft checks out and monitors its subsystems more or less continuously. The few anomalies that occurred were quickly resolved by vigilant spacecraft controllers.

An impressive amount of data - about 1 Terabits, or one million million bits - has been transmitted to Earth over the first 500 days.

Håkan Svedhem, Venus Express Project Scientist says, "The scientists analysing the data have a challenging but exciting task ahead.” They will have to archive the data and extract the most important detail from this immense collection of images, spectra and profiles of temperature, pressure and chemical composition.

Some of the first detailed analyses are now being completed and will soon be published in acclaimed scientific journals. Among many other findings that have surprised scientists, Venus’ atmosphere seems extremely fickle. Recent observations with the Visible and Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIRTIS), the atmospheric structure changes quite rapidly, from day to day.

Source: ESA

Anti-obesity Gene Keeps Mice And Worms Lean

2007-09-05T16:50:00.000+03:00

Researchers have revealed an antiobesity gene that has apparently been keeping critters lean during times of plenty since ancient times. The gene, first discovered by another team in flies, also keeps worms and mice trim, according to the new report in the September issue of Cell Metabolism. If the gene works similarly in humans, the findings could lead to a new weapon against our burgeoning waistlines, according to the researchers.
Animals without a working copy of the gene, known as Adipose (Adp), become obese and resistant to insulin, while those with increased Adp activity in fat tissue become slimmer, the researchers found. Moreover, the gene's "dose" seems to determine how slender an animal turns out to be.

"Maybe if you could affect this gene, even just a little bit, you might have a beneficial effect on fat," said Jonathan Graff of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, noting that people often become overweight very gradually--adding just one or two pounds a year. "After 30 years, that's a lot."

While worms and flies are routinely studied as models of human health and disease, that trend has been less true in fat biology, Graff said. That's because unlike mammals, worms and flies store their fat in multifunctional cells rather than in dedicated fat cells known as adipocytes. However, those differences didn't preclude the possibility that the animals might use similar genes to accomplish their fat storage goals, he added.

In the new study, Graff's team found that worms lacking Adp activity became fat, although they appeared to be otherwise healthy and fertile. The researchers scoured the genetic database in search of related genes and found one with "tremendous" similarity in flies.

Indeed, another scientist, Winifred Doane, had found a naturally occurring strain of plump flies in Nigeria almost 50 years ago that carried a mutation in their Adp gene. The flies lived in a climate marked by cycles of famine, where they may have benefited from being highly efficient at fat storage, Doane had suggested.

To explore Adp's function even further, Graff and his colleagues produced a strain of mutant flies like those that Doane had found years earlier. They found that the mutant flies were indeed fat and also had trouble getting around. Flies with only one copy of the Adp mutation fell somewhere in between the fat and normal flies, evidence that the gene's effects are "dose dependent," they reported.

Treatments that increased Adp in the insects' fat tissue led them to lose weight, evidence that the gene operates within fat cells themselves. In mice that expressed the gene in fat-storing tissues, the same patterns emerged.

"We made mice that expressed Adp in fat-storing tissues, and lo and behold, what happened"" Graff said. "They were skinny--weighed less with markedly less fat--and their fat cells were smaller." Smaller fat cells usually translate into better metabolic function, he said, including better blood sugar control.

"It's a striking conservation of genes that restrain fat," he said. While fat storage is an important mechanism for getting through lean times, "too much fat in times of plenty has deleterious consequences."

The search for molecules underlying weight gain and poor blood sugar control "has taken on additional urgency due to the recent dramatic increase in obesity and diabetes," Graff said. But in a modern world where many people have essentially unlimited access to food, it's a wonder that even more people aren't overweight, he added. If this gene plays a similar role in humans, "it may be that some people's Adp works very well."

The researchers include Jae Myoung Suh, Daniel Zeve, Renee McKay, Jin Seo, Zack Salo, Robert Li, Michael Wang, and Jonathan M. Graff of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

This work was supported by awards to JMG from the NIH and the NIDDK.

Reference: Suh et al.: "Adipose is a conserved dosage-sensitive anti-obesity gene." Publishing in Cell Metabolism 6, 195--207, September 2007 DOI 10.1016/j.cmet.2007.08.001.

This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Cell Press.

Science decodes da Vinci's secrets

2007-09-05T11:45:00.000+03:00

Leonardo da Vinci did not mix colours on a palette, but directly on the canvas he was painting, Italian researchers have found.

The discovery occurred when one of the Renaissance master's artworks was bombarded with a narrow beam of high-energy ions.

The study decodes for the first time Leonardo's painting technique and was presented at the 9th European Conference on Accelerators in Applied Research and Development, an international conference running this week in Florence.

Researchers at the Nuclear Techniques Laboratory for Cultural Heritage in Florence used a nuclear accelerator device that launches particles at high speed to determine the composition of the oil-on-wood painting Madonna of the Yarnwinder, completed in 1501.

"This non-destructive technology not only made it possible to identify pigments in the various paint layers, but also allowed us to decipher how Leonardo created his works. It was as if we were watching him while he painted," says Dr Cecilia Frosinini, an art historian at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure restoration lab in Florence.

The technology basically dissected Leonardo's work, stroke by stroke.

"We were able to examine as never before the layers of colour, their thickness and how they were placed on the canvas," Frosinini says.

It emerged that Leonardo applied very thin layers of colour on top of each other to create a rich texture and an almost 3D effect.

That conclusion comes as no surprise to some art historians.

"I think this is a very interesting study, though it doesn't really add much to our knowledge," says Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where the artist was born.

"It confirms from a scientific point of view what scholars had already long known."

Da Vinci himself mentioned his painting technique known as 'sfumato', from the Italian word 'fumo', meaning smoke, in his notes on painting.

"Light and shade should blend without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke," he wrote.

According to Vezzosi, it is no surprise that the Renaissance genius did not use the palette.

"Colour dilution was very important for Leonardo. He put a lot of effort in preparing the colours, so he did not have to mix them on the palette," Vezzosi says.

"Often, he did not use the brush either. He applied the thin layer of colours using his thumb. He used this technique often in his later work, especially on the Mona Lisa."

source: discovery news

Feedjit Customized Widget Shows Real Time SiteTraffic

2007-09-03T14:55:00.000+03:00

The Feedjit traffic widget launched a month ago and is now claiming some fairly serious viral growth - 3 million impressions per week from the blogs that have added it. When installed on a blog, the widget shows people who enter and leave the site and, and where they are located. Neither the blog publisher nor visitors need to register for the service - the code just has to be on the site.

Feedjit offers two types of widgets.First widget FEEDJIT gives you real-time traffic data on your blog. No registration required and it's completely free. See where your visitors are located in the world, which websites they're arriving from and what they're clicking when they leave your site. The second widget, The FEEDJIT Traffic Map shows the locations of the last 100 visitors to your website. Hover your mouse over any point on the map to see a detailed place name.

Red wine compound shown to prevent prostate cancer

2007-08-31T22:23:00.000+03:00

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have found that nutrients in red wine may help reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer.
The study involved male mice that were fed a plant compound found in red wine called resveratrol, which has shown anti-oxidant and anti-cancer properties. Other sources of resveratrol in the diet include grapes, raspberries, peanuts and blueberries.

In the study resveratrol-fed mice showed an 87 percent reduction in their risk of developing prostate tumors that contained the worst kind of cancer-staging diagnosis. The mice that proved to have the highest cancer-protection effect earned it after seven months of consuming resveratrol in a powdered formula mixed with their food.

Other mice in the study, those fed resveratrol but still developed a less-serious form of prostate cancer, were 48 percent more likely to have their tumor growth halted or slowed when compared to mice who did not consume the compound, the UAB research team said.

The findings were published in August through the online edition of the Journal of Carcinogenesis.

This study adds to a growing body of evidence that resveratrol consumption through red wine has powerful chemoprevention properties, in addition to its apparent heart-health benefits, said lead study author Coral Lamartiniere, Ph.D., of UAB’s Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.
An earlier UAB study published May 2006 in the same journal found resveratrol-fed female mice had considerable reduction in their risk of breast cancer.

Lamartiniere said his research team has been pleasantly surprised at the chemoprevention power of wine and berry polyphenols like resveratrol in animal models.

"A cancer prevention researcher lives for these days when they can make that kind of finding," Lamartiniere said. "I drink a glass a day every evening because I’m concerned about prostate cancer. It runs in my family."

Lamartiniere and other researchers say work is already underway to test resveratrol consumption in humans to see what concentrations are needed to convey cancer-prevention benefits.

