Ancient stone markers warned of tsunamis in Japan

Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan's destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day.

"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants," the stone slab reads. "Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan's northeastern shore.

Hundreds of such markers dot the coastline, some more than 600 years old. Collectively they form a crude warning system for Japan, whose long coasts along major fault lines have made it a repeated target of earthquakes and tsunamis over the centuries.

The markers don't all indicate where it's safe to build. Some simply stand — or stood, washed away by the tsunami — as daily reminders of the risk. "If an earthquake comes, beware of tsunamis," reads one. In the bustle of modern life, many forgot.

More than 12,000 have been confirmed dead and officials fear the death toll could rise to 25,000 from the March 11 disaster. More than 100,000 are still sheltering in schools and other buildings, almost a month later. A few lucky individuals may move into the first completed units of temporary housing this weekend. ...

via Ancient stone markers warned of tsunamis - CBS News.

Comfort food: The woman who can't stop eating sofas

A mother-of-five has been diagnosed with a rare disorder called Pica after seeking medical help for her addiction... to eating sofas.

Adele Edwards, of Bradenton, Florida, has been eating the foam inside couch cushions for 21 years.

She sought help when the cravings started getting out of control.

Miss Edwards, 31, said: 'In the last year I’ve eaten seven sofas.

'I unzip the cushions and snack on the foam inside. And once I start I just can’t stop.

'But now doctors have told me that if I carry on, my addiction will kill me.'

Pica is a disorder found most commonly in toddlers and pregnant women who lack certain nutrients, causing them to crave non-nutritive substances like chalk, coins, batteries and even dirt.

Sometimes it’s caused by stress, and Adele admits her first time happened during a very emotional period in her life, when her parents were on the brink of divorce. ...

Like many addicts, Miss Edwards didn't get hooked overnight.

She started by chewing the cushion foam before spitting it out. But it wasn’t long until she began to swallow each small piece of cushion she put in her mouth.

Today, Adele’s habit includes added levels of disgust.

'I unzipper the cushion cover and tear off a piece about the size of half a pencil,' she said.

'Then I take it outside and rub it in dirt. The dirt makes it crunchier. Then I chew on it and swallow it.'

Her gastroenterologist, Dr. Christopher Olenec of the Digestive Health Center in Sarasota, Florida – the man who diagnosed Miss Edwards with Pica – was alarmed when Adele told him of her new habit with the dirt.

'The question became, "did she have a deficiency in her iron? And was that what was driving her to ingest the seat cushions?"

In fact she did. Miss Edwards’s blood contains half the amount of iron of a normal woman. For most, an easy solution would be regular consumption of iron supplements. But Miss Edwards has always struggled to combat her addiction with regular treatment.

'I’ve taken the iron supplements and they seem to actually work,' she says. ...

'It’s hard to try to get people to understand how bad this addiction is.

'I’m aware of the life risks. Doctors have told me I could get a stomach blockage so bad I’d go septic and my intestines could explode. That scares me.' ...

Miss Edwards, who is in discussions to enter a therapy center in California for people with similar strange addictions, believes this is the time for her to be serious about quitting.

'I’ve been doing this almost my whole life, 21 years. It’s consumed me. It’s putting my life and family at risk. I’m trying to stop this.'

via Comfort food: The woman who can't stop eating sofas | Mail Online.

In addition to the painful grapefruit sized blockage the article says she once had, I would think there would be chemicals in the foam that would make her very sick.

Astro-Lung: Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson to Duet With Astronaut on International Space Station

Jethro Tull lead singer and flutist Ian Anderson has made some out-of-this-world music, but his upcoming collaboration could be his spaciest concert yet.

That's because part of it will be from space itself: The International Space Station, to be specific.

On April 12, Anderson will be taking part in a duet with U.S. astronaut Col. Catherine Coleman, also a flutist, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight in 1961.

Here's the catch: Anderson will be performing on stage in Perm, Russia, while Coleman orbits 250 miles above Earth. Her performance will be screened by video link to the audience.The duo will perform "Bouree," an instrumental reworking of the Johann Sebastian Bach composition "Bouree in E Minor," which originally appeared on Jethro Tull's 1969 album "Stand Up."

Although Coleman has been aboard the space station since December, the gig has been in the works for months. In fact, Anderson helped her get ready by giving her one of his flutes to take on the journey. ...

via Astro-Lung: Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson to Duet With Astronaut on International Space Station.

Bob Dylan, not a folksinger, not a counterculture Czar

... He sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left.

