Physicists watch as sand forms droplets

Fire a squirt-gun skywards and the liquid stream will start to break up into smaller droplets due to surface tension. Intriguingly, this same behaviour is also observed in flows of sand even though granular matter is thought to be collection of grains that exert no forces on each other. Now — with the help of their $80,000 video camera — physicists in the US have developed an explanation for this puzzling similarity.John Royer and colleagues at the University of Chicago attribute this behaviour to the roughness of individual grains of sand. They propose that coarse surfaces lead to a combination of van der Waals interactions and capillary forces, causing grains to become attracted. Although 100, 000 times weaker than surface tension in liquid, these interactions closely resemble droplet formation in water jets, say the researchers.Recent studies have revealed instabilities in the flow of granular materials but the minuteness of the forces involved have rendered the clusters too short-lived to observe. Royer and his team avoided this problem by combining high-speed photography with sensitive measuring of forces. By “dropping” the camera alongside a stream of sand, they were able to capture high-quality images at 1000 frames per second and record the sand dynamics as it fell a metre in less than a second. “We now have a magnetic release, though at first I literally held it up by and then let go,” John Royer told physicsworld.com.

Invisibility cloak could hide buildings from quakes

Borrowing from the physics of invisibility cloaks could make it possible to hide buildings from the devastating effects of earthquakes, say physicists in France and the UK.

The "earthquake cloak" idea comes from the team led by Stefan Enoch at the Fresnel Institute in Marseille, France. They were the first to show that the physics of invisibility cloaks could have other applications – designing a cloak that could render objects "invisible" to destructive storm waves or tsunamis. ...

The new theoretical cloak comprises a number of large, concentric rings made of plastic fixed to the Earth's surface. The stiffness and elasticity of the rings must be precisely controlled to ensure that any surface waves pass smoothly into the material, rather than reflecting or scattering at the material's surface.

When waves travel through the cloak they are compressed into tiny fluctuations in pressure and density that travel along the fastest path available. By tuning the cloak's properties, that path can be made to be an arc that directs surface waves away from an area inside the cloak. When the waves exit the cloak, they return to their previous, larger size.

Unlike some of the optical invisibility cloaks that have been studied in physics labs in recent years, the new cloak is "broadband", meaning that it can divert waves across a range of frequencies.

This is made possible by tuning different rings of the cloak to incoming waves of different frequencies. Waves pass largely unaffected through rings not tuned to their frequency.

"The outer rings remain nearly still, but the pair of rings tuned to the frequency of the wave move like crazy, bending up and down and twisting," says Guenneau. "For each small frequency range, there's one pair of rings that does most of the work." The team has simulated cloaks containing as many as 100 rings, says Guenneau, although fewer would be needed to protect against the most common kinds of earthquake surface waves.

via Invisibility cloak could hide buildings from quakes - tech - 26 June 2009 - New Scientist.

New fossil tells how piranhas got their teeth

How did piranhas -- the legendary freshwater fish with the razor bite -- get their telltale teeth? Researchers from Argentina, the United States and Venezuela have uncovered the jawbone of a striking transitional fossil that sheds light on this question. Named Megapiranha paranensis, this previously unknown fossil fish bridges the evolutionary gap between flesh-eating piranhas and their plant-eating cousins.

Present-day piranhas have a single row of triangular teeth, like the blade on a saw, explained the researchers. But their closest relatives — a group of fishes commonly known as pacus — have two rows of square teeth, presumably for crushing fruits and seeds. "In modern piranhas the teeth are arranged in a single file," said Wasila Dahdul, a visiting scientist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in North Carolina. "But in the relatives of piranhas — which tend to be herbivorous fishes —the teeth are in two rows," said Dahdul.

Megapiranha shows an intermediate pattern: it's teeth are arranged in a zig-zag row. This suggests that the two rows in pacus were compressed to form a single row in piranhas. "It almost looks like the teeth are migrating from the second row into the first row," said John Lundberg, curator at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and a co-author of the study.

via New fossil tells how piranhas got their teeth.

Reverse-Engineering the Quantum Compass of Birds

Scientists are coming ever closer to understanding the cellular navigation tools that guide birds in their unerring, globe-spanning migrations.