The amounts used in the UAB mice studies were the equivalent of one person consuming one bottle of red wine per day, which is not advisable. Since drinking alcohol in excessive amounts can have harmful health effects, doctors generally recommend moderate red wine consumption, which is an average of two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women.

Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham

Microsoft Ups Hotmail Storage to 5 GB

2007-08-31T00:03:00.000+03:00

Microsoft Corp. will soon let users of its Hotmail service store 5 gigabytes of photos and other e-mail messages, more than double the previous limit.

Of course, only a small number of Hotmail users will ever approach that threshold, a reality the software maker acknowledged in a blog post this week outlining the storage boost and other upgrades to the free, Web-based service.

"Just when you were wondering how you'd ever fill up 2 or 4 GB of mail, we've given you more storage," wrote Ellie Powers-Boyle, a program manager for Windows Live Hotmail.

Microsoft's new limit, from 2 GB currently, will leapfrog Google Inc.'s nearly 3 GB. Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL e-mail services already include unlimited free storage.

The software maker also said that Hotmail will get faster in coming weeks thanks to performance improvements. E-mail users will also see a new "report phishing" button and a way to combine duplicate contacts in the address book.

When Hotmail users log in, they currently see a page filled with news headlines and photos from Microsoft's MSN sites - not their inbox. Soon, Microsoft will let users choose to go straight to their e-mail and skip the extra content.

"We know this is going to be a big hit with a lot of you out there in blog land," Powers-Boyle wrote.

© 2006 The Associated Press

Television, Internet... what's next?

2007-08-30T23:48:00.001+03:00

Humans can see in three dimensions soon after birth. The brain converts the two-dimensional images supplied by each eye into a single spatial image. To watch a film in 3-D, viewers have hitherto needed a pair of special glasses. Cinemagoers may be happy with this, but at home nobody wants to sit in front of the TV or PC wearing a pair of 3-D glasses.

The Multi-User 3-D Television Display developed by the European consortium MUTED eliminates the need for those annoying glasses. It reproduces natural vision for three to four people.

“The display always needs to know exactly where the viewers’ eyes are,” explains Klaus Schenke from the HHI, who is responsible for the exhibition stand at the IFA. “The eye positions correspond to the two viewpoints from which the three-dimensional image is scanned or computed. At the IFA we will be showcasing our head-tracking system. This represents a major contribution to the 3-D television display because it replaces viewing aids of any kind.”

To date, the display has been geared to a maximum of six eyes, in other words three viewers. The main application is aimed at private use, “particularly 3-D television,” says Klaus Schenke. “In future, though, it will also be possible to use the display in the medical arena, for minimally invasive surgery.” It will track the various positions of the surgeon, intern and nurse, for instance, so that all three can follow the operation simultaneously on the same screen with three-dimensional images.

In addition to 3-D viewing without glasses, the HHI will also be presenting a contactless touchscreen at the IFA.

“Conventional touchscreens are only suitable with a small screen. Viewers need to see all the information at close range so that they can touch the screen, like the ticket machines in train stations,” is how Klaus Schenke describes the challenge.

But the HHI is looking further ahead and aims to provide travelers with more information, such as location maps and sights worth seeing, on a larger screen. To do this the Institute has developed a “virtual” touchscreen, the iPoint Explorer. The “i” stands for “information”; this information is retrieved by pointing a finger. The gestures are captured by cameras on the display. “As a result, the user can stand up to 1.5 meters away and even view screens with a 62-inch diagonal,” says Klaus Schenke. A further advantage is that, not being touched by thousands of people, the iPoint Explorer is more hygienic.

Another HHI research area presented at the IFA is video encoding. Although downloading videos from the Internet is nothing unusual nowadays, the numerous digital transmission paths and devices on which the audiovisual data can be transmitted still present a technical challenge. Wireless home networks in particular are becoming increasingly powerful and important. But not all content is equally suited to large-screen and pocket formats. The video material needs to be adapted accordingly to provide optimum image quality. Under the existing encoding standards, all the parameters, such as image resolution or size, are precisely defined from the outset and must be fully downloaded.

The HHI has now managed to make encoding scalable. “There is a choice of multiple resolutions, different image frequencies and variable image quality within the same bitstream,” explains Karsten Grüneberg, scientist at the HHI and member of the European Union’s ASTRALS research project. “Users decide themselves which parts of the bitstream they want to transmit, depending on the transmission path or terminal device.”

The HHI will also be presenting other developments in tomorrow’s media world such as a virtual mirror for augmented reality and the pocket PC photo browser.

Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

Sarcosuchus imperator

2007-08-30T12:51:00.000+03:00

Steve Irwin, the daredevil Australian naturalist killed last year by a stingray, never wrestled a croc like this one.

French paleontologists at the
Museum of Natural History in Paris,
Philippe Taquet(L) and
France de Lapparent de Broin
pose on a likeness of the
"Sarcosuchus imperator"
that lived 110 million years ago.

As long as a tourist bus and with jaws big enough to pick up a cow, "Sarcosuchus imperator" lived 110 million years ago and was surely the biggest, baddest crocodile to ever roam the earth.

This week its scales-and-blood likeness was unveiled by the man who first identified and named the amphibious predator based on fossil remains found in Niger more than 40 years ago.

"It is impressive to finally see this animal in the flesh -- excuse me, I mean in resin," said a smiling Philippe Taquet, a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Measuring 12 meters (40 feet) from snout to tail, and weighing in at 10 tonnes, Sarco -- as the beast is known among dinsosaur buffs -- undoubtably chomped on big fish and small dinosaurs, dragging them into the tropical rivers that once criss-crossed what is today the Sahara.

The reconstruction of the animal by the French company Ophys required 1800 hours of work and 750 kilos (1650 pounds), and was undertaken under the watchful eye of paleontologist France de Lapparent de Broin, who co-authored with Taquet the first scientific article on Sarco in 1966.

Sarco's new home will be the Crocodile Farm, an wildlife park with 400 of the pre-historic reptile's modern cousins, along with an assortment of giant turtles.

Weight Loss Drug May Have Killed Man

2007-08-30T07:50:00.000+03:00

According to the Turkish media a 40 years old man who had been taking these slimming pills for a few months passed away after getting a heart attack. His family and friends are convinced that it was the slimming pills that were the cause of this heart attack and are keen to make sure that other people do not meet the same fate.

The 40 years old man Ertan Geyik was a television manager at the Kanal 1 station and was probably unaware that the Ministry of Health in Turkey had actually restricted the sale of these pills after independent testing has shown that they contained a number of dangerous and harmful chemicals that were not licensed for sale. The Lida Weight loss pills originate in China and it appears that they found their way into Turkey after getting a permit from the Ministry of Agriculture when in fact the Ministry of Health should have been informed and been responsible for the import permit.

This is not the first time that we have come across people suffering from heart attacks when using weight loss medication that has not been properly tested by health authorities. If you This is not the first time that we have come across people suffering from heart attacks when using weight loss medication that has not been properly tested by health authorities. If you are taking this dangerous and illegal weight loss medication you should stop using it immediately and get a medical checkup, or if you know of anyone else who is taking Lida please warn them that they could be putting their life into danger.

Lida has been advertised as a “miracle herbal pill” to lose weight and no mention is made of the fact that it contains powerful chemicals. This sort of advertising is extremely irresponsible and has caused many deaths worldwide from people who think that they are using harmless herbal and natural weight loss remedies.

Supersonic 'rain' falls on newborn star

2007-08-29T08:49:00.000+03:00

Astronomers at the University of Rochester have discovered five Earth-oceans’ worth of water that has recently fallen into the planet-forming region around an extremely young, developing star.
Dan Watson, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, believes he and his colleagues are the first to see a short-lived stage of protoplanetary disk formation, and the manner in which a planetary system’s supply of water arrives from the natal envelope within which its parent star originally formed.

The findings, published in today’s Nature, are the first-ever glimpse of material directly feeding a protoplanetary disk.

The embryonic star in question, called IRAS 4B, lies in a picturesque nebula called NGC 1333, about 1000 light years from Earth. It is one of an initial list of 30 of the youngest “protostars” known, which Watson and his team examined with the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared spectrograph for signs of very dense, warm material at their cores. It is also the only one of the thirty to show signs of such material, signaled by the infrared spectrum of water vapor. The watery characteristics of IRAS4B’s infrared spectrum can best be explained by material falling from the protostar’s envelope onto a surrounding, dense disk. This setup, called by astronomers a “disk-accretion shock,” is the formative mechanism of the disks within which all planetary systems are thought to originate.