“The Times They Are Not a-Changin’,” noted The Financial Times under a picture of the grizzled 69-year-old on stage in a Panama hat.

“Imagine if the Tea Party in Idaho said to him, ‘You’re not allowed to play whatever,’ you’d get a very different response,” said an outraged Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.

A 22-year-old Dylan did walk off “The Ed Sullivan Show” when CBS censors told him he couldn’t sing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.”

But he’s the first to admit he cashes in.

David Hajdu, the New Republic music critic, says the singer has always shown a tension between “not wanting to be a leader and wanting to be a celebrity.”

In Hajdu’s book, “Positively 4th Street,” Dylan is quoted saying that critics who charged that he’d sold out to rock ’n’ roll had it backward.

“I never saw myself as a folksinger,” he said. “They called me that if they wanted to. I didn’t care. I latched on, when I got to New York City, because I saw (what) a huge audience there was. I knew I wasn’t going to stay there. I knew it wasn’t my thing. ... I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.”

“Folk music,” he concluded, “is a bunch of fat people.”

He can’t really betray the spirit of the ’60s because he never had it. In his memoir, “Chronicles,” he stressed that he had no interest in being an anti-establishment Pied Piper and that all the “cultural mumbo jumbo” imprisoned his soul and made him nauseated.

“I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of,” he said.

He wrote that he wanted to have a house with a white picket fence and pink roses in back, live in East Hampton with his wife and pack of kids, eat Cheerios and go to the Rainbow Room and see Frank Sinatra Jr. perform.

“Whatever the counterculture was, I’d seen enough of it,” he wrote. He complained of being “anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent.”

Performing his message songs came to feel “like carrying a package of heavy rotting meat,” he wrote.

Hajdu told me that Dylan has distanced himself from his protest songs because “he’s probably aware of the kind of careerism that’s apparent in that work.” Dylan employed propaganda to get successful but knows those songs are “too rigidly polemical” to be his best work.

“Maybe the Chinese bureaucrats are better music critics than we give them credit for,” Hajdu said, adding that Dylan was now “an old-school touring pro” like Frank Sinatra Sr. ...

via Blowin’ in the Idiot Wind - NYTimes.com.

Sarah Palin 'Appreciates' Donald Trump's 'Birther' Questions

Sarah Palin said today she "appreciates" Donald Trump's repeated questioning of where President Obama was born, saying that though she believes he was born in Hawaii, "there is something there that the president doesn't want people to see on that birth certificate."

Palin's remarks on the "Judge Jeanine" show on Fox News came as the Hawaiian state health official that reviewed Obama's birth certificate denounced conspiracy theorists as "silly."

"It's kind of ludicrous at this point," Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the former director of Hawaii's Department of Health said in an interview with NBC, adding that "birthers," or those who have been questioning where the president was born, will never be satisfied.

"They're going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated," Fukino said. "The whole thing is silly."

Fukino said she has inspected Obama's "long form" birth certificate twice -- once in the run up to the 2008 presidential election and again in July of 2009. Both times Fukino made public statements indicating that she had inspected the certificate and that it was in fact accurate.

"It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that," Fukino said. ...

via Sarah Palin 'Appreciates' Donald Trump's 'Birther' Questions - ABC News.

It is hard to believe that an actual one time US candidate for president uses the word 'birther'. The word gives me the creeps. It reminds me of a particular  X-files episode ("Home").

Why more and more women are using pornography

... as she entered a depressed job market after university, it became a form of escape, a default she turned to whenever she felt anxious or bored. "I'd be stuck at home in front of my laptop on my own all day. I'd wake up with all these ideas for the day – and end up surfing for porn, trying to distract myself, eating and then going back for more porn. No one would ever have known. But I didn't get much done. It was like a constant battle between my sexual urges and my self-control. I'd think to myself: 'It's not doing any harm.' But then I started to loathe myself for giving in and wasting so much time on it."

Caroline is not alone. While it's accepted that women are watching – and enjoying – porn more and more, it's less recognised that some are also finding it hard to stop. At Quit Porn Addiction, the UK's main porn counselling service, almost one in three clients are women struggling with their own porn use, says founder and counsellor Jason Dean. Two years ago, there were none.While more than six out of 10 women say they view web porn, one study in 2006 by the Internet Filter Review found that 17% of women describe themselves as "addicted".