The latest piece of the puzzle is superoxide, an oxygen molecule that may combine with light-sensitive proteins to form an in-eye compass, allowing birds to see Earth’s magnetic field.

“It connects from the subatomic world to a whole bird flying,” said Michael Edidin, an editor of Biphysical Journal, which published the study last week. “That’s exciting!”

The superoxide theory is proposed by Biophysicist Klaus Schulten of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, lead author of the study and a pioneer in avian magnetoreception. Schulten first hypothesized in 1978 that some sort of biochemical reaction took place in birds’ eyes, most likely producing electrons whose spin was affected by subtle magnetic gradients.

In 2000, Schulten refined this model, suggesting that the compass contained a photoreceptor protein called cryptochrome, which reacted with an as-yet-unidentified molecule to produce pairs of electrons that existed in a state of quantum entanglement — spatially separated, but each still able to affect the other.

According to this model, when a photon hits the compass, entangled electrons are scattered to different parts of the molecule. Variations in Earth’s magnetic field cause them to spin in different ways, each of which leaves the compass in a slightly different chemical state. The state alters the flow of cellular signals through a bird’s visual pathways, ultimately resulting in a perception of magnetism.

Far-fetched as it sounds, subsequent research from multiple groups has found cellular evidence of such a system. Molecular experiments suggest that it’s indeed sensitive to Earth’s geomagnetics, and computational models suggest a level of quantum entanglement only dreamed of by physicists, who hope to use entangled electrons to store information in quantum computers.

But though cryptochrome is likely part of the compass, the other part is still unknown. In April, another group of magnetoreception researchers showed that oxygen could interact with cryptochrome to produce the necessary electron entanglements. Schulten’s latest proposed role for superoxide, an oxygen anion found in bird eyes, fits with their findings.

Edidin cautioned that “this is still not an experimental demonstration. It’s a possibility.”

As for the perceptual result of the compass, it remains a mystery. Some researchers think birds might see a dot at the edge of their vision, swiveling according to the direction they’re facing. Others think it might produce effects of color or hue. Perhaps migrating birds fly towards the light.

via Reverse-Engineering the Quantum Compass of Birds | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Round-the-world solar plane debut

Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard has unveiled a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world.

The vehicle, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly through the night.

Dr Piccard, who made history in 1999 by circling the globe non-stop in a balloon, says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies.

The final version of the plane will try first to cross the Atlantic in 2012.

It will be a risky endeavour. Only now is solar and battery technology becoming mature enough to sustain flight through the night - and then only in unmanned planes.

But Dr Piccard's Solar Impulse team has invested tremendous energy - and no little money - in trying to find what they believe is a breakthrough design.

"I love this type of vision where you set the goal and then you try to find a way to reach it, because this is challenging," he told BBC News.

The HB-SIA has the look of a glider but is on the scale - in terms of its width - of a modern airliner.

The aeroplane incorporates composite materials to keep it extremely light and uses super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors and propellers to get it through the dark hours.

It is probable that Dr Piccard will follow a route similar to the one he took in the record-breaking Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon - travelling at a low latitude in the Northern Hemisphere. The flight could go from the United Arab Emirates, to China, to Hawaii, across the southern US, southern Europe, and back to the UAE.

Measuring success

Although the vehicle is expected to be capable of flying non-stop around the globe, Dr Piccard will in fact make five long hops, sharing flying duties with project partner Andre Borschberg.

"The aeroplane could do it theoretically non-stop - but not the pilot," said Dr Piccard.

"We should fly at roughly 25 knots and that would make it between 20 and 25 days to go around the world, which is too much for a pilot who has to steer the plane.

"In a balloon you can sleep, because it stays in the air even if you sleep. We believe the maximum for one pilot is five days."

The public unveiling on Friday of the HB-SIA took place at Dubendorf airfield near Zürich.

"The real success for Solar Impulse would be to have enough millions of people following the project, being enthusiastic about it, and saying 'if they managed to do it around the world with renewable energies and energy savings, then we should be able to do it in our daily life'."

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Round-the-world solar plane debut.

Rising CO2 Levels Lead To Bigger Fish Ears

For years scientists have observed the deleterious effects of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the oceans on shellfish and corals. Now, a new study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has provided evidence that the physiological development of fish ears is also impacted by the gas.