“Icy material from the envelope is in free-fall, reaching supersonic speeds and crashing into the protoplanetary disk.” says Watson. “The ice vaporizes on impact, and the warm water vapor emits a distinctive spectrum of infrared light. That light is what we measured. From the details of the measured spectrum we can tease out the physical details of this brand-new, pre-planetary disk”

Among the details derived so far are the rate of “rainfall” onto the disk – about 23 Earth masses per year – and the characteristics of the “puddle” on the disk’s surface: The surface is 170 degrees Kelvin (153 degrees below zero Fahrenheit), and at that temperature there is about an Earth’s mass worth of material, including enough water to fill Earth’s oceans about five times. The area of the “puddle” is such that, if circular and centered on the Sun, its perimeter would be just beyond the orbit of Pluto. Results such as this will help astronomers assess the early planet-forming potential of IRAS4B’s disk, and by inference learn about the earliest stages of our solar system’s life.

There are astro-chemical implications of the observations as well. “There are lots of primitive icy bodies in our solar system, and the ice they carry is often thought to descend directly from the interstellar medium, so that by studying one we could learn about the other,” says Watson. “But in NGC 1333 IRAS 4B’s disk, it is clear that the water is received as vapor and will be re-frozen under different conditions, and this means that the oxygen and hydrogen chemistry of its disk is reset from interstellar conditions. It’s not getting pristine, interstellar ice.” Astronomers at the University of Rochester, including Watson and co-author professor William Forrest, helped design the “eyes” of Spitzer specifically to look for objects like IRAS4B and its water because such objects sit in an astronomer’s blind spot. Called “Class Zero Protostars” for their extreme youth, these objects radiate substantial light only at long infrared wavelengths, which our atmosphere inconveniently blocks from ground-based telescopes. When Watson and his team first planned their Spitzer observations, only 50 class-zero protostars were known, and the team selected the 30 brightest. But Watson says that’s just the beginning. Astronomers now know of hundreds of such objects, and Watson expects to have thousands to investigate in the coming years.

Another characteristic makes the otherwise un-noteworthy IRAS4B a rarity. It is oriented with its axis pointed almost directly at Earth, splaying out its entire disk to our view and simplifying the process of plumbing its secrets. Only a small fraction of the future candidates are expected be similarly oriented, keeping the search for lots more “raining protostars” a challenge.

Source: University of Rochester

New golden frog discovered in remote region of Colombia

2007-08-28T17:33:00.000+03:00

A new poisonous frog was recently discovered in a remote mountainous region in Colombia by a team of young scientists supported by the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP). The new frog, which is almost two centimetres in length, was given the name the "golden frog of Supatá".

Originally, the young scientists thought the frog was similar to several other common species in the area. However, after scientific analysis of the frog’s characteristics, and review of their findings by experts at Conservation International, it was determined that the golden frog of Supatá is unique and only found within a 20 hectare area in Colombia’s Cundinamarca region. Colombia is one of the world’s richest countries in amphibian diversity, with more than 583 species.

Unfortunately, since this frog is a recent discovery, and endemic to only the Cunidnamarca region, little is known about it. So far, scientists say that the golden frog of Supatá belongs to a group of “dart fogs” that are known to be highly venomous. In the coming months, the young scientists hope to have more information about the frog.

“The importance of this project is not just the discovery of the new frog,” said Oswaldo Cortes, team leader and one of the winners of the 2007 Conservation Leadership Programme awards. “But, most importantly, what this new discovery shows is how little we still know about our planet, and the many species that haven’t yet been discovered. This is why it is so important to work with local communities and educate them about the need for conservation.”

Exploding Lunar Eclipse

2007-08-28T17:21:00.000+03:00

On Tuesday morning, Aug. 28th, Earth's shadow will settle across the Moon for a 90-minute total eclipse. In the midst of the lunar darkness, Cooke hopes to record some flashes of light--explosions caused by meteoroids crashing into the Moon and blasting themselves to smithereens.

"The eclipse is a great time to look," says Cooke, who heads up NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The entire face of the Moon will be in shadow for more than two hours, offering more than 7 million sq. miles of dark terrain as target for incoming meteoroids.

Lunar explosions are nothing new. Cooke's team has been monitoring the Moon since late 2005 and they've recorded 62 impacts so far. "Meteoroids that hit Earth disintegrate in the atmosphere, producing a harmless streak of light. But the Moon has no atmosphere, so 'lunar meteors' plunge into the ground," he says. Typical strikes release as much energy as 100 kg of TNT, gouging craters several meters wide and producing bursts of light bright enough to be seen 240,000 miles away on Earth through ordinary backyard telescopes.

"About half of the impacts we see come from regular meteor showers like the Perseids and Leonids," says MEO team-member Danielle Moser. "The other half are 'sporadic' meteors associated with no particular asteroid or comet."

The MEO observatory is located on the grounds of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and consists of two 14-inch telescopes equipped with sensitive low-light video cameras. Moser and colleague Victoria Coffey will be on duty Tuesday morning.

During the eclipse, they hope to catch an elusive variety of meteor called Helions.

"Helion meteoroids come from the direction of the sun," Cooke says, "and that makes them very difficult to observe." They streak across the sky most often around local noon when the sun's glare is too intense for meteor watching.

Wait a minute. Meteors from the sun? "The sun itself is not the source," he explains. "We believe Helion meteoroids come from ancient sungrazing comets that laid down trails of dusty debris in the vicinity of the sun."

No one can be certain, however, because Helion meteoroids are so devilishly difficult to study. Astronomers see them only in small numbers briefly before dawn or after sunset. Attempts to study Helions via radar during the day have been foiled, to a degree, by terrestrial radio interference and natural radio bursts from the sun—both of which can drown out meteoroid "pings."

Enter the eclipse.

During the eclipse, the Man in the Moon (the face we see from Earth) will be turned squarely toward the sun—"perfect geometry for intercepting Helion meteoroids," says Moser. "And with Earth's shadow providing some darkness, we should be able to see any explosions quite clearly."

"Watching Helion meteoroids hit the Moon and studying the flashes will tell us more about their size, velocity and penetration," she adds. That, in turn, will further the MEO's goal of estimating meteoroid hazards to spacecraft and future Moon-walking astronauts.

No one has ever seen a lunar impact during an eclipse, "but there's a first time for everything," Cooke says.

Source: Science@NASA, by Dr. Tony Phillips

Dreamy Lunar Eclipse

2007-08-26T01:17:00.000+03:00

Close your eyes, breathe deeply, let your mind wander to a distant seashore: It's late in the day, and the western sun is sinking into the glittering waves. At your feet, damp sand reflects the twilight, while overhead, the deep blue sky fades into a cloudy mélange of sunset copper and gold, so vivid it almost takes your breath away.

A breeze touches the back of your neck, and you turn to see a pale full Moon rising into the night. Hmmm. The Moon could use a dash more color. You reach out, grab a handful of sunset, and drape the Moon with phantasmic light. Much better.

Too bad it's only a dream...

Early Tuesday morning, August 28th, the dream will come true. There's going to be a colorful lunar eclipse visible from five continents including most of North America: map.

The event begins 54 minutes past midnight PDT (0754 UT) on August 28th when the Moon enters Earth's shadow. At first, there's little change. The outskirts of Earth's shadow are as pale as the Moon itself; an onlooker might not even realize anything is happening. But as the Moon penetrates deeper, a startling metamorphosis occurs. Around 2:52 am PDT (0952 UT), the color of the Moon changes from moondust-gray to sunset-red. This is totality, and it lasts for 90 minutes.

To understand why the change occurs, close your eyes and dream yourself all the way to the Moon. Once again, you're standing on a seashore—the Sea of Tranquillity. There's no water. You're surrounded by hundreds of miles of dusty, hardened lava. Overhead hangs Earth, nightside down, completely hiding the Sun behind it. The eclipse is underway.

With the Sun blocked, you might expect utter darkness, but no, the ground at your feet is aglow. Why? Look back up at Earth. The rim of the planet seems to be on fire. Around Earth's circumference you see every sunrise and sunset in the world—all at once. This incredible light beams into the heart of Earth's shadow, transforming the Moon into a landscape of copper moondust and golden hills.

Wake up! This is really going to happen, and some planning is necessary. Start times of totality are listed in the table below. Set your alarm an hour or so in advance to gather snacks and dress warmly. (Even in August, four o'clock in the morning can be chilly.) Waking up early also allows you to catch some of the partial eclipse before totality.

The eclipse will be visible from Australia, Japan, parts of Asia and most of the Americas, but not from Africa or Europe. Pacific observers are favored. On the west coast of the United States, the entire eclipse will unfold high in the post-midnight sky. On the east coast, totality will be truncated by sunrise. That's okay; even a little eclipse can be a dream.

