US billionaires pledge 50% of their wealth to charity

Image:

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (left) and billionaire investor Warren Buffett during the 2007 Berkshire Hathaway meeting in Omaha, Neb. (Nati Harnik/AP)

Thirty-eight US billionaires have pledged at least 50% of their wealth to charity through a campaign started by investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

They include New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CNN founder Ted Turner and entertainment executive Barry Diller.

"The Giving Pledge" lists all the families and individuals who have committed to the project.

The site says the pledge is a "moral commitment" not a "legal contract".

Related stories

* Who are the billionaire philanthropists?

The campaign was started in June to convince US billionaires to give away at least half of their fortunes either during their lifetimes or after their deaths.

"We've really just started but already we've had a terrific response," Mr Buffett said in a statement.

He added: "The Giving Pledge is about asking wealthy families to have important conversations about their wealth and how it will be used."

Those who pledge their money to "philanthropic causes and charitable organisations" must publicly state their intention through a letter of explanation.

'Improving education'

Other billionaires who have pledged large sums of their money include film producer George Lucas, philanthropist David Rockefeller and oil investor T Boone Pickens. ...

via BBC News - US billionaires pledge 50% of their wealth to charity.

Go Bill.

Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show

Winston Churchill was accused of ordering a cover-up of a Second World War encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public "panic" and loss of faith in religion, newly released secret files disclose.

The former Prime Minister allegedly banned reporting of the “bizarre” incident, off the east coast of England, for half a century amid fears disclosures about unidentified flying objects would create public hysteria.He is said to have made the orders during a secret war meeting with US General Dwight Eisenhower, the then commander of the Allied Forces, at an undisclosed location in America during the latter part of the conflict.

The claims are contained in thousands of pages of declassified files on UFOs, released on Thursday online by the National Archives.

The 18 files, which cover from 1995 to 2003, are made up of more than 5,000 pages of reports, letters, and drawings drawn from correspondence with the public and questions raised in parliament. The allegations involving Churchill were made by the grandson of one his personal bodyguards, an RAF officer who overheard the discussion, who wrote to the Ministry of Defence in 1999 inquiring about the incident after his grandfather disclosed details to his family.- telegraph

The government took the threat of UFOs so seriously in the 1950s that UK intelligence chiefs met to discuss the issue, newly-released files show.

Ministers even went on to commission weekly reports on UFO sightings from a committee of intelligence experts.

The papers also include a wartime account claiming prime minister Winston Churchill ordered a UFO sighting be kept secret to prevent "mass panic".

The files show reports of UFOs peaked in 1996 - when The X Files was popular.

The Joint Intelligence Committee is better known for providing briefings to the government on matters relating to security, defence and foreign affairs.

But the latest batch of UFO files released from the Ministry of Defence to the National Archives shows that, in 1957, the committee received reports detailing an average of one UFO sighting a week.

The files also include an account of a wartime meeting attended by Winston Churchill in which, it is claimed, the prime minister was so concerned about a reported encounter between a UFO and RAF bombers, that he ordered it be kept secret for at least 50 years to prevent "mass panic".

X Files

Nick Pope, who used to investigate UFO sightings for the MoD, said: "The interesting thing is that most of the UFO files from that period have been destroyed.

"But what happened is that a scientist whose grandfather was one of his [Churchill's] bodyguards, said look, Churchill and Eisenhower got together to cover up this phenomenal UFO sighting, that was witnessed by an RAF crew on their way back from a bombing raid.

"The reason apparently was because Churchill believed it would cause mass panic and it would shatter people's religious views."

Reports of sightings of UFOs peaked in 1996 in the UK - when science fiction drama The X Files was popular.

According to the files, there were more than 600 reports in 1996, compared with an average of 240 in the previous five years.

The figures for 1996 show 609 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects, 343 letters from the public to the MoD's UFO desk and 22 enquiries and questions from MPs.

But by 2009, the MoD's UFO inquiry desk -Sec(AS)2 - had been closed down.

The 18 files released on Thursday are the latest to come out as part of a three-year project between the MoD and the National Archives.

Dr David Clarke, a UFO consultant to the National Archives, explained why the papers are being made public now.

Dr Clarke told the BBC: "Since the Freedom of Information Act arrived in 2005, this subject - UFOs - have become the third-most popular subject for people to write to the Ministry of Defence saying 'please could you release this file, or papers that you hold on this particular case'.

"What they've decided to do is to be totally open and to say, 'look we're not holding any secrets back about this subject we've got all these files and we're going to make them available to the public'."