In the June 26 edition of the journal Science, researchers from the San Diego-based institute published a short paper outlining the results of experiments in which young white seabass were continuously exposed to high levels of CO2. The most dramatic change observed was the aberrant enlargement of the fish’s ear bone, or otolith, which plays a critical role in helping the animals to sense their surroundings and swim upright.

The results were particularly surprising to the researchers, whose initial hypothesis had predicted the shrinking of the otolith in response to elevated carbon dioxide levels. In general, there was no increase in the overall size of the fish, only in the relative size of their otolith.

“At this point one doesn't know what the effects are in terms of anything damaging to the behavior or the survival of the fish with larger otoliths,” explained lead author of the study, David Checkley.

“The assumption is that anything that departs significantly from normality is an abnormality and abnormalities at least have the potential for having deleterious effects.”

As carbon dioxide levels around the planet are on the rise, ostensibly due to human activities, one of the many effects has been an increased acidification of the world’s oceans.

Environmentalists and oceanographers alike have watched with horror as falling pH levels in the oceans have brought on the massive erosion of coral reefs and a dramatic shrinking of plankton populations.

via Rising CO2 Levels Lead To Bigger Fish Ears - Science News - redOrbit.

Dolphins get a lift from delta wing technology

We can only marvel at the way that dolphins, whales and porpoises scythe through water. Their finlike flippers seem perfectly adapted for maximum aquatic agility. However, no one had ever analysed how the animals' flippers interact with water; the hydrodynamic lift that they generate, the drag that they experience or their hydrodynamic efficiency. Laurens Howle and Paul Weber from Duke University teamed up with Mark Murray from the United States Naval Academy and Frank Fish from West Chester University, to find out more about the hydrodynamics of whale and dolphin flippers. They publish their finding that some dolphins' fins generate lift in the same way as delta wing aircraft on 26 June 2009 in The Journal of Experimental Biology at http://jeb.biologists.org .

Using Computer tomography scanning of the fins of seven different species ranging from the slow swimming Amazon River dolphin and pygmy sperm whale to the super-fast striped dolphin, the team made scaled models of the flippers of each species. Then they measured the lift and drag experienced by the flipper at inclinations ranging from -45deg. to +45deg. in a flow tunnel running at a speed that would have been the equivalent of 2m/s for the full scale fin.

Comparing the lift and drag coefficients that the team calculated for each flipper at different inclination angles, they found that the flippers behave like modern engineered aerofoils. Defining the flippers' shapes as triangular, swept pointed or swept rounded, the team used computer simulations of the fluid flows around the flippers and found that sweptback flippers generate lift like modern delta wing aircraft. Calculating the flippers' efficiencies, the team found that the bottle nose dolphin's triangular flippers are the most efficient while the harbour porpoise and Atlantic white-sided dolphin's fins were the least efficient.

Commenting that environmental and performance factors probably play a significant role in the evolution of dolphin and whale flipper shapes and their hydrodynamics, Howle and his colleagues are keen to find out more about the link between the flippers' performances and the environment that whales and dolphins negotiate on a daily basis.

via Dolphins get a lift from delta wing technology.

Wow, check out the markings on those stripped dolphins! The patterns look purposefully designed to fool other fish into thinking they are farther away, faster, or smaller than they actually are. Amazing natural camouflage.

Sri Lanka astrologer is arrested

The authorities in Sri Lanka have arrested a popular astrologer who predicted that the president will be ejected from office, police say.

Chandrasiri Bandara announced last week that the government would flounder in September and October because of political and economic problems.

The opposition have condemned the arrest and warned that the country is heading towards a dictatorship.

Astrology is taken seriously by numerous Sri Lankan politicians.

Inauspicious

Police told the AP news agency that Mr Bandara told an opposition meeting that the prime minister would take over as president on 9 September and the opposition leader would become prime minister.

He was arrested on Wednesday night to investigate the basis of his prediction, police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekera said.

Mr Bandara made his forecast despite the president's high approval ratings following the defeat of Tamil Tigers rebels in May, bringing an end to nearly 26 years of civil war.