... Orgasm releases a dopamine-oxytocin high that has been compared to a heroin hit, and many regular users of internet porn report experiencing an almost trance-like effect that not only makes them feel oblivious to the world, but also gives them a sense of power that they don't have in real life. "The PC becomes an erogenous zone. The more you keep trying to put porn out of your mind, the more it keeps popping back in. The brain then learns that porn is the only way to cope with anxiety."

... as porn becomes more pervasive, Hodson observes that women are now also using it as a quick way to have sex without emotional investment, just as men traditionally have. "For women, just as for men, the internet is able to satisfy that need in rather a raw, crude sense, quickly and easily. Why serenade someone and go through all the courtship rituals with another person when you have Google?"But it's important not to turn lone use of porn into a catastrophe, adds Hodson. For many women, it's a phase that will pass ...

"I have a problem with the word addiction," he says. "Sex is a very natural function – and what is an abnormal level of sex to have or to want? If a woman is taking two minutes to orgasm to porn, and she's doing it, say, 10 times a day, that's still only 20 minutes a day.

"But if porn does become a habit that interferes in other areas, it might be an opportunity to take stock and realise there's not enough happening in your life. Forgive yourself for being tempted and having a few orgasms. If it goes beyond that, there are people outside who can help." ...

via Why more and more women are using pornography | Culture | The Guardian.

It's a like a junk food addiction. Sugar is an attractant in fruit intended to get us to eat something healthy. But we extracted the attractant (sugar) from fruit and added it to things that are not good for us.  Similarly, the sights and sounds of sex cause brain stimulation that is intended to accompany intimacy.  Mating with your a laptop is certain to be unsatisfying, but the same can be said of steamy romance novels, adult toys, running water, pillows and so on.

That dopamine-oxytocin high from an orgasm is not bad for you, so comparing it to a heroin high is stupid. You could also compare the intensity of desire to eat when hungry or drink when thirsty to heroin, but these are healthy behaviors.  Studies show that at least one orgasm a day is good for your overall health (lowers depression and stress, good for your heart, etc.), and there are plenty of reasons to avoid intimacy if the conditions aren't right.

If you do believe you have an addiction to anything (junk food, alcohol, porn, facebook),  you owe it to yourself to learn the skill and experience the fun of being able to re-program your own behavior. To break a habit, find a new desired replacement behavior and trick yourself into doing that instead for a few weeks. Pretty soon you'll have a life long habit.  I meditate, lift weights, run a mile and drink a healthy shake every morning, for example. Am I addicted to the high I get from exercise? Perhaps. But I wouldn't call that a bad thing.

 

Gardening: What to plant in April (Northern California)

I'm getting into gardening. Growing some of your own food is great. Today, April 10th, 2011, is a nice day and I've got my beds weeded and ready for planting, but what to plant? Here are a few guides:

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

September: Plant marjoram, oregano, peppermint, rosemary, thyme. (Herbs can actually be planted all year in most climates.)

... April ... Plant:• Basil seedlings (Plant in batches every two weeks through August)

• Chiles (seedlings; through May)

• Corn (seed―plant in batches every two weeks through August)

• Cucumbers (seedlings)

• Edamame (seeds; plant in batches every two weeks through May)

• Hops (through May)

• Lemongrass, Melons (seeds; seedlings in May),

• Squash (seeds; seedlings in May)

• Tomatoes (seedlings; through May)

• Zucchini (seeds)

via Our planting calendar - Sunset.com.

Today I planted 3 kinds of tomato, chilies, and pepper seedlings plus seeds for watermelon, corn, edamame, zucchini, pumpkin, and sunflowers. Total cost (including the new shovel, $55.)

Cuba anger at US Posada Carriles verdict

Cuba and Venezuela have condemned a US court's decision to acquit a veteran anti-communist militant and former CIA agent, Luis Posada Carriles.

A Cuban official called the outcome a "shameful farce"; Venezuela said the US was protecting a known terrorist.

Mr Posada Carriles was cleared of US immigration charges on Friday.

Cuba and Venezuela accuse him of staging bomb attacks and plotting to kill Fidel Castro, and have demanded his extradition.

Mr Posada Carriles, 83, spent decades fighting to overthrow the communist government in Cuba and stop the spread of left-wing influence throughout Latin America.

He was on trial in Texas on charges of lying to immigration officials about how he entered the US and about his alleged involvement in bomb attacks in Havana in 1997 in which an Italian tourist was killed.

But a jury found him not guilty, ending a four-year effort by US federal prosecutors to convict him.

The head of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, told the Associated Press the federal judge in Texas had prevented jurors from seeing evidence that would have convinced them of his guilt.