One includes details on "aerial phenomena" prepared for a meeting of the Cabinet Office's Joint Intelligence Committee in April 1957.

According to a note included in the Red Book, the weekly intelligence survey, four incidents involving UFOs tracked by RAF radars were "unexplained".

'Spaceman'

The documents also include reports of a famous incident dubbed the "Welsh Roswell" in 1974, where members of the public reported seeing lights in the sky and feeling a tremor in the ground. ...

They are available to download for free for a month from The National Archives website

via BBC News - Churchill ordered UFO cover-up, National Archives show.

New China Daytime UFO Sighting Over Leshan City, Sichuan China?

What do you make of this?  Are these the same picture?  I overlaid them in Photoshop, but can't seem to get them to line up exactly. Close, however. The orbs are about in the same place if you line up the buildings... but not exactly.  if they move slightly, especially with time stamps on the images, this would be more interesting... Are they two stills from a video?

According to chines media report on July 26, 2010 citizens of Leshan City saw a Triangular UFO in the sky around 10 A.M.Above three unknown luminous body lead to a group of people gather around in Leshan, city.

Lu Shan who captured the above image with his phone camera describes the unknown round illuminated discs light first appeared in the west to the naked eye to judge its diameter about 20 to 50 cm; 10 minutes, the south from the building the speed of 1 meter per minute slowly move to the north, and the radius is becoming increasingly small and lasting for more than 10 minutes before disappearing.

Professor Wang Sichao, from Purple Mountain Observatory of Chinese Academy of Science, said the identity of those discs still can't be determined before comprehensive analysis.

Wang explained that formation of a mock sun could be influenced by many respects, including directions of ice crystals in sky, the number of ice crystals and the number of cirrus clouds. Those ice crystals are just like prisms that could cause sunshine to bend and form a circle around the sun.

However, the situation was not adequate enough in Leshan to form this phenomenon, according to Wang.

via New China Daytime UFO Sighting Over Leshan City, Sichuan China |UFO News|UFO Footage|2010 UFO Sightings|Alien Pictures|Coverup|Disclosure Project|Web Bot.

Based on 39 years of research, Professor Wang discovered a pattern. He found that July and August are the best months for viewing, generally after 10:00 pm. Wang also stated that major UFO sightings tend to occur in years ending with numbers 1, 2 or 7.

After 39 years studying UFOs, Professor Wang concludes that most reports have been hoaxes. The objects spotted were mostly missiles, satellites and meteors. Yet, he admits a few cases still can't be explained, and these could be actual encounters with alien intelligence.

Since June 30, at least eight UFO sightings were reported in Xinjiang, Hunan, Zhejiang, Chongqing and other parts of China. Some of the objects later turned out to be rockets, planes or lighted kites. Yet, some remain a mystery.

via UFO blogger.

Here is the result of stretching and rotating the large image to try to fit it over the small one. Perhaps someone else can make it work... to me it seems possible these are two different images close together.

Caroline Giuliani, daughter of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, busted in alleged shoplift attempt

The Ivy League daughter of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was busted Wednesday for shoplifting at an upper East Side beauty store, cops said.

Harvard senior Caroline Giuliani was caught at about 3:30 p.m stealing $150 worth of cosmetics from Sephora on E. 86th St. and Lexington Ave., sources said.

"She was caught red-handed. She knew it, and didn't act out," a police source said.

The 20-year-old daughter of New York's toughest-talking law-and-order mayor was arrested for misdemeanor petty larceny and hauled out of the store in handcuffs.

She was taken to the 19th Precinct stationhouse and issued a desk appearance ticket that requires her to return to court on Aug. 31.

"She kept her head low and you could see her eyes were tearing up," a source said of her wait at the stationhouse.

Once store employees learned who the suspect's father was, they told cops they didn't want to press charges.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said there's been no decision about whether prosecutors will pursue the case. "Once we review the case, we will decide whether or not to file a criminal complaint," said DA spokeswoman Erin Duggan.

Caroline smiled nervously as she walked out of the 19th Precinct at about 7:30 p.m. with her mother, Donna Hanover. Neither would comment as they climbed into a Chevy Suburban and drove to Hanover's East Side home.

"This is a personal matter and Mayor Giuliani asks the media to respect the privacy of his daughter at this time," said a spokeswoman for the ex-mayor. The father and daughter have had a frosty relationship since his divorce from Hanover in 2002.

via Caroline Giuliani, daughter of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, busted in alleged shoplift attempt.

When you can afford the stuff, it is more of a sport than a crime, I guess. Or a cry for help.