"The CID (Criminal Investigations Department) is questioning the astrologer," Mr Gunasekara said. ...

"The crime which Chandrasiri Bandara committed was publishing an astrological column which was adverse to the government," said opposition United National Party General Secretary Tissa Attanayake.

So convinced are Sri Lankan politicians over the accuracy of astrology that many have their own personal seers who decide the auspicious times to launch any new initiative.

President Rajapaksa has declared himself to be a believer, telling foreign reporters earlier this year that he has often consulted a favoured astrologer for advice on what time to make speeches or to depart for trips.

via BBC NEWS | South Asia | Sri Lanka astrologer is arrested.

Time warp back to the Dark Ages.  Intuitive advisors can be useful, but there is no magic involved, no insight to be had from the motion of the planets about human events. (Unless you count the motion of the Earth around the sun and the resulting seasons which do influence our behavior due to changes in the weather... ) Bandara and other astrologers should get credit for ideas and advice without attributing them to some Namby Pamby hocus pocus Mumbo Jumbo.

Military jets spotted searching for sphere UFO over Kansas City, Kansas

A report was made that military planes and helicopters moved quickly onto the scene after an unusually shaped sphere UFO flew into the Kansas City, Kansas, area and hovered, according to witness testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

A woman in the Kansas City area was outside at 2 a.m. and looking toward the public forest area behind her home when she noticed a large white light moving toward her – and getting larger as it came closer.

When the object stopped, the woman used binoculars to get a closer look.

She described the object as “three large spheres connected together with a large arm or protrusion extending out at an angle underneath the craft. The arm was moving around in a circle.”

The object emitted a bright white light and stayed in that position until it just disappeared.

Shortly afterwards, military planes and helicopters moved into the area and seemed to be searching the same area for about an hour.

via Military jets spotted searching for sphere UFO over Kansas City, Kansas.

Oldest Elephant Relative Found

Scientists have discovered fossilized remains of the oldest known elephant relative, dating back 60 million years.

The fossils were found in Morocco. Called Eritherium azzouzorum, the animal would not have looked much like an elephant. It was just 1.6 to 2 feet (50 to 60 cm) long and weighed 9 to 11 pounds (4 to 5 kg).

The animal's relation to elephants was determined via analysis of the specimen's teeth and skull. While it lacked a trunk, the animal had an enlarged first incisor, which researcher Emmanuel Gheerbrant of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, says represents a primitive tusk. It was much smaller than the tusks of today's elephants.

"The trunk evolved with the modern elephant group, called elephantiform, at the beginning of the Oligocene," which extends from 33.7 million to 23.8 million years ago, Gheerbrant told LiveScience.

The fossil mammal was found in the same area that yielded the then-oldest elephant relative called Phosphatherium escuilliei, which dated back 55 million years.

The newly identified species extends the record of the Proboscidea order (whose sole survivors today are modern elephants) back to the Late Paleocene.

via Oldest Elephant Relative Found | LiveScience.

A tough way to wake up: Man stabbed while sleepwalking

What a wake-up call.

A 24-year-old Kansas City man suffered a stab wound to his face and shoulder Wednesday when his girlfriend allegedly tried to wake him from sleepwalking.

Police said the victim was intoxicated when he came home to his apartment. The girlfriend awoke about 1:30 a.m. and saw him urinating in the closet. She thought he was sleepwalking because he had done that in the past.

She tried to wake him up, but she said he pushed her out of his way. Scared he might hit her, she said, she grabbed a knife and held it up as he approached, cutting him. His injuries are believed to be non-life threatening.

via www.kansascity.com | 06/24/2009 | A tough way to wake up: Man stabbed while sleepwalking.

Dog in Calif. came _ somehow _ from Saudi Arabia

A "sweetheart" of a dog now in a California shelter may be really, really far from home. His microchip says the knee-high, light tan Saluki came from Saudi Arabia.

The neutered male dog brought to a Carlsbad animal shelter last week has an implanted microchip that was sold to the U.S. Military Training Mission, headquartered in Riyadh, said Lt. Dan DeSousa of San Diego County's Animal Services Department.

The dog was found June 15 near Escondido, about 30 miles north of San Diego.