"The US government is as much a liar as he is because it converted a killer who has been sought for decades into a simple old liar," he said.

The Venezuelan government expressed "indignation" at "an act of theatre" designed to "protect the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles".

It said it would renew its request to have Mr Posada Carriles extradited for his alleged role in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1973, which killed 73 people.

The US has previously refused to send Mr Posada Carriles to Cuba or Venezuela, saying he might face torture. ...

via BBC News - Cuba anger at US Posada Carriles verdict.

Why Glenn Beck lost it

On Wednesday, Fox News announced that it was ending Glenn Beck’s daily cable-TV show. ...

Beck’s angry broadcasts about the nation’s imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night — and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

But as the recession began to ease, Beck’s apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience began to drift away. Beck responded with a doubling-down that ultimately brought about his demise on Fox.

He pushed further into dark conspiracies, urging his viewers to hoard food in their homes and to buy freeze-dried meals for sustenance when civilization breaks down. He spun a conspiracy theory in which the American left was in cahoots with an emerging caliphate in the Middle East. And, most ominously, he began to traffic regularly in anti-Semitic themes.

This vile turn for Beck reached its logical extreme two weeks ago, when he devoted his entire show to a conspiracy theory about various bankers, including the Rothschilds, to create the Federal Reserve. To make this case, Beck hosted the conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, who has publicly argued that the anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” “accurately describes much of what is happening in our world today.”

Griffin’s Web site dabbles in a variety of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including his view that “present-day political Zionists are promoting the New World Order.”

A month earlier, Beck, on his radio program, had described Reform rabbis as “generally political in nature,” adding: “It’s almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way.”

A few months before that, he had attacked the Jewish billionaire George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, as a “puppet master” and read descriptions of him as an “unscrupulous profiteer” who “sucks the blood from people.” Beck falsely called Soros “a collaborator” with Nazis who “saw people into the gas chambers.”

Fox deserves credit for finally putting an end to this. Its joint statement with Beck’s production company, claiming that they will “work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects,” is almost certainly window-dressing; you can be confident Fox won’t have Beck reopening what his Fox News colleague Shepard Smith dubbed the “fear chamber.”

In banishing Beck, about whom I wrote a critical book last year, Fox has made an important distinction: It’s one thing to promote partisan journalism, but it’s entirely different to engage in race baiting and fringe conspiracy claims. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity may have their excesses, but their mainstream conservatism is in an entirely different category from Beck.

Fox has rightly, if belatedly, declared that there is no place for Beck’s messages on its airwaves, and Beck will return to the fringes, where such ideas have always existed. Because his end-of-the-world themes will no longer be broadcast by a mainstream outlet, there will be less of a chance for him to inspire off-balance characters to violence. ...

via Why Glenn Beck lost it - The Washington Post.

A two-week old report by the Washington Post is only now gaining traction in the tech section. It appears that Apple has boycotted Fox News based on Glenn Beck and his ludicrous statements, including calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a "cancer."

"More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of Beck's program, making it difficult for Fox to sell ads," the Washington Post reports. "The time has instead been sold to smaller firms offering such products as Kaopectate, Carbonite, 1-800-PetMeds and Goldline International. A handful of advertisers, such as Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether. Network executives say they believe they could charge higher rates if the host were more widely acceptable to advertisers."

Given that Fox has the largest cable news viewership in the US, Apple's decision to boycott them was no small decision, especially with the impending launch of the iPad. Then again, Apple doesn't have a problem garnering media attention; it'll probably still penetrate a majority of the mindshare market without running a single iPad ad.

via Tuaw

Glenn Beck, go to heck.  There is some truth in many conspiracy theories but it takes research and careful consideration to reach that truth. It is easy and stupid to jump to sensational conclusions without solid evidence.

Hawaii-bound plane returns to Sacramento after bird strike

An Alaska Airlines flight headed from Sacramento to Hawaii turned around and landed safely after striking a bird this morning, airport officials reported.

Flight 869 reportedly had engine trouble after the bird strike, but no damage details were available.

The plane, which took off at about 10 a.m., landed safely at Sacramento International Airport and the passengers deplaned.

Inspection is underway, and no information is available on reboarding or rescheduling for the passengers.

via Hawaii-bound plane returns to Sacramento after bird strike - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee.

The flight was headed to Maui before the bird was ingested into the engine, Sacramento International Airport spokesperson Karen Doron said.

The plane landed safely and is being inspected by officials.