...nasa...

What's Next for DVD ?

2007-08-23T13:16:00.000+03:00

Media attention these days focuses mostly on the high-definition Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats. Yet in this interim period--while high-def adoption ever-so-slowly ramps up--standard DVD continues to see updates and new products. Here's a wrap-up of the most interesting (and the more pedestrian) DVD players and burners that have crossed my desk this summer.Multipurpose Burners March OnSony recently began shipping the latest iteration of its stand-alone DVD burner, the DVDirect. The $230 VRD-MC5 is no ordinary external drive--it's intended for use independent of your PC.In fact, that's the first major change in this version: The DVDirect can no longer even connect to a PC. According to Sony, the capability was removed because the company's research showed that 97 percent of DVDirect users didn't bother with a PC. Gone, too, is support for PictBridge, which let you slot in a memory card and output a photo via a PictBridge printer.And no wonder, as DVDirect's strength lies in what it allows you to do without being tethered to a computer. The unit boasts memory card slots (for Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Pro Duo, SD Card, xD-Picture Card, and CompactFlash media) on the right side, and composite, S-Video, and analog audio inputs on the left. It also has four-pin FireWire and USB 2.0 inputs for connecting to camcorders. On its top surface, the DVDirect has a 2.5-inch LCD screen for playing back discs created by the unit, as well as for previewing video and image content.One of the coolest abilities of this product is that it can easily create DVD photo albums (with up to 2000 photos) directly from a memory card. The discs can act as photo slide shows, and you can even choose an MP3 for background music during the show. Another nifty new ability: The VRD-MC5 can transfer high-def 1080i video from Sony AVCHD camcorders to DVD; the unit encodes the resulting video in H.264, an efficient high-definition video codec. Sony says you can get up to 95 minutes' worth of HD video on a DVD, and the disc should be playable on most Blu-ray Disc players.Other improvements include support for DVD+RW media, a bizarre omission in the previous MC3 model; a stop-record timer (in 30-, 60-, and 90-minute increments); and the ability to detect and record all (or just new) content on a camcorder. Pixela's Portable BurnerThe Sony DVDirect is clearly intended for use in a home; by contrast, Pixela's PIX-BU010-P01 DVD Burner targets the mobile camcorder user with its slick, slim-line, portable design.The $300 Pixela DVD Burner puts a slot-loading DVD drive inside an easy-to-tote, 1.3-inch-high chassis. The unit has a mini-USB input for attaching SD Card- and hard drive-based camcorders, including models from JVC, Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba (see the full list of models), as well as for attaching digital cameras or SanDisk's SDDR-89-A15 memory card reader.The product is very simply designed. All you need to do is connect the video source, specify whether you want to create a DVD-Video movie disc or a data disc (for a raw data dump of your files), and then press the green-ringed start button.The concept is certainly a viable one, and Pixela executes it well. I could see how this device would work for transferring files in a hotel room without having to bring a laptop along for the ride. It's pricey, however, and I find its usefulness somewhat limited by its lack of a display option--at the least, outputs for TV (which might be limited anyway, given how Fort Knox-ified most hotels keep their TVs these days). Personally, I'd prefer something with a screen, like the DVDirect, so I can preview what I've transferred to disc to make sure the transfer went smoothly. Burners Get Cheaper, FasterIt's a familiar tale: faster write speeds, cheaper prices. I've seen some DVD burners priced at $30 in weekend advertisements--a clear sign of just how commoditized DVD burners have become. But that hasn't stopped manufacturers from refreshing their product lines. Sony, for example, recently rolled out its internal $70 DRU-840A and external $110 DRX-840U drives, which support writing at 20X on 16X DVD±R media. Though many vendors are slowly shifting their drives to the newer SATA interface, Sony's internal model still uses an IDE interface. (The SATA advantage for DVD drives has nothing to do with speed; rather, the cabling for SATA drives is simpler, which translates into better airflow inside your PC.)This year marks Sony's entrance into the slim-line competition with the $130 DRX-S70U, due to ship in September. Although desktop burner write speeds have managed to creep up over the past few years, slim-line portables such as this 0.87-inch-high model remain stuck at just 8X (maximum) for writing to single-layer DVD±RW.Earlier this summer, LG and Plextor both introduced new models. LG released a new drive that offers SecurDisc, a hardware-software one-two punch from LG and Nero that's designed to protect burned data. SecurDisc is a feature in the internal, $80 GSA-H55LI and the external, $120 GSA-E60L; both are multiformat drives that max out at 18X for single-layer DVD. The internal model uses an IDE interface. SecurDisc also appears in LG's slim-line model, the GSA-E50L.Finally, Plextor shipped its newest internal and external 18X burners earlier this summer. The external $140 Plextor PX-810UF has both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces. The internal version, the $90 TurboPlex PX-810SA DVD Super Multi Drive, uses SATA to connect to a PC motherboard; this model complements another 18X model that uses IDE.
Source : Yahoo! News

Astronomers find gaping hole in the Universe

2007-08-22T14:27:00.000+03:00

University of Minnesota astronomers have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious, unseen “dark matter.” While earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in the large-scale structure of the Universe, this new discovery dwarfs them all.

Astronomers have known for years that, on large scales, the Universe has voids largely empty of matter. However, most of these voids are much smaller than the one found by Rudnick and his colleagues. In addition, the number of discovered voids decreases as the size increases.

“What we’ve found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe,” Williams said.

The astronomers drew their conclusion by studying data from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), a project that imaged the entire sky visible to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, part of the National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). Their study of the NVSS data showed a remarkable drop in the number of galaxies in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus, southwest of Orion.

“We already knew there was something different about this spot in the sky,” Rudnick said. The region had been dubbed the “WMAP Cold Spot,” because it stood out in a map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe (WMAP) satellite, launched by NASA in 2001. The CMB, faint radio waves that are the remnant radiation from the Big Bang, is the earliest “baby picture” available of the Universe. Irregularities in the CMB show structures that existed only a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.

The WMAP satellite measured temperature differences in the CMB that are only millionths of a degree. The cold region in Eridanus was discovered in 2004.

Astronomers wondered if the cold spot was intrinsic to the CMB, and thus indicated some structure in the very early Universe, or whether it could be caused by something more nearby through which the CMB had to pass on its way to Earth. Finding the dearth of galaxies in that region by studying NVSS data resolved that question.

“Although our surprising results need independent confirmation, the slightly lower temperature of the CMB in this region appears to be caused by a huge hole devoid of nearly all matter roughly 6-10 billion light-years from Earth,” Rudnick said.

How does a lack of matter cause a lower temperature in the Big Bang’s remnant radiation as seen from Earth"

The answer lies in dark energy, which became a dominant force in the Universe very recently, when the Universe was already three-quarters of the size it is today. Dark energy works opposite gravity and is speeding up the expansion of the Universe. Thanks to dark energy, CMB photons that pass through a large void just before arriving at Earth have less energy than those that pass through an area with a normal distribution of matter in the last leg of their journey.

In a simple expansion of the universe, without dark energy, photons approaching a large mass -- such as a supercluster of galaxies -- pick up energy from its gravity. As they pull away, the gravity saps their energy, and they wind up with the same energy as when they started.

But photons passing through matter-rich space when dark energy became dominant don't fall back to their original energy level. Dark energy counteracts the influence of gravity and so the large masses don’t sap as much energy from the photons as they pull away. Thus, these photons arrive at Earth with a slightly higher energy, or temperature, than they would in a dark energy-free Universe.

Conversely, photons passing through a large void experience a loss of energy. The acceleration of the Universe's expansion, and thus dark energy, were discovered less than a decade ago. The physical properties of dark energy are unknown, though it is by far the most abundant form of energy in the Universe today. Learning its nature is one of the most fundamental current problems in astrophysics.

Source: University of Minnesota

Girls primed to prefer pink

2007-08-21T03:07:00.000+03:00

Boys like blue, girls like pink and there isn't much anybody can do about it, researchers say.

Their study, published in the journal Current Biology, is one of the first to show scientifically that there are gender-based colour preferences.

Researchers say these differences may have a basis in evolution in which females developed a preference for reddish colours associated with riper fruit and healthier faces.

Recent studies have suggested there is a universal preference for blue.

But there has not been much previous evidence to support the idea of sex differences when picking colours, says lead author Professor Anya Hurlbert, a neuroscientist at the UK's University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

"We speculate that this sex difference arose from sex-specific functional specialisation in the evolutionary division of labour," the researchers write. "There are biological reasons for liking reddish things."