DeSousa said he believes someone in the military owns the dog and likely brought him from overseas. But they haven't been able to track down the owner, even after speaking with veterinarians who work with the U.S. military in Saudi Arabia.

"In our hearts and minds, we know this dog belongs to someone in the military. For all they've done for us, it is only fair we try to get the dog reunited," DeSousa said.

DeSousa said he doesn't know the dog's name but he wears a tag that reads "Pet Rejuvenizer." Plenty of people have said they would take him but authorities hope the real owner will come forward.

"There's a lot of unanswered questions, and dogs can't talk, so we're kind of restricted as to what information we can get out of him," DeSousa said, chuckling. "We're trying to put the word out. He is a sweetheart of a dog."

via Dog in Calif. came _ somehow _ from Saudi Arabia -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY:1163:.

I'm thinking one or more humans is involved somehow... ;-)

Salt Block Unexpectedly Stretches

To stretch a supply of salt generally means using it sparingly.

But researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and the University of Pittsburgh were startled when they found they had made the solid actually physically stretch.

"It's not supposed to do that," said Sandia principal investigator Jack Houston. "Unlike, say, gold, which is ductile and deforms under pressure, salt is brittle. Hit it with a hammer, it shatters like glass."

That a block of salt can stretch rather than remain inert might affect world desalination efforts, which involve choosing particular sizes of nanometer-diameter pores to strain salts from brackish water. Understanding unexpected salt deformations also may lead to better understanding of sea salt aerosols, implicated in problems as broad as cloud nucleation, smog formation, ozone destruction and asthma triggers, the researchers write in their paper published in the May Nanoletters.

The serendipitous discovery came about as researchers were examining the mechanical properties of salt in the absence of water. They found unexpectedly that the brittle substance appeared malleable enough to distort over surprisingly long distances by clinging to a special microscope’s nanometer-sized tip as it left the surface of the salt.

More intense examination showed that surface salt molecules formed a kind of bubble — a ductile meniscus — with the exploratory tip as it withdrew from penetrating the cube. In this, it resembled the behavior of the surface of water when an object is withdrawn from it. But unlike water, the salt meniscus didn't break from its own weight as the tip was withdrawn. Instead it followed the tip along, slip-sliding away (so to speak) as it thinned and elongated from 580 nanometers (nm) to 2,191 nm in shapes that resembled nanowires.

A possible explanation for salt molecules peeling off the salt block, said Houston, is that "surface molecules don't have buddies." That is, because there's no atomic lattice above them, they're more mobile than the internal body of salt molecules forming the salt block.

Salt showing signs of surface mobility at room temperatures was "totally surprising," said Houston, who had initially intended to study more conventionally interesting characteristics of the one-fourth-inch square, one-eighth-inch-long salt block.

- via sciencedaily

Stem cell surprise for tissue regeneration

This cross section of hind limb muscle tissue is from a mouse five days after injury. The uninjured cells are at top and stained red. The blue cells below are regenerating muscles cells. They were labeled with a blue stain and formed from muscle stem cells.

=================
Scientists working at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology, with colleagues, have overturned previous research that identified critical genes for making muscle stem cells. It turns out that the genes that make muscle stem cells in the embryo are surprisingly not needed in adult muscle stem cells to regenerate muscles after injury. The finding challenges the current course of research into muscular dystrophy, muscle injury, and regenerative medicine, which uses stem cells for healing tissues, and it favours using age-matched stem cells for therapy. The study is published in the June 25 advance on-line edition of Nature.
Previous studies have shown that two genes Pax3 and Pax7, are essential for making the embryonic and neonatal muscle stem cells in the mouse. Lead researcher Christoph Lepper, a predoctoral fellow in Carnegie's Chen-Ming Fan's lab and a Johns Hopkins student, for the first time looked at these two genes in promoting stem cells at varying stages of muscle growth in live mice after birth.

As Christoph explained: "The paired-box genes, Pax3 and Pax7 are involved in the development of the skeletal muscles. It is well established that both genes are needed to produce muscle stem cells in the embryo. A previous student, Alice Chen, studied how these genes are turned on in embryonic muscle stem cells (also published in Nature). I thought that if they are so important in the embryo, they must be important for adult muscle stem cells. Using genetic tricks, I was able to suppress both genes in the adult muscle stem cells. I was totally surprised to find that the muscle stem cells are normal without them."