Genome of ancient sponge reveals origins of first animals, cancer

The sponge, which was not recognized as an animal until the 19th century, is now the simplest and most ancient group of animals to have their genome sequenced.

In a paper appearing in the August 5 issue of the journal Nature, a team of researchers led by Daniel Rokhsar of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI), report the draft genome sequence of the sea sponge Amphimedon queenslandica and several insights the genome gives into the origins of both the first animals and cancer.

All living animals are descended from the common ancestor of sponges and humans, which lived more than 600 million years ago.

A sponge-like creature may have been the first organism with more than one cell type and the ability to develop from a fertilized egg produced by the merger of sperm and egg cells.– that is, an animal.

"Our hypothesis is that multicellularity and cancer are two sides of the same coin," said Rokhsar, program head for computational genomics at JGI and a professor of molecular and cell biology and of physics at UC Berkeley. "If you are a cell in a multicellular organism, you have to cooperate with other cells in your body, making sure that you divide when you are supposed to as part of the team. The genes that regulate this cooperation are also the ones whose disruption can cause cells to behave selfishly and grow in uncontrolled ways to the detriment of the organism."

As part of the new analysis, the team looked in the sponge genome for more than 100 genes that have been implicated in human cancers and found about 90 percent of them. Future research will show what roles these genes play in endowing sponge cells with team spirit.

Sponges are often described as the "simplest" living animals, while humans are considered relatively "complex," but how this differential complexity is encoded in the genome is still a major question in biology.

The new study shows that, while the sponge genome contains most of the gene families found in humans, the number of genes in each family has changed significantly over the past 600 million years. By analyzing which gene families were enriched or depleted in different groups of animals, the authors identified groups of gene functions that are associated with morphological complexity.

"The genome raises questions of what it means to be an animal," said first author Mansi Srivastava, a former UC Berkeley graduate student who now is a post-doctoral associate at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

"Though we think of a sponge as a simple creature whose skeleton we take to the bathtub, it has a lot of the major biochemical and developmental pathways we associate with complex functions in humans and other more complex animals," she said. "But there are certain missing components. Future studies will reveal how sponges operate as bona fide animals without those components, and how the addition of those components led to the evolution of more complex animals."

... What sponges lack, however, are a gut, muscles and neurons."This incredibly old ancestor possessed the same core building blocks for multicellular form and function that still sits at the heart of all living animals, including humans," said coauthor Bernie Degnan ... , essentially all the genomic innovations that we deem necessary for intricate modern animal life have their origins much further back in time that anyone anticipated, predating the Cambrian explosion by tens if not hundreds of millions of years.

"What marked the evolutionary origin of animals was the ability of individual cells to assume specialized properties and work together for the greater good of the entire organism. The sponge represents a window on this ancient and momentous event," said coauthor Dr. Kenneth S. Kosik, the Harriman Professor of Neuroscience at UC Santa Barbara and co-director of the Neuroscience Research Institute.

...  The sponge genome may also have more practical implications, according to Degnan."Sponges produce an amazing array of chemicals of direct interest to the pharmaceutical industry," he said. "They also biofabricate silica fibers directly from sea water in an environmentally benign manner, which is of great interest in communications. With the genome in hand, we can decipher the methods used by these simple animals to produce materials that far exceed our current engineering and chemistry capabilities."

via Genome of ancient sponge reveals origins of first animals, cancer.

Childhood Personality Traits Predict Adult Behavior

Personality traits observed in childhood are a strong predictor of adult behavior, a study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, the Oregon Research Institute and University of Oregon suggests.

Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse elementary schoolchildren in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later.

What they discovered was surprising, said Christopher S. Nave, a doctoral candidate at UC Riverside and lead author of the paper, “On the Contextual Independence of Personality: Teachers’ Assessments Predict Directly Observed Behavior After Four Decades.” Co-authors of the paper are Ryne A. Sherman, a UCR doctoral candidate; David C. Funder, UCR professor of psychology; Sarah E. Hampson, a researcher at the Oregon Research Institute; and Lewis R. Goldberg, professor of psychology emeritus at the University of Oregon. The research was sponsored by the National Institute on Aging through a grant to the Oregon Research Institute.

“We remain recognizably the same person,” Nave said. “This speaks to the importance of understanding personality because it does follow us wherever we go across time and contexts.”

