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This is the weblog of
Raymond Powers.
Here I will be sharing what I find of import, humor, concern, inspiration and on the transformational edge
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A Quote:
Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed. --Howard Nemerov
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Raymond lives in Ojai, where the time now is:
01:04AM
Unique Readers:
Primarily
Public Domain
Everything I've written here, except my copyrighted
essays, poetry, lyrics, and music is hereby placed in the public
domain. The quotes from other people's writings, and the pictures
used might or might not be copyrighted, but are considered fair
use. Thus the license here would best be described as:
Primarily Public
Domain.
Please ask permission if there is any question in
regards to public domain usage.
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| Monday, June 16, 2003 |  |
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 16 Jun 2003 @ 00:21
Experts To Repair 'Faeces Fossil'
The Viking fossil is a key attraction at the museum Archaeologists are carrying out one of their most delicate projects to date - the careful restoration of 1200-year-old human faeces. Measuring 20cm by 5cm, the exhibit is thought to be the largest fossilised human excrement ever found.
But despite surviving for well over 1,000 years, the Viking relic was broken into three pieces during a recent school visit to its home, the Archaeological Resource Centre (Arc) in York.
Now team member Gill Snape, a student from the University of Bradford, has the unenviable task of restoring the artefact to its former glory.
But despite admitting she has "never done anything quite like this before", the 21-year-old told BBC News Online it was not quite the revolting job people assumed.
"It's rock hard, it doesn't smell and it's certainly not squishy," said Ms Snape.
Centrepiece attraction
Museum chiefs are desperate to see their star exhibit glued back together because it is popular with the schoolchildren that make up a large percentage of their visitors.
"The kids loved it," Ms Snape added.
"We've even had thank you letters saying 'thank you for showing us the poo'."
After it is delicately glued back together, Ms Snape said the fossil would be mounted on perspex for visitors to "fully appreciate its glory as the centrepiece of the Arc".
And she had a message for anyone who doubted the impressive stature of the item, which was discovered in 1972 on land now occupied by Lloyds TSB Bank in York.
"It's huge - and bear in mind it's shrunk since it was deposited," she added.
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| Sunday, June 15, 2003 | |
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 15 Jun 2003 @ 12:08
Nature Science Update
Mice make their own signposts
First evidence of animal creating markers to navigate
2 May 2003
Hannah Hoag
Wood mice fashion portable signposts from bright leaves and shells when they explore fields for food, a new study suggests. This is the first time that animals other than humans have been found to use moveable landmarks. "No one thought that mice would be clever enough to use tools for navigation," says biologist Pavel Stopka of Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic.
Wood mice fashion portable signposts from bright leaves and shells when they explore fields for food, a new study suggests.
This is the first time that animals other than humans have been found to use moveable landmarks. "No one thought that mice would be clever enough to use tools for navigation," says biologist Pavel Stopka of Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic.
Wood mice live in large fields that often lack features that they might use to locate nests, food sources or danger zones. So the animals build bundles of leaves and twigs as they explore, report Stopka and his colleague, David Macdonald of the University of Oxford, UK.
When a mouse has thoroughly investigated a place it picks up its pile and moves on. In the lab, the rodents did the same with small plastic disks that the researchers gave them. Should a predator send a mouse scurrying for cover, a quick glance at a marker returns it to where it was before the disturbance.
"It's extremely interesting as a potential new mechanism that wood mice use to find their way back to places," says Jane Hurst of the University of Liverpool, UK, who studies scent cues in the common house mouse2. "It gives us new insight into the capabilities of these animals - most people think they are pretty dim," she says.
But the use of scent should be ruled out, Hurst warns. "All rodents have scent glands in the mouth area," she says. The house mouse signposts its territory with urinary proteins, but wood mice don't do this, as these signs could reveal their location to predators.
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| Monday, June 9, 2003 | |
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 9 Jun 2003 @ 09:01
From Environmental Working Group
In two to five minutes on a conventional stovetop, cookware coated with Teflon and other non-stick surfaces can exceed temperatures at which the coating breaks apart and emits toxic particles and gases linked to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pet bird deaths and an unknown number of human illnesses each year, according to tests commissioned by Environmental Working Group (EWG).
In new tests conducted by a university food safety professor, a generic non-stick frying pan preheated on a conventional, electric stovetop burner reached 736°F in three minutes and 20 seconds, with temperatures still rising when the tests were terminated. A Teflon pan reached 721°F in just five minutes under the same test conditions (See Figure 1), as measured by a commercially available infrared thermometer. DuPont studies show that the Teflon offgases toxic particulates at 446°F. At 680°F Teflon pans release at least six toxic gases, including two carcinogens, two global pollutants, and MFA, a chemical lethal to humans at low doses. At temperatures that DuPont scientists claim are reached on stovetop drip pans (1000°F), non-stick coatings break down to a chemical warfare agent known as PFIB, and a chemical analog of the WWII nerve gas phosgene.