Passengers are waiting in the gate area. Doron said she is not sure if the passengers will travel on the same plane or not.

News10/KXTV

Vampire woman Maria Hose Cristerna gets 'horns' implanted

She was a trained lawyer from a deeply religious family who married at the age of 17.

But Maria Hose Cristerna, a 35-year-old mother of four from Mexico is known as vampire woman after becoming a tattoo artist and taking her body art to the extreme.

She says she turned to body art after suffering years of domestic abuse. ...

She has tattooed almost 100 per cent of her body, had titanium 'horns' implanted into her skull and dental implants that give her 'fangs'.


'The horns I have are a symbol of strength and were implanted without anaesthetic.'


I had the fangs done because I loved vampires as a little girl and I changed the colour of my eyes so they were how I really wanted them to be,' she told the Sun.

via Vampire woman Maria Hose Cristerna gets 'horns' implanted | Mail Online.

FBI opens searchable 'vault' of files including Unexplained Phenomenon

 

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has unveiled a searchable, online repository of 2,000 agency files on hot topics that had been previously publicly released in piecemeal in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The newly indexed files include a melting pot of information including internal security inquiries on cabinet members, investigations about ESP and details on undercover operations against subversive groups. Among the highlights:

Guy Hottel - Guy Hottel was a Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The information concerning Hottel is in regard to a March 22, 1950, memo he sent to the Director concerning flying saucers.

Notorious B.I.G. - The FBI opened a civil rights/color of law investigation into the murder of rap musician Notorious B.I.G. This release consists of FBI files between 1997 and 2005.

Lady Bird Johnson - This release consists of files concerning threats against the former First Lady. Other files in the release concern security arrangements regarding her travels.

Animal Mutilation - Hundreds of pages of FBI notes involving alleged cattle mutilation by non-terrestrial life are contained in five separate files. ...

via parapolitical • The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has....

Cool. The Roswell report is interesting. A hexagonal disk suspended from a balloon was recovered.

 

The 'molecular octopus': A little brother of 'Schroedinger’s cat'

For the first time, the quantum behaviour of molecules consisting of more than 400 atoms was demonstrated by quantum physicists based at the University of Vienna in collaboration with chemists from Basel and Delaware. The international and interdisciplinary team of scientists has set a new record in the verification of the quantum properties of nanoparticles.

In addition, an important aspect of the famous thought experiment known as 'Schroedinger's cat' is probed. However, due to the particular shape of the chosen molecules the reported experiment could be more fittingly called 'molecular octopus'.

The researchers report their findings in Nature Communications.

Schroedinger's cat': simultaneously dead and alive?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, quantum mechanics has been a pillar of modern physics. Still, some of its predictions seem to disagree with our common sense and the observations in our everyday life. This contradiction was brought to the fore 80 years ago by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schroedinger; he wondered whether it was possible to realize states of extreme superposition such as, for example, that of a cat which is simultaneously dead and alive. This experiment has not been realized with actual cats for good reasons. Nevertheless, the successful experiments by Gerlich et al. show that it is possible to reproduce important aspects of this thought experiment with large organic molecules. ...

The use of specifically synthesized organic molecules consisting of complexes of up to 430 atoms enabled the researchers to demonstrate the quantum wave nature in mass and size regimes that hitherto had been experimentally inaccessible. These particles are comparable in size, mass and complexity to Insulin molecules and exhibit many features of classical objects. Nevertheless, in the current experiment the tailor-made molecules can exist in a superposition of clearly distinguishable positions and therefore -- similar to 'Schroedinger's cat' -- in a state that is excluded in classical physics.

via The 'molecular octopus': A little brother of 'Schroedinger’s cat'.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives - Part I

Botanist finds mysterious plant in NM

Little green men are no strangers to Roswell, but now one New Mexico botanist says a little green plant has an out-of-this world connection to New Mexico.

David Salman said he was on a seed hunting trip near Roswell when he noticed a faint glow coming from what appeared to be a meteor crater.

He said it turned out the light was coming from a small patch of carnivorous cacti.

Salman said he found a cactus that eats bugs, glows and probably came to earth on a meteor.

He says he scooped up some samples to see if someone could identify them, so far no one has been able to.

via Botanist finds mysterious plant in NM | Roswell N.M. | KRQE News 13.

300 Chinese Cows Genetically Modified To Produce Human-like Milk

The reason that Chinese researchers have introduced human genes into cows is to enable them to produce an adequate substitute for human breast milk, since baby formula doesn't offer the same benefits. That said, there's no reason you couldn't drink it, and according to the researchers, "the milk tastes stronger than normal milk," whatever that means.