Hurlbert also acknowledges that culture may also play a role in colour preferences.

"Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preferences," she says.

In the study, the researchers asked a group of men and women to look at about 1000 pairs of coloured rectangles on a computer screen in a dark room and pick the ones they liked best, as quickly as possible.

Afterwards, Hurlbert and colleague Dr Yazhu Ling plotted the results along the colour spectrum and found that while men prefer blue, women gravitate towards the pinker end of the blue spectrum.

"Women have a very clear pattern. It's low in the yellow and green regions and rises to a peak in the purplish to reddish region," she says.

Hurlbert believes women's preference for pink may have evolved on top of a natural, universal preference for blue.

"When you add it together you get the colours they intrinsically like, you get bluish red, which is sort of lilac or pink," she says.

For men, thinking about colours was less important because as hunters they just needed to spot something dark and shoot it, Hurlbert says.

But how about the universal appeal of blue? Could evolution explain that too?

"Going back to our savanna days, we would have a natural preference for a clear blue sky, because it signalled good weather," says Hurlbert. "Clear blue also signals a good water source."

source : Reuters

The Power of the Tarot

2007-08-19T20:14:00.000+03:00

Tarot cards have been around for hundreds of years. According to most experts, Tarot decks first appeared between 1410 and 1430 somewhere in northern Italy, and probably originated as elaborations of pre-existing four-suit playing card decks. The resulting hybrid decks were originally called "carte da trionfi" or "triumph cards." The oldest surviving Tarot cards were painted for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan, around the middle of the 15th century. As early as 1540, these new cards were clearly being used for divination, and divination may even have pre-dated the Tarot cards as a medieval book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forli describes a primitive method of divination using the coin suit of regular playing cards.

Whether one believes in the power of Tarot cards or not, this method of divination is clearly here to stay. Once associated primarily with wandering gypsies and carnival booths, Tarot practitioners have entered the mainstream, opening storefronts, creating websites, and founding highly profitable corporations. Tarot is big business.

But can a Tarot reading really predict the future--or is it just a fun diversion?

The Dutch government apparently believes in the power of Tarot. In august of 2007, the state began funding Tarot card readings for the jobless. That's right--Tarot card readers can receive government funding to counsel the unemployed and help them get back to work. And it's not just those crazy Dutch people. New York City boasts a Tarot School, founded in 1995, where anyone can enroll to get a "higher education" in tarot card reading.

According to reports, Christian Dior used to consult the Tarot to determine the best day to show his collection and when to go on vacation. During Ronald Reagan's tenure as President of the United States, there were whispered tales of tarot cards being slipped into the White House through the back door, and former Reagan chief of staff Donald Regan finally revealed in a tell-all book that Nancy Reagan had an obsession with astrology and sometimes used it to arrange her husband's official activities.

During the height of the U.S. Presidential campaign of 2000, nationally-recognized astrologer Claudia D. Dikinis announced that in spite of her personal preference for Al Gore, a reading of her Tarot cards gave a clear indication that George W. Bush would be the next President of the United States.

On July 31, 2007, Indian Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt was sentenced to a jail term of 6 years for illegal possession of firearms. Things looked bleak for Dutt, until well-known Tarot reader Mita Bahn announced that after consulting her cards it was clear Dutt would soon be released. Two weeks later, he was granted interim bail.

Such strange occurrences are not limited to the rich and famous. On March 20, 1986, Theresa Jackson of Florida sat with her daughter Tina Mancini, 17, and spread a deck of Tarot cards across the table. According to Mrs. Jackson, "The cards told me a blond child of mine was going to die." For days later, Tina pointed a .357-caliber Magnum pistol into her mouth and pulled the trigger.

Do these stories suggest a real power behind the Tarot, or are they merely anecdotal, random readings that happened to coincide with real events? We may never know. Well, maybe there's one way. Maybe you should dust off those old Tarot cards you have sitting in your closet and ask them yourself ... if you dare.

by Baudelaire Jones

Searching for the soul in the machine

2007-08-18T23:56:00.000+03:00

If computers could create a society, what kind of world would they make? Thanks to the work of an ambitious project that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘computer society’, in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture, we could be about to find out.

With funding from the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative of the IST programme, five European research institutes are collaborating on the NEW TIES project to create a thoroughly 21st-century brave new world – one populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and culture.

This kind of social interaction is a tantalising prospect for the artificial intelligence (AI) experts, computer scientists, sociologists and linguists working on NEW TIES. The keyword here is ‘social.’ “While individual (or machine) learning and evolutionary behaviour have been quite well studied, social learning is still an unknown quantity,” says project coordinator Gusz Eiben, an AI professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Joining the Vrije Universiteit are the University of Surrey, Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University, Edinburgh’s Napier University and Tilburg University in The Netherlands. The multidisciplinary team has a dual goal: to study natural processes (like language development), and to advance the construction of collective artificial intelligence.

“For the linguists and sociologists, the main motivation is to study existing processes in societies and languages,” Eiben explains. “The computer scientists on the other hand want to develop and study machine collaboration, with an eye on future applications in robotics. Robots in the home are only five to 10 years away, and in the future we might be able to send robot rescue teams to disaster areas to search for survivors. They could even one day travel to Mars. Obviously, it will be important for them to be able to cooperate with each other – especially if they are in a hostile environment.”

From thousands to millions of agents

Future disaster victims rescued by robots may perhaps owe their survival to the software agents currently being prepared for life in the NEW TIES engine – which, within a few months, will be running across a Grid of 60 computers. “No one has ever created an engine of this complexity,” says Eiben, adding that it will support about 1,000 agents at first, building up to millions – each one a unique entity with its own characteristics, including gender, life expectancy, fertility, size, and metabolism. The agents will not be labelled, but will have their own distinguishing characteristics to make them recognisable. Their traits will be inherited from their parents, and passed on to their offspring, but they will be able to learn from their own experiences and from each other.

“It’s a given of the NEW TIES project that we are not hardwiring agents,” says Eiben. “We are not programming how they behave. Each entity has its own ‘controller,’ analogous to a brain. And because we want to create an interesting controller, we have to produce a challenging world – otherwise there would be no impetus for development. So, in one scenario, we have created a world with seasons – so that the agents have to learn to find, transport and store food. And there are two rival groups, so they will have to learn to tell friend from foe.”

The agents will have the ability to communicate, using a ‘native vocabulary’ of a few simple words like, ‘food’, ‘near’, and ‘agent’. “One interesting question is how they will communicate,” says Eiben. “Naturally, the linguists want to see how they develop a spoken language, but for the AI researchers we will also test to see if there are possible alternatives – telepathy, for example.” Some basic rules will also be given, along the lines of, “if it’s hot, it burns,” but agents are expected to add to the rule set as they discover new ‘laws of nature.’

Ready to start experimentation

Currently, NEW TIES is on the brink between development - now pretty much complete - and scientific experiment, which can begin once calibration is completed. “We are ready to start the interaction,” says Eiben, adding that the team hopes to scale up to 5,000 computers, and a vast population of agents, because “then we’ll really see some emergent behaviours.”

In the meantime, he points to some intriguing results obtained from other platforms. His own findings have established that aggressive behaviour, surprisingly, increases in agent-worlds as life becomes easier, while an ideal world (‘ideal’ meaning maximum survival) has two main attributes: flexibility and mobility.

Eiben cautions against applying the findings from simple computer worlds to reality, yet admits that this ‘shadow world’ effect is the reason why the press have shown so much interest in NEW TIES, and why the project’s ‘it might look like this’ images have been taken as literal representations. Now, in fact, the project is working on a state-of-the-art visualisation for its interface, to make its agents more comprehensible to a public well versed in The Sims and other computer realities.

By the time it has run its course in August 2007, NEW TIES will have provided food for thought in several fields, and perhaps taken us a step closer to the days Eiben anticipates, when politicians will be able to run simulations on computers to test scenarios (for new tax laws, for example) before carrying them out in real life. “Simulators now allow us to optimise car engines or train timetables,” says Eiben. “But why shouldn’t they help us optimise social decision-making?”

Source: IST Results

CIA and Vatican edit Wikipedia entries

2007-08-18T11:52:00.000+03:00

A US hacker's homemade program to pinpoint origins of Wikipedia edits indicates that alterations to the popular online encyclopedia have come from the CIA and the Vatican.

Virgil Griffith's "Wikiscanner" points to Central Intelligence Agency computers as the sources of nearly 300 edits to subjects including Iran's president, the Argentine navy, and China's nuclear arsenal.