For the past fifty years DuPont has claimed that their Teflon coatings do not emit hazardous chemicals through normal use. In a recent press release, DuPont wrote that "significant decomposition of the coating will occur only when temperatures exceed about 660 degrees F (340 degrees C). These temperatures alone are well above the normal cooking range." More >
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| Sunday, June 1, 2003 | |
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 1 Jun 2003 @ 21:25
?Another symptom of a culture afraid of growing old?
Testosterone In A Tube
CBS News
May 19, 2003
Founders of a 3-year-old pharmaceutical company hope that for aging baby boomers, the Fountain of Youth will come in a tube.
Auxilium Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s first product is a gel called Testim, sold in small one-dose tubes and prescribed for men with low testosterone levels.
Patients rub it on their arms and shoulders to restore normal levels of the hormone and combat the sagging sex drive, low energy, depression and dwindling muscle mass and bone density a deficiency can cause.
The market for testosterone replacement therapies is growing fast as the population of older men increases.
"We are fortunate timing-wise, because men have taken a much more active role in the management of their own health," said Gerri Henwood, president and chief executive officer of Auxilium.
That's partly because they're aging, and partly sparked by Pfizer's introduction of the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, with its five years of promotions featuring Bob Dole, racecar driver Mark Martin and other celebrities.
"Viagra has had a role in that there are areas that are much more open for discussion between men and their physicians," Henwood said.
Testosterone treatments are in the spotlight, said Dr. Alvin M. Matsumoto, a gerontologist at the University of Washington and the Veterans Administration Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle.
Testosterone replacement therapy has been done for years using injections, but levels can fluctuate from above normal just after the shot to below normal before the next shot about two weeks later.
Some patients don't feel the roller coaster effect, but others run out of energy before the next injection, Matsumoto said.
Testosterone patches also have been used but tend to result in lower levels of the hormone and sometimes can cause rashes and skin irritation, he said.
Testosterone levels normally decline gradually in men over 30, and researchers are looking at whether testosterone replacement should be used only for those with levels far below normal, who experience severe symptoms, or should be given to counteract the normal decline.
That became a focus since a report last year that hormone replacement therapy frequently prescribed for women actually increased the risk of heart attacks, strokes and breast cancer, leading most doctors to recommend it only for short-term treatment of menopausal symptoms.
Henwood and Jane Hollingsworth, a vice president in a clinical trials company Henwood had previously launched, founded Auxilium shortly after that company was sold in 1998.
"Jane and I started brainstorming about where were there therapeutic opportunities for small companies to enter the market," Henwood said.
They settled on products to help people continue to function normally as they age. Auxilium is Latin for "assistance."
Testim is only the second testosterone gel to get Food and Drug Administration approval.
IMS Health, which tracks prescription drug sales, has said the market for testosterone products in general jumped from $49 million in 1997 to $216 million last year.
The first testosterone gel on the market, Androgel, launched by the Belgian pharmaceutical company Solvay S.A. in 2000, posted about $196 million in U.S. sales last year, a 52 percent jump from 2001. More >
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 1 Jun 2003 @ 21:07
Earth Probe Plan Would Blast A Path To The Core
National Geographic News
May 14, 2003
A scientist proposes sending a grapefruit-size communication device into the heart of the Earth by blasting a crack in the surface and pouring in a huge quantity of molten iron. The weight of the liquid metal would crack the Earth for more than 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers), carrying the probe to the planet's core in about a week.
The probe would measure temperature, electrical conductivity, and chemical composition, and would beam back data as encoded sound waves to a surface detector.
David J. Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena outlines the plan in the May 16 issue of the scientific journal Nature.
"Planetary missions have enhanced our understanding of the solar system and how planets work, but no comparable exploratory effort has been directed towards the Earth's interior, where equally fascinating scientific issues are waiting to be investigated," Stevenson said in his paper. "I propose a scheme for a mission to the Earth's core, in which a small communication probe would be conveyed in a huge volume of liquid-iron alloy migrating down to the core along a crack that is propagating under the action of gravity."
The proposal might sound ambitious, but it's modest in comparison with the demands of space exploration, Stevenson said.
"We live on the Earth's surface, which divides what is above from what is below. The part above us, the rest of the universe, is mostly empty, mostly unknownSThe part below is crammed with interesting stuff and is also mostly unknown, despite its much greater proximity to us."
Stevenson calculated that the energy required to create the crack to launch the probe would be equivalent to a few megatons of TNT, an earthquake of magnitude 7 on the Richter scale, or a nuclear device such as those already possessed by many nations.
It may also be feasible to make use of existing favorable stress environments in the Earth and to avoid the use of nuclear devices, Stevenson said in his paper. "The technological challenge of initiating the crack should be less than that posed by the Manhattan Project," he said, referring to the code name for America's first atomic bomb.