The researchers then looked at whether the same was true upon injury, after which the repair process requires muscle stem cells to make new muscles. For this, they injured the leg muscles between the knee and ankle. They were again surprised that these muscle stem cells, without the two key embryonic muscle stem cell genes, could generate muscles as well as normal muscle stem cells. They even performed a second round of injury and found that the stem cells were still active.

The scientists then wondered when these genes become unnecessary for muscle stem cells to regenerate muscles. It turned out that these embryonic genes are important to muscle stem cell creation up to the first three weeks after birth. What makes the muscle stem cells different after three weeks? The scientist believe that these two embryonic muscle stem cell genes also tell the stem cells to become quiet as the organism matures. After that time is reached, they "hand over" their jobs to a different set of genes. The researchers suggest that since the adult muscle stem cells are only activated when injury occurs (by trauma or exercise), they use a new set of genes from those used during embryonic development, which proceeds without injury. The scientists are eager to find these adult muscle stem cell genes.

"We are just beginning to learn the basics of stem cell biology, and there are many surprises," remarked Allan Spradling, director of Carnegie's Department of Embryology. "This work illustrates the importance of carrying out basic research using animal models before rushing into the clinic with half-baked therapies."

Farrah Fawcett on the Dating Game

US Supreme Court: Stop strip searching kids for asprin

School officials violated the rights of a 13-year-old girl by strip-searching her to look for prescription-strength ibuprofen, the U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday in an unexpected 8-1 ruling that bolsters students' privacy rights.

The ruling moves most of the nation a step closer to California, where a 1988 state law prohibits school employees from conducting strip searches. The court appeared to leave the door open for the searches in some circumstances - but not when school officials are looking only for painkillers and have no evidence that a student is hiding them under her clothing.

The ruling, written by Justice David Souter, said authorities in a Safford, Ariz., middle school had grounds to search eighth-grader Savana Redding's backpack for pills, based on a fellow student's allegation that the girl was supplying them, but not to have a nurse search under her bra and underpants.

"What was missing ... was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Redding was carrying pills in her underwear," Souter wrote in what may have been his last significant opinion. He is retiring after the 2008-09 term ends Monday.

Although school officials have more leeway than police to conduct searches, Souter said the Constitution's Fourth Amendment still requires educators to show a reasonable suspicion that a student is concealing contraband.

Justice Clarence Thomas, in a vehement dissent, said courts should stop interfering with school officials and leave them free, under a centuries-old standard, to act with the same authority as a parent to search or discipline students.

Such a constitutional interpretation is needed "to keep the judiciary from essentially seizing control of public schools," Thomas said. He said parents who object to a school's treatment of their children can ask their school board or legislature to change the rules, "send their children to private schools or home-school them, or they can simply move."

Souter told a lawyer during the session that he would "rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search ... than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime." Others made similar comments, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court's only woman, told a USA Today reporter later that some of her male colleagues didn't seem to understand the situation from a 13-year-old girl's perspective.

"I wanted to make sure no other person would have to go through this," Redding, now 19, said Thursday in a statement released by her lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union. In an earlier court affidavit, she said the search was "the most humiliating experience I have ever had."

The case dates to October 2003, when the assistant principal at Safford Middle School pulled Redding out of class, brought her to his office and showed her four ibuprofen pills of 400 mg each, twice the dose of an over-the-counter Advil. School rules banned the pills on campus.

Redding denied she was distributing the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which found nothing. The administrator then sent her to the office of the school nurse, who told her to remove her clothes and pull out her bra and underpants for a further search, which again found no pills.

Her mother then sued the district and everyone involved in the search. Thursday's ruling upheld a decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that a strip search of a student for an everyday painkiller crosses constitutional boundaries.  - sfgate

Embarrassment can be deadly. Destroy someone's self esteem as a teenager and they can end up with a lifetime of depression, which, for some, ends in suicide.

World record: 17 yr old youngest person to conquer tallest summits on 7 continents.

A seventeen year old from Malibu, California, has just become the youngest person to conquer the tallest summits on each of the seven continents.