A CIA computer was the source of a whiny "Wahhhhh" inserted in a paragraph about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plans for the office.

"While I cannot confirm whether any changes were made from CIA computers, the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly," CIA spokesman George Little said in response to an AFP inquiry.

Wikipedia is a communally refined Internet encyclopedia that taps into the "wisdom of the masses" by letting anyone make changes.

Its founders believe people who know better will quickly correct inaccurate or misleading information.

Griffith, a university graduate student and self-described hacker, says his software matches unique "IP" addresses of computers with Wikipedia records regarding which machines are used to make online edits.

"I came up with the idea when I heard about Congressmen getting caught for whitewashing their Wikipedia pages," Griffith explains on his website.

Most edits listed at Wikiscanner involve minor changes such as spelling. Some alterations involve removing unflattering information, adding facts or inserting insults.

Wikiscanner's roster indicates a Vatican computer was used to remove references to evidence linking Ireland's Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to a decades-old double murder.

Someone at the US Democratic Party's Congressional campaign committee changed a description of conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh to replace "comedian" with "bigot" and dub his listeners "legally retarded."

"We don't condone these sorts of activities and we take every precaution to insure our network is used in a responsible manner," committee spokesman Doug Thornell told AFP.

A Republican Party computer purportedly was used after the US invasion of Iraq to change "occupying forces" to "liberating forces" in a Baath Party entry.

A United Nations computer is identified as the source of an edit that calls a respected Italian journalist a promiscuous racist.

Someone using a US Senate computer altered a profile of veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas to complain she "interrupts" and is annoying.

An edit traced by Wikiscanner to the BBC changes causes of former prime minister Tony Blair's heart palpitations from strong coffee and vigorous gym workouts to vodka and exertion in a bedroom.

Wikiscanner also identified a BBC computer as being used to change US president George W. Bush's middle name from "Walker" to "Wanker" at Wikipedia.

A computer belonging to Reuters news service is listed as adding "mass murderer" to a Wikipedia description of Bush.

Griffith said it appears common for political figures to "whitewash" entries by replacing negative adjectives with flattering ones and that corporations seem inclined to insert criticism of competitors.

Politicians and corporations show similar tendencies to remove critical information, according to Griffith.

Griffith still considers the collaborative open Wikipedia model reliable.

"Overall -- especially for non-controversial topics -- Wikipedia already works," Griffith says on his website.

"For controversial topics, Wikipedia can be made more reliable through techniques like this one ... to counteract vandalism and disinformation."

© 2007 AFP

The Vibration Meaning of Your Birthday

2007-08-17T21:21:00.000+03:00

THE NATURE OF OUR ESSENCE Quantum physics tells us that matter is in actuality a denser form of energy. Thus, what reveals itself to us through our senses as solid, is in actuality a frequency vibration. The body-mind-soul organism, whom we know as ourselves, expresses in the physical world through a unique frequency vibration. Each one of us has a personal signature, as it were, which constitutes the essence of our being. It is based upon our birth date.

Becoming more aware of our unique expression, offers us the opportunity of aligning ourselves more harmoniously with that expression, thus bringing our true-life purpose into focus.

HOW IT WORKS Pythagoras, the mystical mathematician, refined and built upon earlier understandings regarding the quality of vibration inherent in the nine numbers we ordinarily use simply for counting things.

Each number, one through nine, carries a vibration that has a certain meaning relating to the nature of the universe, and the nature of being in terms of the human expression. The sequence of the numbers follows a progression akin to growth, i.e. the development of an individual.

One [1] relates to the energy of outward expressing personality, the beginning of a developing consciousness, the ego-self. Two [2] relates to the energy of duality, of analytical thinking; and as well to the balancing energy of analysis and synthesis, in other words, harmony. Three [3] relates to the energy of creative activity, not just solely artistic activity such as painting or writing or some other art form, but also in the field of creative interaction with life in general and with individuals and groups. Four [4] relates to the energy of stability, like the four legs of a table, thus providing a stable platform for further actions. Five [5] relates to the energy of action, of active participation in whatever mode of movement towards one's fulfillment. Six [6] relates to the energy of compassion, of the caring and empathetic feelings one may be capable of expressing towards others as well as toward self. Seven [7] relates to the energy of spirituality, of spiritual, scientific and intellectual investigation. Here the level of one's consciousness has moved well beyond ordinary personality concerns and takes up an interest in personal spiritual development. Eight [8] relates to the energy of leadership. On the mundane level, this energy may be expressed in various external forms of leadership, such as the head of a group, organization, company or governmental body. On the inner mode, this energy may be seen as providing the individual with self-mastery leadership on the path to Self-Realization and Oneness. Nine [9] relates to the mystical energy that expresses as wholeness. This energy expresses the creative force of the number 3 in a magnified manner as 3 x 3, like a Holy Trinity as it were. In its outward form, it reveals an individual that could be seen as a great humanitarian, a bringer of wisdom to a group as well as to one's self.

All these number/energies can be seen as carrying cosmic power into the manifest world. Each of us comes into the world on the wave of one of these energy/numbers. The day we are born represents a particular moment in cosmic terms, a particular and precise placement of the individual and our planet in the energetic field of manifestation. And thus, as in the science of Astrology, the individual has an energy signature, so to speak. And this energy signature represents the predominate manner in which an individual will be expressing during the life of the person. This energy number is ascertained from one's birth date. The numbers that speak of the date of your birth, can be reduced to a single digit by adding the units until one number remains. This remaining, single number becomes the birth number, the energy of expression for the life of the individual.

By adding the numbers of your birth date, month, day, and year, and reducing the sum to a single digit, you arrive at your prime birth/life expression number.

Example: January 9, 1982 reduced to a single digit can be viewed first as: 1-18-1983, which becomes 1-9-21, then becomes 1-9-3, which resolves to 13, and then 4.

A person with the birth energy of 4 will be expressing her creative style, mainly through addressing issues relating to stability. She would tend toward being well organized in her personal life, an orderly home, a methodical way of accomplishing tasks, and so forth. She would also tend to shun erratic behavior, and would probably not enjoy being too closely associated with scattered individuals. A steady work environment would be her preference.

Since there are only nine numbers out of which we express our birth-given creative energy, one might assume there are only nine human types running around on the planet. But this is not the case for there are underlying numbers [the month, day and year numbers] that offer distinctions. These underlying energy-expressions denote the more subtle qualities of the life-expression, birth number. Thus, you can interpret a person's life-expression by integrating the four vibrations [numbers] that make up the whole birth day configuration.

To learn more about numerology in depth,visit http://joyfulnumerology.com for an in-depth understanding.

A Star with a Comet's Tail

2007-08-16T05:14:00.000+03:00

Astronomers using a NASA space telescope, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, have spotted an amazingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space. The star, named Mira after the Latin word for "wonderful," has been a favorite of astronomers for about 400 years, yet this is the first time the tail has been seen.

Galaxy Evolution Explorer--"GALEX" for short--scanned the popular star during its ongoing survey of the entire sky in ultraviolet light. Astronomers then noticed what looked like a comet with a gargantuan tail. In fact, material blowing off Mira is forming a wake 13 light-years long, or about 20,000 times the average distance of Pluto from the sun. Nothing like this has ever been seen before around a star.

"I was shocked when I first saw this completely unexpected, humongous tail trailing behind a well-known star," says Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology. "It was amazing how Mira's tail echoed on vast, interstellar scales the familiar phenomena of a jet's contrail or a speedboat's turbulent wake." Martin is the principal investigator for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, and lead author of a Nature paper appearing today to announce the discovery.

Astronomers say Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems. Mira is an older star called a red giant that is losing massive amounts of surface material. As Mira hurtles along, its tail sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed for new stars, planets and possibly even life to form. This tail material, visible now for the first time, has been released over the past 30,000 years.

"This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved," says co-author Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena. "We hope to be able to read Mira's tail like a ticker tape to learn about the star's life."

Billions of years ago, Mira was similar to our sun. Over time, it began to swell into what's called a variable red giant - a pulsating, puffed-up star that periodically grows bright enough to see with the naked eye. Mira will eventually eject all of its remaining gas into space, forming a colorful shell called a planetary nebula. The nebula will fade with time, leaving only the burnt-out core of the original star, which will then be called a white dwarf.

Compared to other red giants, Mira is traveling unusually fast, possibly due to gravitational boosts from other passing stars over time. It now plows along at 130 kilometers per second, or 291,000 miles per hour. Racing along with Mira is a small, distant companion thought to be a white dwarf. The pair, also known as Mira A (the red giant) and Mira B (the white dwarf), orbit slowly around each other as they travel together through the constellation Cetus 350 light-years from Earth.