Proven Technologies
According to Stevenson's calculations, it should be possible to send a probe all the way to Earth's core by combining several proven technologies with a few well-grounded scientific assumptions about the workings of the planet.
"We've spent more than [U.S.] $10 billion in unmanned missions to the planets," said Stevenson, who is the Van Osdol Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech. "But we've only been down about ten kilometers [6 miles] into our own planet."
The benefits to science would be significant, Stevenson said, because so little has been directly observed about the inner workings of the Earth. Scientists do not know, for example, the exact composition or even the temperature of the core, and what they do know is based on inferences about seismic data accumulated during earthquakes.
Stevenson said his proposal should be attractive to the scientific community because it is of the same scale, price-wise, as planetary exploration. To date, NASA has flown unmanned missions past all the planets except Pluto, has made a few highly successful soft landings on Mars, has probed the clouds of Jupiter, is getting ready to probe the atmosphere of Titan, and has sent four spacecraft into interstellar space. Sending something into the Earth, Stevenson believes, will have comparable payoffs in the quest for knowledge.
"When we fly to other worlds, we are often surprised by what we find, and I think the same will be the case if we go down."
A Million Tons of Molten Iron
According to Stevenson, the crack that will have to be blasted into the Earth's surface to launch the probe will need to be several hundred meters in depth, and about a foot (30 centimeters) wide, to accommodate a volume of about 100,000 to several million tons of molten iron.
The instant the crack opens, the entire volume of iron will be dropped in, completely filling the open space, he said. Through the sheer force of its weight, the iron will create a continuing crack that will open all the way to the planet's core 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) below. Anything on a smaller scale may not work; anything larger will be even more expensive, so Stevenson thinks a crack of those dimensions is about right.
"Once you set that condition up, the crack is self-perpetuating," Stevenson said. "It's fundamentally different from drilling, where it gets harder and harder -- and eventually futile -- the farther you go down."
The iron will continue to fall due to gravity because it is about twice the density of the surrounding material. Riding along in the mass of liquid iron will be one or more probes made of a material robust enough to withstand the heat and pressure. The probe will perhaps be the size of a grapefruit but definitely small enough to ride easily inside the 12-inch (30-centimeter) crack without getting wedged, Stevenson said.
Inside the probe will be instrumentation for data collection, which will be relayed through low-intensity mechanical waves of some sort. Because radio waves cannot propagate through Earth, this is the only way to get the data transferred, Stevenson said.
Based on the rate the molten iron would fall due to gravity, the ball would move downward into Earth at roughly human running pace (about 10 miles/16 kilometers per hour), Stevenson said.
"Each of the principles involved is based on sound knowledge of crack propagation, fluid dynamics, mechanical-wave propagation, and 'stress states,'" Stevenson said. "If these things didn't already work in nature, we would have no volcanoes and poorly performing bathroom plumbing, but little to fear from a pebble shattering our windshields."
The biggest question should not be the cost, but whether we should pursue the goal of exploring Earth's interior, he said. "That said, I'd suggest we do it if we can keep the cost under [U.S.] $10 billion."
This proposal is modest compared with the space program, Stevenson said, and may seem unrealistic only because so little effort has been devoted to it. "The time has come for action." More >
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| Thursday, May 29, 2003 | |
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 29 May 2003 @ 16:44
Mesopotamia: The Lost Secrets
The above link has an awesome gallery of images from archeological sites in Mesopotamia.
How much of this has been damaged or destroyed due to U.S. endeavors in this part of the world?
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| Wednesday, May 28, 2003 | |
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| Wednesday, May 21, 2003 | |
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 21 May 2003 @ 18:30
Take water and potash, add electricity and get - a mystery
By Robert Matthews
Science Correspondent
news.telegraph.uk
(Filed: 18/05/2003)
British researchers believe that they have made a groundbreaking scientific discovery after apparently managing to "create" energy from hydrogen atoms.
In results independently verified at Bristol University, a team from Gardner Watts - an environmental technology company based in Dedham, Essex - show a "thermal energy cell" which appears to produce hundreds of times more energy than that put into it. If the findings are correct and can be reproduced on a commercial scale, the thermal energy cell could become a feature of every home, heating water for a fraction of the cost and cutting fuel bills by at least 90 per cent.
The makers of the cell, which passes an electric current through a liquid between two electrodes, admit that they cannot explain precisely how the invention works. They insist, however, that their cell is not just a repeat of the notorious "cold fusion" debacle of the late 1980s. Then two scientists claimed to have found a way of generating nuclear energy from a similar-looking device at room temperature. The findings were widely challenged and the scientists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, accused of incompetence, fled America to set up labs in France.
"We are absolutely not saying this is cold fusion, or that we have found a way round the law of energy conservation," said Christopher Davies, the managing director of Gardner Watts.