The researchers examined four personality attributes – verbally fluent, adaptable, impulsive and self-minimizing. They found that:

• Youngsters identified as verbally fluent – defined as unrestrained talkativeness – tended, as middle-aged adults, to display interest in intellectual matters, speak fluently, try to control the situation, and exhibit a high degree of intelligence. Children rated low in verbal fluency by their teachers were observed as adults to seek advice, give up when faced with obstacles, and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

• Children rated as highly adaptable – defined as coping easily and successfully with new situations – tended, as middle-aged adults, to behave cheerfully, speak fluently and show interest in intellectual matters. Those who rated low in adaptability as children were observed as adults to say negative things about themselves, seek advice and exhibit an awkward interpersonal style.

• Students rated as impulsive as adults were inclined to speak loudly, display a wide range of interests and be talkative. Those who were rated low on impulsivity were observed, as adults, to be fearful or timid, keep others at a distance and express insecurity.

• Children whose teachers rated them as having a tendency to self-minimize – defined as humble, minimizing their own importance or never showing off – as adults were likely to express guilt, seek reassurance, say negative things about themselves and express insecurity. Those who were ranked low as self-minimizing were observed as adults to speak loudly, show interest in intellectual matters and exhibit condescending behavior.

“We think that personality resides within us,” Nave said. “It’s a part of us, a part of our biology. Life events still influence our behaviors, yet we must acknowledge the power of personality in understanding future behavior as well.”

Further study will expand knowledge that “one’s personality has important outcomes associated with it.” In addition, future research will “help us understand how personality is related to behavior as well as examine the extent to which we may be able to change our personality.”

via UCR Newsroom: Childhood Personality Traits Predict Adult Behavior.

Compact microscope a marvel

A compact microscope invented at Rice University is proving its potential to impact global health.

In a paper published online today in the journal PLoS ONE, Rice alumnus Andrew Miller and co-authors show that his portable, battery-operated fluorescence microscope, which costs $240, stacks up nicely against devices that retail for as much as $40,000 in diagnosing signs of tuberculosis.

Miller and colleagues at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) analyzed samples from 19 patients suspected of having TB, an infectious disease that usually attacks the lungs and can be fatal if not treated. His instrument, called the Global Focus microscope, performed just as well as the lab's reference-standard fluorescence microscope. The team reported similar findings were obtained in 98.4 percent of the samples tested.

Miller created the 2.5-pound microscope as his senior design project last year, working with faculty in Rice 360˚: Institute for Global Health Technologies. The goal was to make an inexpensive, portable and highly capable microscope that could be used in clinics in developing countries that have limited access to lab equipment and may lack electricity.

The microscope was built with off-the-shelf parts encased in a rugged plastic shell Miller created with a 3-D printer at Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK). Light to power the 1,000-times magnification microscope comes from a top-mounted LED flashlight.

The Global Focus microscope won this year's Hershel M. Rich Invention Award, which is presented annually by Rice Engineering Alumni to a Rice faculty member or student who has developed an original invention. It was the first undergraduate project to win the award.

Miller graduated from Rice in 2009 with a degree in bioengineering and works full time as a medical device designer for Thoratec, a San Francisco company that makes ventricular assist devices. Part time, he continues working to commercialize the microscope in a way that will ensure its cost remains low for users in developing countries. He has also replaced the microscope's plastic casing with aluminum for better stability. ...

Four days of blind testing of 63 smear samples, including control slides, confirmed the Global Focus microscope was every bit as capable as the lab's more sophisticated instrument in identifying positive smear specimens.

via Compact microscope a marvel.

Police: Idaho Man John Olele Bit Off His Roommate's Nose

... Police believe John Olele, 30, bit off his housemate's nose after a heated argument Sunday night.

According to KVAL, police in Boise, Idaho, responded to a 911 call about a fight at 9:49 p.m. and reportedly spotted "an adult male with most of his nose missing."

Officers scoured the property in search of the victim's nose but were unable to recover the detached flesh. The victim was treated at a hospital.

Police found Olele in the home and charged him with "mayhem," according to the Idaho Statesman.

The charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison, can be leveled against "[a] person who unlawfully and maliciously deprives a human being of a member of his body, or disables, disfigures or renders it useless, or cuts out or disables the tongue, puts out an eye, slits the nose, ear or lip," according to the state criminal codes.

via Police: Idaho Man John Olele Bit Off His Roommate's Nose.

I think he ate it. Does he look like a nose eater to you? Would you know one if you saw one?

Wikipedia Explains Law on Use of FBI Seal Image to the FBI

This from Joe Peacock of Fark:

So, you get a letter from the FBI asking you to comply with a demand, or face "further legal action." Most people would be reaching for the Depends adult diapers right then, if they hadn't soiled themselves already.