In addition to Mira's tail, GALEX also discovered a bow shock, a type of buildup of hot gas, in front of the star, and two sinuous streams of material coming out of the star's front and back. Astronomers think hot gas in the bow shock is heating up the gas blowing off the star, causing it to fluoresce with ultraviolet light. This glowing material then swirls around behind the star, creating a turbulent, tail-like wake. The process is similar to a speeding boat leaving a choppy wake, or a steam train producing a trail of smoke.

The fact that Mira's tail only glows with ultraviolet light might explain why other telescopes have missed it. GALEX is very sensitive to ultraviolet light and also has an extremely wide field of view, allowing it to scan the sky for unusual ultraviolet activity.

"It's amazing to discover such a startlingly large and important feature of an object that has been known and studied for over 400 years," says James D. Neill of Caltech. "This is exactly the kind of surprise that comes from a survey mission like the Galaxy Evolution Explorer."

Drinking Too Much Water Can Kill

2007-07-22T19:13:00.000+03:00

In a hydration-obsessed culture, people can and do drink themselves to death.

Liquid H2O is the sine qua non of life. Making up about 66 percent of the human body, water runs through the blood, inhabits the cells, and lurks in the spaces between. At every moment water escapes the body through sweat, urination, defecation or exhaled breath, among other routes. Replacing these lost stores is essential but rehydration can be overdone. There is such a thing as a fatal water overdose.

Earlier this year, a 28-year-old California woman died after competing in a radio station's on-air water-drinking contest. After downing some six liters of water in three hours in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" (Nintendo game console) contest, Jennifer Strange vomited, went home with a splitting headache, and died from so-called water intoxication.

There are many other tragic examples of death by water. In 2005 a fraternity hazing at California State University, Chico, left a 21-year-old man dead after he was forced to drink excessive amounts of water between rounds of push-ups in a cold basement. Club-goers taking MDMA ("ecstasy") have died after consuming copious amounts of water trying to rehydrate following long nights of dancing and sweating. Going overboard in attempts to rehydrate is also common among endurance athletes. A 2005 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that close to one sixth of marathon runners develop some degree of hyponatremia, or dilution of the blood caused by drinking too much water.

Hyponatremia, a word cobbled together from Latin and Greek roots, translates as "insufficient salt in the blood." Quantitatively speaking, it means having a blood sodium concentration below 135 millimoles per liter, or approximately 0.4 ounces per gallon, the normal concentration lying somewhere between 135 and 145 millimoles per liter. Severe cases of hyponatremia can lead to water intoxication, an illness whose symptoms include headache, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, frequent urination and mental disorientation.

In humans the kidneys control the amount of water, salts and other solutes leaving the body by sieving blood through their millions of twisted tubules. When a person drinks too much water in a short period of time, the kidneys cannot flush it out fast enough and the blood becomes waterlogged. Drawn to regions where the concentration of salt and other dissolved substances is higher, excess water leaves the blood and ultimately enters the cells, which swell like balloons to accommodate it.

Most cells have room to stretch because they are embedded in flexible tissues such as fat and muscle, but this is not the case for neurons. Brain cells are tightly packaged inside a rigid boney cage, the skull, and they have to share this space with blood and cerebrospinal fluid, explains Wolfgang Liedtke, a clinical neuroscientist at Duke University Medical Center. "Inside the skull there is almost zero room to expand and swell," he says.

Thus, brain edema, or swelling, can be disastrous. "Rapid and severe hyponatremia causes entry of water into brain cells leading to brain swelling, which manifests as seizures, coma, respiratory arrest, brain stem herniation and death," explains M. Amin Arnaout, chief of nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Where did people get the idea that guzzling enormous quantities of water is healthful? A few years ago Heinz Valtin, a kidney specialist from Dartmouth Medical School, decided to determine if the common advice to drink eight, eight-ounce glasses of water per day could hold up to scientific scrutiny. After scouring the peer-reviewed literature, Valtin concluded that no scientific studies support the "eight x eight" dictum (for healthy adults living in temperate climates and doing mild exercise). In fact, drinking this much or more "could be harmful, both in precipitating potentially dangerous hyponatremia and exposure to pollutants, and also in making many people feel guilty for not drinking enough," he wrote in his 2002 review for the American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. And since he published his findings, Valtin says, "not a single scientific report published in a peer-reviewed publication has proven the contrary."

Most cases of water poisoning do not result from simply drinking too much water, says Joseph Verbalis, chairman of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. It is usually a combination of excessive fluid intake and increased secretion of vasopression (also called antidiuretic hormone), he explains. Produced by the hypothalamus and secreted into the bloodstream by the posterior pituitary gland, vasopressin instructs the kidneys to conserve water. Its secretion increases in periods of physical stress—during a marathon, for example—and may cause the body to conserve water even if a person is drinking excessive quantities.

Every hour, a healthy kidney at rest can excrete 800 to 1,000 milliliters, or 0.21 to 0.26 gallon, of water and therefore a person can drink water at a rate of 800 to 1,000 milliliters per hour without experiencing a net gain in water, Verbalis explains. If that same person is running a marathon, however, the stress of the situation will increase vasopressin levels, reducing the kidney's excretion capacity to as low as 100 milliliters per hour. Drinking 800 to 1,000 milliliters of water per hour under these conditions can potentially lead a net gain in water, even with considerable sweating, he says.

While exercising, "you should balance what you're drinking with what you're sweating," and that includes sports drinks, which can also cause hyponatremia when consumed in excess, Verbalis advises. "If you're sweating 500 milliliters per hour, that is what you should be drinking."

But measuring sweat output is not easy. How can a marathon runner, or any person, determine how much water to consume? As long as you are healthy and equipped with a thirst barometer unimpaired by old age or mind-altering drugs, follow Verbalis's advice, "drink to your thirst. It's the best indicator."

When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One

2007-05-24T08:13:00.000+03:00

You might not want to do it, but removing half of your brain will not significantly impact who you are

The operation known as hemispherectomy—where half the brain is removed—sounds too radical to ever consider, much less perform. In the last century, however, surgeons have performed it hundreds of times for disorders uncontrollable in any other way. Unbelievably, the surgery has no apparent effect on personality or memory.

The first known hemispherectomy was performed on a dog in 1888 by German physiologist Friedrich Goltz. In humans, neurosurgeon Walter Dandy pioneered the operation at Johns Hopkins University in 1923 on a brain tumor patient. (That man lived for more than three years before ultimately succumbing to cancer.) The procedure is among the most drastic kinds of brain surgery—"You can't take more than half. If you take the whole thing, you've got a problem," Johns Hopkins neurologist John Freeman quips.

One side effect Canadian neurosurgeon Kenneth McKenzie reported in 1938 after a hemispherectomy on a 16-year-old girl who suffered a stroke was that her seizures stopped. Nowadays, the surgery is performed on patients who suffer dozens of seizures every day that resist all medication, and which are due to conditions that mostly afflict one hemisphere. "These disorders are often progressive and damage the rest of the brain if not treated," University of California, Los Angeles, neurosurgeon Gary Mathern says. Freeman concurs: "Hemispherectomy is something that one only does when the alternatives are worse."

Anatomical hemispherectomies involve the removal of the entire hemisphere, whereas functional hemispherectomies only take out parts of a hemisphere, as well as severing the corpus callosum, the fiber bundle that connects the two halves of the brain. The evacuated cavity is left empty, filling with cerebrospinal fluid in a day or so.

The strength of anatomical hemispherectomies, a specialty of Hopkins, lies in the fact that "leaving even a little bit of brain behind can lead seizures to return," Freeman says. On the other hand, functional hemispherectomies, which U.C.L.A. surgeons usually perform, lead to less blood loss. "Our patients are usually under two years of age, so they have less blood to lose," Mathern says. Most Hopkins hemispherectomy patients are five to 10 years old.

Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children as young as three months old. Astonishingly, memory and personality develop normally. A recent study found that 86 percent of the 111 children who underwent hemispherectomy at Hopkins between 1975 and 2001 are either seizure-free or have nondisabling seizures that do not require medication. The patients who still suffer seizures usually have congenital defects or developmental abnormalities, where brain damage is often not confined to just one hemisphere, Freeman explains.

Another study found that children that underwent hemispherectomies often improved academically once their seizures stopped. "One was champion bowler of her class, one was chess champion of his state, and others are in college doing very nicely," Freeman says.

Of course, the operation has its downside: "You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost," Freeman says.