"What we are saying is that the device seems to tap into another, previously unrecognised source of energy."
According to Mr Davies, the cell is the product of research into the fundamental properties of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. He argues that calculations based on quantum theory, the laws of the sub-atomic world, suggest that hydrogen can exist in a so-called metastable state that harbours a potential source of extra energy.
This theory suggests that if electricity were passed into a mixture of water and a chemical catalyst, the extra energy would be released in the form of heat.
After some experimentation, the team found that a small amount of electricity passed through a mixture of water and potassium carbonate - potash - released an astonishing amount of energy.
"It generates a lot of heat in a very small volume," said Christopher Eccles, the chief scientist at Gardner Watts.
The findings of the Gardner Watts team were tested by Dr Jason Riley of Bristol University, who found energy gains of between three and 26 times what had been put in.
In a written report, Dr Riley concluded: "Using the apparatus supplied by Gardner Watts and the procedure of analysis suggested by the company, there appears to be an energy gain in the system."
In tests performed for The Telegraph, the cell heated water to near-boiling, apparently producing more than three times the amount of energy fed into it.
Scientists admit to being astonished by the sheer size of the energy increase produced by the cell. "I've never seen a claim like this before," said Prof Stephen Smith of the physics department at Essex University.
"In the case of cold fusion, people talked about getting a 10 per cent energy gain or so, which could be explained away quite easily but this is much too big for that."
Prof Smith said he was sceptical about the theory put forward by the company. He conceded, however, that scientists had also been baffled by the source of energy driving radioactivity, as the key equation involved - Einstein's famous E=MC2 - had yet to be discovered.
According to Prof Smith, if there is a flaw in the company's claims, it lies in the measurement of the amount of electrical energy pumped into the cell. It is possible that, as sparks pass between the electrodes, there is an energy surge which would not be picked up by the instruments measuring the electrical input.
Prof Smith said: "This needs to be very carefully checked, as there could be far more energy going in than the makers think."
Prof Smith's views were echoed by Dr Riley, who said: "There's no doubt that there was a heat rise but I'd like to see a more thorough investigation of the electrical energy supplied into the cell."
While many scientists are trying to solve the mystery of the thermal energy cell, its huge commercial potential has already caused interest.
Cambridge Consultants, one of Britain's most prestigious technology consultancies, has teamed up with Mr Davies and his colleagues to develop a working prototype. "We've had a multi-disciplinary team working on this, and we're perplexed," said Duncan Bishop, head of process development at Cambridge Consultants.
"We are offering to risk-share on it, as it will need about £200,000 to prove the principle behind it."
According to the Gardner Watts team, it will take about six months to carry out tests putting the reality of the effect beyond all doubt. The company then plans to develop a prototype capable of turning less than one kilowatt of electrical power into 10 kilowatts of heat.
Mr Davies said: "The technology could be licensed by a company making household boilers for the domestic market. " He added that the plan is to have the first thermal energy cell devices on the market within two years.
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 21 May 2003 @ 10:55
Ancient Nicaraguan Society Found
By Richard Black
BBC science correspondent
Archaeologists have discovered what they describe as a previously unknown ancient civilisation in Central America.
The site, near the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, dates from before the Mayan era, and relics include what appears to be a centre for mass production of ceremonial columns.
Researchers have been working on the site at El Cascal de Flor de Pino, near the town of Kukra Hill for six years.
They've found evidence of an ancient town and several outlying villages, which developed around 2,700 years ago and lasted for a thousand years.
There are monuments, petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pottery, and most remarkably, an area where many huge columns were formed out of rock - columns which may have been used at burial sites.
Extends Range
"The pottery is similar to pre-classical pottery found at sites of similar age in Belize," Dr Ermengol Gassiot, of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain, told BBC News Online.
"And the columns resemble those found at Mexican sites where they had ritual uses.
"The society had political centres. Kukra Hill, we believe, was a small town, and at least three villages lay around it and were dependent on it."
The newly discovered civilisation is similar to the societies that preceded the Mayan civilisation further to the north.
Independent experts say this shows that the process that led to the founding of the Mayan cities, such as Tikal, Palenque, or Copan (in Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras respectively) covered a much larger geographical region than archaeologists have supposed up to now.
Time before
Much research remains to be done at El Cascal de Flor de Pino but it promises to reveal a vast amount about the various societies and customs which were eventually assimilated into the great culture of the Mayas.
Commenting on the discovery, Jeremy Sabloff, Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, US, said: "This site sounds very exciting and full of potential.
"We're learning lots now about the pre-classical era - the groups which came before the Maya - and this discovery greatly extends the range of these pre-classical civilisations."