But not Wikipedia. When the FBI sent the user-generated encyclopedia a letter demanding that the site take down an image of the agency's seal, the Wikipedia folks stood their ground.

According to the Wikipedians, the law that the feds cited only limits the use of the agency's seal to create fake badges or otherwise falsely represent affiliation with the bureau.

Wikipedia responded with what I feel is the best please-fornicate-yourself anyone's given another entity in the past 10 years: "While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version."

Wow. We'll be watching to see how this plays out. ...

via Wikipedia Explains Law on Use of FBI Seal Image to the FBI.

Remains of St John the Baptist 'found'

Bone fragments of St John the Baptist appear to have been found on Sveti Ivan Island near Bulgaria's southern Black Sea.

He is considered one of the most important figures in Christianity.

Further tests are still to be carried out on the fragments, which were discovered late last month.

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant reports.

via BBC News - Remains of St John the Baptist 'found'.

He's all over the place, it seems... India, Bulgaria, Turkey, Romania, Egypt, Rome...

The presumed 'Head of St John', enshrined in Rome

Istanbul claims to possess the saint's arm and a piece of his skull in the Topkapi Palace, as does the Coptic Orthodox Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Scetes, Egypt,^[49] while John's right hand, with which he baptised Jesus, is said to be in the possession of the Serbian Orthodox Cetinje monastery in Montenegro, and also at the Romanian skete of the Forerunner on Mount Athos. Armenians believe that Gandzasar Monastery's Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, in Nagorno Karabakh, too contains or contained in the past St. John's head. A discussion about how St. John's head ended up in medieval Armenia's province of Artsakh, and in Gandzasar, can be found in the History of the Land of Aghvank, a collection of texts attributed to the medieval Armenian historian Movses Kaghankatvatsi. The fourth-century Armenian Monasery of Surb Karapet (Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, now in southeastern Turkey) established by Saint Gregory the Illuminator contained the relics of Saint John the Baptist; its fate is unclear after the complete destruction of the church by the Turkish army.

In July 2010 a small sarcophagus was uncovered on St. Ivan Island, Bulgaria. According to local archaeologists, the sarcophagus holds relics of John the Baptist which were donated by Constantinople to the destroyed monastery on the island.^[50][51]

An Armenian Apostolic Church, "St. John's" at Chinsurah, West Bengal, India, also claims to possess a portion of the hand of St. John. Each year on "Chinsurah Day" in the month of January, the Armenians of Calcutta make a pilgrimage to this Church and during the mass the pilgrims are blessed with this hand. During the year, the relic is kept at the Armenian Church, Calcutta. ^{- wikipedia}

Hippy Tune Hating Waterloo Man Arrested for Air Horn Blasting

A Waterloo man faces a disorderly conduct charge after he retaliated against noisy neighbors by blasting an air horn in their direction.

Carl Herold said he got tired of the "hippie tunes" constantly coming from across the street. The 62-year-old bought an air horn from an old dump truck last week, pointed it at his neighbor's house, connected it to an air compressor for power and started tooting away.

His neighbors called police within minutes. The arresting officer said he heard the horn blasts every few seconds starting about five blocks from the house. He arrested Herold when he refused to stop.

Herold told The Associated Press on Monday he hasn't decided if he'll fight the arrest.

via Waterloo man arrested for blasting air horn in retaliation for neighbors' noise.

My uncle was the bass player for Steppenwolf. Herold, it seems, was not born to be wild. There will be no hippie tunes in jail... so he wins.

US military to create japanese comic books

The US military is using manga to teach a new generation in Japan about the importance of the countries' half-century security alliance.

A new comic book series features an American boy called Usa-kun - a word play on USA and ''usagi'', Japanese for rabbit - who wears a hooded jacket with bunny ears and befriends a Japanese girl, Anzu Arai.

In the first issue of Our Alliance - A Lasting Partnership, to be published online today, the boy tells Anzu that he has come to defend her home, as they are ''important friends''.

The United States is publishing the Japanese-language comic as the countries mark the 50th anniversary of the security treaty, and two days before the 65th anniversary of the US dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima.

Over the past year, Japan's new centre-left government strained ties by publicly toying with the idea of moving a controversial US airbase off the southern island of Okinawa.

In the four-part comic series, the two characters ''explore and learn about the US military in Japan and its role in the US-Japan alliance''. The manga format was ''a very common way of communicating'', said Major Neal Fisher, of the US Forces' public affairs office in Japan.

''A lot of people love manga … Manga is a very light-hearted way to carry information'' on where the US bases are, what they do and how they co-operate with the Japanese forces, he said.