Remarkably, few other impacts are seen. If the left side of the brain is taken out, "most people have problems with their speech, but it used to be thought that if you took that side out after age two, you'd never talk again, and we've proven that untrue," Freeman says. "The younger a person is when they undergo hemispherectomy, the less disability you have in talking. Where on the right side of the brain speech is transferred to and what it displaces is something nobody has really worked out."

Mathern and his colleagues have recently conducted the first functional magnetic resonance imaging study into hemispherectomy patients, investigating how their brain changes with physical rehabilitation. Probing how the remaining cerebral hemispheres of these patients acquire language, sensory, motor and other functions "could shed a great deal of light on the brain's plasticity, or ability to change," Freeman notes. Still, having half a brain—and therefore only the use of one hand and half a field of vision in each eye—is a condition most would prefer to avoid.

By Charles Choi

Is your bra killing you?

2007-04-19T22:06:00.000+03:00

Underwire Bras Cause Cancer

Sometimes they lift. Sometimes they separate. But do underwire bras cause cancer? Could it be that the very garment designed to offer women support is actually killing them? That's the rumor that has been circulating for decades.

It all began in 1995 with a book called Dressed to Kill, in which Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer, a husband and wife medical anthropologist team, claimed that women who wore tight-fitting bras all day, every day, had a much higher risk of developing breast cancer than those who went au naturel. The authors claimed that by inhibiting lymphatic drainage, bras trapped toxins in the breast tissue, which caused cancer.

According to critics, however, the bra-caused breast cancer theory is not supported by sufficient evidence. Scientists say the research of Singer and Grismaijer failed to exclude confounding variables such as the presence in some women of known risk factors for breast cancer. Thus, the notion of a correlation between wearing a bra and breast cancer does not appear to hold up.

"It just really is not logical in terms of what would increase your risk of breast cancer," says Louise Brinton, chief of the hormonal and reproductive epidemiology branch of the National Cancer Institute. Brinton, who has been doing research in the field for 30 years, says commonly accepted breast cancer risk factors are generally things that affect endogenous hormone levels.

These risk factors include how old a woman is and the age at which she had her first child. (The risk increases for women who have not had children, or who have given birth after the age of 30.) Breast-feeding and exercise are thought to lower risk, whereas a family history of the disease increases it. Scientists also know that 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers are linked to BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.

Marisa Weiss attributes some of the persistence of this urban legend to how frightening the reality of breast cancer can be. As president and founder of the Narberth, Pa.-based nonprofit Web site breastcancer.org, Weiss, who has been in the field for two decades, sees women trying to figure out what in their everyday lives could cause the disease.

Weiss says that although the idea of having one's breasts in cages with metal wires "impeding fluid and marinating breast tissue in toxic liquid" sounds like a reasonable explanation for cancer, it is not. In fact, as she points out, far from being trapped, bodily fluid actually travels up and out of the armpits, not down toward the underwire.

Susan Love is president and medical director of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation in Pacific Palisades, Calif., and a former breast cancer surgeon as well as author of Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book, now in its fourth edition. Love agrees that the bra myth comes from the frustration of not knowing what causes the disease, coupled with a desire that the disease should come from the outside, from something a woman can control.

"You find people less wanting to think about birth control pills, hormone replacement therapy and fertility drugs," she says, "and more about pesticides, bras and deodorant. We don't know what causes breast cancer, and the majority of the risk factors that we know about do not explain it. However," she adds, "I don't think bras—or the lack thereof—are the secret answer."

New Species Declared: Clouded Leopard On Borneo And Sumatra

2007-03-15T21:01:00.000+02:00

Bornean clouded leopard Neofelis diardi Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), Indonesia.

Bornean clouded leopard (neofelis diardi) Kalimantan and Sumatra, Indonesia.
(Credit: Image courtesy of World Wildlife Fund)

Scientists have discovered that the clouded leopard found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra is an entirely new species of cat. The secretive rainforest animal was originally thought to be the same species as the one found in mainland Southeast Asia.

Genetic analysis conducted at the U.S. National Cancer Institute shows that the difference between the two clouded leopard species is comparable to the differences between other large cat species like lions, tigers, and jaguars. Scientists believe the new species of clouded leopard diverged from the mainland population some 1.4 million years ago.

"Genetic research results clearly indicate that the clouded leopards of Borneo and Sumatra should be considered a separate species," said Dr Stephen O'Brien, Head of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, U.S. National Cancer Institute. "DNA tests highlighted around 40 differences between the two species."

The results of the genetic study are supported by separate research on geographical variation in the clouded leopard, based mainly on fur patterns and coloration of skins held in museums and collections.

"The moment we started comparing the skins of the mainland clouded leopard and the leopard found on Borneo and Sumatra, it was clear we were comparing two different species," said Dr Andrew Kitchener, from the Department of Natural Sciences, National Museums Scotland and lead author of the scientific paper that described the new species. "It's incredible that no one has ever noticed these differences."

The new clouded leopard species is generally darker than the mainland species, has small cloud markings, many distinct spots within the cloud markings, grayer fur, and a double dorsal stripe. Clouded leopards from the mainland have large clouds on their skin with fewer, often faint, spots within the cloud markings, and they are lighter in color, with a tendency toward tawny-colored fur and a partial double dorsal stripe.

"Who said a leopard can never change its spots? For over a hundred years we have been looking at this animal and never realized it was unique," said Adam Tomasek, head of WWF's Borneo and Sumatra program. "The fact that Borneo's top predator is now considered a separate species further emphasizes the uniqueness of the island and the importance of conserving the Heart of Borneo."

Clouded leopards are the biggest predators on Borneo. Some grow to be as large as a small panther, and have the longest canine teeth relative to body size of any cat. Sumatran tigers are the largest predators on Sumatra.

Between 5,000 and 11,000 clouded leopards are estimated to live on Borneo. The total number in Sumatra could be in the range of 3,000 to 7,000 individuals. However, further studies are needed to obtain better population data. Habitat destruction is the cat's main threat.

The last great forest home of the Bornean Clouded Leopard is the Heart of Borneo, a wild, mountainous region of rainforest the size of Kansas. WWF recently released a report showing that scientists had identified at least 52 new species of animals and plants over the past year on Borneo.

Last month in Bali (Indonesia), the ministers of the three Bornean governments - Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia and Malaysia - signed an historic Declaration to conserve and sustainably manage the Heart of Borneo.

source : WWF

21st century technology cracks alchemists' secret recipe

2007-01-07T11:09:00.000+02:00

500-year old mystery surrounding the centerpiece of the alchemists' lab kit has been solved by UCL (University College London) and Cardiff University archaeologists.

Since the Middle Ages, mixing vessels – or crucibles – manufactured in the Hesse region of Germany have been world renowned because of their ability to withstand strong reagents and high temperatures.

Previous work by the team has shown that Hessian crucibles have been found in archaeological sites across the world, including Scandinavia, Central Europe, Spain, Portugal, the UK, and even colonial America. At the time, many people tried to reproduce them but always failed.

Now, writing in Nature, the researchers reveal using petrographic, chemical and X-ray diffraction analysis that Hessian crucible makers made use of an advanced material only properly identified and named in the 20th century.

Dr Marcos Martinón-Torres, of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, who led the study, explains: "Our analysis of 50 Hessian and non-Hessian crucibles revealed that the secret component in their manufacture is an aluminium silicate known as mullite (Al6Si2O13).

"Today mullite is used in a wide range of modern conventional and advanced ceramics, such as building materials, electronic packaging devices, optical materials and catalytic converters, as well as in ceramic matrix composites such as thermal protection systems and liners for aircraft and stationary gas turbine engines.

"This material was only first described in the 20th century, though Hessian crucible makers were already taking advantage of this peculiar aluminium silicate 400 years earlier: they synthesised mullite by manufacturing their crucibles with kaolinitic clay and then firing them at temperatures above 1100 degrees.

"Mullite is extremely resistant to thermal, chemical and mechanical stresses, and that's what made the crucibles so fit for their functions. It is thanks to the availability of Hessian crucibles that the discovery of some elements and their thermochemical behaviour could take place.

"Crucible makers were not aware of mullite, but they mastered a very successful recipe, and that's why they kept it constant, and secret, for centuries."

Professor Ian Freestone, Cardiff School of History and Archaeology, said: "Manufacture of the crucibles used in early metallurgy and alchemy challenged the potters as they were required to withstand conditions more extreme than those required of other ceramics. In this case we find that the properties of a material which we regard as modern and high-tech, in this case mullite, were being exploited centuries ago by craftsmen who had a limited scientific understanding of their products but a great deal of skill and ingenuity."

Source: University College London