In addition to researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the Kukra Hill archaeological team includes members from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). More >
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| Monday, May 19, 2003 | |
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 19 May 2003 @ 09:31
Humans Genes Closer To Dolphins' Than Any Land Animals
By: Seema Kumar
Discovery Channel Online News
For years, marine biologists have told us that dolphins share many traits with humans, including intelligence and friendliness. Now, a comparison of dolphin and human chromosomes shows that the genetic make-up of dolphins is amazingly similar to humans.
In fact, researchers at Texas A&M University have found that dolphins have more in common with us genetically than cows, horses or pigs.
"The extent of the genetic similarity came as a real surprise to us," says David Busbee of Texas A&M University, who published his results in last week's Cytogenetics and Cell Genetics.
This information will not only help researchers construct the genetic blueprint of dolphins, but also bolster conservation efforts.
Aided by the progress made in mapping the human genome, researchers will continue to identify individual genes on dolphin chromosomes. Busbee estimates it will save them 20 years of work, and the similarities and differences will reveal how long ago humans and dolphins branched off the evolutionary tree.
Researchers at Texas A&M University applied "paints," or fluorescently labeled human chromosomes, to dolphin chromosomes, and found that 13 of 22 dolphin chromosomes were exactly the same as human chromosomes.
Of the remaining nine dolphin chromosomes, many were combinations or rearrangements of their human counterparts. Researchers also identified three dolphin genes that were similar to human genes.
Until now, researchers have never been able to do genetic studies of dolphins because they are a protected species, making it difficult to get tissues from them. However, Busbee was able to grow colonies of cells from fetal tissues when a female dolphin miscarried.
"Dolphins are marine mammals that swim in the ocean and it was astonishing to learn that we had more in common with the dolphin than with land mammals," says Horst Hameister, professor of medical genetics at the University of Ulm in Germany.
In the past 15 years, the world's dolphin populations have declined considerably, exacerbated by high levels of PCBs. Researchers speculate that PCBs impair the immune systems of dolphins, leaving them vulnerable to disease.
"If we can show that humans are similar to dolphins, and anything that endangers dolphins is an equal concern for humans, it may be easier to persuade governments to become serious about combating industrial pollution and keeping oceans clean," says Busbee. More >
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| Saturday, May 17, 2003 | |
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 17 May 2003 @ 16:05
How You Sneeze Reveals Your Personality
How you sneeze--a delicate little achoo that barely makes a sound or an explosive blast that brings the neighbors running to see if you're okay--reveals the deepest secrets of your personality.
That's what behavior expert Patti Wood, MA, CSP claims. In a
"she-got-paid-to-do-this?" type study, Wood analyzed the different ways people sneeze and then classified the sneezes into four personality types based on the DISC Model of Behavior. Actually, she did get paid to do it--by Benadryl Allergy medicine. And this is the result of that research. You can psychoanalyze your sneezes on the Benadryl Web site.
(Once you get to the Web site, you'll find the first link to the Achoo IQ Test on the bottom left.) Or, do it the fast and easy way and identify your sneeze below and then read about the personality type that matches it.
THE SENSITIVE SNEEZER
The Sneeze: One small sneeze and it's over. You're so polite, you turn your head away.
The Personality: You are warm and friendly and like a relaxed pace. The most important thing in your life is your relationships with others. You will work to avoid conflict and get along--even if that means keeping your mouth shut or making personal sacrifices. You are loyal, calm, and
dependable. People say you are a good listener, though sometimes you feel interrupted. You are helpful, supportive, and nurturing of others.
THE BE RIGHT SNEEZER
The Sneeze: When you sneeze, you cover your mouth.
The Personality: You are careful, accurate, and a deep thinker. Before you speak, you carefully consider what you will say. You are detailed and precise and catch mistakes that others miss. You have great insights and opinions, but you don't always get a chance to express them. You like to read books that make you think. You enjoy solitude so much that you prefer working by yourself and relaxing at home. You take your time, play by the rules, and wish others would do the same.
THE GET IT DONE SNEEZER
The Sneeze: Whenever it's possible, you hold in your sneeze. When you can't hold it in, the sneeze is big and loud.
The Personality: You are fast, decisive, and to-the-point. You wish others could be the same. You are efficient and uncomplicated. You do not have to rely on others. You are a leader. You are forceful and commanding and work to get things quickly accomplished. You seek physical exertion. You do not like to be used unfairly by others.
THE ENTHUSIASTIC SNEEZER
The Sneeze: You sneeze multiple times very loudly. When you sneeze, everyone in the room knows it.
The Personality: You are a charismatic leader and influencer. You are imaginative and have great "out of the box" ideas. You are intuitive and can inspire and motivate others. You value your relationships and hold them dear. You welcome new people and new opportunities. You are optimistic and spontaneous. You are open and people know what you are
feeling. You are articulate and enjoy a good conversation whether it is on the phone, over dinner, or out socializing.