The US, having led the occupation of Japan after World War II, has 47,000 troops stationed around the country.

The comic will be published on www.usfj.mil/manga.

via Latest US signals are in manga.

Scientists make link between brain acid and cognition

Almost anyone who has faced a test or a deadline probably wished there was a smart pill to pop. New research suggests that this may eventually be possible.

University of Maryland scientists have linked a brain compound called kynurenic acid to cognition, potentially opening the door to development of a drug that could aid learning in healthy people -- and in those with disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

"Workers might want to take a pill so they can work harder, and college students would be interested because they already are taking amphetamine-type pills so they will be sharper," said Robert Schwarcz, professor of psychiatry, pediatrics and pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. His research has focused on healthy people, but he says, "What happens with diseases would be a major add-on."

There are many other research projects around the country into brain function. They are examining a wide variety of factors -- vitamin supplements, estrogen, herbs, red wine -- as well as ways to bolster blood circulation and chemicals that initiate actions in the brain. Several drugs are already being used to improve cognition in Alzheimer's patients, but they aren't effective for every patient.

The odds are long for any new drug treatment gaining government approval for use in humans, but Schwarcz believes that the kynurenic acid discovery could be the breakthrough needed by pharmaceutical companies to produce a commercial product. No human tests have been performed based on the findings, but he believes that at least four major companies have picked up on his research and have begun active drug development programs.

Other scientists think the research shows promise in a sorely needed area.

via Scientists make link between brain acid and cognition.

Radioactive Boars Rampaging Through Germany

It sounds like the plot of a B-movie, yet it’s bizarrely true: Radioactive boars are on the loose and thriving in Germany’s forests.

A succession of mild winters has left Germany scrambling to deal with a skyrocketing wild boar population. Tales of swarming beasts rampaging through city streets and attacking citizens occur with alarming regularity.

The problem has been aggravated by the lingering effects of the Chernobyl disaster from twenty-five years ago; a large portion of the wild animals are contaminated by radioactivity.

Poisonous radiation leaves the beasts completely inedible (wild boar is considered a delicacy in Germany), and the phenomenon is becoming expensive for the German government. In the last hunting season, 650,000 boar were shot versus 287,000 in the previous year. And due to atomic energy regulations, the government must buy contaminated animals from hunters who catch them.

Berlin compensated hunters to the tune of over $500,000 in 2009, writes German newspaper Der Spiegel -- quadruple the payment in 2007.

Though the Chernobyl explosion happened a quarter century ago, high levels of radiation remain in the region’s vegetation. And wild boars are especially susceptible because of their proclivity for mushrooms and truffles, which are especially efficient at absorbing radiation.

"In the regions where it is particularly problematic, all boar that are shot are checked for radiation," Andreas Leppmann from the German Hunting Federation told the paper. There are 70 measuring stations in Bavaria alone.

While general radioactivity in plants should continue to decrease, levels in fungi may even increase, leaving no end in sight for this issue. One expert told Der Spiegel that the problem will likely remain for at least another 50 years.

via FOXNews.com - Radioactive Boars Rampaging Through Germany.

Humber rock art mystery solved

When Peter Riedel looks at a riverbed, he sees a puzzle in the rocky surface.Riedel, 48, is the Toronto photographer responsible for the mysterious rock statues that appeared in the Humber River near the Old Mill this weekend.People who live in the area thought it was the work of engineering students or anonymous urban artists. A story about the mysteryappeared in Tuesday’s paper.“It was a real thrill to see it in the paper,” Riedel, 48, said at his home Tuesday. “It was a nice way to wake up with a coffee.”Riedel waded into the Humber River on Sunday afternoon and balanced rocks for four hours, with a crowd of about 30 watching on shore. He made 30 formations, each within 10 minutes. Some have the look of an inukshuk; another looks remarkably like an egret that visits the river. (“That’s my favourite one,” Riedel said.)

Tuesday afternoon, Riedel returned to talk about his work and fix a few pieces that had toppled in the wind. A crowd had gathered to take photos, not realizing the artist was in their midst.

“Are they glued?” Ingrid Hovesen asked her husband. “Does he just pick up any old stone?”

Riedel hears both questions a lot.

“There’s a centre of gravity, an invisible spine where it will stay in place. You just have to jiggle it around until it’s standing on its own,” he said. “Over time you get a really good feel for matching rock surfaces and counter balancing.” ...

via Humber rock art mystery solved - thestar.com.

Ask a Scientist: Why Is Urine Yellow?