To get the human bits into the cows, Holstein dairy cow embryos had their DNA modified using cloning techniques. The clones were implanted into surrogates, and so far about 300 of these "humanized" cows have been created. Their milk boasts a much higher nutritional content, 20% more fat, and a variety of proteins that boost immune systems in human babies. ...

via Uh-Oh: Cows Genetically Modified With People DNA To Produce More Human-like Milk - Geekologie.

4.5-Billion-Year-Old Antarctic Meteorite Yields New Mineral

A meteorite discovered in Antarctica in 1969 has just divulged a modern secret: a new mineral, now called Wassonite.

The new mineral found in the 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite was tiny — less than one-hundredth as wide as a human hair. Still, that was enough to excite the researchers who announced the discovery Tuesday (April 5).

"Wassonite is a mineral formed from only two elements, sulfur and titanium, yet it possesses a unique crystal structure that has not been previously observed in nature," NASA space scientist Keiko Nakamura-Messenger said in a statement. ...

When meteors hit the ground they are called meteorites. Most are fragments of asteroids (space rocks that travel through the solar system), and others are mere cosmic dust shed by comets. Rare meteorites are impact debris from the surfaces of the moon and Mars.

"Meteorites, and the minerals within them, are windows to the formation of our solar system," said co-discoverer Lindsay Keller, space scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "Through these kinds of studies we can learn about the conditions that existed and the processes that were occurring then."

via 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Antarctic Meteorite Yields New Mineral | NASA Research | Meteorites & Early Solar System | LiveScience.

Stem cells coaxed into forming partial eyeball

Mouse stem cells have been coaxed into forming a partial eyeball, and the method may one day lead to retina transplants.

Yoshiki Sasai at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, and colleagues encouraged embryonic stem cells to develop into retinal cells, and then grew them alongside a protein matrix to promote the formation of tissue.

Over 12 days, the retinal cells formed a vesicle which subsequently transformed into a cup-like structure. Within this "optic cup", six major types of retinal cells were identified. They had spontaneously arranged themselves into six different layers, mimicking those seen in the adult retina.

While it is not yet possible to generate a fully formed eye – including a lens, sclera and cornea – Sasai says it may be feasible to use human stem cells with minor modifications to generate retinal tissues large enough for human transplantation in the next few years.

"The retina is severely impaired in genetic diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa. This replacement therapy would become practical once human retina tissue is available by our method," says Sasai.

via Stem cells coaxed into forming partial eyeball - life - 06 April 2011 - New Scientist.

85 year old man crosses Atlantic on raft to raise water awareness

A grandfather from London and his three-man crew have successfully crossed the Atlantic on a raft made of pipes after 66 days at sea.

Anthony Smith, 85, wanted to complete the 2,800-mile (4,596km) voyage to highlight the fact a billion people worldwide live without clean water.

The former BBC Tomorrow's World presenter hopes to have raised £50,000 for the charity WaterAid.

They set sail from the Canary Islands and reached the Caribbean on Wednesday.

Mr Smith recruited the team of "mature and intrepid gentlemen" - aged between 56 and 61 - by placing an advert in the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

It read: "Fancy rafting across the Atlantic? Famous traveller requires 3 crew.

"Must be OAP. Serious adventurers only."

The 85-year-old was a science correspondent and presenter on the BBC programme, which was axed in 2003 after 40 years.

Speaking ahead of the trip Mr Smith said: "Water strikes at the very heart of need.

"To voyage almost 3,000 miles upon the salty kind will make us intensely aware of places in the world that are without adequate supplies."

Their vessel, named the An-Tiki, was constructed out of 12m (39ft) lengths of pipe.

It was powered by a 400-square-foot sail and steered using twin rudders and oars, travelling at an average speed of four knots. ...

via BBC News - Presenter, 85, crosses Atlantic on raft for WaterAid.

Fourteen die after eating toxic sardines in Madagascar

At least 14 people have died in Madagascar after eating toxic sardines.Officials say more than 120 people remain seriously ill after the incident in the south-western town of Toliara.The government sent its condolences to the victims' families, promising to foot the medical bills of those being treated in hospital.Samples of the sardines have been sent for analysis. In previous incidents, researchers said the contaminated sardines had eaten poisonous seaweed.They say seaweed has proliferated among Madagascar's coral reefs as global warming changes the sea conditions.

via BBC News - Fourteen die after eating toxic sardines in Madagascar.