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| Thursday, May 8, 2003 | |
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8 May 2003 @ 22:43
By Paul Blakemore
The Telegraph - UK (10-22-2)
In 1846, researchers noticed that Uranus was wobbling in a way that confounded Newton's Law of Motion. This meant they had two options: rewrite the most time-honoured of the laws of physics, or "invent" a new planet to account for the extra gravitational pull. Compared to Newton's reputation, an eighth planet seemed much less massive and Neptune was discovered.
Today scientists working in the University of Louisiana have discovered a statistical anomaly of similar proportions. Professors John Matese [see below], Patrick Whitman and Daniel Whitmire have studied the orbits of comets for 20 years, and their recent findings have led to startling theories.
Intrigued by the work of two palaeontologists working for the University of Chicago, Prof Whitmire, along with Nasa colleague Dr Al Jackson, had earlier attempted to explain the amazing discovery that six apocalyptic events, including the extinction of the dinosaurs, have all occurred, like clockwork, every 26 to 30 million years. To try to explain this mass extinction cycle, they looked to the possibility that comet showers were to blame.
The latest effort of Matese, Whitman and Whitmire studies 82 comets from the huge cloud of comets, called the Oort cloud, that exists around our solar system. They took the aphelia of these comets, the points on their orbit that are farthest from our Sun, and plotted them on a globe. Expecting to find an even distribution, they instead found that a particular band of sky, about one sixth the total, contained more than one quarter of all the comets, and that about 25 per cent of the comets coming from this cloud have anomalous paths.
So what was affecting the orbits? They went on to theorise that the best explanation is the existence of a previously unknown body - that our solar system is made up of the Sun and a shadowy partner, either a brown dwarf or a massive planet, in a wide binary system. In effect, the solar system had two stars, the Sun and a dark companion, spinning around each other.
Now I know what you're thinking Surely I'd have noticed a second Sun in the sky? But, as Prof Whitmire explained, the process of assumption based on statistical anomalies has always been a cornerstone of scientific discovery. According to their current theory, he says, "the companion is a brown dwarf star or massive planet of mass between two and six times the mass of Jupiter". A brown dwarf is a star too small to sustain the nuclear fusion that powers our Sun, and so is relatively cool (surface temperature of less than 1500C) and so also very dim, being barely hot enough to give off light.
But it gets worse. Under their original theory, called the Nemesis theory, this small dark star, which lurks at around 90,000 times farther away than the Earth is from the Sun, may be on an orbit that, once every 30 million years, ploughs it into the densely packed inner cloud. Here its immense gravitational pull would drag out several of the Oort comets and give them the "kick" needed to send them towards the Sun on orbits perilously close to the Earth. This explains, in the professor's view, the ominous mass extinction cycle, due to regular periods of increased cometary activity every 30 million years.
However, before we head for the bomb shelters, we should take heed of the professor's words: "As a practical matter our models will never be generally accepted (and shouldn't be) until the actual object is found." However stressing that they are "sufficiently plausibleto give incentives for others to look".
Today, their current paper has moved away from the Nemesis theory and proposed, on the basis of comet orbits, a less massive planet about three times the mass of Jupiter. None the less, with an explanation for the mass extinction cycle yet to be found, he has admitted that they may not be mutually exclusive; and that there could be two dark stars, one a failed partner to our own, and another one that is acting almost as an alarm clock for doomsday. Even so, he says: "I'm still hopeful that ultimately these might turn out to be the same object.".
"An original idea in science is often a gut instinct, but this should not influence the development of the idea," says the professor. "I always try to be my own worst critic". The scientific world remains intrigued but sceptical. However, the recent bombardment of Jupiter is a reminder that if the team is right, there may not be many around to hear them say: "I told you so."
Full Story Here More >
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| Wednesday, May 7, 2003 | |
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 7 May 2003 @ 12:53
White Noise Delays Auditory Organization in the Brain
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
April 18, 2003
Exposure to continuous white noise sabotages the development of the auditory region of the brain, which may ultimately impair hearing and language acquisition, according to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.
According to the scientists, the young rats used in their study were exposed to constant white noise that is relevant to the increasing, random noise encountered by humans in today's environment. They theorize that their findings could aid in explaining the increase in language-impairment developmental disorders over the last few decades.
The researchers, which included Howard Hughes Medical Institute medical student fellow Edward Chang and otolaryngology professor Michael Merzenich at the University of California at San Francisco, published their findings in the April 18, 2003, issue of the journal Science.
“While the rat is not a perfect model of human auditory development, it does allow us to investigate the fundamental role of early sensory experience in mammalian auditory development,” said Chang. “For example, we do know that exposing infant rats to specific sound stimuli can induce long-standing representational changes in the brain. Other researchers have shown that there are striking parallels in humans and other animals.”
Although past experiments have demonstrated the important effects that visual experience can have on brain development in animals and humans, Chang said very few comparable experiments have been reported that explore the effects of patterned early auditory experience on cortical development.