Answer: Of the three types of cone cells in your retina, the medium and long ones respond the most and tell your brain "yellow" in reaction to the 570 nm reflected light which reaches your eye because the urobilins in urine does not absorb that wavelength of light.

The yellow color in urine is due to chemicals called urobilins. Urobilin is a chemical formed, eventually, from the breakdown of the hemoglobin in your blood.

Hemoglobin in the blood is what transports oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body (i.e. the tissues) where it releases the oxygen for cell use.

You start with a heme group (left), then remove the iron (Fe) and you end up with urobilin (right).  When your urine contains many urobilins, it's more yellow, and when it's low on urobilins, it is more clear.

There are a few steps in between.

[ Bilirubin is the breakdown product of the heme part of hemoglobin from worn-out red blood cells.  Urobilinogen is a colourless product of bilirubin reduction. It is formed in the intestines by bacterial action. Urobilin is produced when Urobilinogen is oxidized by intestinal bacteria; it can also be produced when urobilinogen is exposed to the environment upon urination, resulting in its oxidation to urobilin. Most bilirubin is partly broken down in the liver, stored in the gall bladder, broken down some more in the intestines, [some of] its metabolites remain in the bloodstream to be extracted by the kidneys where, converted to urobilins, it gives urine that familiar yellow tint. ... These same yellow chemicals also cause the yellow color of jaundice and of bruises, both of which result when more hemoglobin than usual is being broken down and/or the processing of its breakdown products by the liver is not able to keep up.   - Science In Action: Why Is Urine Yellow? ]

Urobilin is produced when Urobilinogen is oxidized by intestinal bacteria; it can also be produced when urobilinogen is exposed to the environment upon urination, resulting in its oxidation to urobilin. - Wikipedia

Our blood is amazing. Ethan Siegel on science blogs says, "there are about 30 trillion red blood cells in the human body, meaning you are both destroying (and making) new red blood cells at a rate of around 2.7 million cells per second. What's more, is that every red blood cell has about 270 million hemoglobin molecules in it, with each one capable of carrying four oxygen molecules (and having four heme groups)."

If your urine is dark yellow, you probably are not drinking enough water.  See the hydration scale. Um, I think you are supposed to squint at it, because if my urine had those little dots I'd freak out.

The colors we see are the result of our eyes and brains responding to different wavelengths of light.

Isaac Newton discovered that white light splits into its component colors when passed through a prism.  You see a rainbow of colors, but, you can put those colors back together and get white light if you pass them through another prism that bends the light back together.

Light is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is visible to the human eye (in a range from about 380 or 400 nanometres to about 760 or 780 nm). Visible yellow light has a wavelength of about 570 nanometers.  Urine is yellow not because urobilin emits 570 nm light, but that it absorbs light better that is not in the yellow range.

You see yellow because your retina's color opponent mechanism sends a signal up your optic nerve that, in the battle between yellow and blue, yellow has won.

Metagenomic symbiosis between bacterial and viral pathogens in autoimmune disease

Here is some great cutting edge information about autoimmune disease.  It seems that there are many more microbes in our bodies than anyone ever knew.

A couple weeks ago, I gave a presentation at the International Congress on Autoimmunity in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The talk was about successive infection and how viruses and bacteria can work together to cause an autoimmune disease state.



Amy Proal graduated from Georgetown University in 2005 with a degree in biology. While at Georgetown, she wrote her senior thesis on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Marshall Protocol.

A 4 dimensional shape and my sighting of an other dimensional vanishing bicycle

This thing is really fun. Try to follow one corner.

Admit it. You can’t take your eyes off this object. This is a tesseract and as such is a 4 dimensional shape. Wait, though. We only live in three dimensions, don’t we? So although this object is beautiful, hypnotising almost – what on earth is it and what is it doing here, confounding our lovely three dimensions with its impertinent fourth? Strictly speaking, what you can see above is a two dimensional projection of a three dimensional simulation of a four dimensional tesseract, that’s what

...Think of the space with which you are familiar. Put simply; think of the ways in which you can move. There is left to right, forwards and backwards. Finally there is up and down. Three ways, three dimensions. You can pinpoint your location by working out your coordinates in those three directions.

...When you go to the fourth dimension (cue Twilight Zone music) you have another direction. That direction is (wait for it) at right angles to each and every one of the three original directions. If your head just exploded, don’t worry. That is quite a normal reaction. Just take it from me that the math works.

via Daily Grail Frontpage | TDG - Science, Magick, Myth and History.