On June 8th Johnny Strange, a 17-year-old high school senior, broke the world record for youngest person to climb the highest summit on every continent, the Seven Summit challenge, by scaling Mount Kosciuszko in Australia. The previous record was held by 18-year-old Samantha Larson of Long Beach, Calif. in 2007. Strange, scaled Mount Everest on May 20th. - now public

This is from June 9:

Three weeks ago, Malibu's Johnny Strange delivered a message from the top of Mt. Everest, stating, "Stop Genocide."

But he carries another message for fellow teenagers: Pursue your dreams and meet challenges head-on.

Strange, 17, after scaling the world's tallest peak at 29,035 feet, flew from the Himalayas to Australia and on Monday (Tuesday in Australia) strolled to the top of 7,310-foot Mt. Kosciuszko to become the youngest person in the world to have climbed the highest peak on seven continents, known collectively as the Seven Summits.

Strange beat a record held by Long Beach mountaineer Samantha Larson, who achieved the Seven Summits when she was 18.

Afterward Strange typed an e-mail to family and friends that read: "Never let anyone stifle your dreams no matter the feat, for if you have the heart and the courage, impossible is nothing."

It helps to have a wealthy attorney and fellow adventurer as a father, but this should steal nothing from Strange's accomplishment. He climbed Antarctica's Mt. Vinson when he was 12 to set this project in motion, and Everest is daunting for climbers of any age and experience level because of its perilously thin air and unpredictable nature (six climbers have died on Everest this season).

Strange reached the summit of Everest two days after Utah's Johnny Collinson stood on top of the world. Collinson also is 17 and he's trying to bag the Seven Summits within a calendar year.

Strange said he chose Kosciuszko instead of  Everest as his final Seven Summits peak because he wanted to tackle Everest "as a lone experience, not part of the Seven Summit goal." - LATimes

Michael Jackson dies at 50

I found out within 10 minutes after the LA Times reported it.  Amazing how fast information travels.  Farrah Fawcett Majors (62) and Michael Jackson (50) in one day! RIP. Wikipedia has a daily death list here. Perhaps we should do something about this whole death problem. Well, some people are working on it:

It is not known that human physical immortality is an unachievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations — for example, their fragility and slow adaptability to changing environments, which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering. As of 2009, natural selection has developed biological immortality in at least one species, the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula,^[4] one consequence of which is a worldwide population explosion of the organism.^[5]

Certain scientists, futurists, and philosophers, such as Ray Kurzweil, advocate that human immortality is achievable in the first few decades of the 21st century, while other advocates believe that life extension is a more achievable goal in the short term, with immortality awaiting further research breakthroughs farther into an indefinite future. Aubrey de Grey, a researcher who has developed a series of biomedical rejuvenation strategies to reverse human aging (called SENS), believes that his proposed plan for ending aging may be implementable in two or three decades.^[6] - wikipedia

Great, because being dead sounds boring. Has a single ghost ever been scientifically proven to be the returning spirit of someone who has died? I think not. Here is some stuff about Jackson:

At 3:24 pm Pacific time today, the LA Times reported that Jackson was dead. The New York Times already has a minute-by-minute account of what happened, starting with a 12:21 pm PST call to the parademics.  - lat

On a magical night in 1983, Michael Jackson struck a pose on stage, clasping the black fedora on his head with his white sequined glove. His black jacket and silver vest glittered as white socks showed under his high-water black pants. Then he erupted into a flurry of fluid dance moves in a performance of Billie Jean that would catapult the former child singing sensation into full-blown superstardom.

Probably no celebrity has been as revered and reviled over the past 40 years as Jackson, 50, who died Thursday in Los Angeles. The troubled, reclusive star was rushed to UCLA Medical Center by paramedics responding to a call from his home at about 12:30 p.m.

Jackson had been scheduled next month to begin the first of 50 sold-out concerts at London's O2 Arena, a testament to his enduring popularity with fans around the world, a love affair that reached a peak on that March evening 26 years ago.

The occasion was the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever television special that celebrated a milestone for the legendary label, but it was also a seminal moment for the King of Pop. A then-record 47 million people watched in awe as Jackson unveiled the moonwalk with an electrifying performance. Other Motown greats performed that night and Jackson himself had reunited with brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy for a walk down memory lane with the Jackson 5.