“Auditory experience is clearly an important factor in humans for learning language,” he said. “We learn to speak and read through our sensitivities to speech sounds that are heard during early life.”
Thus, Chang and Merzenich designed experiments in which they reared rat pups in an environment of moderate continuous background noise, which, while not injurious to their peripheral hearing, was loud enough to mask normal environmental sounds. They then used electrophysiological methods to gauge the organization of the auditory cortex in those animals, as well as in control animals raised in a normal auditory environment.
The mapping technique consisted of recording the responses of auditory cortex neurons to a variety of sounds presented to anesthetized animals.
“We knew from previous work that the rat auditory cortex normally undergoes a very dramatic, specific, and progressive development,” said Chang. “During the first month of life, it becomes much more specific and well tuned to different frequencies and temporal patterns of sound. The brains of animals reared in noise, however, did not achieve the basic benchmarks of auditory development until they were three or four times older than normal animals,” he said.
Additional tests on the maturing noise-reared rats showed that their auditory regions continued to be plastic — they continued to reorganize their neural circuitry in response to exposure to sound stimuli alone, long after the brains of normal rats had ceased rewiring. This suggested that a “critical period” for exposure-based plasticity in the brain had been extended.
They performed supplementary long-term experiments that showed that although auditory development was delayed in the noise-exposed rats, it did mature to normal adult levels once the animals were removed from the noisy environment. And furthermore, they observed those plasticity effects consolidated during the extended critical period persisted into the future, suggesting that this exposure were indeed “critical.” Chang summarized, “it's like the brain is waiting for some clearly patterned sounds in order to continue its development. And when it finally gets them, it is heavily influenced them, even when the animal is physically older.”
Chang said that the findings “suggest that there are two sides to the coin. “On the negative side, these findings suggest that noise can have devastating effects on the rate of development of the brain. They emphasize the importance that children, especially those at risk, be exposed to salient features in speech sounds in order for their auditory development to be normal. On the positive side, our findings may mean that the time frame may be longer in which treatment of such children will allow them to catch up.” According to Chang, the need for exposure to structured sounds underscores the importance of special therapy for children with disorders that might affect auditory processing.
“There are many linkages between neurons in the auditory system from the cochlea to the cortex where information has to be passed along,” he said. “And in addition to environmental noise, a number of acquired or inherited disorders could potentially degrade the signal at any of these points, masking the sensory input. From these findings, we theorize that disorders, for example, such as focal epilepsies or defects in myelination, might affect the fidelity of this signal, disrupting normal development of the auditory cortex. A combination of external and internal elements would be highly detrimental.”
Chang's future studies will address whether humans with developmental disorders have higher levels of noise in their auditory systems. Such studies, he said, could lead to diagnostic and predictive tests.
“If we knew that a child had a susceptibility to noise, we could intervene to enrich the child's acoustic experience to foster more normal auditory and language development,” said Chang.
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| Wednesday, April 23, 2003 | |
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 23 Apr 2003 @ 23:47
LSD TAKES TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
By Michael Shields
Retuers
Thursday April 17, 2003
ZURICH (Reuters) - LSD, the hallucinogenic drug that launched a million trips for hippies, was discovered 60 years ago when a Swiss chemist accidentally inhaled a substance that made his bike ride home something special.
Albert Hofmann was actually trying to develop stimulants for the circulatory system in his Sandoz lab on April 16, 1943 when he mixed up a batch of LSD from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye.
Instead, he created one of the most powerful agents ever to change perceptions of reality, an icon of the 1960s Flower Power movement and the drug of choice for a generation of musicians and writers who rode the psychedelic wave.
Hofmann, now 97 and living near Basel, recalled in a newspaper interview 10 years ago that he had made LSD in his lab that fateful day after discovering it five years before.
"Afterwards on the way home I suddenly had hallucinations, a beautiful and pleasant trip. The only thing was, I could not at first explain what had made me so high," he recalled.
Only three days later did he conduct a direct experiment on himself with lysergic acid diethylamide-25.
"I took what I then thought to be a very small amount, namely 25 mg. Then it all became clear," he remembered.
Researchers seized on the drug as a tool to probe human consciousness and perhaps shed light on psychoses such as schizophrenia, but it also became an underground cult drug whose illicit use Hofmann came to decry.
Sandoz, which also isolated hallucinogen psilocybin from Mexican mushrooms in 1958, never marketed either drug but distributed them free to research labs and clinics until 1966, when it halted shipments.
"Unfortunately, increasing abuse of hallucinogenic drugs is being noticed of late, especially among young people abroad," it said at the time, blaming sensational media reporting that gave rise to "an unhealthy interest" in
mind-bending drugs.
Hofmann always insisted LSD should remain administered only by researchers and psychiatrists because of the danger that people high on the drug could unwittingly do themselves harm.