Tonight while driving I saw a bicycle rider with one arm out of the corner of my eye. As I turned to look at it, the moving contraption fold into itself and disappeared.

That, of course, is impossible, so, my brain promptly told me that I did not see what I had just seen.

And when I got to a computer, I saw the above  on The Daily Grail blog.  What I saw folded up and vanished something like this. Anyone else ever see something like this? I assume it is an eye/brain malfunction after staring at a computer all day, but it would be a lot more interesting if it was something real.

Some people believe that there is another world all around us and that four dimensional creatures can just fold in and out.  This, along with eye-strain, may explain many unusual things. Of course, there is zero evidence for other dimensional beings and plenty for perceptual malfunctions.

It is more fun to think that when there is a CME hitting the earth the multi-dimensional beings get those fold-able bicycles out and visit us.

This morning around 0855 UT, Earth orbiting satellites detected a C3-class solar flare. The origin of the blast was sunspot 1092. At about the same time, an enormous magnetic filament stretching across the sun’s northern hemisphere erupted… In short, we have just witnessed a complex global eruption involving almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun. A coronal mass ejection (CME) produced by the event is heading directly for Earth. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when it arrives on or about August 3rd. - spaceweather

Jonas, 32, sewed up his own leg after ER wait

A 32-year-old took the needle into his hands when he tired of the wait at Sundsvall hospital in northern Sweden and sewed up the cut in his leg himself. The man was later reported to the police for his impromptu handiwork."It took such a long time," the man told the local Sundsvall Tidning daily.

The man incurred the deep cut when he sliced his leg on the sharp edge of a kitchen stove while he was renovating at home.

"I first went to the health clinic, but it was closed. So I rang the medical help line and they told me that it shouldn't be closed, so I went to emergency and sat there," the man named only as Jonas told the newspaper.

After an hour-long wait in a treatment room, he lost patience and proceeded to sew up his own wound.

"They had set out a needle and thread and so I decided to take the matter into my hands," he said.

But hospital staff were not as impressed by his initiative and have reported the man on suspicion of arbitrary conduct for having used hospital equipment without authorization.

While Jonas admitted to the newspaper that he has no prior experience of sewing up himself he sought to play down the fuss that his handiwork has caused, arguing that "through the ages people have always sewn themselves up".

via Jonas, 32, sewed up his own leg after ER wait - The Local.

"Suspicion of arbitrary conduct?!"  Control freak alert. That such an infraction would even exist is the invention of a madman. Life itself is the result of arbitrary conduct!

In any case, sewing up a cut is rational behavior as it protects your wound from becoming infected... although I'm not sure how clean that needle was... but he may have sterilized it with a match first.

The hospital staff is guilty of no conduct. Probably understaffed, which means the hospital administrators are guilty of miserly conduct.

Scientist: A universe could exist inside every black hole

Using an adaptation of Einstein's general theory of relativity, Nikodem Poplawski, of Indiana University, Bloomington, analysed the theoretical motion of particles entering a black hole.

He concluded that it was possible for a whole new universe to exist inside every black hole, which could mean that our own universe could be inside a black hole as well.

"Maybe the huge black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies are bridges to different universes," he told New Scientist.

Explaining his theory in the journal Physics Letters B, he said he used the Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama (ECKS) theory of gravity, in his analysis to account for the angular momentum of particles in a black hole. Doing this it made it possible to calculate a quality of space-time called torsion, a property believed to repel gravity.

He says instead of matter reaching infinite density in a black hole called "singularities" in Einstein's theory of relativity - the behaviour of the space-time acts more like a spring being compressed with matter rebounding and expanding continuously.

Dr Poplawski explains that this "bounce-back" effect is caused by the torsion of space-time having a repulsive force against the gargantuan strength of gravity in a black hole.

Dr Poplawski also claims that this recoiling effect could be what has led to our expanding universe that we observe today and could explain why our universe is flat, homogeneous and isotropic without needing cosmic inflation.

It is hard to see how we could test whether or not Dr Poplawski's theory is correct; the force of gravity in black holes is such that nothing can escape, so no information about what is going on inside one can ever reach us.

However, according to Dr Poplawski, if we were living in a spinning black hole then the spin would transfer to the space-time inside, meaning the universe would have a preferred direction - something we would be able to measure. Such a preferred direction could be related to the observed imbalance of matter and anti-matter in the universe and could explain the oscillation of neutrinos.

via A universe could exist 'inside every black hole,' claims scientist - Telegraph.

I've got a universe in my head. Found it there last Wednesday.  The inhabitants ... yes, I hear them... request that I refrain from sneezing.