But in that moment, Jackson stood alone in the spotlight, a singular figure riding a wave of popularity rarely seen anywhere. His groundbreaking Thriller— still the biggest selling album of all time — was dominating the charts and Jackson was in the process of reshaping the musical landscape with his videos and celebrity. There were still millions of records to be sold, acclaimed videos to be filmed and record-shattering concert tours to undertaken.

It was also before years of tabloid exposes, bizarre behavior, artistic flops, financial crises, health issues and child sex abuse scandals tarnished his image. His run of triumphs in the 1980s, in addition to Thriller, included the blockbuster albums Off the Wall and Bad.

Since he first arrived on the scene in 1969 as the cherubic 11-year-old phenom leading the teen heartthrob J5 singing I Want You Back, Jackson has been at the forefront of pop culture.

He transformed pop music, becoming the first African-American singer to gain mass crossover appeal. The premiere of videos for songs likeBeat It, Billie Jean, Thriller, Bad andSmooth Criminalwere major events and he helped popularize the then-fledgling MTV. It, in turn, brought him into millions of homes daily.

Thriller won a record eight Grammy Awards in 1984. Virtually every song became a hit single and it changed the industry's thinking about how albums were put together and marketed. It also opened the door for artists to have more creative freedom and higher royalty returns. At the same time, he inspired legions of imitators and a line of dolls and accessories.

He spent his life under the glare of paparazzi flashbulbs, but in recent years, he has more often been the subject of negative news about his eccentricities and personal life. Jackson's seemingly charmed life started to change when a pyrotechnics accident during the filming of a Pepsi ad set his hair afire and burned his scalp. He got outpouring of sympathy after that and won a $1.5 million settlement from Pepsi, which he donated to charity.

But his health also became a public fascination, especially as he began to change his appearance through plastic surgery. He had several nose jobs, his lips thinned, and chin clef put in, among other alterations. Meanwhile, Jackson's brown skin grew progressively lighter, rumored to be the result of skin bleaching, but later diagnosed as vitiligo. The skin disorder causes a loss of pigment.

Jackson himself fueled gossip column by leaking false stories that he slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, reportedly to slow the aging process, or next to the bones of Joseph Merrick, the 19th century Englishman known as "The Elephant Man" because of his congenital deformities.

He addressed many of these issues in his 1988 autobiography, Moonwalk, in which he also revealed that he had been physically abused as a child. That same year, he built his $17 million Neverland Ranch near Santa Ynez, Calif., replete with an amusement park and exotic animals.

And while none of his post-Thriller albums matched its success, 1987's Bad, 1991's Dangerous and 1995's HIStory were still commercial successes. Jackson reminded the world again of his power as a artist with an exhilarating halftime performance at 1993's Super Bowl XXVII before a U.S. TV audience of more than 135 million.

via - USAtoday



[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-261612272896784588]

Homeless Guy Smashes Other Homeless Guy Upside Head With Skateboard During Quantum Physics Argument

Bell's Theorem and the Death of Locality? Or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument? We may never know what the beef was, but an argument between two homeless men about the splitting of atoms resulted in the splitting of lip:

A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.

Jason Everett Keller, 40, allegedly accosted another homeless man, Stephan Fava, on the 200 block of Grand Avenue in South San Francisco at about 1:45 p.m. March 30.

At the time, Fava was chatting with an acquaintance, who is also homeless, about "quantum physics and the splitting of atoms," according to prosecutors.

Keller joined in the conversation and, for reasons unknown, got upset, authorities said. He picked up his skateboard and hit Fava in the face with it, splitting his lip, prosecutors said.

Physics discussion ends in skateboard attack (SF Gate, image via Computer Science for Fun)

via Homeless Guy Smashes Other Homeless Guy Upside Head With Skateboard During Quantum Physics Argument - Boing Boing.

Drugs Won the War

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

I’ve seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

via Op-Ed Columnist - Drugs Won the War - NYTimes.com.

Seems we'd do better to strike at the root of the problem: people turning to addictions to cope with stress, depression, disconnection, etc.