"The great danger of LSD is that one cannot come to grips with and integrate the shock of being transported into a different reality, that one 'flips out'," he once recalled. More >
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 23 Apr 2003 @ 23:39
Informed Choice has a table on their website that lists vaccinations, the manufacturer, and the ingredients.
Really interesting and alarming.
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| Tuesday, April 22, 2003 | |
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 22 Apr 2003 @ 22:52
Space Weather News
for April 16, 2003
THE PLANET MERCURY: This is a good week to spot the innermost planet in our solar system. Look low and to the west just after sunset; Mercury will be there shining like a 1st magnitude star. Mercury, which is usually hidden by the Sun's glare, reaches greatest elongation (apparent distance
from the Sun) on April 16th. Visit Space Weather News for sky maps and details. (Note: When you're done looking for Mercury in the west on April 16th, spin around and look at the full Moon rising in the east. Low-hanging full Moons very often seem swollen and colorful--a lovely sight.)
AURORA WATCH: Earth is once again slipping into a high-speed solar wind stream flowing from a coronal hole on the Sun. Auroras are possible on April 16th and 17th--especially at high latitudes: e.g., New Zealand, southern Australia, northern Europe, Canada, Alaska and other northern US states such as Wisconsin, Vermont and Michigan. Because at this time of year nights are shortening in the northern hemisphere and lengthening in the southern hemisphere, southern sky watchers could be favored during this week's geomagnetic activity. The bright full Moon will make faint auroras harder-than-usual to see in both hemispheres.
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| Wednesday, April 16, 2003 | |
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 16 Apr 2003 @ 09:36
This comes from a story at MSNBC
Gourd reveals roots of ancient god 4,000-year-old fragment shows oldest evidence of religious icon in the Americas.
A drawing by Jill Seagard shows the Staff God as depicted on a 4,000-year-old gourd fragment found in Peru. The Staff God is characterized by a frontal view, fanged teeth, splayed feet and the presence of a staff in one hand.
CHICAGO, April 14 — The image of a fanged deity inscribed on a 4,000-year-old Peruvian gourd indicates an early Andean civilization practiced religion a millennium earlier than previously believed, scientists said Monday.
CARBON DATING of the fragment, found at a looted Peruvian cemetery by a husband and wife team of anthropologists in July 2002, showed that it was from around 2250 B.C.
“This appears to be the oldest identifiable religious icon found in the Americas. It indicates that organized religion began in the Andes more than 1,000 years earlier than previously thought,” said Jonathan Haas of the Field Museum in Chicago.
“We have this window back to the beginnings of civilization ... to the role of religion and the emergence of a complex society, the role of religion in the development of social hierarchy, government, power and leadership,” he said.
The 3-inch-tall (7.5-centimeter) depiction of the “Staff God” shows a fierce feline face with fangs, clawed feet, a snake for one hand and a staff — a sign of leadership — held in the other. Unlike undecorated gourds found elsewhere, it was likely inscribed with a hot implement and placed in a grave due to its ceremonial value.
The gourd could also have served soup, though such details await a residue analysis of the fragment.
This photo shows the actual 4,000-year-old gourd fragment, held at the left lower corner. The faint outlines of the Staff God can be seen on the piece, which was found at a looted cemetery along the coast of Peru.
Versions of the Staff God appeared in Andean iconography in succeeding centuries throughout Latin America, with the deity later depicted in gold, clay, textiles, and stone. The Staff God was later called the creator god, or Dira Cocha, by the Inca up through contact with Europeans in the 15th century.
“This god on the gourd is telling us about the history of religion in South America,” said Haas’ wife, anthropologist Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University.
The gourd fragment was discovered in a large burial ground in the Pativilca River Valley of a region called Norte Chico, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) north of Lima.
Also found in the area were 75-foot-high (25-meter) mounds with staircases and ceremonial hearths with plazas below, as well as housing for various strata of society.
Twenty-six communities have been found that likely contained thousands of residents each, reflecting a much more complex civilization compared to earlier hunting and gathering bands that populated the Peruvian highlands or small fishing villages along the coast.
Haas said the society was a “seedling” for the explosive growth of Andean civilization along Latin America’s West Coast and Andean highlands. Writing and pottery were unknown to the society, but they had a rich diet from gardens and the sea.
An article on the gourd discovery was published in the
latest issue of the magazine Archaeology.
More info. at these sites:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993625
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0417/p02s02-woam.html
http://web.latercera.cl/lt/Articulo/0,4293,3255_5726_29233929,00.html (Spanish)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/newstmpl=story2&cid=570&ncid=753&e=3&u=/nm/20030414/sc_nm/science_deity_dc
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2947039.stm
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030414-024215-4448r
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030414/030414-4.html
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_16-4-2003_pg9_3
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Sounding Circle - Category: Science
